Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar

We had a party of 15 people, and this establishment handled us with no problem. We had a courteous waiter who had more tables than ours, and he was great. Thank you to Applebees for fantastic service and some well prepared food.

Visited this nothing-special-chain Applebee's in my former stomping grounds for a friend's birthday gathering this weekend.

In her words, (she still live there), she likes the food better at Logan's, but the drinks better at Applebee's, so you see where the focus was on this particular gathering.

First of all, the restaurant is located in the outer parking lot of what was once a Wal-Mart (way back) and now a bowling alley and a Goodwill super store.  At night the entrances are not particularly well lit and it's easy to pull into the wrong driveway coming from I-40 (wonder who did that...).  The parking lot isn't very well kept, I guess it's all common to the development, but even at night I saw way more trash and uneven pavement than you would prefer in the parking lot.

Sunday night between Christmas and New Year's at 6 PM and they were packed.  I actually beat the other girls there as they started a movie I couldn't schedule, so after touring the place to make sure they were not already imbibing, I put our name in.

Now, it's been a while since I've been to Dickson, and I've never been to this Applebee's before.  I haven't been in any Applebee's in at least 10 years I guess, and I'll just say it's what you probably expect.

I was admittedly jaded having spent the previous afternoon at Opry Mills, a shopping mistake I don't plan to ever repeat, but I'll write more on that in its review.

As you entered the Applebee's the clouds of smoke from addicted customers smoking on the chilly patio was a bit overhwelming.  I'm sorry, you just don't see that in my current home base of Cool Springs.  

The crowd in the bar and grill was, well, different again.  Lots of long hair, unkempt beards, ball caps, Confederate flags, a few mullets (seriously), and girls wearing too tight t-shirts and ill-fitting clothes in general.  I don't mean to sound like a snob, but I guess after living in Franklin for 15 years I've become one.  It's just - different.

The girls that I was celebrating with arrived (all wearing appropriate attire and make-up, I might add) and we continued to wait what felt like a lot longer than the previosly proclaimed 20 minutes for our party of five.  We ordered drinks and appetizers, the drinks arriving after maybe 10 minutes and the appetizers seriously taking like 30 minutes.  The waitress was exclaiming that the kitchen had been backed up from the earlier crowd they weren't expecting... (really?  Sunday night of a holiday weekend, and you're surprised people go out to eat?)... and apologized.

She was nice enough, but seriously just kept getting everything confused giving th wrong drinks to the wrong folks, one person asking for something and her presenting to someone else, and quite humorously she was absolutely convinced the friend sitting next to the birthday girl was the celebrant.

The food was slightly below par in my opinion.  The fried cheese appetizer was lukewarm when arriving (after the long wait), and I had ordered the chicken/broccoli/pasta that was again lukewarm and the smaller-than-averge chicken portion looked kind of sad.  The alfredo sauce tasted like it had possibly sat out too long as well, but by this pont after drinks and talking, I wasn't really hungry anyway.

The servers did bring out a complimentary ice cream sundae and sang for our friend - a pleasant surprise considering I didn't think they did that sort of thing anymore.  But all in all - service was slow, food was blah, and even when the crowds had very much thinned out and there were open tables everywhere - they still keep people on a wait.  I left about 9 pm, and they finally had a no-wait lobby around 8:30 pm.

Is there anything that can realistically be done to improve an Applebee's experience?  I don't know.  Having not been to one in forever, maybe this is what the food is supposed to be like, and this chain is a sort of "training ground" for servers aspiring to work at nicer restaurants.  But either way, I'll hopefully not have to return to find out.