Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Sacramento

TL;DR: If you ever go to this Outback, ASK FOR REESE. He’s SUPER DOPE and I WISH WE TIPPED HIM MORE. ~40% was not enough. 😂

Summary: Wow. WOW. What a pleasant and wonderful experience! This review is for Reese (give this guy the biggest raise ever, please!) and the wonderful service/food at this location.

We never eat out. I love to cook, so we generally will have a sit-down restaurant meal only once a month, if that. This time, we were craving some comfort food, and Outback just sounded BOMB. Y’know what I mean? Like, “Wanna get down on some ribs at Outback?!” That kinda day.

The Service:

We were juggling a lot during our visit, (hubby broke his arm recently, so we were a little “handicapped”), but what really made this meal memorable was our waiter, Reese. Like, I don’t even wanna talk about the food. Reese deserves an Oscar. A Grammy. A Kid’s Choice Award. Employee of the Forever.

How can we describe Reese?

Friendly, welcoming, made us feel at home, made us feel like family, made us feel at ease, seemed really confident in himself and his abilities, never rushed us, really took care of us, anticipated what we needed, went the extra mile — you name it, he did it.

It was just nice to feel like the one time we decided to go and have a meal outside our home, someone like Reese was there to serve us. It was just the unexpected double-cherry on top to our expectations of yummy food.

But okay, fine. I guess I should mention the food, too. It’s just that Reese was so great, the yummy food is an afterthought. 😂

The Food: YUM. Yummy bread appetizer (hubby says it’s jokingly referred to as “chocolate bread” because of the rich and dark brown crust) with whipped butter, yummy wing appetizer (mmm, wow!!), yummy Blue Cheese Pecan Salad and Wedge Salad (seriously, so good), and even more delicious ribs. I will dream of these ribs for weeks.

We ordered the Sirloin and Ribs, and while the Ribs + Loaded Mashed Potatoes were fantastic, the Sirloin itself was a bit undercooked. BUT. Hang with me, here, because the service immediately made up for it.

We showed Reese our undercooked steak, who immediately took it back to be fired longer on the grill, then asked us if we wanted another serving of ribs and loaded mash to go with it. We politely declined (we already demolished our ribs), but he insisted, saying it was on the house. Well gosh, okay, sure. Thank you! We can just take it home, I guess.

When the steak was brought back, the manager accompanied it, apologized, and stayed to watch us cut into it and ensure it was prepared the way we liked. It was! Thank you again!

We enjoyed our meal (hubby looooved the steak), and mostly, we quietly chatted about how nice the service was. You just don’t really expect to love your waiters at a chain restaurant, but MAN. What a friendly and accommodating server!

We ended the night with some amazing cheesecake Reese talked us into, haha. Hubby had the raspberry cheesecake, and I had the chocolate. So good! We’re usually really good about what we eat (typically super healthy), so I felt guilty eating such rich food, but it was wooorth iiiiit because I really loved everything I had.

Just want to double, triple, and quadruple-down on how wonderful our service and meal was at this location. I’m really looking forward to coming back again.

And if you, person reading this, are ever in the neighborhood, drop by and ASK FOR REESE. Someone else needs to bear witness to this guy and see what an awesome server he is. Seriously. Fantastic. Standing ovation. Slow clap. Encore. Loud finger-whistle. All of...

Sad to say the quality of this place, and I'm guessing Outback overall has gone downhill. Locations are closing in my area, and that may be a direct reflection of the experiences customers are having.

My experience started off great. Walked in, seated immediately. Waitress was over in a few minutes and got our drinks started. Shortly after, we ordered and the appetizers were out in about 10 min. Up to that point, everything was good. Then our waitress vanished. Drinks went empty, main courses took 45 min to arrive. Neither meal was prepared correctly. The plates were set on the table, not by our waitress but by another staff member, and they left. The meals were incomplete and poorly prepared. The pasta option was dry. Like it had been sitting out waiting to be delivered for 30 min or more. The steak lol. Wow. Just wow. This is supposed to be a steak house. I ordered the ribeye. It was the poorest cut of meat I've ever had. Seriously. 18 ounce steak and 1/3 of it was bone and fat, 1/3 was edible (barely), and the last 1/3 was gristle and is still stuck in my teeth 10 hours later.

My meal was nearly complete by the time the waitress returned. I got my missing food items and a refill on my drink. This was after being there roughly 75 min from walking in to this point. I had a beer and soup basically for dessert.

The experience was one I would expect from a buffet themed restaurant. In fact, it's very much like the service I have experienced and expect from Golden Corral. At least Golden Corral has better steak.

Sacramento has far better steakhouse options in the same price range. Sorry outback. You...

My first steak was so hard to eat. It truly was inedible. Let me start by saying that I know ribeyes have a lot of marbling. Then there is a steak that is so fatty and grisly that you can't even eat it without immediately wanting to....or wait! Needing to spit it out! I never ever like to send my food back, no matter how bad it is. My partner talked me into it this night though. Both our steaks were rough! Finally we returned both our plates and received brand new ones in about 5 mins, I think. It was really quick. We got new steaks cooked better, but still not how we ordered. I wanted a medium cooked one and his request was medium-rare. My first steak moo-ed at me it seemed like. There was blood on my plate. Not juices, but uncooked blood! It was gross. In my second round I could at least get to that perfect little section right in the center of the steak. It was seasoned well, hot and juicy, so I ate it up. Any fatty issues, which there were, I just looked the other way. They even sent out brand new and fully loaded baked pots on our plates! I can say the staff and management was so attentive to our issue. The manager was the one who brought out our new plates. They just wanted us to be happy with our meal, and I appreciated that. I could of done without the big party of maybe about 25 that lingered right in front of us through most of our meal that we're standing around and talking, saying goodbye to one another for at least 30 mins! If not for that, I'd have given 5...