Steak ‘n Shake

The worst Steak n Shake around! I ate here a long time ago and it was OK then nothing great. I stopped in really late one night and it was pretty dead but yet there where pills of trash on the floor one right next to our table. The trash was there the whole time we where there I almost cleaned it up myself. I recommend the shakes to go and get the hell out of there. The rest of the food is gross.

I honestly thought I reviewed this joint way earlier but here it goes now! I was having a horrible day and was ready to fly back to Seattle that day. My friend dragged me here and I begrudgingly tagged along. The service was great! Despite the bad reviews I had not a single complaint. Décor is great and the server was on point and helpful. Plus this meal was VERY affordable! I feel like in Washington they could charge way more but they don’t exist here! Please open a store in Washington.

Very good service and food and reasonable priced #satisfied customer to compare steak n shake to bob Evans is an insult to this restaurant no contest

I love Steak and Shake, but rarely eat inside. The Chicago Style steak dog is fantastic as are their steak burgers and shoe string style fries, especially when ordered with a side car of cheese sauce for dipping. Reading the other reviews one notices this establishment seems to have troubles with service in their dinning room, but as I said above, I nearly always order via the drive thru and always enjoy the food.

This place is a train wreck. Arrived around 4:45, ordered, and received drinks promptly. It was only after 55 minutes and a trip to the counter to speak to the manager that we actually received our food, which was not as ordered. We were with another couple or I would have left after 20 minutes of poor service and no sign of food. Manager took care of our check but I would have rather received my food (as ordered) and when I ordered it.

I wasn’t eating. I was just here with my fiancé. There was a please wait to be seated sign, but no one seating, so I ordered at the bar. After paying, I was sat at a dirty table with ketchup all over it still. We weren’t given any napkins or silverware either. Way to many people getting paid to stand around and do nothing at this location. Someone is losing money and with good reason with this pathetic service. Keep up that 1 star rating.

The only reason I go here anymore is because bob Evans is on overflow. We waited for 35 minutes on food even though it was 11 am on Saturday. All the tables were dirty. Food finally came and the eggs were way over cooked and the hash browns were way undercooked. Horrible service along w horrible food.

This is the place you go if you’re not hungry, because by the time you get served, you’ll be starving.
The waiter’s opening statement that he was comping our drinks should have been a warning. It was appreciated, but there’s twenty minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Steak n Shakes that are open 24 hours attract huge groups who have nowhere else to meet and can’t afford Denny’s. This has been true in multiple States. This location is just the latest example.
Do not go late and expect any reasonable amount of service. They are consistently under-​staffed to meet the crunch times, and a group of 10 will cause crunch time.
The food is usually good, I’m just wondering if it’s worth the pain. After all, White Castle will be open in a few hours.
Update: Our food arrived about ten minutes after I posted this review. My bacon cheeseburger was good, my wife’s burger was cold.
When we checked out, I mentioned the wait and the cashier verified our server had comp’ed our drinks. I think you have an issue if you have a standing policy to comp drinks after a slow order.

My golf team and coach stopped at this location for dinner and milkshakes as a treat for our solid play over the course of our conference championship tournament. Our usual stops are at places like Wendy’s and Burger King, so this was supposed to be a (small) step up, and we were all incredibly hungry. I can safely say this is one of the worst Steak ‘n Shakes in existence, and both Burger King and McDonald’s would’ve blown it out of the water in every category.
It took our waitress about fifteen minutes to get water to our table (of six), which she brought without straws. The lack of straws wasn’t a huge deal, but one of my teammates asked for one, and she said she would bring them for everyone. She proceeded to come back a few minutes later with four straws, and after handing them all out and realizing she was short two, she said «oops, I miscounted.» At that point, I knew we were in trouble.
I ordered the barbecue burger, which I’ve had before, along with an Oreo shake, which I was very excited about. Like I said, we don’t usually get the opportunity for delicacies like milkshakes («Not going to fit in the budget,» our coach always claims), so this was a big deal. Everyone else ordered milkshakes as well, and we waited eagerly for them all to arrive. A little while later, the shakes showed up, and another waitress came with our original one to oversee their delivery, seemingly realizing her coworker’s ineffectiveness at getting things right.
I’m still not 100% sure what was in my milkshake, but all I can say is that it was not by any means a purely Oreo shake. I can’t describe exactly what the other taste was, but after examining the color of the beverage, I noticed a yellow twinge throughout most of it, leading me to guess banana (which, consequently, is about the only flavor of milkshake I would NEVER order). This ticked me off, but, because I was so sure of our waitress’s incompetence, I didn’t alert her to the error (I still maintain that she took down the order wrong, and that it wasn’t the fault of the kitchen, but I could be wrong). I didn’t finish the shake, which was depressing, considering it was one of the main reasons our team picked the restaurant.
The burgers came a few minutes later, and were actually decent. Mine was a tad overcooked, but it was smothered in bacon, cheese, and barbecue sauce, so it was bearable, plus, who really goes to a Steak ‘n Shake for the meat quality? Anyhow, when doing our next Indiana to Ohio drive for a tournament, we will not be stopping here. I truly hope things improve at this location, because at this rate, I can’t imagine it will continue to turn a profit.

