Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Virginia

This is in a follow up to my previous review for my 11/29/24 review. This was handled swiftly and very satisfactorily by Samantha who personally emailed me 11/30/24 apologizing for the experience. I really appreciate the fact she took time to personally email me and to handle this in such a quick manner. Samantha, you are truly outstanding and thank you for your help. Because of you and the great staff outside of this one instance and the great food, I will continue to to dine here. Thank you

On 11/29/24 I ordered the prime rib via curbside.and once I got home to eat it, I noticed it was not cooked correctly, so I called back to the location to advise of this . the first young lad I spoke to was really nice and helpful and offered to get the manager for me to speak to. The manager comes on the phone, who's name was Rhonda who was not very helpful and very rude. I advised what happened and she ask if I would like a refund or for them to recook it.I advised wasn't going to come back up there as I live over 20 minutes away from there. So then she asked how I paid. I advised by cash. She then tells me she can't do a refund over the phone which I totally understand. So then she says they could just refund it to me the next time I came but I would need to bring the receipt and the food. I asked why would I be bringing the food back at a later date with the receipt. It could be days, weeks, or months before I came back. She advised this was policy. I asked why couldn't she just give me a voucher or a git card or something next time I came and she reiterated that I would have to bring the receipt and the food back then for them to do anything. I then asked if she had their corporate number. She advised they don't keep it there. Then I asked if she was the General Manager and she advised no. I asked for the General Manager's name and she refused to provide that information as well as refusing to give her last name. She then preceded to hang up on me. I have ordered from this location a lot over the past few years, but if I'm going to be treated like this, I won't...

We came to this location to have my birthday dinner, and dinner made my birthday not so happy. We requested a table for 3, gave my number for when the table was ready and decided to have a drink at the bar. My phone went off saying my table was ready, I go to the front and the person told me "Oh I thought you had left" and he had seated someone else at our table. He offered us a booth in the bar area at that point. The bartender was now our server - yay. We order apps, and our meal. I asked for the boneless ribeye to be grilled not seasoned and seared. I was told they had a new equipment and they could not do that anymore (Umm really? You can cook bone in ribeye on the grill but not boneless - okay) We were hungry and I did not feel like arguing, so I said fine - do seasoned and seared, whatever. We received our apps and ate them (15-20 mins), then the server ( who is the bartender) comes back to the table and asks us for our meal order again - she said she forgot to put the order. By this time it was 20 mins before closing. We gave it to her again and we later got our main course. The seasoning on the steak was so over done, it was inedible (way too much pepper) - instead of returning for a new steak, I asked for it to be taken off the bill. It was taken off the bill, and she even offered for me to take home the steak and potato, but no, I refused (like I said - it was inedible) Maybe the seasoned steak is supposed to taste like that, or maybe because it was so late (because the server forgot to put in our order), they were heavy handed on the seasoning in the back. Perhaps if I could have had my steak grilled (apparently with their new equipment you can't) like I asked, this would not have happened.

In the end - my steak dinner for my birthday, never happened. UN Happy Birthday to me.

This past week, my husband and I were in Midlothian again, thought about having a steak - but decided nope we would go home, no need to go to this Outback because of the food quality and poor service that...

My 5-star rating is meant as a rating that compares this Outback to other Outbacks. I can't r compare an Outback experience to a non-Outback dine-in because it just wouldn't make sense. If you are unfamiliar with the Outback concept then this won't help. Maybe you could check Youtube to see if anyone has created a video that will give you the nuts and bolts of what they are about.

15 years ago, before all of the novelty had worn off, there probably would have been a little bit of a wait. But the traffic has died down since then and we experienced no delays. Our wait-person escorted us to a table of our own selection post haste. She was energetic and enthusiastic and seemed genuinely concerned that we experience the full pleasure possible from a plateful of meat prepared to our liking. To insure this would happen, she did have to excuse herself a few times to obtain the clarifications we required. The drinks were delivered promptly as was the complementary bread, all of which was shortly followed by our appetizers. All excellent. Then came the main dishes which also did not disappoint. Throughout this fecund flurry of food we were questioned many times regarding our current levels of satisfaction. I assumed this was all pro forma and not tied to her past experience in fielding customer grievances. It was hard to tell because she did seem genuinely concerned and then relieved each time we assured her that our satisfaction levels were still high and climbing.

Sorry, no room for dessert this visit so I can't comment on the current quality of that particular course. But the selections appear not to have changed over the decades and the quality has always been evident on...