IHOP — Restaurant in Phoenix

I would like to mention that I am writing this review to help improve the service and Social distancing awareness. I have been here many times but today I wanted to make this public. We came in around 8am on 7/5/2020 and when we were seated we wanted to get a particular booth. Unfortunately the waitress mentioned that due to the COVID the booth is not available. She mentioned it was every other booth. That was not a problem at all as we are all trying to stay safe. 10 minutes in IHOP and a man sits in the same booth right behind us. The waitress proceeded in taking his order and sat another family at the table to the left of us and the other booth. We proceeded to order as the both behind us had the man with his back towards us. We proceeded to order and waited for our food. My wife ordered extra cheese on her meal, I ordered over medium on my eggs. When the food came out my wife’s meal did not have extra cheese and my father in laws and my meal had burnt hash browns. When I mean burnt I mean burnt. The toasts did not have any butter and the eggs where over cooked. We were in a rush so we just proceeded to eat. I finished my drink and my Father-in-law and mother in law finished their coffee. 10 minutes later and still no refill. Finally a refill was done and we finished our meal. I got up to the counter and the manager was there. I proceeded to advise him that they might want to practice social distancing a little better. He asked what table we were in and I should him. The response was mind boggling as he replied we do social distancing. I wonder what he was looking at cause all the booths and tables were occupied around us. Well regardless of that he seemed a little bothered by my comment. I left it at that and paid our bill. He did give a 30% discount but did not acknowledge any other facts I addressed. IHOP, please take this matter seriously as you can get someone sick with the lack of attention and service that was provided to my family and I. I hope this helps you ramp up...

This place has a management problem. Our server was new and didn't know how to work the tablet used to take orders and was hesitant to ask for help (training?). We tried to use the app to get a free stack but she didn't know how to do that either. Said she would just remember that and take care of it at the end. Wanna guess what happened? It's ok. I remembered.

After 40 minutes (note, this was Sunday at 10:00 AM) the table behind us called the server over to say they had been waiting for their food for an hour so they were leaving. Manager came over to comp their meals but they never got food so no charges. Not having seen my server since we ordered I got up to find her. Walked by the kitchen and the entire length of the staging line was covered in plates of food.

Even though my server was AWOL I had been watching all the other servers delivering food. Not sure why the manager couldn't help them and deliver food too.

Plenty of cooks and food, just no one to serve it? There seemed to be a lot of servers but a line full of food says otherwise.

My eggs sat there so long they were cold. I ordered French toast plain. She asked me twice if I wanted bananas and strawberries . Nope I said. Wanna guess what showed up? Upchargeable I'm guessing. Didn't matter. It was cold too. Syrup was just out of the fridge too. Strange.

Couldn't find the server again to pay so had to try paying up front. Found the manager! As far from the customers as possible. I didn't ask to comp it but he offered and for once I accepted.

The restaurant was full and the servers were all hustling so maybe we drew the short straw with a new server on a busy Sunday but I wouldn't...

I will start by saying the food was fine. Nothing too bad; just standard IHOP food. The service, however, was the worst I have ever received at an IHOP or at almost any restaurant I've ever been to. The restaurant itself was unpleasant. It was freezing cold inside, the bathrooms were close to our table and they smelled bad enough that the dining room had a funky urine smell, the syrup bottles were sticky with dried clumps of syrup made the syrup difficult to pour, and the 3 tables next to us were filthy from the moment we got there until our food came out. Then the service from the employees was appalling. Our waitress was lackluster to say the least and never offered to refill our drinks. We saw our food sitting on the counter waiting for 10 minutes before the manager finally came over and explained (never apologized) that the cook made regular bacon and sausage so he 'had to fix it' and brought me turkey bacon and sausage. But when I told the manager that the cook was right I asked for regular, not turkey, he told me to just try it and he'd get me what I asked for if I didn't like the turkey bacon. As if that wasn't bad enough he could tell that my boyfriend and I were visibly upset and he took it upon himself to sneakily get his phone out and started taking pictures of us probably thinking we weren't going to pay (we did pay, though). Needless to say we will never be returning to this IHOP location, nor do we recommend anyone...