4−18−13 when our party of 5 arrived we were the 3^rd group in line, behind a family of 3 and another of 6, the restaurant was less than ½ full at 7:30, we waited 10 min before the manager came and seated the 1^st group of 3, we waited another 10 min before the party of 6 left as well as our party… there were 2 waitresses that we saw, 1 manager and approx 7 – 8 in the kitchen… we went to the Olive Garden!

From my experience tonight, it is my opinion that this location has demonstrated serious quality control and food handling safety issues. Unacceptable kitchen food preparation practices were plainly observed that warrant serious avoidance, and I caution anyone from visiting until this facility’s management takes their staff’s indifference to safe food handling habits seriously, to include the firing of kitchen staff and/​or shift managers who are permitting such action. Steak ‘n Shake is a name we’ve come to associate with a higher standard than the typical fast food burger joint, but sadly, this restaurant seriously tarnishes this good reputation with it’s negligence.
We’ve reviewed two other locations in the Dayton Metro (with many revisits) and have found them to be consistently reliable above average performers. However that not withstanding, this location is nothing short of horrific. I will never return to this location.
I ordered a burger pictured to be the mother of all cheeseburgers, the cheesey cheddar burger. The photo in the menu looked like something from the heart attack grille, with melted cheese thickly draping down the sides well to the plate over two patties. My burger arrived suspiciously at room temperature (I later saw why, see last paragraph) with a silver dollar sized circle of cheese so tiny we thought they had made the wrong burger. As the cards fell, the cook had intended this to be the correct menu item, he apparently just didn’t care about his work or about the menu description. When asked to remake it, we later discovered the chef simply took the old burger, smothered new cheddar on top of the old and microwaved it which caused the old cheese to somehow get as hard and dried out as leather, as I would find out when I bit into the middle.
The manager was notified but couldn’t be bothered to personally speak to us even though the place was dead. Our served removed it from our check, and offered to replace it but by then I feared what the cook would do to my replacement food. My logic was if that was the kind of work he did when he wasn’t provoked, how much worse would his ethic be when his pride was irked? I ate around the center, without having to worry, thank you, and vowed never again. I absolutely KICK myself for not being able to take a photo of the burger before being sent back, it was so pathetic! I had also substituted onion rings for fries, which surprise, the cook also forgot, so those came out after the cheese incident. Oh crap, right? I had unwillingly subjected myself to his «wrath» and he lived up to my expectations of him. See the photo of the pool of (very dirty) grease he left me as a present in the photo section. It was as if he didn’t even bother to drain them at all! Absolutely gross. Appetite gone. What did I expect?
–HELLO, HEALTH ISSUE!–
Lastly and most concerning, I saw why my burger came out room temperature and understood why with what I thought was only one blast of a commercial microwave the original cheese turned as hard as leather. The grill and prep line is perpendicular to the register granting anyone an unobstructed full view of their noticeably unoccupied kitchen. I observed they were storing pre-​cooked basic burgers in buns on the edge of the grill (it was a very slow night after all, who knows where the cooks were) on the unheated part on the other side of the grease channel. For those who have seen a commercial grill, this is an unheated area unintended for food to sit, where the spatulas usually rest temporarily, and that is what they were doing to save time and/​or product, it appeared, if they made more than they needed. Forget making food to order, they pre-​make it, goof off when it’s slow, and try to be minimally inconvenienced with their actual responsibilities. The burgers were unattended to, unheated, no heat under or over, completely irresponsible and unsafe.
My original burger probably sat there for quite some time before they reheated it for the first time in the microwave (unbeknownst to me) and let it sit long enough to come back to room temp as they cooked other parts of our order they didn’t have waiting around, before the initial presentation. Upon receiving it back, they put new cheese over the old and microwaved it a second time, which would explain the cheese being as hard as leather. Anyone who has tried to reheat cheesy leftovers knows cheese only survives one microwaving usually before getting dehydrated, greasy and hard. That my friends, is one gross mystery solved.
–CONCLUSION–
Clearly, this location has bigger problems than microwaving food when they should be remaking it. Letting meat sit at room temperature until someone orders it on a slow night is not an acceptable practice. The other stuff was just quality control. The latter is a health issue. This place should expect a visit from the health department soon.