Red Lobster — Restaurant in Parma

My girlfriend and I visited the Red Lobster in on Day Drive on 6/28 for our 3-year anniversary. We had a reservation for 9:15 PM and arrived at 9:05, checking in with the hostess, Angel, who confirmed our reservation and said we’d be seated in 5–10 minutes. Totally reasonable — or so we thought.

While we waited, we overheard mentions that the restaurant was understaffed, and watched several walk-in parties come and go, some joining a waitlist with an hour-long estimate. We stayed patient, trying to be understanding, but after 45 minutes passed — with several larger groups seated ahead of us — a walk-in couple who arrived 15 minutes after us was told they were next. That made no sense.

I approached the hostess, and she told me we were at the top of the list but claimed she “didn’t know” our reservation was for 9:15 — even though she had confirmed it earlier. No name call, no text notification, nothing. We were literally sitting in view the whole time, being passed over again and again. Only after I brought it up did she seat us — almost an hour after our reservation time — making the reservation completely pointless.

Then came another hour wait for our food. I was already frustrated, doing my best not to let it ruin the evening, but things just kept compounding. When the food finally arrived, we were given plastic silverware because the dishwasher is backed up. You have me trying to eat crab legs and lobster tails with disposable cutlery. Seriously?

The waiter was clearly overwhelmed — not his fault entirely — because a party of 40 had taken over the event room, even though it was supposedly booked for only 12 people. That one party monopolized the restaurant’s attention while every other table, including ours, was tended to more sparsely. The couple behind us left before even getting their food. They had been seated before us.

When we finally got the bill (after another 15-minute wait), I asked the person handling it — who seemed to be a manager — for the hostess’s name. When pressed for why, I explained what happened, and she was dismissive, downplaying the situation, and only asked if we enjoyed the food. It was fine, but nothing to write home about. Definitely not worth the headache.

We walked out 45 minutes after closing, having spent almost three hours there. Three hours that I’ll never get back. Three hours I regret spending at Red Lobster. A total waste of time, money, and what should’ve been a special evening. The service was subpar, the food was mediocre, and the management clearly had no control over what was happening.

I won’t be coming back — and I wouldn’t recommend this location to anyone who values their time, their money, or their...

We visited this location on 2 separate occasions.

The first visit was a little bizarre. Part way through our visit, we were asked to grab our dishes and drinks, and to relocate to another area of the restaurant as they were experiencing some sort of leak where we were sitting currently. We didn't really mind this too much, but we were kind of weirded out by it and made the visit memorable in a bad way.

A few months later, we decided to give it a second chance. Overall the staff was pretty friendly and we didn't have to relocate tables this time. The host stand seemed a little unorganized. The host planned to take us to a table, but a manager stepped in and had us seated to a different table. No big deal - I assume maybe the host is newer and still learning their role. It was probably 10 minutes after we were seated before we heard from our server, got waters, and placed our food orders.

At one point, while we were waiting for our food, another server came by our table, grabbed one of our sets of silverware, and explained that her table needed it because they already had their food. Having worked in the restaurant industry previously, this was a bit of a red flag. First off, from a customer service perspective, the only thing that should be taken from a guest is empty dishes. This sent a message to us that we were less important than this other table . This particular server failed to set her table up for success. Secondly, from a health and sanitation perspective, it can be very dangerous to take dishes/silverware from in front of one guest and serve them to another guest. For example, I was trained that when a plated meal is served to the wrong table, the meal should be discarded and made fresh. There's no way of knowing how that silverware was handled. We could have touched it without having washed our hands, we could be sick and breathed all over it, or we could have licked it for all they know. The server did replace it prior to our food arriving, but I still believe this was not the right approach.

On top of that, we had some missing sides that only came after we reminded our server. Later, our server went to refill our waters and accidentally watered down my Lobster Punch. No one's perfect, mistakes happen, but I was never offered a new one.

Again, the staff was all very polite. I believe many of these issues may boil down to lack of experience or proper training. With it being Red Lobster, you sort of get what you paid for. I'm hoping this review was constructive and can help them improve. I'm not opposed to giving them another chance in the future, and if the experience improves, I will modify this review...

So I didn't have an opportunity to take photos, but it happens to be the Shrimp Feast. It was about eight of us that went and myself along with two others had an alfredo sauce I had the shrimp Alfredo one person had crab another had lobster and shrimp or something to that creation I don't know what's going on with their alfredo sauce but it's thin watery and disgusting. As a restaurant, it can never go wrong with its biscuits it's cheddar biscuits they are the best. Several persons had salads they were all so great. Yet, not enough salad dressing, and this was a theme for the night, not enough. They have a new dish it's a Maple Bacon Chicken, the chicken was nice and moist. However, the flavor was very bland, missing the flavor mark. You have two very strong flavors, maple and bacon, and they didn't stand out at all. As you know, they have lots of sides, so out of the eight meals, three persons had coleslaw. Two coleslaws were delicious, and one coleslaw was dry and last minute put together. I do want to compliment those in the kitchen because every dish came out hot the kids meal didn't come out too hot to burn her and all the adult meals came out hot and edible. I will say it is a seafood restaurant so some of the dishes that probably shouldn't be made out of seafood restaurant probably should be pasta dishes that incorporate sauce and Seafood. As usual, the kids' meals were mac and cheese, and it was on point it's Kraft. You can never go wrong with that. And I do want to talk about service the server we had she was awesome she was serving several tables she remembered everyone to order she asked questions to make sure we were okay, like Bravo, and thank you. The atmosphere was very relaxing there was however a 43 minute wait thank goodness we didn't have anything planned afterwards or it wouldn't have been a good idea and definitely lost a lot of business yesterday because of the long wait only to get into the restaurant and see more than 20...