The Outback Steakhouse is a chain of restaurants throughout the USA. We visited the restaurant on the US192 on a Tuesday evening.
Having first visited, with my husband, one in another location back in 2000 where we had to send our steaks back for being overcooked, the chain was well down our list of places to eat; probably at the bottom! However we ended up eating in this Outback restaurant recently by default, as the previous 2 other restaurants we had visited that evening had waiting times of over an hour, and we were in company all of whom were hungry and wanted to eat sooner rather than later. So with trepidation we headed ‘into the Outback’ and took the pager to wait for our table. The service at the bar was fine and we managed two drinks before our table was ready.
Our server was a friendly chap and we ordered our meal. The starters were nice enough, we sampled French Onion soup and Blooming Marvellous, which is an onion creation, dipped in batter and deep fried, and so named because it comes out like a blooming flower! Coconut shrimp was also tried and the overall verdict for all the starters was good.
The steaks and salads were then ordered, the salads came out first and then 15 minutes or so later, the steaks. Mine arrived so bland looking, just the steak and a baked potato, all the same colour and very unappetizing. I had ordered a filet, medium cooked, as I like the middle red. When you tell them how you want it cooked, they tell you what the meat will be like, so I was expecting it to be correct. Despite this, mine was overcooked in some parts of the steak and raw in others. I did eat mine but it was nothing special at all. Hubby was unimpressed with his steak as it was too well cooked and the fries were tasteless. They were also a mixture of fresh and reheated fries. The others in the party had ordered medium-well and one of the steaks was rarer than mine! Why did we not send them back you ask? Well, we decided to go ahead and eat them, rather than wait for new steaks, as we were in company and everybody wanted to eat at the same time.
There are too many good steak restaurants out there to accept this standard of food. It was not just a one-off, as this mirrored exactly our previous experience of dining in an Outback restaurant. We shall never visit an Outback again. To be honest we would not have gone this time were it not for the circumstances!