Red Lobster

Red lobster provided us much more than a meal today. They gave us an experience. Today was more than a lunch. It was an occasion.
This was a Christmas get together for family. When you have a bad experience, it is more than an inconvenience. A bad experience can impact the whole outing and will change the way the family Christmas meal «was remembered». And the person who chooses the location gets the blame for it. That’s why it’s so crucial to «get it right.» And «get it right» today is just what they did.
We were a table for six and ordered much of the menu. The menu itself is like a book, but was detailed and fairly easy to navigate. All the food was perfect. Lobster, shrimp, calimari, fish, fried broccoli, crab legs, appetizers, biscuits, salads, and desserts. All perfect.
I tried hard but found it impossible to find one single thing to complain about. The bathrooms and dining room are clean. Parking lot and landscaping are well maintained. No problems anywhere.
What really made it great was the service. The hostess was friendly and offered a sling made to hold our baby carseat carrier before we ever sat down. Terrell served us the whole time without having anyone else deliver one thing to us. He quickly learned each of our names and how we are related as a family. He is one of the best servers to have fed me.
Our experience with the service was very different from other reviews. If service is consistently as good as ours was, then you’ll have no problem getting five star reviews and packing the house every night. Here’s how to do it. Promote your very best server into management. He could be responsible for all Dardin restaurants for an entire region. He will invest heavily into training. There will be classes, weekly meetings, and videos. He will focus on 100% customer satisfaction, and the service staff will have the knowledge to handle any situation professionally with the customer. The best server at each location will be in charge of service at their store. If a customer is unhappy, he needs to know about it. If an employee is unhappy, he needs to know about it. The reason employees are rude is because they are unhappy. Find out why and eliminate the problem.
Alisa has a photo up from two months ago of a cheesecake with strawberries that looks really good. I decided I’d rather get key lime. Ten minutes later they told me they’re out of that so I decided on cheesecake with strawberries. What they sent me was a plain white cheesecake with a little cup of syrup. Didn’t look anything like Alisa’s picture so I sent it back. We also had the chocolate brownie and Apple pie and ice cream.
Price and value. Six lunches plus tip almost two hundred bucks. That ain’t chump change. Then again you go in there planning to spend some dough. Red lobster ain’t cheap. They do have lunch specials but unless you are a light eater, the portions are small. Have to eat extra biscuits. Remember the captain D commercials comparing RL and CD price like they were the same thing for a higher price? Like you could get lobster and crab at captain D? Well they’re not the same and red lobster is expensive, so it better be good. Today it was.

Food was great. The waitress was rude. Brought the bread and slammed the plates so they twirled like a frisbee round and round on the table. Brought the salad and put it on the very edge of the table instead of in front of the customer. Was very irritated at something it seemed. Don’t want to say it’s not a good eatery but the table waiters need more training

Typical Saturday rush. We got there earlier and only had a 10 minute wait. Our waitress Shay was outstanding! And Marcus the minor league ball player was a big sweetie. They are the reason for the extra star!
Now to the food. The biscuits were piping hot with just the right amount of cheesy, salty goodness for soup sopping up or pushing salad onto the fork. The lobster bisque is always tasty but I felt cheated on the amount for $ 5.79 a cup. You used to fill it to the crease in the cup but today we both got ours almost ¼″ below the crease. The bisque was brought out with the salad. The prep guys need to do a much better job of checking the lettuce quality as I got a few leaves that my rabbit wouldn’t even eat. Hubby was disappointed that the cucumber was missing. I like the grape tomatoes better than having the prep guys wedge whole not-​so-​ripe tomatoes. My salad had 3 grape tomatoes and a huge handful of croutons, plus some sliced red onion. I would like less croutons and a couple of more tomatoes.
We both ordered the new Grand Seafood Feast. You get a petite split lobster tail with stuffing, their new brown butter shrimp scampi, hand breaded shrimp and snow crab legs. It comes with mash and another side. I don’t like mash so I ordered the baked and the green beans (haricot verts). My lobster was cooked great, no jerky here but the stuffing was underwhelming. The new brown butter scampi is a major improvement over the regular scampi. I loved the tomatoes and the shaved garlic in the brown butter. It was worth the heartburn. I liked the new hand breading over the old previous stand-​by Walt’s shrimp. The beans were cooked just the way I like them, crisp with a little squeak left in them. They ended up putting a cold scoop of mash on my plate by mistake and they could have kept it. Cold, bland, mush in a dome is not appetizing at all. You included it by mistake so I tasted it. Yuck! I don’t know what happened to your old brand of sour cream for the baked but it needs an immediate reinstatement. Don’t ever give me sweet tasting, fake or low-​fat sour cream. I should have skipped the spuds in any iteration and doubled up on the verts.
Service = 5 stars, food = 2.75 stars.

