Yet another visit to Red Robin where something had to be sent back to the kitchen to get fixed. This time it was the lukewarm "Gourmet" Mac & Cheese my wife ordered. The good news is that they didn’t keep my wife waiting too long and they actually fixed the problem! Halleluiah!
I didn’t eat, however. The last three times now that I’ve made the mistake of ordering a "Gourmet" burger from Red Robin, it was always overcooked – even the two times I sent it back to get fixed, it came back overcooked. This whole "Some Pink" or "No Pink" horseshit is precisely the reason I won’t waste my money at this so-called "Gourmet" restaurant anymore. Red Robin ceased being "Gourmet" the day they decided USDA cooking guidelines weren’t good enough for their clientele. Instead, cooking skills have been replaced with a conveyor-belt cooking method that thoroughly sucks and is hideously inconsistent. There is NO SUCH THING as a gourmet hamburger that’s cooked to "Some Pink" or "No Pink", and Red Robin should be truly ashamed of themselves for deceiving their customers into believing there is.
The fact that they do this indicates one of two things: (1) They use questionable-quality ingredients in their meat, so they HAVE to burn the living hell out of the meat to keep their customers safe, or (2) their cooks aren’t capable of properly cooking a piece of meat per “real” USDA guidelines. After this last experience, and based on the amount of food I’ve sent back to the kitchen in the past, I think it might actually be a combination of both. In either event, it’s cost Red Robin my business.
How long do you think Ruth’s Chris Steak House would stay in business if they started serving their steaks cooked (only) to "Some Pink" or “No Pink”?
Red Robin is NOT a Gourmet restaurant by any stretch of the imagination. They cook your Burgers the exact same way as Burger King does; they just make your burger "Smile" at you as if to say "Hey! Look at me! You’ll enjoy eating this piece of tasteless shoe leather! Yum!!" I remember initially being excited about Red Robin coming to my town at some point in the past, but now that I’ve been burned along with their hamburgers so many times, I find myself wishing they’d just go away and make room for a restaurant that actually knew how to prepare truly gourmet food. For this level of crap, however, I’ll just visit Burger King. They’re a lot cheaper, a lot faster and a lot more consistent, even though they too can’t prepare gourmet food. At least they don’t claim to be something they aren’t.
I’ll be writing a “real” review of Red Robin soon.