Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Novi

I was a bit surprised by the small number of patrons during the lunch hour at this establishment, but soon it became clear why the place was occupied only by accidental visitors like myself and my co-worker. It was a pretty cold day, so instead of a typical iced tea we have ordered a hot tea. (And no, they didn’t have green tea, just black one.)

Upon dropping tea bags into a “hot” water in the mugs we immediately noticed a foam indicating the water was not boiled at all. Stupid us, instead of walking out of this Outback we decided to stay, mostly due to the freezing cold outside.

I ordered unlimited chilli and a salad, my colleague ordered a French onion soup and a chicken. A soup seemed to be a reasonable choice for a cold day.

The soups arrived after few minutes. French onion soup looked hot, melted cheese was hard to scrap from the edge of the bowl. The chilli on the other hand - it was a worst chili I had in almost 60 years of my life. It was soooo hot (taste wise), however it was not hot temperature wise at all. It felt like someone had held a can of chilli between their thighs for 5 minutes, then emptied the content of a can into a bowl.

I believe that everyone deserves a mulligan and I ordered a second cup of the soup. I figured, maybe they have only one microwave and the microwave was taken to heat my co-worker’s French onion soup. Big mistake. Second cup of chilli was even colder than the first cup. This really irritated me. After all, homo sapiens use fire to warm up the food for thousands of years, but this establishment until today, was unable to master this well known art.

Unfortunately, the worst was still to come. The intake of liquids in a form of un-boiled tap-water tea, and soups called for a visit to the Outback facilities.

I really wanted to blame the state of the washroom on the recent immigration policies of the United States government, but judging by the state of the toilets, the last cleaning of urinals and toilet bowls dated well prior to January 20 inauguration. I almost vomited the lukewarm chilli when I approached the urinal. I don’t even want to think how the kitchen looks like at this Outback after I saw their toilets.

Therefore, next time I will simply go to the nearby Applebee’s, this Outback is below any civilized...

We visited this store for lunch as a family. Most of the restaurant was empty but we were told by the host that we would need to wait five minutes for a table. It wasn’t until after we were seated and ordered drinks that we were informed that the bartender (James) was the only server and that the hostess was helping.

My mom ordered steak and the rest of us ordered unlimited soup and salad. After waiting for quite a while we asked about our salads. The host came out with two salads confused and had to go back and get the other two. Shortly after, the steak and soups arrived. My mom sent her steak back because she didn’t want it to get cold while she ate her salad.

The rest of us are our salads and our lukewarm soup. We waited quite a while before my mom’s steak was brought back out. By that time it had been sitting under a heat lamp for a while and we were all done eating. She sent her steak back.

The server was very understanding and patient and took the steak off the bill. The manager never came to talk to us and the server wasn’t even sure where the manager was.

At that point we didn’t order any more soup or salad because the service was so slow and my mom no longer wanted to eat a cold steak. We also paid $4 each for two pops that we never got refills on.

I have worked in the restaurant business for years and the store was not that busy. The host should have been a stronger help for that bartender/server, and the manager should have had oversight on the timing and expedition of the orders. They also should have addressed our situation when my mom sent the steak back. This whole situation could have been avoided if the store was being properly managed.

In the meantime, we paid $50 for a lackluster lunch that left us feeling disappointed. I would have gotten much more value from...

Very discouraging experience. We love Outback and decided to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary there. Did an online waitlist for 6:15. Arrived and the restaurant was less than 1/2 full but several waiting to be seated. We figured since it was a Saturday night they must have had several call ins and were short staffed. When seated after almost 20 minute wait I asked the host (manager?) if they were short staffed and he said no, they just don’t want people to have to wait once seated. That made no sense but ok. Primary reason for going there was for the blackberry sangria. They were out of it on a Saturday night. Husband tried to order 3 different beers before finding one they had. Ordered dinners and waited a while for salads- we had barely started salad and within minutes dinners came. My medium rare prime rib was medium well/well (end cut) and was very obviously a reheat that had been dipped in au jus. Server said there was no medium rare available and she ‘wished they’d told her that’. She was going to send a manager out when someone (assuming a manager) came out with a new dinner with medium rare prime rib. Overall it was just a super disappointing experience, not even close to Outback standards and not how we hoped to celebrate our anniversary. Post note: we get staffing issues but if you’re going to not seat 1/2 the restaurant on a Saturday night at least tell guests when they get there. No one was acting rushed in any way and totally tone deaf to the fact guests waiting were all talking about the number of...