I would really love to give this place four or five stars, but there’s just too many little things preventing me from doing so.
First I will start off with the appetizers. We had the lobster bisque and as usual it was absolutely delicious. However, I was surprised to find that I got only about 10 bites out of my entire cup of lobster bisque. For almost 6 dollars you would expect a bit more. However it was very tasty and the cheese biscuits are delicious as always. The salad needed to be sorted through much more meticulously. My wife’s salad had a few pieces that had obviously been in the bin a bit too long and they also stopped adding cucumbers which I happen to really like.
As far as the dinner goes for the first time we ordered the grand seafood feast. A few items on this plate were absolutely delicious and a few items really need some help. The mashed potatoes were extremely bland and just not worth putting on the point. The stuffing in the lobster left a lot to be desired. On the positive side, my wife’s lobster was cooked to perfection and was absolutely delicious while mine was just a bit overcooked. The new scampi they made by far was the highlight of the meal. The additions they made were spot on and I am glad we ordered that portion. Also the new fried shrimp were so much better than what you can get on the Ultimate feast. Finally a simple thing as green beans being cooked exactly as they should be really did help to meal.
Those of you that have read my reviews know that two things are always important to me and that is cleanliness and service. The cleanliness left a little bit to be desired. There was not a lot of trash or visual pieces of food laying around but it smelled as if the cleaning rags were a bit old and musky and therefore left a bad scent behind. Now onto the service. We had a wonderful server. Shay was very attentive yet not overbearing. We got our order in a timely manner and she was very polite and friendly. Also the young gentleman, Marcus, who delivered our food was extremely polite and also a very nice young man. I truly hope the management understands the quality of some of their employees.

Okay, the last time I went here was 7 years ago, maybe 8. Let me tell you… it has changed a lot… for the better. Let’s get started.
Seating.
Remember those long waits at red lobster where you had to wait 45 min to an hour. Yea… well they got rid of those. We were seated almost without hesitation. I loved how great it was, just like walking into Ryan’s. It’s that quick now. I’ve actually seen a lot of restaurants change in that way. I like these changes.
Service.
Great. We had a nice, talkative waitress who was pretty speedy. She brought the food without hesitating or even stopping by another table to get them anything. I got ketchup, A1 sauce, and a refill all in less than a minute. They were speedy and on task.
Sanitation.
They were pretty clean at the booths. It was the bathrooms I was concerned about, which were not so good. They were okay in the sanitary department, but I was more concerned about the broken stuff. The sink took more than a minute to start and both paper towel mechanisms were broken. I would suggest getting this fixed, Red Lobster.
Food.
The food was great. For appetizers, we got chicken tenders, cheese sticks, and the tasty biscuits. Lemme tell you, they are the bomb. Eating just one was not an option. Then I got my meal. I got the steak and lobster combo with a 12oz NY Strip and Lobster Tail. The greatest thing ever invented. It had a phenomenal taste, and it came with amazingly favorable butter, the best I had ever tasted.
Wrapping it up.
I would say you should check this place out. Four Stars.

Funny smell employees loitering at table when not serving
Food was ok… glass often empty

The host got us a table as soon as we got in, but took forever for our server, I think her name is Shannon, a tall black girl. We had 4 party table, but somehow she got my salad dressing wrong. After she served the bread basket and salads, she has gone long enough for me to forget about the correct dressing I asked for. Then, she came to served our main dishes. I told her she didn’t give me the right dressing for salad, but that was alright. Then she came by to fill water twice but took awhile to come back for our dessert.

Red Lobster used to be our favorite special occasion restaurant. The upgrade to the interior was way over-​due and it looks much nicer now.
There seems to be no good day or time to eat there as lunch times can be slow even if they are not crowded. The hostesses don’t seem very eager to get you listed or seated. Once you are seated, it is a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ chance if you get good service. None of the usual staff are still there and you may have to wait forever for drinks or refills. You may get greeted right away or wait for 10 minutes before a server says hello.
The food is still great, comes out hot and the biscuits are yummy. However, if they don’t address the service issue, I can see where people may just stop coming since there are lots if choices of where to eat in the Mall area.

