IHOP — Restaurant in Salinas

My family and I stopped here after a beautiful weekend in Monterey. Seating the 9 of us was pretty fast, considering our large party. That's when the Shenanigans began! They took our drunk orders. We asked for glasses of water for all. The drinks came and "some" glasses of water. They only brought 4 waters. Then, they ran out of straws. I hate drinking straight from a glass. As we sat, we waited and watched as other parties were seated after us and served their food, ate, and left. And we still waited. We were blown away watching in amusement how fast the bussers cleared the tables. Twice, we watched customers get up briefly to run to the restroom. They either covered their food with napkins or left personal items at the table to indicate they were coming back. By the time they returned to continue eating their food, they returned to a clean table. The customers were so upset; they complained and got fresh meals. Surprisingly, they were also served before us. An hour and 20 minutes later, we are still waiting for our food. Finally, 93 minutes later, they start coming out with our orders, 2 at a time. Some food was ice cold. Some food was piping hot, and some was prepared totally wrong. The upsetting wait time was a huge inconvenience. But the one thing that sent us into emotional Hangry tantrums was the fact that our waitress did not come over one time in the whole 93 minutes to check on us, see if we needed anything, bring the remaining waters, give us an update on our orders or apologize for the long wait. Customer service was the worst. The food was subpar. When we decided we'd had enough of IHOP, we sarcastically asked the waitress to split the checks 5 ways according to orders. She slamdunked that request and returned with our checks in record time - less than 5 mins. I'll admit that it's not every day that I take weekend trips to Monterey. It's also highly unlikely that I'll ever return to this IHOP. Just a word to the wise, if you have a party more than 4 people, choose...

I ordered delivery through DoorDash. The delivery driver did a fine job. They arrived a few minutes early and I was watching them on the map. They didn't seem to hang out or waste time in bringing me my food and it was inside a warm bag, so kudos to them. They did a good job.

However, when my omelette and pancakes arrived and were barely warm to the touch, I wasn't particularly happy. I get that food won't be as hot when delivered as when you order in the restaurant, but this wasn't warm enough. Probably due at least in part to their thin, cheap, plastic take out containers. No insulation whatsoever. It's pretty sad, especially given I paid $30 for it including delivery fees.

The part that really irritated me, though, was the amount of butter and syrup they sent. I got three full-size pancakes from them and they sent one thing of syrup and one pad of butter. One. For three pancakes. You might as well not send any at all at that point, IHOP. That's barely enough butter for a single pancake. Personally, I would like even more than that for a single pancake, but regardless it was FAR LESS butter than you'd get while ordering in the restaurant. Why am I paying the same price for a lesser product just because it's delivery?

Both of these issues put together mean I'll never be ordering from that IHOP again. Terrible first impression. The only reason they don't get 1 Star is because the food did actually taste good, outside of not being...

Do not go in there!

I ate there last night. Only three other tables had guests. I ordered breakfast for dinner: two eggs over medium, wheat toast, bacon, hash browns and blueberry pancakes, no whipped cream. My meal arrived 15 minutes later. Whipped cream on the pancakes. Not just some whipped cream but whipped cream an inch thick covering 90% of the pancakes. The server set the plates and turned to go. I said, "I requested no whipped cream." She turned, looked at the pancakes, giggled and walked away. Then I saw that my eggs over medium were scrambled. I waited a few minutes for her to return. When she didn't I scraped off the whipped cream and ate some of the pancakes. Never saw my server again. I was there for 45 minutes after she delivered my meal. She never returned. It wasn't busy; no one came in after me. I went to the register and a woman came, asked if I wanted to be seated, which I assumed she said because I didn't have a check in hand. I said I'd been sitting there more than an hour, server never returned so no check. She said nothing, walked over, found the check and told me the amount. I paid but left no tip and told the woman why. She didn't apologize or say...