Reviewing businesses with a positive approach is much more my style, and it is with regrets to have to review this restaurant http://www.ponderosasteakhouses.com with such a negative review. This evening I thought about all the recent advertising seen about the “New Buffet Bar” at Ponderosa Steak House located at 6204 North Illinois Street, Fairview Heights, Illinois, so I thought why not give them another chance.
Entering the restaurant with debris and dirty tables throughout should have been a good indication for me and my guests to leave, but the advertisement said, “try our new Buffet Bar”, so with that in mind we paid for our buffets. The hostess was friendly and smiled as she rang up our receipts for the buffets. She said we could sit anywhere there was a vacant table, so we proceeded into the dining area to find all dirty tables. I had to ask one of the servers to clean a table for us to be seated. I only saw two servers throughout the dining area, so this may be part of the why the restaurant looked like it did. Our server approached our table within a reasonable time to take our receipts and bring our drink order. He was friendly and smiled.
The buffet was far from being new, and desirable to anyone. The food was messy and scattered about. Most of the trays were less than half full and definitely not appetizing. I walked over to the soup bar, which consisted of broccoli soup and chili. The chili was cold and definitely not anything you would want to eat. The dessert bar was full of crumbs and food everywhere. This was such a waste of money and time, and I know that there will be no third chance at this restaurant. The only item that looked worth eating was the chicken wings. I filled my plate with a few wings, a small amount of Jell-O, and drank my soda. This was definitely not worth $9.95. The only reason I am giving this restaurant one star is because the hostess and server were friendly.
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