I do not leave reviews often, if at all. I usually only leave reviews when I have an extremely good or extremely bad experience. Unfortunately, this review is the latter.
Our server was polite and friendly, however, our experience was not a good one. Not always her fault this evening, but some of it was.
My wife, daughter and I ordered our food. My wife ordered a Reuben sandwich, which was the only good thing that we ordered. She also ordered soup as well. Soup and salads should always come out before your meal. Her soup did not come out until she was 75% done her meal, and we had to ask about it. Okay, you forgot to put the order in, not the biggest deal in the world. But maybe something should have been done about it.... Like questioning if we still want it or not.
My daughter's meal came out, a cheese quesadilla was ordered, and when it arrived it had chicken on it. My daughter will not eat chicken, so we had to send it back. It took at least 15 minutes for the second quesadilla to come back out to our table....a cheese quesadilla! Whether the waitress ordered it properly or the kitchen messed up the order or not, it should not take that long for a little replacement cheese quesadilla.
My beef burger was ordered medium rare. It looked like a hockey puck when it arrived, chart on the outside and totally cooked inside. I took a couple bites hoping the center would at least be slightly pink....it was not at all and was totally cooked and had gristle chunks within. I have seen the movie Waiting, and I don't send food back typically.... So I muscled through it and spit out the gristle chunks.
Both my wife and my meal came with french fries on the side. That's fine, but anytime fries are involved, the server should ask if you need ketchup, mustard, etc. We were never asked and after about 5 minutes of eating plain fries, I had to ask for ketchup.
Finally, we received our check. Everything was included on the check and appropriate, according to menu and prices. However, my 10-year-old daughter's plain cheese quesadilla was $18! We have ordered many cheese quesadillas and never have I paid anything close to $18 for a little kids cheese quesadilla, let alone the cheese quesadilla from an Irish restaurant.
I had to get up, leave the table and head to my car at that point. My wife felt compelled to say something at least about the price of the quesadilla, none of our other issues though. I had to leave because I wanted to complain about everything, and like I said before, i never complain about food or service unless it's awful. My daughter and I went to our car, my wife came out a few minutes later and said that the server simply said that's the price of our quesadilla! After all this, I asked my wife how she tipped..... She said she still tipped 15% (We are normally 20 to 30% tippers). I told her I'm not sure why you tipped at all.
This was a terrible experience for us, as we're always on the lookout for a good restaurant to hit and break up our travels on the way home from Massanutten multiple times a year. Maybe it was an off night for them, maybe the kitchen was backed up although there was almost no one in the restaurant, maybe the server was spread too thin..... IDK. Needless to say, we will not return to O'Brien's. read more