Red Lobster — Restaurant in Ross Township

If I could leave a review without a star at all, I would. I’m all for giving places a chance. I understand that bad days happen. However, after the third bad experience, forget it. The first time I took it as a slight oversight. The waitstaff was just having a bad day so they kept forgetting about us. Not a huge deal, made no fuss.

The second time I made an online order to-go. The staff was rude. My husband and I walked in and the place was “dead”. Maybe 2 tables and a handful in the back had guests. We stood and waiting for about 5 minutes for the hostess to finish her conversation with another staff member to ask us “how many”? I told her I had a to-go order and she said we can sit on the bench. I asked if we could sit at the bar, we’d like to have a drink while we wait. She rolled her eyes as she said, “sure if you want”. So we walked over and sat down. I grabbed a drink menu and we looked through. I knew what I wanted. I would always get the same thing from there (mudslide). Once we figured out what we wanted, we waited. We looked around and waited. Waitstaff looked at us, pointed, walked away. Got back to the drink station, looked again, shook their heads and walked away. All the while sitting there the hostess was talking to another staff member directly behind me. Who I’m guessing had heard me several times saying, “wow, I’m surprised there isn’t a bartender. Or that no one not even a waitress asked if we need anything “. After about 15 minutes went bye, the woman standing behind me talking to the hostess walked behind the bar. Are you kidding me!!!? I’m glad I ordered my food online.

Third was this past Friday. I wanted to take my parents out for a nice dinner. We walked in and we’re greeted and sat immediately. Waitress came right over. Seemed very nice. We ordered our drinks and I said we’d like an appetizer. The waitress said that once she brought out the drinks she’d take that order. She never came back. I actually timed it. 19 minutes... 19. I mean, seriously. The worst part, my poor mother is diabetic and has to eat a short time after her injection. And here we are, 19 minutes and no sign of our drinks. I looked at my parents and said let’s go. As we walked out, the same hostess who sat us said, “have a good night.”

Great job...

Thought I’d give Red Lobster another try since the last time I had it 2 years ago I was highly disappointed. I ordered for “rapid curbside.” I arrived 10 minutes after the time it said my food would be ready on the texts they send out. I texted immediately saying here and got a text saying someone would be out immediately. 10 minutes went by and nobody came out, so I called the phone number listed on the pickup sign. It rang and rang for several minutes and nobody answered. The parking lot had barely any cars in it, so it wasn’t even like they were busy. Anyways, I went inside and saw a to go bag sitting on the counter. I waited a minute until this friendly gentleman asked how he could help me. I kindly told him that I got a text message, saying my food was ready (at this point) 25 minutes ago and I checked in on my phone for curbside and nobody came out. He proceeded to tell me my food just now came out and handed me the bag that was sitting there. I said thank you and left. I was planning on eating my food in my car and opened it right away. You could tell by looking at it that it was sitting out for a long time as the sauce had started to harden and definitely not fresh. I ordered the Lobster linguine and it definitely was not worth the $30 price tag. On top of it not being fresh, the sauce was extremely salty. I forced myself to eat half, but couldn’t finish it. I don’t understand why they even have curbside pickup and texts saying your food will be ready if nobody bothers to bring your order out and they don’t answer the phone. They just leave your food to sit there to harden. Once again, they weren’t even the least bit busy! I left a nice tip and couldn’t even get good service! I would have been better off driving all the way out to Bahama Breeze in Robinson for their lobster...

I didn't have a chance to express just how bad this visit was for me. I put it at 2 stars because I was able to eat part of my meal. The quality of the food was poor and the preparation was lackluster. This was our last chance for this location. We used to get really good service here and the restaurant actually seemed to care about us as customers. Now, on this last visit, only a different "helpful" server asked us if we'd like some water and we agreed, but then no one ever asked us if we actually wanted drinks. So that wasn't great, but the drinks are all sugary and low alcohol content, so not really a loss for us, but the service here was lacking. The service did not improve, apparently there were 3 total servers (counting the bar tender) with 9 tables each (overheard from servers complaining). Then when we finally got to our food, it was cold AND poorly prepared. Chicken was under cooked and seemed to not have been flipped in cooking. Was supposed to include "thick cut apple wood smoked bacon" and we got bacon bits that were burnt. I know this edit is after corporate replied with a ticket number and all that, but I don't care because it was sooo bad. I still paid for the meals we got, but my scallops and shrimp were also barely cooked and stone cold. This chain used to at least care about sea food quality, but now it seems as though their only goal is to cut costs and serve poor quality food for a steep price without offering a competitive wage to workers (likely why there were only 3 servers for a full restaurant.) Icing on the cake is that we are unable to consume gluten and they no longer post gluten free options on the menu and do not care! Personally, I'd suggest going to any other restaurant in the area...even the crappy Wendy's up the road has...