IHOP — Restaurant in Virginia

I was at this Ihop on 6/11/18. My experience was TERRIBLE. see below for the details.

I went with one other person IE Table for 2 on a Monday approx 1030 am. We were seated in a reasonable time. Our waitress Terri arrived and introduced her self. She took an order for drinks I had a Splashberry and my friend had a water with lemon and a coffee. She then asked if we knew what we wanted, we did so we ordered. I ordered a create your own omelette of cheddar cheese, bacon, ham, hash browns and avocado. My pancakes upgraded to the harvest grain and nut. my friend ordered the country omelette with upgraded pancakes to the strawberry cheese cake. during taking this order our waitress becomes exasperated and fusses that they just sat her 4 new tables. It took over 10 min to get our drinks. Understandable due to the table issue. However when they did arrive there was no water for my friend. We asked about 10 min later we got a water. At this point my splashberry needed a refill and that came in a timely manner. The waitress apologized for the wait. We were still patient as it was obvious she was running around like crazy. The waitress returns to tell me they are out of harvest grain and nut pancakes. I look at a menu and order cinnastack pancakes instead. We wait some more and a food runner arrives with our food. My friends order was correct mine was not. I had no avocado on my omelette and they brought pain pancakes. I let the food runner know both issues. She took the pancakes with her, later she brought me the correct cinnastack pancakes. at that point I reminded her i was still missing avocado on my omelette. She apologized and said she was new and asked if i just needed slices for the top or needed my omelette returned. I said slices would be fine. In the time since the water and our one refill we haven't seen or heard from our server. The food runner returns with my avocado and I dig in. I am about half way thru my meal and I have no more drink. I am a person who cant eat with out my drink so I pause and wait. Our waitress finally appears and both my friend and I ask for a refill. She begins to go thru the checks she is carrying at our table. we wait assuming she is going to leave our check (we are about half way thru our plates so that's fair) however she mutters something and walks away. I keep waiting for my refill still not eating for another 15 min. I am looking for our waitress but I haven't seen her. She finally appears and says "have I given you your check?" we say no but can we have boxes and she walks away. At this point we decide just to take the left overs and we will eat the rest later as we are obviously not getting refilled. She brings the check and we ask again for boxes. She grabs them and comes right back. we pack up and head to the register.

this is where it gets plain RUDE!

The gentleman that helps us we can only assume is the manager as he is wearing a different uniform and no name tag. He approaches and just looks at me so I start. I say hi we need to split the check. I had the... he interrupts me and says in a snappish tone "give me that" and points to the check. I hand it over to him and I am angry at this point. I say you all have had some issues today and he shouts "YOU THINK". I am sure I probably had a look on my face at this point. But he hands me back the check and just looks at me so I switch to brisk business mode to get out of there.

I point out what I had and pay my bill. at some point he mush have realized he was rude or that i was mad because he starts attempting to back pedal as my friend is rung up. he says oh i just needed the table number to split it. I didn't respond. After paying and using the restroom I ask for a card. I picked up the feed back card and the general card for the location. As soon as we hit the parking lot I left a voicemail on the number for feed back asking for a call back. as of today 24 hrs later i have not recvd a call back. I am planning to send this review to the email on the...

TL;DR: Service is incredibly slow. While my son loves the food it's not worth waiting the time, nor paying the over-priced bill to go there while coupled with the expectation of tips.

Do yourself a solid. Unless you really like the franchise, don't bother. I mean, even the omelettes are bad.

On the pro side, the staff are friendly and polite.

On the con side, oh boy. Service is generally slow even on nights when it isn't busy, so it's difficult to imagine a truly busy night. Perhaps they have more servers on those nights or they partition the restaurant into sections rather than an as-come assignment to customers. Maybe that makes a difference?

Oh, and boy is this place expensive.

• • SILVER LINING! * * *

My son adored the pancakes, so if you ignore the kind of things that the adults bother about then the restaurant would have received a higher rating. The fact that he walked away with what appeared to be five more servings of pancakes is a win-win for him. Things like having to hunt down a server to get a box for that mass of food is not a thing that he was even aware of.

On the Celiac side of things, it may come as no surprise that you should avoid this place (specific restaurant and likely the chain in general). They have a very restricted gluten "friendly" menu (read: cross-contamination is likely, shared fryers, shared surfaces etc.). The restaurant didn't know what corporate was saying (read: didn't know their online menu--this is not the first time that this has happened), and acknowledged the shared fryer situation. I thus had zero confidence in any of their "gluten friendly" menu, let alone the "GF" pancakes that they mistakenly sent out (not what was ordered).

Corporate IHOP acknowledges this with a tiny disclaimer. Fair enough. The thing is, if you're going to make such a shallow effort to try and bring in the money of Celiac sufferers then do so by being honest, transparent, and not restricting disclaimers to 8-point font (or smaller). Either don't bother or just do one thing really, really well. For example:

"If you're a Celiac sufferer then, sorry, just don't eat here. Even our omelets have wheat flour in the unless you ask for "shelled eggs" because nothing says eggs than added pancake batter. And as for dedicated facilities? Not going to happen. On the other hand, we make a mean cup of coffee that you can bring your own Irish to*. We won't judge."

(The "mean cup of coffee" and "bring your own Irish" are not offers made here. It's just a bit of facetiousness to lighten up the fact that IHOP should just give up on trying to serve those with wheat/gluten allergies and say that they only serve fad gluten free dieters.)

Kudos where kudos is deserved: the staff tried their best to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, the corporate training didn't seem up to the task--a shame for keen servers trying to...

We frequent IHOPs on a regular basis for senior discount day on Wednesday. This location and Culpeper, Virginia disappoints more than not. The quality of the food and the service has gone down quite a lot. Tonight, my father‘s order was supposed to have mashed potatoes. The manager was even proud that they used real potatoes and not box potatoes. However, they were not mashed. It was potatoes that were chopped up, put into a bowl without seasoning of any kind. The basic rule of cooking potatoes is you must add salt while cooking them. Even a little during the mashing process. Perhaps some butter or sour cream or anything to give it flavor. Only not mashed they had no flavor., The server, unfortunately, had a very limited grass of the language, and so when my father ordered two sides for the dish and the rules said it was with a soup or salad, she did not correct him and offer either one we asked for the second vegetable to arrive, and it never came. At that point, my father called over the manager. He was confrontational. My father was just simply trying to understand the situation with the non-mashed tasteless, potatoes, and why it was like that. The managers response was simply that they don’t use box potatoes, and we should be happy about that. And the fact that we were getting it for 50% off. That’s an advertised thing for IHOP, that does not equate to poor quality food nor does it equate to poor quality service. I’ve not experienced this degree of dissatisfaction at any any other IHOP. I can shout out to the Chantilly IHOP and Warrenton IHOP. I think this is a great service for the senior citizens and I applaud IHOP for doing so. There is definitely a need for education, education, and serving, and basic linguistic skills and...