Iffy Eats
Written: Jun 24 '05 (Updated Jun 24 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Retro decor, open all night
Cons: Questionable cleanliness
The Bottom Line: The burger was tasty. Hopefully other locations are better.
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| phyllisjoy's Full Review: Steak 'n Shake |
I used to live close to a Steak & Shake and I remember visiting it at least a couple of times. My friend found a hair in her cheese fries while we were eating there once. Other than that, the visits weren't very memorable.
Recently I visited Steak & Shake again. A bunch of friends and I went to the one on 12163 South Apopka Vineland Road outside of Orlando, Florida.
One cool feature of this Steak N Shake is that even though it is part of a "strip mall" it has a drive through window. Pretty nifty.
The restaurant itself is decorated retro-style. Lots of chrome, red-and-white checks, etc.
When we entered the restaurant, it wasn't very crowded, but we had to wait about 5 minutes before we were seated. The host led us to a table (not booth) near the kitchen. There were paper placemats already on our table before we sat down. As soon as we sat down, I noticed crumbs on the table. Yuck, but sloppy table-wiping is no reason to leave, right?
We had been waiting at our table for a few minutes when I noticed two menus in a holder at the end of the table. I took them out of the holder, and we all crowded around them. Then one of my friends snagged a few more menus from another table so that we each had our own to look at. I thought that it was odd that we hadn't been handed menus, or at least had them pointed out to us.
Our waiter introduced himself and took our orders. Even though he was polite, our waiter wasn't a great waiter. When we ordered, one of my friends wanted a burger platter--a burger with his choice of 2 side dishes. He chose a garden salad and some other side. When my friend said that he wanted ranch dressing with his salad, our waiter said something about the taco salad coming with a different type of dressing. So my friend explained that he didn't want a taco salad, just the side salad with the burger platter.
Our cold drinks came, each in a glass with ice and a wrapped straw. One of my friends had ordered an orange drink. (In the menu, it was simply listed as "Orange" without a brand name or any other sort of description.) His drink was multi-layered. On the bottom, it was a very dark orange, and then got lighter as it went towards the top of the type where it was near the ice and had almost no color. After my friend stirred it up, it didn't look so bad.
The garden salad was the first food to arrive at our table, besides the root beer float which someone else had ordered. Later on, but before the rest of the food arrived, our waiter came over to our table and my friend with the salad asked if he could have a fork. We all turned and looked at him. He had been eating his salad with a spoon! We laughed, but our waiter didn’t. I’m not sure if he apologized either, but he did bring over a fork, as well as utensils wrapped in napkins for the rest of us. There hadn’t been any on the table previously, but I think that there was a napkin dispenser. I’m not sure where my friend got the spoon. Maybe his salad had been delivered with one accidentally.
My food was good. I ordered a Steakburger with cheese. The toppings (lettuce, tomato, pickle) came on the side, and there was a bottle of ketchup on the table. The burger tasted sort-of like Minute Steaks pressed into patty form. I especially liked the edges where it was extra crispy. My friends seemed to like their food also, although no one really talked about it.
At some point during our meal, our waiter said that the taco salad would be along shortly. We informed him that no one had ordered a taco salad. Later, we saw a taco salad waiting at the kitchen window. I felt badly about a wasted, uneaten taco salad that was connected to us somehow. But we really hadn’t ordered it.
After we had finished eating, our waiter came back to our table, asked if we would like refills on our drinks, and said that our food would be arriving shortly. . . Yes, he said that despite the empty plates in front of us. We told him that we had already been served and he said that was good, he was afraid that we had been kept waiting the whole time. So, he took two cups back to the kitchen. One was unsweetened iced tea, the other was lemonade. Mine was the lemonade. When our waiter brought the drinks back, he handed me mine along with a wrapped straw. I then noticed that there was already a straw in my beverage! Then we saw that it had been chewed on. It may have been the straw from the iced tea, since my friend with the iced tea chews his straws. (I don’t chew my straws.) But I question even that because I think that any remaining iced tea would have noticeably changed the color of my lemonade.
When we were ready to leave we checked our bill carefully at the end of our visit. We hadn’t been charged for the taco salad, and everything else looked correct. We left a tip for our waiter, because he really seemed to be trying to be a good waiter. Outside we decided that we would not be visiting this Steak N Shake again any time soon.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
phyllisjoy
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Location: Pennsylvania
Reviews written: 90
Trusted by: 9 members
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