Pizza Hut

Traveling across the US. This night we found ourselves in Mt. Vernon. Most businesses were closed because it was Sunday. This limited our selection to burger places and the one pizza place in this area. Everyone told us the good places all closed on Sunday and we did not want to drive 30 miles to a larger town.
Pretty much standard layout outside and inside for a Pizza Hut.
The inside was in need of a good cleaning. The carpet had a dirty wet smell which as long as I had pizza under my nose was not as noticeable. The salad bar was unkept. I would of eaten a salad also but there was to much salad makings laying on the counter. Just not appetizing.
Pizza was ok, tasted good.
Servers were cordial but not what I would call friendly. No hey how are you, glad you are here, come again. Just took care of needs with no smiles or conservation.

I will start by saying I absolutely LOVE Pizza Hut, I have for years. There is nothing better then the treat of getting to go to Pizza Hut. The smell of the cheesy goodness wafting all around, the dusting of the Parmesan on top of the delicious warm bread sticks, the salad bar with it’s endless supply of fresh lettuce and vegies, the pasta, the wings… Mmm, mouthwatering! Pizza Hut has always had a quality product, quality customer service and a clean comfortable environment… until now.
Yesterday evening around 4 in the afternoon my family of four went to the local Pizza Hut here in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. We were promptly seated in the empty restaurant. I noticed that the little holder that keeps the paper towels and the cheese and pepper shakers had crumbs all over it. This sort of grossed me out a little but then I rationalized with myself, «it’s just on the base of the holder and the rest of the table is clean, maybe they just got busy at some point today and forgot to wipe it off, cut them a break». Then I started looking around and realized that most of the clean tables also had the towel holders filthy and not only was there food all over them but there was still cheese on top of the shakers and the rims of the shakers had black crud all along the ridges of them. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of my love for Pizza Hut and decided «hey we just won’t use those».
Sitting back I began to look at all the photos they have hung up on the walls, I smiled at the old photos of the buildings until I realized that something else was on the photos… food. No not photos of food, actual food pieces and greasy slimy fingerprints all over them, at this point I am wondering if anyone in the building cleans. I made the mistake of looking into the seats around us, realizing that the tables were clean, because the stuff on them had been wiped into the booths, so there were crumbs in the booths as well. At that point we probably should have just left but once again I reminded myself of my love for Pizza Hut (apparently I am a glutton for punishment) So we went ahead and ordered.
We ordered an 8 piece boneless Honey BBQ wings, a family order of cheesy bread sticks, two salad bars and a large Supreme pan pizza minus the green peppers as my husband doesn’t like them. The salads were great, the boneless wings were mouthwatering amazing, the cheese sticks cooked to perfection with mountains of cheese flowing down from the bottom as you pull them apart. The marinara sauce was not so good, it was the consistency of tomato juice and when you dipped your cheese sticks in it, the sauce just flowed right back off like water, this is really unacceptable but hey, the food was great so why complain about a little thing right? …Sighs.
Next our pizza was served, WITH green peppers on it. We called the server over and pointed out that our pizza had green peppers on it when we had in fact requested it NOT have them. He apologized and said he would go see if we could get a new one, we declined the offer saying we would just go ahead and eat it. Now that would have been that, cooks make mistakes, these things happen and we were willing to overlook it, however the server came back out and informed us that the cook told him that he had tossed the green peppers on it then realized his mistake and tried to pick them off. So basically what this means is that instead of making a new pizza he CHOSE to go ahead and serve a pizza he knew was not right and in fact still had green peppers all over it. It wasn’t that he simply missed the note about it not having green peppers, he saw it, messed up but chose to serve it anyway.
My question to that was, is this a common occurrence?, what if a person was allergic to the peppers and he simply sent it out anyway? Unacceptable. In the end my husband went up and explained to the manager what had happened (I am not sure but the far away look and unconcern in the managers face might have meant he simply didn’t care). My husband did not ask for nor was he offered a new pizza, from the manager himself and aside from a flippant «We are sorry sir», I am positive the manager really didn’t get the message. All my husband was trying to do at that point was explain to the young man why what happened was wrong, so someone that maybe had an allergy would not have the same thing happen to them. Yeah, they did not seem overly concerned. It is a shame that this restaurant has gone downhill like this. The building itself is fairly new and one would think it would be very easy to keep clean. I think they need a visit from Gordon Ramsey so they can learn about cleanliness, customer service and what you should and should NOT send out of the kitchen to a customer.
So to sum it all up, if you want great tasting food, that may or may not come out as you ordered, in a dirty restaurant, with unconcerned employees, then eat at Mt. Vernon Pizza Hut.