Red Lobster

The food was great. The staf is great. The other Patrons at the bar were friendly to.

Red lobster is to die for this place had terrible wait time but the food was great if your looking for a place to eat great seafood and you have 1 ½ hours to wait for a seat go to red lobster

The people who work here are so incredibly nice! Every server genuinely cares about their customer and it shows. They are personal and attentive, always with great attitudes. The managers always show the same unstoppable positivity. Not to mention the food is delicious, and always looks just like the picture in the menu! Great place to have a great dining experience!

Well… It is Monday at 5:30 pm… Why the 20 min wait when it was suppose to be less than 10 min ??? Not enough servers they say… Normally not a clock watcher but…
Here goes…
Okay, its a chain. Its all you can eat shrimp…
Started with three stars… Hope we turn this around.
Michelle is the servers name, looks like this ain’t her first rodeo. She’s seasoned and just charming enough. Everyone is as professional as you’d expect them to be…
Kitchen is surprisingly extremely slow. We are clocken at about 8 — 10 min per 7ct of ⁵¹⁄₆₀ shrimp… this is gonna be a long nite. I get the idea of 7 — 10 piece at a time but I feel like a baby bird Waiten on Mama! … Half are cold.
Oooh this has to be what the trick seals feel like worken the audience for a tiny morsel at Sea World.
Called it a nite early… Never again.

The dinner plate was as expected. It was plentiful and well displayed. Service was friendly and attentive. The appetizer, similar to bang bang shrimp was disappointing as the lettuce on the plate was like a wedge on the head of the lettuce complete to the core. There was no possible way to make a lettuce wrap with it. They did offer to replace the lettuce but should have noticed it when plating or serving as it took up half the plate.

It’s a Red Lobster, the food is average because it’s what you would expect from a Red Lobster. The service is good, lots of parking, clean dining area. If you want spectacular seafood, don’t come here.

Maybe it’s my lack of experience in real seafood restaurants. Being in NE Ohio I’m not too familiar with «real» seafood. And I’ve never really traveled to a seaside area to have tried it there.
Yes Red Lobster is part of the Darden chain, and chain restaurants do leave a lot to be desired. But I’m a huge fan of Red Lobster.
I’ve never had bad service, I’ve actually always enjoyed the servers I’ve had. It gets busy during the weekends so try and plan to come at a time when you won’t wait very long.
The unlimited shrimp is my favorite but it’s only offered every so often. In that case I get the shrimp 3-​ways with coconut, scampi and popcorn. Always with Caesar salad, as I think they have one of the best. My other favorite is the admirals feast which comes with a lobster tail, crab legs, shrimp and a side. It’s pricy at $ 25 but worth it. The cheddar bay biscuits are addicting and I try not to consume to many! (Darden has a way with bread… Olive Garden breadsticks, Red Lobster biscuits…) They have quite a few good appetizers as well. The lobster pizza is good, and the shrimp dip.
Overall I really love Red Lobster both the one in Niles and Boardman are good and I don’t mind one over the other.

I grew up in Boardman, and I’m one of those people who remembers Chi Chi’s and Red Lobster as being the two places you go out to for special occasions as a kid. Chi Chi’s was the obvious choice for birthdays, with the big sombreros and the singing wait staff, but Red Lobster was the refined choice, especially since you don’t get much seafood in Ohio. (Who else remembers drinking the nada-​coladas and pretending you were getting drunk? LOL)
That said, I’ve been to Red Lobsters around the country since they’re usually safe and I know the menu.
We decided to meet up with some family here for the husband’s birthday dinner since he wanted the dueling lobster tails on the lobster fest menu. We did call an hour ahead and were seated by the time they said we’d be, even with a huge line out the door. Nice.
We had to wait quite a while for family to show up, because they had the date wrong and weren’t ready when we got to town at 5, but the waiter was more than patient, bringing us drinks and appetizers as if it were cozy part of 2 instead of a huge table for 8.
The food was quite good. Everything was hot. The husband loved his dinner, and since lobster fest goes on for another month, he wants to go back and get it again before it’s gone. So they must be doing something right. And the waiter we had was top notch, even though he had most of our dining room and was running like a mad man.
After living in Tampa, Florida for 3 years, I will say this much — the Red Lobster in Boardman, Ohio had better seafood than any of the Red Lobsters in Florida, or many of the non-​chain seafood restaurants in Florida for that matter.
Here’s to hoping it keeps it’s doors open for years to come, because I don’t think I could take another loss like when Chi Chi’s closed shop. It still hurts a bit when I think about those birthday sombreros…

What happened to the garlic mashed potatoes?

Note: Surprisingly, this is the same distance from Kay’s home as the Red Lobster in Robinson Township, PA.
Kay wanted to go to Red Lobster for their Endless Shrimp promotion. I used to really like RL when I was younger. A fairly recent visit to one in Robinson had me waxing nostalgic over the franchise. This time however, I wasn’t as enthusiastic over my meal.
Now the service was extremely personable, timely, and effective. Our waitress, Tracy, would probably treat you like family if you were dining at her house and is likely the best mom, grandmom, or aunt one could have. God love her.
The food was… eh.
I had forgotten NOT to eat steamed oysters at RL since the last time I had them (years ago at the one in West Mifflin), they were shrunken, rubbery, and only mildly flavorful. Such was the case at this RL located in a very Robinsonesque (a bastion of chains) section of Youngstown. Not even the cocktail sauce and melted butter were able to make it better. I also got a bit of grit in my teeth when I dug into them. Not nice.
The Lobster Pizza was serviceable with its thin crust and heavy, liberal langostino chunks. Aside from an equally passable Apple Crumble dessert that I shared with Kay, that’s all I ordered.
Kay went beserk with the shrimp, pretty much ordering it in every way one could have it. She got it Sweet & Spicy, Garlic Shrimp Scampi, Coconut Shrimp (with piña colada sauce); you call it, she tried it. And guess what? Tracy brought an extra plate, instinctively knowing that I might wanna partake.
The S&S shrimp was what I enjoyed the most. The remainder was again, merely unexceptional.
Not all of them are bad, some of them are quite good, but man, I gotta break the chains…
P. S. Damn those cheddar biscuits. They are illicit!

I liked this place,
Nothing special all red lobsters are almost same,
The service was excellent!

So why am I reviewing chain restaurants? I guess this is to compare with the Crab Co experience that I had yesterday.
My coworker and I got here at 9:30pm as we worked really late. We got seated even though the restaurant closed at 10. We ordered crab cakes. While they are supposed to be pan-​seared, they appeared to be microwaved.
The grill fish of the day was a tilapia in spicy soy sauce. It’s supposed to be a winning recipe from a TV show. The tilapia was probably the freshest seafood of the meal ~ I would have given this place 4 stars since it was very similar to Crab Co… but for being national chain, I deducted one star for it should have been better.