An Evening in the Twin Cities: Applebee's, Maplewood Mall

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Applebee's, Maplewood Mall - October 30, 2007

Her perspective: C
His perspective: D

Let me start out by saying that I used to work at Applebee's, several locations, off and on for about 5 years.

We were seated immediately and greeted fairly quickly. William ordered a shot of Jack Daniels and a Mountain Dew. I ordered just a Mountain Dew. Our server brought the sodas and made a separate trip for the Jack. We were ready to order our food for several minutes before our server noticed.

William had ordered a caesar salad as an appetizer. It came out on a warm plate, which ended up making the salad warm, so he didn't really enjoy it. He also ordered the Bourbon Street Steak done Medium and I ordered a Chicken Finger Basket with broccoli instead of fries.

We waited over a half hour for our food and there were three other tables that were seated after us that got their food before we did. William's steak was, once again, overcooked. He ate his sides and we were both almost done by the time the server finally got around to check on us. She wasn't very attentive. She offered to put another steak on, but we both didn't want to stay that long, so he declined. She abruptly took the plate off the table and said that she would have the manager take it off. When the manager dropped off the check, she apologized and I took that opportunity to explain how long we waited. She apologized again and stated that she was in the kitchen at that time and that they had gotten backed up. It wasn't very busy and, even so, that doesn't explain how three other tables got their food before ours. My chicken fingers were good, but the broccoli was bland and under-cooked.

We have decided that should we decide to go to an Applebees, that we will go to the one in Apple Valley, since we have never had a problem there and have had problems at every other store.

2 comments:

William said...: I have to add that I didn't want them to remake it because I didn't want to wait another 30 or 45 minutes to eat it. Since it took so long to get the first time around, and since our server was apparently more interested in other things than her tables, I just didn't want to waste anymore time on it.; 10:58 AM
William said...: We just found out over the weekend that this location has CLOSED. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. We've never seen that store busy, and we usually had problems with our food or orders at that location.; 8:43 PM

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Background information on your reviewers:

Maryanne was in the restaurant industry for 14 years, including one year as a manager for Chili's Grill and Bar. She has experience in fast food, family chain restaurants (with and without alcohol) and fine dining. She has a Hospitality and Tourism Management degree which gives her an understanding of the service industry including travel, hotel, gaming, food and beverage, and entertainment. She is also an actress with some years experience doing short and feature films, online episodic shows, student films, film projects and contests which include both paid and voluntary roles.

William has none of that experience, but instead has experience eating with and entertaining groups of different sizes in a variety of venues in different areas of the Country. That and a knowledge of how things 'should' work in the entertainment and service worlds. He forms his own opinions from that mix of knowledge using a good dose of common sense and a perception of what he feels people expect from dining out at various venues, seeing movies and such.

Our rating system is just a guide, and no rating system is 100% perfect. We are just married couples, friends and relatives that enjoy movies, eating out and other entertainment in the Twin Cities area, and generally we find that people agree with our assessments of different venues, so we offer this bit of common-man insight to everyone. We feel that we're all pretty average people, and we expect what we think any average person would when we spend money to go places and do things, and we have the same reactions when things go right or wrong as most anyone else would. We offer this blog and our experiences to people so they can know or formulate a better opinion as to whether they might want to spend their money or not at these same places or for the same things.

We know that lots of people don't follow reviews and critics and such because they are paid to do what they do, and they generally spend a lot of time qualifying what they say so that you could make the review mean more than it really does. We are all straight-forward and upfront people, and we're not paid, reimbursed or in some other way compensated for these reviews. Maybe it's just us, but we think that lends us more credibility since we're just doing it because we can and we like to, not because we get paid for doing it.

That said, you have to keep in mind that we aren't pro's or anything, so you'll get a no-nonsense perspective from us. We may seem harsh at times, but you need to remember that in some cases we'd spend a lot of money just to come away with a poor review. It hurts having to spend money on something and have nothing good to show for it, and we feel that other people would have the same reaction we would in cases like that, and our reviews reflect that fact. Along that same line, we like spending a little money and getting more value from it. Our reviews and descriptions should also show that, and that's what we're trying to get across to other people as well.

Again, we aren't compensated for this in any fashion, we just do it because we can, we want to, and to maybe help some other people out in the process.

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Applebee's, Maplewood Mall - October 30, 2007

2 comments:

Background information on your reviewers: