IHOP — Restaurant in Texas

I just noticed that I reviewed this location 4 years ago because of the roach I saw on the ceiling. I should've remembered this better as now that I'm posting a new review, I wish I would've followed my old self's advice of avoiding this place.

..fast forward to this morning. I've been placing a few to-go orders in the middle of the night due to my work schedule. Been pretty good overall this week until this morning. I'm not a picky eater and I try to be optimistic when it comes to places I eat at/get service from.

1:50am - started calling. No answer and went to voicemail(yes, IHOP phone goes to voicemail LOL). Did this at least 4 times.. I finally got on the phone with someone at 1:56am. Order taker was polite and took order promptly. Was quoted "10-15 minutes."

2:22am (note: 26 min after I placed order for 1 omlette) - I arrive and notice a couple waiting for their to-go order also. Weird.. very unusaul for people to be waiting at 2am on a Tuesday for to-go food in my 6 years of food service experience except maybe Saturday night. I waited at least 3 minutes until the ONLY working waiter acknowledged me(OTHER WAITER SAW ME AND COMPLETELY IGNORED ME WHILE FOLDING NAPKINS AROUND SILVERWARE!!), and then he went to charge my card and then walk back to the kitchen. Came back to tell me its going to be another 4 minutes. I tell him I'm pretty disappointed that its not ready after THRITY minutes of placing a order. 35 minutes if you include the first 6 minutes of trying to get someone to answer the damn phone. Apparently they're very busy, so I ask how is it so busy the cook can't make a ommelette? He showed me the tickets in queue, and I had the 2nd oldest ticket out of 8... so this means they SKIPPED my order to make the orders placed AFTER mine OR the cook is taking 35 minutes on a single ommelette. I don't expect perfection from IHOP, but I have to say I'm quite disappointed. I will probably never come back here again.

The triple stack of pancakes were dry, but the ommelette was alright to be fair.

Hopefully this location can get their night crew's act together. Possibly understaffed. Considering there was 2 tables sat down(bigger tables) and several to-go orders, maybe consider cross-training waiters in the kitchen to expedite to-go orders.

You've been warned if you dare order to-go at night.. Don't expect anything less than 40 minute wait time or outstanding customer service. The guy who did take my card was polite to give him credit.. but its hard to make up for the fact it...

Horrible experience. Went at about 8:00 pm, it was not crowded at all. We were sat at a table in the corner and no one even came to the table until about 15-20 minutes later. (We were just about to get up and leave, which we should have, and someone finally came over). We placed our whole order, including our beverages finally. Our food came out at least another 20 minutes later, and still no beverages. No one checking the table in between. Nothing.

Our food comes out and here’s the feedback on that:

My pancakes were hard. Literally like someone reheated them. Eggs cold.

My husband’s order was wrong. He wanted Nashville chicken and waffles, but was brought regular chicken. They took the dish back and said they were going to remake it, but I think they just put sauce on it because it came right back out with sauce but food temp was cold.

My son got the fisherman’s platter - the fish was unusually super fishy, so he didn’t eat it. He also got the Oreo waffle, which was the only decent thing on the table.

We did get checked on probably twice back to back after that , but never got a refill on the water.

Also, there was no one visibly around to let them know about our experience. One host, a waiter, and our waitress were the only people in sight.

I called first thing the next day to speak to a manager on duty and explained the completely horrible experience we had - in both service and food quality. The ONLY comment made was “we are sorry to hear that. We will check the cameras to see what was going on.” Unsure how checking cameras would solve any of those issues, but needless to say, we will not be returning to this location at all. There’s not a whole lot to expect when going to IHop, but this couldn’t even meet the minimal criteria of their food being at least ok, or their service being at least ok. Missed the mark bigtime. There are other breakfast/dinner spots in the area that can at least deliver what they say they will, with most of them exceeding that by far. Don’t waste...

So, to be clear, I visited two IHOP locations. I was wanting French Toast and I noticed one near the area of the Main Event location, not too far from where we've been eating sushi. This place did not go so well.

We waited for 10 minutes at the counter with no response from anyone walking by. They would look in our direction and appear almost afraid to speak with us. Finally, we took a seat and were approached by someone who looked to be a manager.

We were taken to a table but were told that he was helping but there were only two servers, one of which was working 4 tables and trying to clean another 3. This person said their manager was out sick, they were short staffed and would be closing soon. It's a 24 hour location, half the restaurant was blocked off to customers and the staff looked exhausted. We left. We decided it would be better to go somewhere else, just as about 8 more people tried to walk in.

We went to another IHOP a few miles down on Fry Rd. This location had a help wanted sign and the same issue: limited staff and a normal crowd of people. We were seated in 5 to 6 minutes, but it appeared there were 3 servers for the whole location.

Ours was doing his best. His name was Ronnie, he greated everyone with a smile and had a super positive attitude. It took a while for our food to come out, but by that point we were tired and decided to wait.

Our waiter did an awesome job of assisting all the tables within his range. I felt bad because he seemed to be really overworked, but you could tell he was doing his best. The food tasted ok, my French Toast tasted sweet and fluffy, but my fiance's breakfast sandwhich was super dry, and she could only eat half.

Had this place had more staff, it may have been a lot better. I tipped our server very well, in cash, and made sure he got it directly. It may be a few more weeks at least before we try IHOP again as it seems they may still be recovering from what appears to be a shortage...