Red Lobster — Restaurant in Maplewood

Our experience had some positives but were overshadowed by negatives.

Negatives: -Someone in our party ordered salmon. The kitchen ran out of salmon (5:00pm on a Saturday), didn't say anything and tried to serve white fish instead. Staff remedies this by "giving" our person a dozen pieces of coconut shrimp. However, they were charged for the "make things right" shrimp. -A 3 y/o in our party received their food about 15 minutes after everyone else. Wait staff told us someone in the kitchen had it hiding in a warmer. -I ordered the $10.99 fish and chips. However, I was charged $14.99 for a version not on the menu. -It took staff 30 minutes to order our food (sitting down to ordering), they seemed understaffed.

Positives: -Wait staff was friendly enough. They even got some orange slices for the 3 y/o while they waited for their food. -Able to accommodate 12 people. -Cheddar biscuits were plentiful and back to an acceptable size.

Suggestions to management: -Try to serve small children first. They will thank you and their parents even more so. -Ensure your menu is correct. -Be honest about running out of items. People are much more accepting of honest issues then trying to cover things (e.g. passing off white fish as salmon). -If you are going to remedy a situation, don't charge them for it. That's not correcting the issue. -More staff would be helpful. It felt very understaffed. -Manager on duty should be apologizing or at least approaching partiea with less than adequate experiences. We would have appreciated a amanger apologizing for the mix up...

Update: 5/5/2024 Ordered food for take out. Was ready on time. Food was a lot better this time and had good flavor. The last time I went there must been an off day, because this is normally what I see Red Lobster as for food quality. Thank you.

I normally love Red Lobster especially the Triple Berry Sangria, but I was pretty disappointed at this location.

The Drinks were made great and the Staff was friendly and professional, the food on the other hand was extremely bland with no seasoning. I am not sure if they just had an off night. But I was very shocked with the poor food quality at this location.

The lobster had absolutely no seasoning or flavor, along with the butter dipping sauce. Tasted more like plain oil.

Same thing with the steak, and was barely cooked. My friend asked for medium well and looked like she got medium rare. I asked for medium rare and looked like it was just rare and not cooked.

Same with the Shrimp Linguini Alfredo, the tail was still on the shrimp and the sauce was plain. The grocery store canned Alfredo has more flavor.

Lobster flatbread, was decent but light on flavor.

Only thing that tasted good was the seafood mushroom and the lobster mashed potato. Everything else was just sadly disappointing. Displayed nicely but no taste for how...

I took my daughter, my mom and my grandma out to eat that is 4 generation's of women or girls in my family. Me and my mom wanted crab legs and we wanted the best. We asked the waitress where we could find crab legs on the menu not in lobster fest (money was no concern to me), she showed us one other place so we order that. When it arrived it was the skinniest crab legs I had seen there (Cub foods has a bag of crab legs that is 100% more appealing). It was 4-6 legs each and they were tiny, I was looking for king crab. After eating it thinking that was the best that was available I asked the waitress if that was the only type of crab legs offered and she then decides to tell me that on a separate menu they offer king crab but it's very expensive!! Wait what?? I may not look like I can afford it but Red lobster is not an expensive restaurant in my book, it just so happens to be one of the few seafood places in Minnesota. Why would she have not told us that, I honestly feel that she felt we could not afford it based off of small remarks she made. Nonetheless I still tipped her generously for her service and at that point it was clear that she had changed her perspective, making sure to come back to the table to...