If I believed in playing the «race» card this would be the establishment I would blow out of the water. Red Lobster in the Wolfchase area is an embarrassment to Memphis.
My friend (black male) lost a bet to me, so, he had to buy me dinner. Since he lost the bet, I let him choose the restaurant.
We were seated promptly, but, after a few uncomfortable minutes of looking around for a server, someone came to the table and informed us that the servers are «discussing» who’s section our table belonged to. Hmmm. I ordered a bottle of wine so I could tease my friend about making bets with me.
Servers walked back and forth passing our table with no one making eye contact. Customers were being seated after us and getting their food while we continued to be ignored. We were both getting irritated and tapping our fingers on the table. No bread, no wine, no attention.
After 15 – 20 minutes of nothing and biting my tongue so as not to embarrass my friend, I politely said «We should leave, this is not a good sign». As we were making our move, a server brings an unopened bottle of Sutter Home. We slowly sat back down. She showed the bottle to my friend and I said «we ordered Beringer Zin» she didn’t make eye contact with me and flatly said «all I was told was white wine». I glanced at my friend and he didn’t say anything so I let it go.
We drank the bottle of wine before the food came. Yes, that means the food came 20 minutes later. The food was good, the wine was drinkable and the service was unacceptable.
Afterwards, I asked my friend if he had ever had that horrible service before. He preceded to «school» me that I was a victim of discrimination. I had the deer in the headlights look on my face and said «what does that mean»? He informed me that it is frowned upon by some (black women) that a white woman is with a black man. He reminded me that the servers who were «discussing» who would wait on us was a group of young black women.
I instantly transformed into my «ghetto girl» and said «aww hellll naw dey didn’t! Imma bout to go up der an get somethin fo free cuz dey jus disrespected me!!!» All while my head was swiveling and my pointer finger was waving around wildly. He said «please don’t». Then we both laughed so hard our stomachs were hurting.

The main reason I come here is for the Cheddar Bay biscuits, not even gonna lie. However now that they sell mixes at the grocery store, there’s less of a reason to go.
I’ll say one thing, the interior looks a lot better now that they’ve renovated. It’s a little classier. But the atmosphere is still kinda ehh. Service can be really hit or miss. Either I have a great waiter who’s super attentive or I’m left waiting on them to come back 15 minutes after I finished my drink and need a refill. There’s no in between.
The food itself is… okay. It’s clear everything’s frozen/​pre-​made. I’m a sucker for their fried flounder even though it’s probably half a step up from frozen fish sticks. This is one of the few places that offers broccoli as a side, yet the broccoli tastes like something (most places either just steam it totally unseasoned or drench it in some gross sauce), although most of the times it’s overcooked to the point of being mushy.
They used to constantly be busy to the point where you had to go during some random off time like 2 pm to not be told there was an hour wait. However, these days it seems much easier to get immediate seating here. I’ve come here on Fridays right after work and they’re dead, even when I end up leaving they’re still dead.
I’d give them a higher rating but honestly, between the pre-​made food and the sometimes subpar service, it’s not really worth it.

Just ordered a 30 $ meal, ask for cheesy broccoli noodles instead of the two sides, nope can’t do that! What is wrong with that?!? It’s not like the noodles arn’t already made! I used to be a waitress and would make the customer happy, if they wanted something I made sure they got it! I gave 1star because the server couldn’t be bothered to even go ask if I could have the damn noodles! Thank god for the sunset passion colada! All I have to say is this 30 $ steak better be great!

This place has tried to become more trendy but all in all this place is a huge letdown. The food quality has diminished greatly over the years yet the prices keep going up. I will no longer be dining at any Red Lobster location.

Ordered the endless shrimp with fries on the side (side doesn’t matter because I won’t be eating anything but the shrimp). Had a choice of salad but instead of chancing anaphylactic shock I chose a cup of clam chowder. Clam chowder was great and even better with dipped Cheddar Bay biscuits! My wife ordered mash potatoes for a side. They were cold when served.
First round: Sriracha-​Grilled Shrimp (Spicy), Garlic Shrimp Scampi, & Hand Breaded. Everything was perfect temp and great. I like the Sriracha-​Grilled Shrimp however it doesn’t out perform my favorite — Garlic Shrimp Scampi. Every round after either included Hand Breaded or Scampi. Only one reorder took some time and at that time the food could have been hotter and one reorder was forgotten. Probably remained in the window too long.
Manager came around and checked on tables.
Go by and see our wonderful waitress — Brittney B at the Hwy. 64 location.

