Red Viking Restaurant — Restaurant in Solvang

We had been to this restaurant before with family. My husband seemed surprised I wanted to go there and didn't understand why. In seonds I understood why. The cashier who we were checking in with for seating was not at all welcoming. After we sat down, my husband said the last time we were there, the service was awful, and the food was not that great and was cold. He remembered having to hunt down the server for things. I was having a good time with my family that I didn't notice. I was hoping this time would be different. It was not. It took about 15 minutes to get our drinks and place our order. About 20 minutes after we placed our order, the server came over to tell us they were out of Cajun sausage, so we requested ham instead. A busser walked by with regular coffee and asked me if I wanted some, I said I wanted coffee but was drinking decaf. He never returned. My husband got up to go ask for some. Let's talk about the cold food that arrived at our table. We both asked for white toast. Most places give you 2 slices; we each got one tiny piece of toast. I had asked for extra crispy bacon and did not get that. The entire time we were there, the server never stopped by to check in and see how everything was. I am going to guess she knew what the answer would be so she didn't bother. When we got the bill, I noticed they hadn't updated the order to show eggs and ham instead of eggs and Cajun sausage. I knew there were price differences in the options, so I went to ask the cashier for a menu. It was only $1 difference, which is peanuts, but after our horrible experience, I told the cashier what had happened to see what would happen. There was no apology, and she charged what the bill said. Tourists and locals beware! DO NOT EAT HERE. We are not ever going back. The lesson we learned today is don't go to the one restaurant on the block that is not busy while all others have people waiting outside. There is a reason there is...

I completely understand that with the pandemic and worker shortages, that every industry, very much including the restaurant street, suffering from manpower, but I have to say that I was quite disappointed with the service here even despite that.

First, the food was okay. It was cooked reasonably well, and the flavors were all right, but after the 30-minute wait, I think I probably expected a little bit more.

Now for the service/experience. Like I said, we waited for about 30 to 40 minutes, which I'm normally okay with, but towards the last 15 minutes or so we noted that a lot of the tables inside and outside were being vacated and cleaned, but no one additional was being seated. It seems they were seating, taking orders, serving, and cleaning up all in waves. Again, I understand if that's due to lack of manpower so I would be willing to overlook some of that. Then, we sat down and multiple people came to take orders and help, which I appreciate with flag of manpower, but that also meant that no one seemed to take individual responsibility for our table, so we had to ask for separate people just for some water, because the first three seem to forget. Normally, I would also let that slide, if I had not seen all three of those people in between serving and casually coming back to the front and looking for more work. The overall service was just very disjointed and didn't seem run very well. We also got our bill before our dessert came, even though someone else who had taken our order for dessert had tended to us 10 minutes prior, again reinforcing the fact that no one was taking individual responsibility for our table, and seemingly trying to just get us out the door. My three out of five stars is mainly based on the fact that I didn't feel like we were a priority, which is...

The waitress service was excellent, very attentive, in less than a minute she came to the table to take our drink order, she brought the drinks immediately, I ordered two chicken club sandwiches, with extra avocado, the food arrived and I saw that the chicken was raw and I pointed it out to the person who brought the food, when they brought me the "new" food I saw that it was the same chicken in the same bread and the same ingredients contaminated with the raw chicken and they forgot to put the avocado, the old tomato was almost transparent and it was the top part of the tomato with a hole in the center, the lettuce was not fresh, the bread was wet with the juice that the tomato leaked and soaked in mayonnaise, it broke into pieces, I only ate the chicken. Two basic things in the kitchen of any restaurant, ONE is called cross contamination, when a raw product is in contact with other ready-to-eat products, in that case the ready-to-eat products must be discarded, TWO all products that are cooked, especially meats, must have their internal temperature taken to ensure that they are properly cooked before serving. In this experience, neither of these two basic concepts of any kitchen or cook were done correctly. It seems unfair to me that the tips that we customers left were divided between waiters and cooks, if the cooks do not know how to do their job or at least those who were...