Applebee’s

Decided to go here Friday night for dinner. The place was pretty packed, but were seated right away in the bar. Our waitress came to us right away and took our drink order. We looked over menu and decided for sandwiches. My husband ordered the brunch burger with fries and I ordered the Monterey steak sandwich with a salad. All the food was good, hot, and filling. Our bill was $ 33, which we thought was a little high, but what can you do? We might go back, nothing really keeping us from it.

Logan’s, next door, closes at 10:00 so this is the only game in walking distance of the hotel. Not very busy at 10:30 on a Monday, in a college town, after a holiday weekend, as expected. What I didn’t expect was ordering a double shot of Dewars (at the bartender’s suggestion), having the bottle run out and having Ethan, the bartender, try to sneak in the second shot as J & B, looking over his shoulder and thinking I wouldn’t see/​notice. Uh, yeah, busted. I payed up and letting him know I saw what he did was my ‘tip’.

I haven’t been to an Applebee’s in over 5 years. Sadly they still haven’t caught on to trends in diet; vegan and vegetarian. All of their soups are chicken based (even the tomato!) and they offer no type of black bean burger or vegetarian friendly sandwich. Almost all restaurants nowadays have at least one veg friendly option. Anyway, as a company wide issue I can’t give this location a bad review based on that. Our server was friendly and was comfortable handling our group of 10 just fine. She came around a couple of time for refills. What I did end up eating was pretty good, but the food took a little longer to be served than I was hoping for. Restaurant was clean enough; didn’t check out the restroom though. ⁴⁄₅.

We went to Applebee’s on Saturday 12÷8÷12 and it wasn’t a good experience. The first thing that happened was one of our glasses was so dirty I find it very, very hard to believe it ever touch a washer. It looked like it came out of the bus person’s bin because. I rubbed my finger across the edge of the glass and there was a greasy smear around the entire thing. I didn’t catch it the problem – a 10 year old boy did who was getting ready to pour his milk in the glass.
When our meal came my steak was very well done to the point of being completely cooked through with no pink in it at all. Big deal – accidents happen. The wait person stopped by (who was very friendly the whole time) and agreed it was well done and had another one put in for me. They left the old meal on my plate so I left the steak alone but had some of the potatoes. It took a long time for a new steak to show up – I’m guessing around 15 minutes but I didn’t check my watch. The manager dropped it off with little fanfare. No apologies, just dropped the steak, said «Here you go» and left. A few minutes later the wait person came by to check if things were ok.
The check arrived with no adjustments.
The wait person was very nice and professional; much more so than the manager.

Yeesh, I hadn’t been to an Applebee’s in forever and was surprised to pick up their menu and find that it was full of pictures of salads and other ‘healthy’ food. I’m all for healthy food, but the menu seemed over the top and desperate to me.
I went with four other people for lunch, the place wasn’t that busy and we were promptly seated. Our server was friendly and competent and I don’t have a single complaint about her.
With all the health-​food fanfare I was a little surprised to find a serious lack of vegetarian options. I wasn’t in the mood for a salad — it would have been something ordered sans meat — so I went for a lunch combo consisting for a grilled bacon and cheese sandwich (minus the bacon) and tomato soup. The sandwich was yummy, but they only give you half of one for the combo and I didn’t find it filling enough. The soup was tasty too.
We each opted for one of the $ 1.99 or was it $ 2.99 desert cups. I got key lime — it was okay — but wished I’d gone for the chocolate mouse one.
All and all, a good place for a basic, not too expensive meal.