I thought I was done with Red Lobster when I got rid of my ex. Mind you I don't hate the chain but I have never been really impressed. However the birthday girl wanted their crab legs so off we went.
Arriving about 6:00 for an early dinner we were given a place in line which took a little over 30 minutes to get seated. There is only so long a 5 year old can keep occupied with the lobsters in the tank. If it had just been L and I we would have taken a seat at the high tops that were part of the bar even though she doesn't drink. When were seated we were told it had been like this since about 3:30. Starting just after we were seated it started getting quieter as fewer tables were occupied but we noticed as we left about 8:00 that with about a fourth of the tables empty there were still about 4 parties waiting to be seated.
Apparently one of the reasons they were slammed early was the all you can eat shrimp which two of us partook of. The women chose to build their own feast and the kids got chicken fingers and linguine shrimp respectively. To start with us adults got lobster stuffed mushrooms which were pretty good. One of the supposedly good things about a chain in this price range is the predictability, tasty but not great, of the food and overall we were not disappointed. The let downs were the crab claws J went there for, the coconut shrimp both of the women ordered and the blue cheese dressing. The stand outs were the salmon and key lime pie L ordered (and I got to share :-)). I wasn't noticing the amount of salt with oils as I ate but after I got home I had 4 big glasses of water.
The service was spot on the entire meal. K was not wanting for any of his 6 shrimp orders (oink). There were no mistakes and every thing for the two kids was given priority. That's pretty good for a chain, especially as we were a party of six spread across a 60 year span.
Given my past history with the chain I would have given them a 2 but this experience earns them a solid 3.