Arby's — Restaurant in Salem

We went here the other day to satisfy my wife's annual nostalgic craving for a past that never really was (Arby's has always been pretty mediocre at best).

This location is almost always dead and this night was no exception. The parking lot was empty and there was 1 car at the drive-through window as we walked in.

At the counter, we could see 2 people working. One was at the drive through register in the corner and another was moving around looking busy, but with what, it was hard to tell.

The person walking around let us know that she was actually an employee at another location and was just there helping out. She didn't have a login for the register? I guess those are per-store for some reason and there's no way to override... She was friendly and apologetic, but because the other worker was logged into another register, she couldn't help us until the drive through order was complete and paid for.

It took about 3 minutes of awkward smiles and shuffling feet, but she was then able to help us after her co-worker logged into the register for her. She actually pointed out a deal they had going on which was not advertised anywhere in the store that saved us like $4/person on our food, which was a surprising level of service in our post-COVID dystopian fast food world. She was friendly and seemed quite good at this portion of her job.

As soon as she finished taking our order, she set about making curly fries - a good start.

The other worker, who I presumed was making the food for the drive through order this whole time was telling a new drive through customer who had pulled up a free minutes earlier that she could finally take their order as she now has access to her register again. At this point we went and filled our drink cups and had a seat, confident that our order was well in hand.

Fast forward about 10 minutes, we're starting to wonder what happened to our order, so I walk around to the counter to check. Our food was still not made and it now looks like only 1 person is working.

She's running around looking for things that must be in different locations in her normal store, and not having much luck. She's telling a person on the drive through speaker that she's still waiting to get into the register to take their order. At this point I realize this is the same drive through customer from 10 minutes ago.

I hear her ask the empty kitchen where they keep something (didn't quite hear what) and the other worker comes into view from somewhere in the depths of the back of the kitchen where she'd been lurking out of sight and tells her it's in the walk-in freezer in the back. So now she disappears and there's nobody making food or manning the drive through window.

A couple minutes later, she emerges from the back of the store, nothing in hand, so I'm still not sure what she was getting, and takes notice that I'm standing at the counter- she asks me if I'm from door dash, apparently completely unaware of our interaction 15-20 minutes ago. I show her my receipt and it clicks for her - she says something about how she closed our order out to turn off an alarm.

It turns out they had made 2 of our 3 sandwiches already and she jumped to work getting us fries- which were also made, but she deemed them "bad" and got us fresh ones. I took that food back to the table and came back for the 3rd sandwich - I had to remind them again what I was there for as the workers seemed to have forgotten again in the 30 seconds it took me to drop off the completed part of the order and walk back after explaining to my family why it was now about 10 minutes after I'd left to check on the order.

After I got my sandwich, I went and sat down and opened it up to find a huge mess inside the wrapper-exactly the kind of food I've grown to expect from Arby's.

So, all told, we were there for about 45 minutes. 5 of those were spent eating. 40 were spent wondering why we decided to eat there in the first place.

I'm sure this was somewhat of a fluke, but it's not that much worse than our other...

I just had one of the grossest chicken sandwiches ever, didn’t finish it obviously. The King’s Hawaiian Sweet Heat chicken sandwich was inedible. Didn’t even want this food due to the dissatisfaction of the last time but we were needing something quick. First several bites were nothing but breading, sauce, and lettuce. Eventually got to the “chicken” and had to double check to make sure it was actually chicken. The breading was all pulled off on one side and that exposed an off white, grayish chunk of meat. I did a double take and had to pinch it because it seemed so rubbery and stiff. I was brave enough to sink my teeth into the “chicken” but had to rip off a bite because it was so tough. Once the bite was pulled away I noticed a gross smell and immediately spit out the bite of “chicken”. Considered taking it back to the location it came from but in the end it’s not worth the time and the $7.50 wasted on the sandwich. Declared out loud to my family that I wouldn’t be eating at Arby’s again since this was the second time I’ve received sub par food in the last 6 months/2 visits. Arby’s used to be OK for every now and then but lately it’s disappointing garbage. Especially those featured sandwiches they’re pushing, don’t even bother. You’ll be...

Every so often, our kids clamor for a trip to Arby's, we relent, and then remember that really, it's a pretty decent restaurant in the world of fast food. This time I tried the Three Cheese & Bacon Angus sandwich. It's actually pretty good - I split it with my wife and neither of us was certain what the 3rd cheese was or if it was there at all (it had cheddar and Swiss). We also ordered a pile of the Jr. Roast Beef and Jr. Ham & Cheddar off the value menu, to fill up the kids and round out our own meal. We've always enjoyed the little ritual of filling about 20 of those tiny paper cups with horsey sauce, Arby's sauce, hot sauce and honey mustard. One poor value - the steakhouse onion rings: they taste great, but for like $2.30 you get exactly 5 of them - essentially, it feels like you're buying a cup full of air. I do like the curly fries as well (and you get a whole lot more for your money.) A big negative with this visit: the Jamocha milkshakes had a really strange "musty" flavor. We've enjoyed them before, but for some reason, the flavor was just "off." The staff, after trying and commenting that the Jamocha shakes tasted fine to them, exchanged them for chocolate shakes and we were...