Red Lobster — Restaurant in Matthews

I love Red Lobster and this is our location to visit. However, over the last coupleof years. It has been hit or miss, depending on the quality of manager. By quality, I mean a manager who puts the customers first, as opposed to expecting the customer to compromise for manager's convenience. The latter began to occur too often. We barely go their now as it's a gamble. This was the same sign one other loved restaurant started to show, Chilli's. We don't even go there anymore as they've fallen off across the board. I hope this Red Lobster is not reflective of other Red Lobster restaurants. I would like to add, I think the concern response from store in comments, may not be completely sincere and more for appearances. The issues are easily resolved, if the manager leading the store, is well acclimated to high standards initiated by owner. Lack luster managers are no secret and must feel comfortable being so. I believe in contacting customer service first in such matters, before posting. However, when you see the appearance of concern in comment responses, but not emails. You get the impression the tactic may be to give the appearance of a quality business in public view, as opposed to the reality of running one.

Update: I suggest you be weary of curbside pickup. I ordered online curbside and was told by several people picking up their order, I might want to go inside. My hazard lights were on as instructed by curbside, which made it obvious I was waiting. Sure enough, I had to call inside. Only then was the order brought out. Plus, I always get the same dish from Red Lobster but the first time I've done take-ou. The portion makes me feel like i was robbed.🤨

Update 5/22/2025 This will be my final review and rating for this location. My lady and I were celebrating something and she wanted to take me to one of my favorite restaurants, Red Lobster. Often, I talk myself out of it because I never know what the experience is going to be. However, today was great. We sa in the Bar section for the first time. We weren't able to sit where we would have liked. The bartender was our waite. I believe his name was Larecco C. He was a nicest guy and made us feel incredibly welcome. He really made our day and the bar seating area a wonderful experience. Our hostess was a mature lady who was fantastic, but I don't recall her name. I'm going to upgrade the rating to a final score of four stars. I'll hold back one star for two reasons. One, stop restricting where customers can sit. This is my biggest discouragement with this location. They appear to allow the convenience of how far a waiter or waitress wants to walk, as the determining factor in how positive a customer's experience will be. Two, there's a constant high pitch noise we experienced in the bar seating area. We were told it's the lobster tank. Our waiter/ bartender Larecco was gracious enough to find us a seat in the bar area that was less vulnerable to the noise. If that noise issue can be resolved. I would highly recommend it. Having said all that, the food...

We love coming here for special occasions but tonight's experience was so horrible that it has made us not want to come back for quite a while. It went wrong from the second we walked in. When we walked in the restaurant there was no one at the host stand so we stood there and waited to be helped and we had many servers walk by us. It took 10 minutes for someone to come acknowledge us and let us know someone would be with us shortly to seat us. After we got sat we waited for quite a while before a waitress came up and said I'll be with you shortly. 10-15 minutes after we had been sat we finally got to place our drink order and then watched other tables around us get their drinks and biscuits before us and they got seated long after us. 15 minutes later we finally got our drinks. Our food took almost an hour to come out and when the food runner brought out our food she spilled another tables food onto my dish and my lobster linguini had deviled crab in it. I do not like crab and I love the lobster linguini so much it's all I ever eat when I go to red lobster. My pasta tasted bad because of the crab in it and the breading they use on the crab was in my pasta giving it a bad taste. Everytime we needed something it would take a while to get it from our server Gabby who is very new. Our server Gabby was nice but the service was very slow as she could not multitask very well with her tables. She never checked for refills when our drinks were out and my husband got his food and she didn't notice that I didn't get my food until I said something to her. Gabby is obviously a new server and needs more time training. All the other servers there have always given us great service. There is a server there that sings and is always happy and gives awesome service. We were hoping to get him but whenever we decide to come back we will ask for him if...

We had the worst experience that we have ever had at a red lobster restaurant. Will never go back to this location it was so bad. Everyone that worked there was so rude to us for no reason.

First thing I walk in and up to the front to put our name in for a table the woman just stares at me with a scoul and doesn't say anything. I said umm table for 5. She said "45 minute wait". I said that's fine. "Name" I told he the name. And she didn't say thank you we'll call you when it's ready or anything. Just gave me that scoul of a look again.

We ended up only waiting about 25 minutes for our table. Which is great. We ordered our drinks and after getting our drinks we ordered and it took 30 minutes to finally get our salads and then another 30 minutes to get our food. Keep in mind the place isn't busy at all, several open tables.

Our drinks were empty most of the time. I had to get up and go to the bar just to ask for a refill for our tea's since our waitress was no where to be seen most of the time and she never brought out some of the things we asked for. And when we would ask for the same thing again she would roll her eyes and walk off.

I'm always understanding when a restaurant is busy or short staffed but most of the time the waitress is apologetic or even the manager is apologetic. We didn't get either. Manager spent most of the time at the bar or in the kitchen and was just talking to the staff, not tending to customers at all.

We seen at least 1 or 2 tables just get up and leave without ever getting their food after being there for an hour like we were before getting ours. We arrived at 6:35 and left at 9:00 it was endless shrimp and getting our orders was like pulling teeth apparently.

I will never advise anyone to go to this location again and...