Applebee’s

A below-​average type of Applebees.
They recently renovated it, so it definitely has a prettier appearance to some Applebees — and I love that they’ve taken the time to put up a lot of décor from the local area — such as Wartburg décor or sports team photos from the high schools and whatnot.
It had decent-​ish food with decent-​ish prices. About what you’d expect at an Applebees. At the very least, Applebees usually has about the same type of bland-​ish food at each location — but it’s reliably the same, so I can usually order the same thing anywhere and expect the same flavor. The same is true here. I enjoy my dish — which is why I come back — and their 2 for $ 20 menu means that my partner and I can eat with two soft drinks, an appetizer, and two entrees for usually less than $ 30 with tip. That makes it a decent deal for us. From our table, one person received overdone chicken, another person’s steak was well overcooked from medium rare, and another person thought their bread was overcooked.
The issue here comes with the service. We were in today, and while we were seated promptly and most people were polite, we just really didn’t receive great service. Nobody was outright rude, but at our 5-​person table, most of our drinks were left unfilled — in fact, we only received one refill throughout the entire hour we were here — while most of the people drinking water went through their beverage decently quickly and were ready for another. There was a 10+ minute wait to get our check. This might have been somewhat-​excusable during a busy day — except we saw our waitress (and other wait staff) sitting and chatting it up at the bar for most of our visit. I certainly don’t think employees don’t deserve any fun time. They do. But when the restaurant was almost entirely empty at a noon on Sunday, and we were still mostly being ignored, it’s not the time for that. Tend to your job — and then relax.
Hopefully we’ll have a better experience next time we come back. Today’s experience was functional, but with the pretty «meh» food quality that Applebees is known for, they really have to shine in service, and today that just wasn’t happening.

I wouldn’t even give this place one star, but that’s the lowest it would allow me to go. We sat and waited 20 minutes to order our food. As we got our appetizer, we were given no plates to use and we would’ve asked but NO ONE came to our table. We then got our main dishes and our waiter didn’t even take our empty appetizer plate. We finished eating and waited another 20 minutes before I asked for our bill. But what really bothered us is that they messed up a couples order a few tables down and EVERY waiter went to their table to apologize and give them discounts and free food. Very poor service.

How do you cook shrimp and steak and have no flavor at all? this place has answered that.

Slow bus service caused major seating delay. Glasses and silverware were filthy. Manager seemed to not have good control of staff. Table dirty when we were seated. Waitress was pleasant and apologized for delay and issues.