As I walk in the restaurant, located on Capitol Drive in Pewaukee, the host opens the door for me and says, “Hi! Welcome to Applebee's. How are you doing today?” I responded and then I was seated right away. Around 2 minutes later my server comes over to my table and asks me what I want to drink. As I preview the drink menu, all I see is the calories next to the drink, not the price. This confuses me because I would rather see the price than the calories. I just hope the rest of the menu is not like this, I think to myself. As I continue to page through the menu, I see a lot of variety: steak ribs, chicken, seafood, pasta, salads, burgers, sandwiches, wraps, and tacos.

I order the frozen strawberry lemonade, although I have no idea what the price is. I then flip to the appetizer section of the menu and the brewpub pretzels & beer cheese dip for $7.49 really caught my attention.  Something I have never seen on a menu before. Around 7 minutes later it comes out and the first thing I notice is the amount of salt. There is a ton. 4 big fluffy pretzels loaded with salt. As I start digging into the pretzels (after I brush off most of the salt), they are very tasty. But I do notice that it is a very big portion. I could definitely eat this appetizer as a meal.  

Time for the main course. I chose the 4-cheese mac & cheese with chicken tenders for $12.99. Yes, you heard correctly—chicken tenders on top of mac and cheese—yum! As I wait for my food I continue to flip through the menu just to see more about the food. And I noticed these bolded options and it means those are the Applebee’s Signature dishes. The 4-cheese mac was an Applebee’s Signature as well. Around 15 minutes later my food comes out. The enormous plate of savory mac and cheese is covered with 3 chicken tenders. It’s a bit salty, but still very tasty. I continue to sip on my sweet and sour drink when the manager walks over to my table. As he introduces himself, he asks me how my meal was today; I said how I liked how big the portions were, but I also added that I did not like how you could not see the prices of the drinks.  He continued to ask me about my service. I really liked how he stopped over and made sure everything was to my liking. After he leaves, I still have about half of my mac and cheese left; and I realize I still have to save room for dessert.

I flip towards the back of the menu and see the 5 dessert options plus their 4 shakes. The dessert they advertise the most is the triple chocolate meltdown for $6.29. I decided to order this. 5 minutes later it comes out. That was very fast. My first impression was, I could not believe I was paying $6 for a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a little lava cake drizzled with hot fudge. I take a chunk out of the cake and warm, rich fudge oozes out of the cake. It was delicious dessert—I just don’t think it was worth $6.29.

As I am finishing up my dessert, my server comes over to my table and ask me if I am paying cash or card. I respond with card. She points over to this tablet looking thing and says, this is the TED, and you can pay on here. As I click the button to pay, my bill was a whopping $35! I am in shock of how high the price is. Although the main course and the appetizer were huge portions. I could make another meal from what I am taking home. But the drink ended up being $3.49, and the dessert was $6.29; those were the two things I thought were overpriced But the others were a good price for the amount of food you got. This is why on the drink menu I would have liked to see the price so I could see the price before I ordered it. As I use the TED, I find it easy and simple, but I could see how someone who is not the best with technology having troubles or get frustrated that they have to use this device to pay.  

Overall, I would recommend the Applebee's in Pewaukee to others. It is a delightful restaurant for the family. I say this because it has such a wide variety of food. So it is good for a family who cannot decide what genre of food they want. It was a bit pricey but the large portions make up for that. The service was one of the best parts of the time I spent there. The food was delicious. Therefore, take your family to Applebee’s for dinner. You will not regret it.