Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Noblesville, IN

Almost any place you go to these days, whether it is a restaurant or a store of some kind, has a customer satisfaction survey the management would like you to take. By a show of hands, how many of you actually take the survey? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Last October, my girlfriend and I were in Valparaiso, IN and visited Red Robin for dinner while her daughter attended a concert at the university campus. Our experiences there is what enticed me to finally complete one of the satisfaction surveys. But this post is not about the Valparaiso location so to keep it brief I will just say this: the food was great, the service was bad. Someday we will go back and I will let you know how it goes.

This post is about our visit to Red Robin in Noblesville, IN on December 30, 2010. The Noblesville location is the first Red Robin I ever visited and I have to say they set the bar high on that first visit. Never ending french fries? Hello! Perhaps that is why every visit since seems to be lacking?

I have never had anything to eat at Red Robin that did not taste good. Their burger selection is awesome, and the bottomless steak fries are well worth the extra calories. On our recent visit, their menu offered some new items, one of which was the Pub Burger. Ale-braised onions and mushrooms, creamy peppercorn-ranch, melted Cheddar and Swiss cheese, and fresh tomatoes. Served on a toasty onion bun. As the commercial says, "Yummm!"

Service seemed to start off a little slow, but to give credit the waitress did acknowledge our presence by at least letting us know she would be back with soda refills or more steak fries shortly. On my first visit to Red Robin, the steak fries were brought to us while we waited for our meal. That doesn't seem to be the norm anymore, I suppose appetizer sales probably suffered from that practice so I can overlook it.

Now to evaluate.

For food quality, I rate this restaurant as excellent
For service and employee interaction I rate this restaurant as above satisfactory, but just short of excellent. Maybe its the economy, but when a place is that busy, you got to hire more help.
For cleanliness, I rate this restaurant as satisfactory. Nothing really out of the ordinary, and even the manager was willing to grab a broom when he needed to. I didn't think to check the restroom, sorry.
Pricing - worth the money. Our total, for 2 adults and 2 female teenagers, before the tip came to about $50.

I guess I should come up with some form of grading scale here so on my drool-o-meter (what do you expect on short notice?) I'll give Red Robin - Noblesville 4 out of 5 drool streams. Please, let me start munching on those bottomless steak fries before my meal gets there!