Red Lobster you never cease to underwhelm me

I just returned home from an evening made great by friends but with awful food. I would like to start by saying I do not go to Red Lobster by choice. But when a friend says that's where they want to go for their birthday dinner then you put on your big boy pants and go.

Now for the record I went not expecting much so that I could not be disappointed. The thing is, the part of me that loves food and has worked in the restaurant industry off and on for fifteen years can't help but be disappointed. Of course you walk into the restaurant and you get the same decor as the freecreditreport.com commercial. This is to be expected. Sad as that is. And I will say that the two servers that we had were very personable. Unfortunately that is all I can say. To start with, there were only eight of us in the party. I was baffled by the fact that we had two servers taking care of us. We are actually a fairly low maintenance table and any server worth anything at all can take care of an 8 top with their eyes closed. It was not busy in the restaurant so maybe they were both bored. Either way, despite the fact that we had two servers we had to beg for drinks. Unbelievable. For dinner I ordered the lobster and artichoke dip which is normally an appetizer. When I asked the server who was taking care of my side of the table how it was, she enthusiastically told me that is was wonderful. She told me that normally she doesn't like artichokes but that they were really good in the dip. Great! I love artichokes. The dip arrived and I took one bite and almost spit it out. Terrible... I even gave it the old college try. I ate about three more bites and just had them take it away. I then understood why she liked the artichokes in that dip and no where else. It was so overwhelmed by fish flavor that you couldn't taste them. And I do understand that is was a lobster dip. Good lobster with nothing on it, not even butter, should be a bit sweet and not fishy. But they kindly took it off the bill. Sadly what they should have done is taken it off the menu. But as my friend Steve says, There's just no accounting for some people's tastes.

I don't have a sophisticated palate but I do know what good food is, and since I do wait tables I don't get upset about service if the servers are making an attempt at taking care of me. But I do ask two things... One, give me food that is edible. Two, keep my drinks filled. If the server is swamped an I can tell they are trying then no worries. But it was a half empty restaurant and we had 2 I repeat 2 servers and we couldn't get a drink refill. Well at least I won't have to go back again until my friends birthday next year.