This IHOP just recently opened in Rib Mountain a few months ago. Since opening I have eaten here twice.
The first time was about 30 mins before they closed on a Tuesday. We asked the hostess if she was still taking tables since it was so close to closing time. The hostess was very pleasant, said it was no problem, sat us and then ended up being our server. She later told us she had let the waitress go early since it was slow and they were closing soon. We were the only table but soon after about 5 more tables walked in. I was extremely impressed with the fact she handled the whole dining room by herself and managed to give us excellent service. The food was really yummy. I had the french toast with eggs and canadian bacon (she was nice enough to let me substitute the regular bacon for canadian bacon. I LOVE the fact that they serve canadian bacon. I prefer it to regular bacon and it's hard to find breakfast places that still serve it, so I was excited to see it on the menu. All and all everything was spot on, the food and the service excellent.
Second trip was on a Monday at 5pm. The dining room was pretty full and I was sad to see that the hostess who had served us so well last time was absent this time. The first thing I noticed when our server came to take our drink order is that she seemed to be new or in some kind of training. The reason I say this is because when I asked her if the iced tea was sweetened and she said "no". As she was saying this a server from behind her quickly chimed in that they do have raspberry sweetened tea. Every question the person dining with me asked her, she seemed to have to have this other server answer for her.
I ended up trying to order the same thing I had the first time since I enjoyed it so much. But when I told her I wanted to substitue canadian bacon for the regular bacon she said they didn't have canadian bacon. Thinking she misunderstood something I said, I then told her it was okay to charge me extra, that I didn't expect the substitution for free. She then repeated to me that they don't have canadian bacon. Confused, I asked her if they were just out of canadian bacon or if they had taken it off the menu completely since I had had it the last time I was there? She just said once again that they didn't have it, so it was pretty clear that she was starting to get agitated with me, so I just dropped it and said fine to the regular bacon. She was obviously new and had no idea if they had it or not, or just didn't care to find out for me.
The food came and both mine and the person I was dining with did not enjoy our meal. Both of our bacon was overdone/burnt to the point where it just crumbled into little bits on our plate so we didn't eat it. I almost wondered if she had the cooks do that on purpose just to spite me? Maybe I am just being paranoid but it just seemed like too wierd of a coincidence. My french toast was still mushy in the middle so I didn't eat much of it. Luckily the eggs were good otherwise I would've left hungry. When she came to pick up our plates she noticed the crumbled bacon on our plates and asked us how everything was (she never came during the meal to check on us). When I told her "everything was okay except for the bacon obviously", she said "yeah I can see that". So she acknowleged that the bacon was bad but didn't do a thing about it, didn't even offer to get us new bacon.
After two completely opposite experiences I have come to the conclusion that this place probably falls into the catagory of "hit or miss". So I am giving it 3 stars in the hopes that my next experience will be a "hit". If it's not I will be sure to come back and update my star rating. read more