Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Brews — Restaurant in Upper Saucon

Trainwreck, unfortunately:

Went here tonight with the wife and kids. At 6:03pm, we checked in and told 15-20 minute wait- no problem, it looks busy. We waited and were seated at 6:19pm - still all good. Our waitress came to us within 5 minutes - she was very nice and took our drink order. She gave us a minute to look over the menu and came back in a few minutes and took our order - no drinks yet which we didn't really mind.

17 minutes later, we get our drinks - odd since no alcohol, so no bartender needed but again, we get it...they're busy, it's expected.

Now it's a little after 7:08pm, waitress came and apologized for the wait - we get it, it's cool, it's busy. While she came over, we see the 4 other tables behind us without food also, and they all came in before us. Two gentleman behind us started questioning what the food wait was about - waitstaff all apologized and said "it should be out any second".

Now it's 7:26pm and still, no one has food. I walk around to see the place has half-emptied out but at least 8 people are still at the host table waiting to be seated? I walk to the restroom and see 12+ food plates sitting on the order counter getting cold, at least 6 waiters standing there at the plates hanging out, and 6 cooks in the back cooking...so no shortage of staff for a Wednesday night.

Now its 7:38pm - my wife and kids are now hangry, irritated and our "bottomless" drinks have been empty for over 20 minutes with no sigs of refills coming. I asked for our server - she came over, apologized again and that they were "backed up in the kitchen". Clearly, that wasn't true because 12+plates were sitting getting cold. We finally decided we were leaving - I offered to pay for our drinks but we were canceling our food order and leaving - the drinks were gratis per our server due to our food never coming.

It' now 7:41 and we leave without food. We were the 4th table to completely get up and leave because of this tonight (that i know of) and I'm pretty sure half of the restaurant cleared out because food wasn't being served. To make matters worse, no owner or manager in sight to help rectify the problem. I've never left a restaurant but you can't expect patrons to wait an hour and a half with no...

The experience started out okay. The server asked us what drinks and brought them. Then asked if we were ready to order. We order and then they came back with silverware and I asked about the lemonades, if they were bottomless too. They said yes and then I ordered one, thinking it would come out rather quickly. Fast forward to when our food comes(a bit later and our server never checked on us) and I cancelled it because it had not come yet. Server seemed fine with it but after that they didn’t check on us once. We wanted to order more fries(portions were quite tiny this day, I guess)and by the time they came back we had finished our food. They asked if we want more refills and we said no we were done at that point. Granted it’s been a long time since we had been to a Red Robin but we waited for them to bring our check and eventually we tried to use the tablet since no check came. Mind you they never came back to see if we need a box or wanted dessert nothing not even a you can use the tablet to close out your bill. This server never checked on us. Back to the tablet, the lemonade we cancelled was still on the bill. We press the call button and had to wait again for them to notice the light on the tablet. They can over with a version of what do you need. We told them about the lemonade and asked for a box. They came back and said try again but the tablet was not working and it would not been bad if they would not turn their back to us every time they came to our area. After much frustration with the tablet and them just not acknowledging us, we asked the card to be run at their register. Maybe this person was new or having a hard time/day but this was not the first bad experience at Red Robin. We felt a some point our server got very short with us and just wanted us to leave. And having them not check on use did not help anything. Maybe they might be better on another day but we...

The only saving grace for the experience was our server, Janet and the hostess.

We came in for a quick lunch, relying on a good service, seeing we have come to this location plenty of times before... Prior to this past weekend, this is by far the worst service we ever had.

The hostess was friendly and promptly greeted us and placed us at a table. She notified the server in the area and we kindly waited. Over 5-8 minutes, we saw the server in the area look at our table, talk to the other tables and steadily walked back and forth around us without checking in.... As so far as going to the other tables on either side of us and completely ignored us. Another server in a completely different area noticed this and promptly came over to serve us. She was kind, friendly and apologized for the elongated wait. We were very closed to walking out, but she saved the day.

The other fun part was the manager on duty was doing the same thing as the other server who refused to serve us- checking in with the other tables, walking back and forth... even sitting at the staff table joking around with the servers on break. The kick was that he stared right at my wife and I, yet acted like we weren't there. How does a manager behave in such a way is beyond me. He checked in with every other table except ours to assure if we were having a good experience. Very, very unprofessional. Our actual server was quite busy, so I'd imagine the manger would at least try to assist. He did not.

Sadly, I would not recommend this location to anyone if this is how their customer service is nowadays. We loved coming to the Saucon Valley location specifically because of the great experience we had in the past. I see that is not the...