French Fry Diary 658: Logan's Roadhouse

We had a late night dinner option open on our first night in Celebration, Florida, and we had a few choices. We tried to pick something from Urbanspoon, FourSquare, and traveling up and down the Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway. We could go back to Steak 'n Shake, maybe go to a real, open, Ponderosa Steakhouse, or try something new. We went with the third option and ended up at Logan's Roadhouse.

I at first I thought this was the only one, but quickly realized this was a chain, not that there's anything wrong with that. It was certainly the happening place to be the Friday night we went, parking lot packed, neon lights everywhere. Just like the old Lone Star Steakhouse, which has sadly moved from our South Jersey/Philadelphia area, there were peanut shells all over the floor. A bucket of peanuts was at our table, and we were subconsciously encouraged to throw our shells on the floor. Allergies be damned!

The menu and atmosphere was pretty typical for the Lone Star, LongHorn, Outback, Texas type restaurants, which was fine with me. We got the tower of onion rings, which is actually a call back to Red Robin or Chickie & Pete's but still terrific. The Southern Onion Tower, as they called it, was a tower of onion rings on an upright stick with two sauces, southern dipping and ranch. These were big, thick rings with a crunchy bread crumb coating. They were delicious and we ate them all.

Of course, that would have been better with utensils and especially napkins. We had to finally ask for them. Our waiter was not the most attentive we have ever had. It was quite a long wait for refills on our drinks and water. When we finally got them, he was not endearing himself to us. The Bride said 'thank you,' and he replied with a huffy and dismissive 'mmm hmm.' It was almost a verbal finger snap.

I ordered the chopped steak, medium, but it was more rare than anything. If that was medium, I should have asked for well done. The fries were natural cut shoestrings, very crunchy and good. The fries I liked a lot. I would have liked more of those, but because of the huge portions, we took most of our meal back to the hotel.

Our room was equipped with a microwave, so we had leftovers for lunch the next day. The nuked chopped steak was perfect, but the fries did not take so well. That said, I am sure they would have been better reheated in a conventional oven. All in all we liked the food very much, but the customer service not so much.