Ok.. I hate to do this, but there's no way around it. Note: This review is long, because I want to be detailed about our experience, in short though, maybe stay away from this location on holidays and/or be prepared to wait, for possibly very overcooked food and mediocre drinks.
My boyfriend and I came here on Valentine's Day at about 6, and they were quite busy, as expected. I had planned on cooking that night, but after a busy day just didn't feel like it - hindsight and all that..
I was informed there was a 25 min. wait, but noticed open seating at the bar which we're fine with. We parked, walked in, and checked the outdoor bar area for open seats out there and there were none, BUT we noticed about 4 or 5 tables that were open, not being prepped or bussed. My BF approached the hostess and asked if those were taken and she said 'oh no, there's no wait for outside' and that as soon as she had someone to seat us we'd be seated out there. I thought that was strange as I hadn't specified an inside table when I asked for the wait time.. We told her we would be at the bar since the waiting area was already crammed. We sat there for about 20 minutes, had time to finish a drink and were ready for the next one, so he asked how much longer and was told we would be next. Sure enough, they got us just a few seconds later, so I'm not sure if they forgot or what happened. No big deal, we now had a nice seat by the water.
We were greeted by our waitress whose name escapes me, she took our drink order and offered to take dinner orders but I wasn't ready. She came back several minutes later, apologized drinks weren't out yet and took our dinner order. We finally got our drinks, over 20 minutes later. BF was starting to get annoyed at this point. She walked back by and we ordered another round, to be safe, and sure enough those took at least another 20 minutes.
We both ordered burgers cooked medium. I had a spacey moment where I ordered sweet potato fries and then wanted to change my mind back, I grabbed the waitress and asked if it was too late, and she said she would just bring regular fries out too - I stressed that she shouldn't worry about it because that would be wasteful and it was really no big deal. Instead of checking with the kitchen though, she just kept insisting, in an effort to be accommodating I understand, but I thought it was weird she wouldn't (1) just check if it was really too late to modify the order, and (2) she was completely missing my point that I didn't want all that food wasted because of my indecisiveness and therefore would have what I ordered without further issue.. She was trying to be nice but I thought it was strange and my BF rolled his eyes at me.
So then we waited just over 40 minutes for our burgers. When we got them, mine was wrong. I had ordered a burger with bacon and bleu cheese. And my BF had ordered their "Texas burger" which has onion strings on top of it. Mine had those too, and I had specifically stated I didn't want them. So, I must've confused the waitress at some point.. But, ok, I'm easy going enough to where I would've scraped those to the side and been done with it. When we bit into our burgers though, they were the worst burgers I think i've ever tried. They were extremely overcooked and dry - almost like they were microwaved or just thrown on the grill and forgotten about for almost an hour.. BF proceeded to throw his napkin on his plate, which caught the eye of a nearby waiter who asked what was going on. BF's temper had gotten the best of him, and we were both hangry at this point, so I said we should just get our bill for the drinks and leave. Before the bill was brought over the manager came over stated that the drinks would be on the house, offered to have the food re-cooked for us, but we were out of patience at that point and I thanked her for the drinks and confirmed that we would be leaving. She shrugged her shoulders and said it was Valentine's Day, they were busy, and she was sorry.
This was the second time that my BF has had a bad experience there, the first apparently being an overcooked blackened mahi sandwich, so I don't think we will be back. I've been to other Flanigans locations though, and would give it another try, but this location was sorely under-prepared for the holiday and I don't think management handled the situation very well, made me feel bad for leaving and wanting a dinner that we could eat without waiting another hour.
Take this experience for what it was worth and hopefully if you go here on a less busy night, you have a completely different experience! read more