Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Terre Haute

UPDATE: The manager of the restaurant reached out to me recently and expressed his apology for our bad experience and made things right with us. We will definitely be returning sometime soon to give them another chance and feel confident that they will have fixed the problems that occurred during our previous visit reviewed here earlier. Because of the manager's consideration I have adjusted my rating to 4 stars from my original 1 star rating.

--------------- ORIGINAL REVIEW ------------------ Overall this was not a very enjoyable dining (takeout) experience. We placed an order online and that was easy enough and it said our order would be ready in about 20-25 minutes. OK, that was fine so we get there in about 20 minutes and about the time we do we get a text from Outback saying that our order is almost ready and that we should stay in our vehicle and they will bring the food out. So we wait.. and wait .. and wait ... and after about 15 minutes past the time the order was supposed to be ready I decide to go inside to find out why we haven't gotten our order. A polite young man at the podium said he would check and promptly came back with my order. I asked him "Why did it take so long on my order?" and asked where I parked and I said I was in the front (main.. only) parking lot and he said something to the effect of "Oh, our curbside pickup is on the other side of the building". I said "There's nothing here in the front of the restaurant that says that is where pickup is!" (and there isn't.. I checked when leaving). He just shrugged his shoulders! See .. the thing is .. about 3-4 months ago we picked up an order at this same Outback and they brought our food out to the front parking lot so how were we to know they had made a change in where to pick up orders?!? Again, there was NOTHING that directed people picking up orders to the side area. One would think that that should be a "no brainer".

Anyway.. we get our order and then drive to a little shady area nearby to eat it (took less than 5 minutes to get there) and open up the sack and pull out our appetizer ... breaded mushrooms ... and geesh .. COMPLETELY SOGGY! And no doubt the reason was because they sat around for probably 20-30 minutes because of the problem in finding the pick up door. So we eat the soggy mushrooms ... sure would have been nice if they would have had a crisp breading like they should have.

Moving on to the entree we shared .. we ORDERED a 6 oz. sirloin cooked medium with a baked potato and a side of "freshly steamed seasonal vegetables". Well I guess the only vegetable that was in season is broccoli because that was the ONLY vegetable! Come on! It's the middle of summer and you only have broccoli?!? We were expecting at least some summer squash, zucchini, maybe carrots .. and/or another one or 2 .. but no .. just broccoli. If we had wanted only broccoli we would have just ordered an order of broccoli! And the broccoli was "limp" and WAY too salty! As for the sirloin .. we ordered it cooked medium but there was absolutely NO pink ... was more on the order of medium well to well. But worse, it was EXTREMELY tough with a lot of gristle running through it. We couldn't eat probably about 25% of it because it was so gristly and fat. It was probably the worst steak I have ever gotten from an Outback. Well, on the bright side the baked potato was pretty good so I guess all wasn't lost .. just about 90% of the meal. If we had been eating in I would have definitely sent this steak back to get a decent one that was cooked to order.

We will probably give this Outback one more chance to but this is now the 2nd straight visit (both takeouts .. do they even care about take out orders?) where our food and service was poor. But if we go again and they strike out, that's it for giving any more business to Outback. I hate to say that because we used to just LOVE Outback .. and still want to .. but just can't with this kind of poor customer service and food. What...

They probably won’t post this but I took a screenshot of today with pictures of our meal! Now can I add we’ve been going to the outback for Father’s Day as well as several other days during the year but it’s always my husband’s favorite place to go on Father’s Day! Seem like we waited forever for food, but that’s to be expected on Father’s Day only it wasn’t crowded if you can believe that! People were standing in line everywhere else that we passed, but not there! Our service was great. I food came out. I had the Allison Springs chicken with french fries and mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes versus small it’s like if you’re putting a scoop of sour cream on some thing I got some fries and what looks like 1/2 of a chicken breast One piece of bacon split in half a little bit of cheese and exactly one and a half pieces of mushroom on my chicken ! My husband ordered the chicken the same way his came out exactly the same then he got a salad which is pretty nice just like we normally get and then he gets his fries always the same way adding cheese and bacon ! My husband’s piece of chicken which is a small I would say it was maybe a 4 ounce maybe 6 ounce piece of chicken is what it was. He got one piece of bacon split in half one on each side of the chicken if that tells you anything, how do you know cheese and he got three pieces of mushroom on his! The french fries that he got with all the cheese melted on in the bacon, there was only seven or eight of them that had cheese on it and bacon it wasn’t covered. It wasn’t even enough rice for a serving. Our server tells us she’ll go get the manager and the manager comes out and says that my husband’s meal is on the smallest played. They have there that they serve on mines a little bit bigger it must’ve been because I had that big of a scoop of mashed potatoes.! he said oh that doesn’t look right those are really small portions. I said yeah they are really small portions and we come here a lot and my husband loves to come here. He said let me fix that for you. I’ll look at you another half a chicken. He comes out with a piece of chicken. That’s literally cut in half and I could pick it up. It was so small with my index finger in my thumb just pick it up and of course it was there one big piece of chicken cut in half so it’s even tinier than the piece we got before and charge us $22 for this each and acted like everything was OK. ! We tipped our server $10 because it was not her fault and we’ve seen this manager here before we’ve talked to him several times because my husband used to come here after the gym! I’ve had several people complain about this outback lately, and I said I’ve never had a complain about my food like their food is great we always get the same thing. Needless to say you’ve lost another customer and I will be letting everybody know, including your corporate, which is sad because my husband left it there for his birthday and for Father’s Day and for just a normal Friday night, don’t...

Service: My wife and I came on a Sunday afternoon with a reservation. After being seated, it was a little long before ours server came, but also a little busy so we gave the benefit of the doubt. Things went downhill from there. We both ordered waters and told the server we needed just a minute. Someone brought out our waters, which we had to send back because our glasses were dirty. Then, the bartender (I assume) brought our new waters. Once the server finally came back to the table roughly 15 minutes after the first visit, she asked if we were doing ok. We told her we still needed to order and she then realized she couldn't take our order because she didn't have her tablet. She went to get it, but rather than come straight back to take our order, proceeded to help other patrons who had already ordered and returned several minutes later, once again with no tablet. She did this time go straight to get it and came back. We placed our orders, each of us getting a steak, potatoes and chili. She repeated the orders back to us to confirm they were correct, which they were, and informed us the chili would arrive early as an appetizer. 5-10 minutes later, a food runner brought out 2 bowls of potatoe soup. We explained to her we didn't order that and she was confused. She brought back our chili a few minutes later. Our server came back after the chili the arrived and apologized that she accidentally put the order in incorrectly. (How?!? If you read it back to us) Finally our food arrived. And the rest of the meal went without anything noteworthy. Food: The chili was actually quite good. The steaks were tender enough but the seasoning was not to our liking. The potatoes were decent too. The water had dirt the first go around which is worth mentioning twice. Atmosphere: The restaurant isn't anything to write home about but did seem clean. However, the lighting (not something I normally would call out) was terrible. I was wearing a hat, and the way the lights are situated in the ceiling, cast a shadow so dark I couldn't see the menu with the hat on. Just felt weird and off putting. That being the least of several negatives during our experience, we have no...