I was shocked that the food was not horrible. It’s been years since I’ve been to this place. My last experience at Red Lobster was not a good one. The food tasted like it could have come from Captain D’s, and the customer service was just as awful if not worse than the food. Anyway, the food was good and affordable. I may be back. The customer service was still horrific.

For whatever reason, I had not been to one of these establishments in over five years, but the gf insisted upon us going for their cheese biscuits. Since we were already at the Wolfchase Galleria, we decided to stop in.
Upon arrival, we asked to be seated in the bar area and were told there would be a short wait… completely understandable. However, when we were called, they tried sitting us in a non-​bar area and gave us a little grief about us bringing this up even though there was a table available.
Once seated, we had decided to go with the Two for $ 29.99 deal. I had asked the waitress if I could substitute the wine sauce on the peppercorn sirloin with bleu cheese, and got an awkward «umm I guess» which I thought lacked professionalism. She never made us feel welcome at the establishment, only making the minimal effort to satisfy the basics. However, the cheese biscuits were good and my girlfriend seemed to enjoy her coconut shrimp; I was not a fan of my steak though. For that price point, I could have gotten a better steak at a good handful of establishments.
We got the lava cookie for dessert which was good, but nothing to rave over. Long story short, it’s been over five years since I’ve been to one of these; I’m imagining it’ll be a long time before I try this place again.

This place always has a wait, even at lunch, so its hard for me to understand why there’s talk of it closing nationally. We went recently on a Sunday night and things didn’t start off well. We specifically asked to sit in the bar area and were taken to another area, when I pointed this out I was told there were no tables, so i pointed to a very open table and we were reluctantly seated there. Our waitress wasn’t warm or friendly but she did provide everything we needed without ever having to ask for it — and she kept the bread basket full, and lets face it, I’m there for the cheese biscuits.
We got the 2 for $ 29.99 meals. The salads always have a lot of dressing so get it on the side if that bothers you. My coconut shrimp were exactly what I expected but the bf did not think much of his steak. The dessert was a little bland but we did finish it. Our final spend was $ 40, not bad but I do think there are places with better food quality and similar ambience for the same or less price point. But I’ll be back, because I just love those damn biscuits.

Good meal, very slow service for lunch. Don’t try it unless you have some extra time

Maybe the last time in a while I go here. Had the combo shrimp/​lobster pot pie and fried shrimp. 2 bites of lobster, and, those baby baby tiny tiny shrimp, no flavor in the pot pie at all. The fried shrimp, maybe a dozen mid size, breading was falling off so greasy. Server was excellent. Too bad their food quality continues to go downhill.

They’ve classed up Red Lobster from what I remember as a kid. It used to look like a Captain D’s with old folks in it. Now it looks like a club with booth tables and seafood.
Great staff at the bar. Food was fast and tasty.
Needs a better selection of beers however if they’re going to be a proper bar. Especially for summer!

I mean, it’s Red Lobster — I don’t know that my expectations are really that high anymore. The last time I came here, it was for girls’ night out, so we were ready to have a good time. We had to wait a few minutes before being seated in a booth near the bar, and then the evening’s entertainment arrived, in the form of our waitress.
This woman was just unreal. By the time we ordered drinks, we’d heard all about how far her teenage daughter made it last time she ran off (before maxing out her mother’s credit card), and it was downhill from there. Pressed to order an adult beverage (I was driving), I asked for a margarita on the rocks, but received a frozen one instead. I had to check with my friends to make sure that no, I was not imagining things, I did in fact request on the rocks.
The food: eh, it was fine. I do love their biscuits, but that’s about as far as it goes these days. Our waitress continued to regale us throughout our meal, and while it was nice to have someone looking after us, she seemed more interested in talking than in making sure we had everything we needed. We overheard her greeting another table and just about died when we heard her start off the same way the she had with us. She ended the night by bringing our check and telling us what a great time she’d had with us… ok then. It was kind of like a bad date, except with a group. Awkward much?