My visit today was very disappointing. The hostess was able to greet and seat us right away, but I'm not sure if it was an assigned section. My family sat for a good 15 minutes before I noticed a manager pass by us with food and head back to the kitchen. I attempted to stop him to ask if we had a server before he hit the kitchen but his reaction was to look right at me then fly into the kitchen before I could get any words out. The hostess was no longer at the front so I awkwardly waited for a server to pass me as they were headed to the kitchen and ask if we could at least get a drink order in. She was sweet and very apologetic and let me know that she'd get someone right over.
Worst part about having an open kitchen is being able to see the expo line where most restaurant employees love to hang out. Our table had the perfect view of that as we watched a few of them look at us and try to figure out which server would be waiting on us. What felt like another 10 minutes later someone showed up. At that point I asked if it was fine to go ahead and put in our food order as well. He said that would be okay so we started. I get that it was a Saturday lunch and that crowds of people were coming in and out, but I couldn't help but feel really rushed by him. Once he had a drink and entree order from each of us he flew out of there in the middle of my Aunt asking for a side sauce with her sandwich. We decided we could just wait for that once we received our food but once he came back with the drinks and we realized we were missing one my 9 year old cousin started to ask him if she could get her strawberry shake and he took off again. Sharing my water with her we decided to just hit the call server button to get his attention. I get that it's busy, but if we wanted to receive the shit service we received we would have just sat in a McDonald's dining room. This server looked right at us from the kitchen, even walked by to help another table, LOOKED at my little cousin with the flashing red light and kept walking. Once he came to walk by again three of us spoke up to get his attention with an "excuse me" to which he completely ignored to run to the kitchen to grab our food. As the food was being placed on the table we took it as our chance to get that last drink order in before he ran off again. Food was awesome, never any complaints there from Red Robin. Only thing was that I had asked for garlic parm fries and didn't receive them. Completely over the whole experience at that point I ate what I had and did not say anything. At the end when we were given the check I did a double check and noticed the up charge for the garlic fries. I let him know that I hadn't received them to which he said, "oh right. You didn't. Do you want them now?" As we're all ready to just pay and high tail it out of there. I asked him if he could just remove them off the bill and then we paid.
As someone who has worked for Red Robin in the past along with the food industry for nearly 6 years now I am beside myself with how this entire experience played out. My family and I sat in that restaurant for nearly 2 hours watching people around us come and go. I'm flat out embarrassed even for the MOD to not realize the low quality service his/her staff presented us with today. As for Ray, the server - man, you gotta tighten up and get it together.