Miller's Ale House Restaurants

The place exemplifies the quality of restaurants in Lakeland. Service was OK. Very slow, but nice. The waitress was somewhere in her late 20's early 30's, had maybe 3 tables and still was struggling to bring us refills when we needed.

It was Fathers Day when we went, because all of the restaurants we wanted to go were jam packed and we have a 3 yr old that was not gonna wait for 1 1/2 hrs for a seat. The first thing they did was hand me a "Fathers Day Special" menu and if you order something off this menu you get a free beer.... well it was a free Miller product, of course and on top of that it was a 10oz mug.

Like an idiot, I fell for the surf n turf special for 25 bux. Knowing all along that it would be hit or miss. I figured for the dads they would at least try to make it decent... uhhhh no... the steak was a 1/4 inch briquette of shoe leather.  The lobster tail was like eating silly putty and the mashed potatoes were obviously out of a box. My wife ordered the chicken nachos and when it came out we thought it was made for all of us. It consisted of what looked like a whole bag of restaurant style chips(from Sams Club) a very small amount of  frozen shredded chicken(from Sams) a little bit of shredded cheese and a bunch of not very tasty salsa.

I will say one thing positive about Millers Ale House. My daughter ordered the grilled cheese with fries. She ate most of it and my wife and I ate the rest, because our food was not palatable.  

All in all, we paid 60 something bux for OK service, a Miller lite and a grilled cheese.

The beer and loaded fries are the only redeeming items at this place. The last visit the Ossobuco plate (pork shank) was cold and mashed potatoes watery and bland.  How can you screw up mashed potatoes?  Even frozen dinners get those right!  The shrimp on a previous visit was terrible,  but I should know better than to order seafood at a chain restaurant.   I've been to this place several times and have never finished what I'd ordered due to the food being poor.   McDonald's is fine dining compared to Ale Houses!

We love going here to hang out and chill, drink and enjoy food. But last night (Friday) the place was packed. We found two spots at the bar and had drinks and ordered potstickers to start with. After a very long time we got the potstickers. They were almost cold, but we were hungry, woolfed them down and order fish taco's. When the taco's finally came out, they too were almost cold. The 'fish' turned out to be three tiny slivers of fish, hardly any sauce or filling in the taco's. The soft taco's were dried out and hard ( probably microwaved). Not what we were used to at this place.
I think it was too busy for the kitchen. They were overwhelmed and could not manage so many people.
We have been coming here a lot, but this really was pretty lousy! :-S