Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Surprise

If I could give negative stars I would. My daughter and I decided to give this place another try. It's been a while since we were last here. It was never a bad experience here just never a good one either. Tonight shoved everything past bad and straight to terrible. We placed an online order for pick up. The pick up spots are hard to see and my daughter wasn't sure she was in the right spot so she just parked and went in to get the food. Our order was simple, chicken tenders with loaded garlic mashed potatoes and a Cesar salad (both of these side are an up charge of $3.99 each by the way). The other item The Neighborhood Burger with fries. The burger is supposed to be 2 patties, cheese, lettuce, pickle, and garlic mayo. We get our order and right away thing are wrong. We got waffel fries that no one ordered, no mashed potatoes and salad. Never mind the fact that their chicken tenders are nothing more than mid level frozen tenders that looked and tasted like they were thrown in the microwave until well done. We call the store and ask for a credit of these items. We were reluctantly given this. After hanging up with them we start to eat when my daughter opened her burger and found that she didn't get two beef patties. Instead, she got one very burnt patty cut in half and stacked on top of each other in a pathetic attempt to cover the fact that they screwed the order and had no intention on fixing it. The order wax to hold the lettuce and pickles. They burger had no lettuce but, the pickles were there and someone decided to just add onion (not on the burger to begin with), and no mayo! The halves of the burger fit perfectly together by the way. The receipt on the bag indicated that we told them correctly what we wanted and they chose to ignore that and give us whatever was sitting around in the kitchen. We call the store back. This time we requested a full refund. The manager (not sure what his name was) told us that's how the burger is supposed to look and tried to wiggle out of the s@!t show that was this "meal". I will post a few pics of what we got, go ahead and compare them to the actual menu items. The manager begrudgingly agreed to our money back. This is just....sad. It is Friday night I get they were busy. This wasn't bust, this was people who just didn't care. They knew that burger was wrong. They knew those tenders were stale and most likely sat under a heat lamp for way longer than they should have. Either no one checked to see what was being put in the bag or no one cared. A lousy burger made poorly, dry over cooked frozen chicken tenders and missing food cost...

We arrived for the dollar ritas along with the combo appetizer. The restaurant wasn’t busy at all. Our server was bartender Joseph K and he asked us for our drink order and brought back no water- no biggie. After we had our first drink, I had to flag him down to order another drink and water as he never volunteered to come to our table; we had to notify him. He comes back with our drinks and no water. We ask for water again and he arrived with the water. Keep in mind for drinks, he doesn’t ask if we want lemon nor ask if we want salt or sugar on the rim. We ordered the combo plate and it arrived with some of the mozzarella sticks exploded and the chips were so burnt (you could visually see they were burnt). We mentioned this to our server and he says he will bring us fresh chips. He brings back the burnt chips again and we tell him we clearly can see that they are burnt and we cant eat the queso nor the spinach with burnt chips. He proceeds to tell us he can takie the queso off and give us a 10 percent discount on the combo. This is only 1.89 off something we cannot even eat the restaurant. He apologizes and confirms that he knew they were burnt when he brought the new chips over. He then avoids us like the red plague until we have to ask him to speak to someone due to the service and food received. While we are talking to our server another server Derek walks up to the table to tap our server on the shoulder and ask for w key card. We do not feel valued nor cared about at this point. The cook from the back- Patrick i believe- walks up and can immediately see the chips are messed up along with the mozzarella sticks and says he will remake them. Brings us the food in a to go bag. We arrive home and the food clearly looks like someone was eating and you can twll as the salsa had spinach dip pieces in it and the spinach dip looked half full. I used go be a server at applebees and often go- I will NEVER go to this location again and ai urge others to not either. Please also keep in mind, they were still passing out those burnt chips to other patrons as well and you can see people react but didnt say anything. Save your money (I included a photo showing the spinach dip in the salsa...

My how far the once mighty has fallen.

Red flag #1. When you enter a restaurant at 6:30pm on a Saturday and the dining room is 2/3 empty, that should be your first signal to turn around a find another eatery. By the time we left at about 7:30, there were less than 15 guests in the restaurant.

Red flag #2. After being seated, my daughter ordered a lemonade while I opted for a water. The lemonade was as clear as the water. We had to taste them to see which was the water, and which was the lemonade. Even when a server returned and asked if we wanted refills, he thought we both had waters despite her glass of lemonade being 1/2 full. It was like someone took a glass of water and added a Crystal Light flavor pack to make the water lemon flavored rather than actual lemonade.

Red flag #3. We ordered the 2 for $25 dinner special and chose mozzarella sticks. The mozzarella sticks were by far the best part of the meal, but the dipping sauce had clearly been hyper-microwaved to the point of nearing molten lava.

Red flag #4. Perhaps the one perk of going to a nearly empty restaurant is that your meal will come out hot and fresh. Of course that assumes your food is being cooked fresh to begin with. Not so at Applebee's. The chicken breast in our chicken parm was definitely not cooked to order and almost certainly wasn't even fried the day we came in. I'm still trying to figure out the pasta. It was cold when brought to our table and I almost sent it back, but we were already 3 red flags in. At that point, why should I expect good fresh food even if I sent it back? They probably would have just thrown it in the microwave. The whole entrée gave "3-day old leftovers" vibes, rather than a fresh cooked meal. Chicken parm isn't difficult to make. I could have done much better for cheaper at home.

The 2nd star is there only because the wait staff seemed to be doing their best, despite the crappy food in an empty restaurant.

If Applebee's wants to make a comeback, it has to start with good food. What I was served was worse than hospital cafeteria food. Definitely not eatin' good in this...