IHOP — Restaurant in Southington

My daughter and I went to IHOP in Southington, Connecticut for a late morning breakfast. We waited 10 minutes at the front to be seated. We're told three times she'd be with us. Then we sat down. It was a couple minutes before someone acknowledged us. We asked for hot chocolate and it took about four or five minutes and she only brought us one. She said the other one would be coming out shortly. I asked if she would take our order now and she told me I had to hang on. After a few minutes she finally brought the other hot chocolate and then took our order. Took about 10 minutes for our order to come out. I asked for the bacon to be crispy. It was limp in my plate and appeared to be bacon that was left over from the morning. I asked for my hash brown to be crispy and it was not. The pancakes were okay. It had one little tiny piece of butter on it for two pancakes. I asked for more butter and a refill on the hot chocolate took about 5 minutes. By that time I was halfway through eating my pancakes for her to bring the butter and the hot chocolates. The eggs were very spongy. We asked for the check a couple times and she came over with a computer. Apparently we're not allowed to review the check. We're just supposed to believe that they did not make any mistakes. My daughter paid with a credit card. And we were told that we could leave at 18 20 or 25% tip. We told her we would leave the tip on the table. I tried to tell my daughter to leave her at 10% tip but my daughter left her 15%. Honestly, I do not think the service was worth 15% at all. I heard her tell a table who ordered one double cheeseburger and one single cheeseburger that they ran out of hamburgers. Then she went back to the same table and told them she ran out of biscuits. Then she went to another table and told them that they didn't have any of the gravy for the country fried chicken but that they did have some beef gravy. On the way out the door. I saw two innocent gentlemen waiting and waiting to be seated. I told them that if they were smart that they would pick another restaurant because this one has run out of quite a bit of food. And it certainly isn't for the lack of having a full dining room. There were literally three tables in the restaurant while I was there. My daughter and I started reading Google reviews just to entertain ourselves and most of them for this restaurant were absolutely horrible reviews. I'm still trying to figure out how they could possibly be in business. My daughter suggested that perhaps the waitresses have to turn over some of their tips to keep the business afloat. Some of the reviews were from 7 years ago that listed that the restaurant was always running out of food. Some of them were in just the last couple weeks and lost couple months. So apparently there's a huge problem with management and how to have a well-stocked kitchen in a restaurant. Perhaps they need Gordon Ramsay to show them how it's done. But for a corporation this will be the last time I ever visited a I hop!! By the way, the men decided to choose to leave and find themselves another restaurant. Smart move on there part. It's not like they have an extravagant menu. They serve eggs and pancakes. How do you screw that up? Apparently I guess they...

This is only the second and definitely the last time that I have gone to/will ever go to this IHOP. For one, both times it's made me sick almost immediately after. The food really isn't that great, especially compared to other locations. And to top it off they've got a horrific wait staff! One of the tables next to us ended up with a new waitress because theirs "was Soooooo tired from working a six hour shift." Seriously? I mean I get it, don't get me wrong - I've got fibromyalgia and a 4 hour shift kills me most of the time, but NONE of my co-workers or managers know, and ESPECIALLY not my customers; even if I know them, am friends with them, and they call me out knowing SOMETHING is wrong I WILL NOT tell them, it's just flat out unprofessional. When we went in there we literally stood in the front waiting for AT LEAST five minutes to be seated by a host or hostess, until I eventually found a button that I'm guessing was for a bell to let them know somebody was needed up front - which definitely should've had something stating "Ring for help." On top of that, my husband asked for a glass of water, waited 20 minutes, had to ask again and wait another 10 minutes before she FINALLY brought it to him. Mind you, throughout this entire experience the restaurant was DEAD (literally only 2 other tables), so there's really no reason why on Earth it should've took that long for anything that they did!!! At one point my husband asked another waitress for change because ours was in the back for 13 minutes at that point and we were well past the point of fed up and ready to get out of there, and this other waitress gave him a wicked attitude and was OBVIOUSLY more interested in going to smoke a cigarette than help a customer. By the time our waitress finally came back it took her a few more minutes to get our change, 5 minutes on top of that to get a to go box, and to top it all off was listening to our conversation on the rare occasion that she was out there busing the table next to us and made it a point not to leave the receipt. This is only the second time I've been to this restaurant and have had this poor of quality of customer service BOTH times. Normally both my husband and I are big tippers and are extremely understanding with wait staff - especially since I've personally been a waitress. Needless to say, my husband and I will absolutely not be wasting our time or money at that...

Story time from today.

It was the worst experience so far in an IHOP and I’ve be been to ihops more than 100 times in my life. The beginning was OKAY, we (4 adults and 2 kids) got sat down and were asked for our drinks. They came back missing some of the drinks which totally understandable there. I forget to put my socks on before work sometimes is how bad my memory gets. So that’s out of the way and I get my coffee which was half filled, again, understandable because he was working a whole 3 tables and it was tough for him because between staying and talking to his coworkers and doing his job is extremely difficult. Now the part where it’s rated 1 star. We’ve all finished our drinks, and have ordered already…. An hour and a half ago. The guy, who I won’t name, but you’ll be able to tell who it is by the very strong smelling aroma of marijuana, was disappeared for a while and I started asking other servers for what my table needs. “Finally, the foods comes!” I say. As they hand out strawberryless banana strawberry pancakes, an order of full stack never ending pancakes that wasn’t ordered, a really dry burger, and the rest of our food. As they left, our waiter, returns and I tell him that I do not want the unordered pancakes, more strawberries for the one order I mentioned, and to take my burger away as I didn’t want it. He was completely dumbfounded at the remark like he has just heard the worst news of his life… or maybe it was that he was really high? Who knows. But he gets the manager and takes the order out of the way. We had a new server take over and she made us feel welcomed for the last 5 minutes we were there, also cracked a few jokes. Her name is Anais, something like that, if you wanna visit, request “baby manager” is what she refers herself as, kind of a step below the manager haha. If you come, careful who you have as the server here, you’ll regret not bringing a sleeping bag or eating at home...