IHOP — Restaurant in San Antonio

I want to start apologizing to anybody who work here. I do understand that after the pandemic lots of places are shorthanded and overwork. This location used to be our favorite but sorry, after yesterday experience and what we saw, we will never returned. We stopped by at lunch time, and thought great! no waiting time. I went to the restroom to wash my hands and was a bit like "uhm" it needs some attention but is lunch, maybe they haven't had the chance to clean it. When we were walking to our table, we heard clearly someone yelling about some orders in the back or the kitchen. None of the 5 tables we passed had the food. Again, we were like, "maybe the shift is changing". When we sat at our table, we really started to "look" around and we came to the same conclusion, something is going on. The tables used to have more than 1 syrup flavor, silverware, napkins and plenty of sugar ready and available. Our table had only 1 flavor almost empty bottle of syrup, no silverware, 3 packs of sugar, no napkins. Five tables had the used plates still on the tables waiting on someone to come and rescue them, glass windows had lots of fingerprints, they were dirty, and the air vents OMG full of dust. We waited about 10 min for coffee, almost half of cup for hubby, not the carafe we always get cause we are coffee drinkers. The waitress, to be honest, was the best thing about the lunch. She apologized for the wait and proceed to tell us they had a problem with the coffee maker. I was like "What??? no way. We decided to stay because she was polite, and again, we know how tough things are around. But, for real, we were like in shock to "see" how much this location has change all around. My hubby ordered the chicken burger and he was not happy, and wondered if was fully cook. He got the runs. I ordered the turkey (hardly) sandwich with fries (the whole 5 of them lol). I think she was new because we had to ask for the napkins. The 2 closest table near us, had issues with the food too. There was only one guy clearing the tables, he took 10 minutes to just clean one. The floor had food crumps all over and the walls were dirty. If someone who is in management for this location is reading this, I am writing this review with the best intentions, so please do something. If you are an employee, please understand that is not personal, and yes, show them this review. The last shock was the tab, but maybe...

When my husband and I arrived we were told it was going to be a 20 min wait. We ended up waiting longer than anticipated because the greeter wrote our name incorrectly. She immediately apologized and sat in a booth all the way in the back by the emergency exit which seemed like a last resort booth. The back of the restaurant was infested with gnats and flies. We asked out waitress for another seat because of the bugs, she wasn’t shocked and understood why we wanted to move. She still kept us in the back but the seat she moved us to was extremely dirty. The floor was not swept, it had food all over the floor. Also there were dead flies all on the floor and window seal. We tried so hard to not leave because we already have waited a long time to be seated. At this point, I walked up to our waitress and demanded to be seated away from the back and windows because of the flies or we could take our food to go or just leave and cancel our order. Tamie apologized and accommodated another booth. She explained this has been an ongoing issue in the store and understood our concerns because the workers have brought this to the manager before and nothing has been done. She mentioned she went to her manger and explained our issue and that he would come out and speak to us. She said hopefully if he heard it from a customer he would resolve the problem. Well, the manager came out to us just to bring us our food, Tamie told him we were the ones that have been moved twice, he just yea yea, gave us our food and walked off. I was not only disgusted by the restaurants cleanliness (infestation, sticky/slippery floors, dirty ice, dirty utensils, unkept/gross bathrooms) but I was disgusted by the managers approach. He gave zero F*s. At this point, our food arrived cold. Just imagine eating food in this environment, I couldn’t stomach it. We asked for our check with minutes. My problem is not with Tamie, she was amazing and understanding through it all. She was embarrassed about everything. The manager should be held accountable for the appearance. The way he is, is the reflection of how the restaurant is and it shows. Just disgusting. Surprisingly we are returning customers and because of this we will take our business elsewhere and we will not refer to...

I don't believe that I will EVER go there again on a Sunday afternoon. It took so incredibly long to get a booth, and then again to finally get our food. When we did finally get it, my order was supposed to have sausage but it was missing. It took my waitress about 15 more minutes to finally bring it to me, but I think that was probably the kitchen's fault. The 2 strips of bacon were mostly burnt except for on the very ends where they had curled up and were hardly even cooked. My scrambled eggs were absolutely rubbery and pretty much had zero flavor. Because of Covid, they don't have salt and pepper shakers on each table, but instead they have those tiny little packets where you usually get too much salt and very little pepper. Such a pain!! Even after I added some hot sauce to my eggs they were still flavorless and pretty COLD by that time. The hash browns were absolutely delicious!! 😊

Our waitress was very nice and polite, but she definitely seemed to be struggling bcuz it was so busy, and I recall that it was VERY NOISY. You could hardly hear a thing except for all of the noisy, screaming kids and babies. I think that the glass dividers between every booth (obviously installed bcuz of the pandemic) actually funneled everyone's voices upwards where it echoes and amplifies them before they hit your ears. I have pretty bad hearing to understand normal conversations, but I could definitely hear all of that crying and screaming!! I never did get offered a refill on my coffee until I finally asked her for one. Then when our waitress brought our check she actually offered me a Military discount, but when she ran our card and brought the receipt back for us to sign there was no discount on the total at all.👎 She must have forgotten by the time she got to the register. Needless to say, she didn't get a very good tip!

Also, I happened to notice while I was waiting forever for our food that all the A/C vents that I could see in the ceiling from our booth were absolutely filthy with black dust - hopefully NOT mold or mildew!! It's very obvious and didn't give me a very good feeling about the overall cleanliness of the entire restaurant... 🤔 I think that the IHOP Corporation needs to go and inspect that location...