Bob Evans — Restaurant in Springfield

Gift cards at Bob Evans continue to be hit-or-miss. The one I was sent had a receipt included. The young man at the cash register helping me pay for the meal was paying marginal attention, decided I was adding money to the card, and swiped it to do so. He then voided the transaction, but the next time we tried using the card again, it read 'inactive', not that it had $20 on it. Bob Evans, as a company, needs to be forthcoming about what percentage of its gift cards are declined. I had a similar problem a couple years ago when I was told that the gift card I had was too old to look up in their system.

The pandemic has hit these places pretty hard. The staff was young, relatively inexperienced, uninterested in the goings-on of the restaurant in general, or in serving customers in a timely manner. Like a lot of businesses, this one seemed short-staffed. We were told that the wait to be seated would be 10 to 15 minutes, but it was more like forty minutes. The kids canoodling in the corner didn't seem to be bothered by the passage of time and I envied their distraction with one another. I was left to survey the dwindling supply of junk. The plastic home-spun novelties sold in the lobby to kids who are held captive in back seats on long hot car rides and grandparents who are less apt to saying 'no'. My cousin came up from Florida for a funeral. He was talking about cars, but I was only half-listening and half-wondering why any of us were sitting around at Bob Evans.

We ordered. There was a long, long time for more talking and more half-listening. Eventually the food got to the table. It was suitably hot. My cousin had the cod. I don't know what he was expecting from cod in Ohio, but he still wasn't impressed. My deep dish chicken and noodles are hard to screw up. They were fine. Okay, so I'm a bachelor, I was depressed. The food didn't really have much of a taste. But at least it wasn't another spoonful of peanut butter on the way to do something else. Actually, I like peanut butter.

Serving drinks in Mason/Ball jars was cute at first. Like the first week Bob Evans tried it. Now they require thinned-out staff to actually be interested in refilling drinks twice as often. Bring back the regular glasses, please. The Mason jars are hokey. Like 'Sorry, I haven't done dishes in two years, because I'm a man, and now we are drinking out of Grandma's old jars' type-hokey. Bob Evans needs to use some of the pure profit of duping people into buying useless gift cards to get some decent glassware that metal lids don't screw on to. Screw tops on drinks is not a mark of quality, just ask anyone in the Springfield drunk tank.

When we were through with our okay meal that took a long time to arrive, I foolishly told my cousin I would get the bill. It wouldn't cost us much because I had this gift card that some kind, misguided soul had included in a sympathy card. Because Bob Evans sometimes actually accepts its own gift cards.

I read somewhere that Bob Evans is making more $ off of selling frozen microwavable mashed potatoes at the grocery than they are at their restaurants. Maybe this whole gift card thing will keep the restaurants going another year or two in some locations before they go the way of Big Boy. Because at Bob Evans, we treat strangers like friends and friends like family and family like strangers and gift cards like they...

Came for dinner with my wife, 2 year old daughter, and mother.

The parking lot for the restaurant was about 1/3 full while all the nearby places were overcrowded. This should have been a clue.

Even though the restaurant was nearly deserted and there was no one ahead of us, we had to wait several minutes while they cleared a table. They didn't bother with other tables near us, though -- the tables around us were covered in dishes throughout our entire meal.

I ordered the country fried steak which was fine. Not especially great, but not terrible either. My wife's pot roast was cold when it arrived. The chicken tenders we got for my daughter were so overcooked that she couldn't chew them--the breading was hard and crunchy and the chicken itself was very dry. The potato soup we got needed to cook longer, as the pieces of potato were still hard and uncooked. I got the strawberry lemonade, which tasted almost exactly like water, like they had made a batch in the morning and just kept adding water to it.

Throughout the meal our drink glasses remained empty, because the waiter was not a frequent visitor. After my wife and I had finished our drinks, I managed to get his attention long enough to ask for a refill, and he ran off so quickly that he didn't notice my wife also needed a refill, so hers had to be brought separately. This was the only time we would get refills, since he didn't seem to care.

Our meals came with dessert, I got the chocolate peanut butter pie and my wife got a hot fudge sundae. The pie was not bad, though it seemed like it should have been refrigerated as the top layer was a bit soft. My wife's sundae came out and was completely melted, as if they had made it and then waited ten minutes or more before bringing it back--which may very well have been the case based on the service.

The last Bob Evan's I went to for dinner (in Xenia) didn't do a great job, but this was ridiculous. I don't think I will be returning to any Bob...

Went to dinner tonight with my family before my wife and I leave back to Fort Bragg tomorrow, it was 40 minutes to closing time, and as soon as we walked in the young lady at the began to give us mean looks as she was playing on her phone, when she asked how many people there was in the party I told them 8, yeah probably a bad thing on our part walking in with a party of 8, 40 minutes before they close. As we were waiting for the hostess to get a table together I could hear the people in the back saying "aww we almost made it guys", "looks like another late night for us again" like seriously. Anyways we got seated and the young man who was our waiter began to get out drinks, when he brought them out he ended up spilling Lemonade all over my little sister and her boyfriend, he was very apologetic and brought us some rags to clean up the mess, I ordered an Arnold Paulmer and the biskets and gravy, when I got my drink it looked and tasted like dirty mop water, and my food... well let's just say I've thrown up and I'm currently sitting on the toilet with the runs. There were other problems with the food and coffee being cold or the food was not made correctly. Been coming here since I was little and never had a bad experience until tonight. Only reason I'm giving 2 stars is because our waiter was very professional and I talked to the manager and she said she would fix the problem and that is what she did with the lady up front, don't know about the people in the back, this place use to be good, probably won't be coming back when I get back in...