Red Lobster — Restaurant in Ocala

Tim was our server. He impressed us. I think he is probably an exceptional waiter when working at a restaurant that is not badly UNDERSTAFFED. The wait staff was running around like crazy, and I heard employees complaining about being shorthanded. A waiter doesn't have much of a chance when he is too busy to give his best.

Maybe the management can't fix the staffing issue in a Biden economy in which people are used to being paid to stay home. Sad.

The restaurant seems clean, and it's not in bad shape. Lots of parking, which is a good thing, because it looks like older people really like to jam Red Lobster on weekends.

The table featured three different publications pushing the same cocktails. I get it. Drinks make money. Telling me three times won't make me any more likely to buy one.

We shared the mussels in butter garlic sauce. I thought they were great. I was a little disturbed to see some closed mussels, but the web says they're not unsafe to eat. They are, however, not always easy to open.

Tim brought us biscuits which we liked a great deal. Very light. The wife actually stuck one in her purse.

I had the lobster linguine. It contained a lot of lobster and langostino meat. Langostino is not lobster, but I understand that there is a limit to what Red Lobster can give you for $30 in 2024. It's a good way to give customers a quality entree with top-shelf ingredients and still make a profit. The pasta was a little overcooked, however, and the sauce was salty and lacked cheese flavor. I wouldn't order this again.

My wife had southern tails. This is a dish with one small lobster tail in it, split down the middle. Half of it goes in a bowl of cheese grits with shrimp. The other half goes next to a pile of curly macaroni in cheese. My wife also had mashed potatoes.

The potatoes tasted like they came from a box. They had the familiar sandy texture of dried potatoes. I could be wrong, but that's how they tasted to me. They lacked body. Maybe too much water added. I think they should have just mashed potatoes up with butter, salt, garlic, cream, and cheese and served them.

The grits were watery. You shouldn't be able to pour grits.

The shrimp and lobster were very nice. No problems there.

The cheese sauce on the pasta tasted like it had some kind of processed cheese in it, like Velveeta or cream cheese. When you're shelling out about $50 for an entree, you deserve serious cheese.

Portions were generous.

Our conclusion is that this would be a very good place to go for appetizers and biscuits, but for the money, the entrees we had did not cut it.

If you're going to charge $106 for a casual dinner for two, before the $24 tip, make sure all your food...

10/22: It's been our tradition to go for the all you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster for our anniversary. This was our 19th anniversary. So, we've been doing this for a long time! The lady who seated us was very friendly. The place was quite empty which I thought was unusual as there was 2 1/2 hours til closing. We were seated about 10 minutes before our waitress, Robin finally came to our table. She was not friendly and left me with the impression that we were putting her out being there. Service continued to be slow. Sweet tea was ordered which was served warm. There was very little ice. We asked for a glass of ice so I could pour my tea into it to make it cold. She brought another warm glass of tea with very little ice in it again. The biscuits had obviously been baked ahead and was reheated and slathered with butter so they'd be hot though tough when served at the table and as they cooled they became extremely hard! The brussel sprouts were burned, the lobster topped mashed potatoes were cold....it seemed like everything we were served was like reheated leftovers until the very end. Then they started bringing us fresh food. We had 1 skewer each that was excellent, fresh, hot. During our dinner we had been hearing our waitress complaining loudly about "being tired", "today has just been horrid!", "can't wait to leave here and go home!" For the kind of money charged for the all you can eat shrimp, you certainly don't expect to be given reheated leftovers and have it served in such a stressful atmosphere. My husband ordered a dessert for us to share as our usual tradition, but I couldn't take anymore of the experience and asked if we could "get it to go" . Sad! I said to my husband "we really need to get a new tradition!"

1/23 We took advantage of the opportunity to return and give Red Lobster another try. This time we came between lunch and dinner time. We found to food to be much better! There seemed to be 2 very busy managers on duty and everyone was working to be better attentive to customers. It was very nice to have a nice hot meal that looked to be carefully prepared. Friendliness of our Server could have been better as we had to wait over 15 minutes for her to get to us for our drink order while she chatted with and served what appeared to be regulars she was acquainted with that had been seated after us, but hey, that's the way it goes when Server's pay depends mostly on tips. Shame, really! However, the food was definitely much better then our...

Server was nice and did a decent job, she was a bit slow on drinks and taking our order but when the order was ready she grabbed it immediately. Our issues were with the food and the manager.

From the start we were disappointed. The usually amazingly tasteful biscuits that red lobster is known for were stale, cold, and topped with the worst tasting butter I've ever had. When we asked for fresh biscuits and told the server they were stale she agreed and said they were making fresh. The other biscuits were much better but still used the same butter.

Next up was the cheese sticks. I love cheese sticks and eat them frequently. This was the first time I have ever gotten cheese sticks that didn't have cheese in them. They were a shell of breading with nothing inside, I didn't know it was possible. They were okay at best, typical plain cheese sticks nothing fancy.

The big issue. The fried fish. We got the Friday special of fish and chips. After cutting into the fish and taking a bite we spit it out. It didn't taste right, it tasted tangy with a bitter after taste. This was fried cod, cod is a white fish and when fresh has very little to no smell and lacks flavor. It smelled like chemicals. It was not fresh and was borderline bad and starting to ferment.

We requested a manager to smell the fish to tell us her opinions. She stated that was what cod smells like and asked if she could get us something else and remove it. We took up her offer to have it removed, with everything else we were not chancing another dish. What frustrated us is that she didn't acknowledge the fish and treated us like we were crazy. I don't know if she's ever cooked herself but you do not play with fish, there are serious risks involved with bad or rotting fish and to not address it is the same as saying she didn't care about her patrons' health. I will give her props for removing the fish from the bill.

Overall this was the worst red lobster experience we've ever had and will probably never go to one again, and if we do it won't be this one. We'll stick to making the...