I love IHOP but Applebees is garbage. Like literal, leaking-from-the-bag garbage.
It's one of those things where 50-somethings are blaming millennials for 'killing Applebees' even though it's killing itself by being such a stuffty place to eat. Most of their food is microwave reheated in the kitchen, the serving staff suck at their jobs, and everyone who eats there is sad.
One time, my mom was eating a late dinner at Applebees after flying home from visiting my college. She was having a margarita at the bar, when this old-ass lady starts talking to her. Sure enough, it's Muhammad Ali's estranged aunt who gets dropped off here by her paid caretakers every day to, quote-on-quote, 'get plastered and eat dinner'. It is a place for broken people to fake some semblance of normalcy by eating at a plastic facade of a 'family restaurant'. The workers have smiles on their faces, but look deep enough into their eyes and it's just an empty dark shell.
I ate dinner there once as a little kid, and my parents ordered some drinks while I just got water. The lady brought the alcohol but not my cup of water, so after putting in our food orders, my parents reminded her that I needed some water. She came back with our food ten minutes later, but still no water. Again reminded about it, but no water came later. Eventually the check arrived and we all left - one of us being parched as forget. It was surreal.
In short, forget Applebees. You'd have a better dinner experience eating at IHOP, and they don't really even have a dinner menu to begin with.
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