Red Lobster — Restaurant in Topeka

Arrived Sunday evening at 5:20pm. Seated immediately. Waitress was pretty slow to take the drink order but, we were scanning the menu. She drops off the drinks, no straws, and leaves. Why didn’t she take our order? Eventually returns and two of us order the Crabfest Surf-n-Turf. One order for Ultimate Crabfest Trio. After eating the salads it takes 50 minutes for our order to arrive and it’s wrong. About 15 minutes before the food arrived the waitress stopped by to ask how we were doing? I said we’re just sitting here waiting for some food. She said she was sorry but one of the cooks just quit and they were running behind. Of the two orders of Crabfest Surf-n-Turf, both had Shrimp skewers (no crab) and only one had a steak on the plate. She said she would bring the other steak out later because some salmon is cooking on the grill..... I said the order is wrong, that’s not what we ordered. I had her bring the menu back and showed her what we ordered. At that point I said, bring me a bill for the drinks and salads and we’ll go. So she said she would let the Manager know. The manager arrives and says both cooks quit and she would comp our order. I said I’ll pay for the drinks and salads and go. She asked if we didn’t want any of what we ordered? I said the order is wrong. She said she could fix the order and send it with us. I told her I appreciate the offer and am sorry your cooks quit but we came to eat dinner, not takeout. I again offered to pay for the drinks and salads but she said that wouldn’t be necessary. It’s unfortunate that the cooks quit and I feel bad for the manager but the cooks would have prepared the order they received and the order was put in wrong by the waitress. After waiting that long, if the order had been correct and complete, we would have ate it. But, in reading reviews prior to mine, this seems to be a pattern for this restaurant. Anyway, I shook hands with the manager, told her I’m sorry her cooks walked out, and said we would come back another time and try again. And we will. It may be several months before we do but we will go there again. 7/16/19 I entered my contact information on the Red Lobster web site because they indicated they wanted to know more about my experience. I entered the complaint number they assigned to me but I felt there was no need to rewrite my complaint because I was very specific and left nothing out that I could think of. I got an email from them today indicating that they shared my complaint with the staff and training was being done to deal with the issues I mentioned. They said it was an isolated incident, I’m not sure about that but I don’t go there often enough to know. They are sending me a gift card, which I don’t need nor want. If I wanted something free I would have accepted the Managers offer to “Comp” our meal. But, it is what it is and I hope they fix the issues with inadequate wait staff service and find more...

Came here 02/06 after not visiting for about a year and surprise, we won’t be back for quite some time. We arrived at 5:40 and surprisingly it wasn’t very busy at all. We were seated quickly, and our waiter came over. We still don’t know his name, as he never told us, and we got our drinks and that was it. Extremely impersonal. My wife waited for her salad for literally over half an hour! And still by this point biscuits had not arrived and my two kids were getting antsy and hungry too. Once her salad arrived our waiter finally came and told us that the biscuits would be out soon because they had to make more... at this time I asked when our main food would be ready (we’re all starving!) he says about 5-7 minutes, TWENTY minutes later our main course arrives and finally the biscuits. We sat in the restaurant for 55 minutes without anything to eat besides my wife’s salad that she shared with me and my kids. I talked to the manager and she said that there was a wait for biscuits and that she’d come over and check on us in a bit to make sure things were okay. She never came. Never offered to do anything. The tables around us had a much more intrigued waitress/server that I wish we could have had. I will say, with scallops you need to seer BOTH sides if you want people to pay $7.50 for FOUR of them. It looked like they’d been out on a grill just for a few seconds, literally no color. Our bill was $74 and between the price, the lack of quality in the food, the service and the wait time when it wasn’t anywhere near to being that busy, it is not worth your money...

Went in with my daughter and granddaughter for a late lunch. The server got us an appetizer and drinks and then apologized that they were short-handed. The manager was cooking. We started to give him our order, and he excused himself to grab another customer's meal that had come up. When he returned, he started to take our order and then said he was sorry, but it was now 2 minutes past 3 so he would need to collect our menus and bring us dinner menus. I asked since our ticket was opened at 2:15 that we get the lunch, but he said the system was based on the clock when the items were ordered. I had something similar happen in the past, and the server either removed our drinks to lower our ticket or comped an item but that didn't happen. We were set covid aware, so there were only 2 tables in our area that were active. We got our salads, and the server brought out 2 baskets of biscuits to our neighboring table. When we asked for biscuits, he said the kitchen was way behind and it could be 15 to 20 minutes for fresh ones. We worked on our salads and before they were half gone the server arrived with our meal and biscuits. Our meals were good and tasted good. Since they were dinner-sized, we asked for to-go boxes. When the server returned he brought 2 boxes. We had 3 meals. Anyway, he was gone for about 10 minutes. When he returned he got the third to-go box and apologized that the other area in the restaurant had a server not show so he was handling them. We paid and as we have family that are servers we tipped well, but were a bit unhappy with how...