10 Common Customer Complaints About Outback Steakhouse

While Outback Steakhouse promises a good time and good food in a laid-back Aussie atmosphere, customers seem to find themselves with plenty of things to complain about. The restaurant has been luring people in with its kitschy faux-Australian persona, Bloomin' Onions, and steaks for decades. However, the allure has faded for many people who have stopped visiting after too many disappointments.

Outback is one of several steakhouse chains that has suffered from declining business. It's been shuttering quite a lot of locations, with ever more seeming to land on the chopping block each year. However, with its renewed focus on some of its problem areas, the company did start to see a turnaround in profits in 2026. Still, complaints abound. Dishes like the Bloomin' Onion and its steaks aren't the stars they once were, hospitality is often lacking, and the locations can't seem to handle the volume of food it needs to pump out. Plus, the quality, size, and price don't always match up as much as they should. These are the biggest complaints people have about Outback, but we hope improvements in these areas can help get the restaurant back on track.

If you walked into an Outback Steakhouse for the first time expecting to experience Australian cuisine, you definitely walked out disappointed. There are tons of Australian dishes that you need to try at least once, like Pavlova and vanilla slice. Disappointingly, you won't even find meat pies, kangaroo steak, or emu steak on the Outback menu. Although, the cooks might "throw some shrimp on the barbie" for you.

Mainly, customers on social media complain that the food is just ordinary American fare. While you might find menu items like Alice Springs Chicken, people actually from Alice Springs don't recognize it. In fact, there are no authentic Australian recipes on the menu — just Australian-sounding names. Australians who visit can't relate to the food and are often amused by the menu. Even the "Australian" Foster's beer has been difficult to find in Australia for decades.

Outback itself only claims to be "Australian-inspired" and says that the menu has a "seize-the-day mindset," which it equates with Australia. The founders never even visited Australia before opening the restaurant in 1988 but just used Australian kitsch for decorations. It fed on the U.S. fascination with all things Australia since "Crocodile Dundee" had hit movie screens two years prior. It honestly seems even less Australian than Taco Bell seems Mexican despite having Australia-representative art on the wall and trying to spice up its menu and marketing with some Australian-sounding lingo.

When you go to a restaurant with the words "steakhouse" in its name, you expect a focus on good steak. Yes, there absolutely are steaks on the menu, but based on all the complaints, we're wondering what happened to the steak quality. In fact, when ranking chain restaurant ribeye steaks, Outback's comes in dead last. So, maybe it's best to find something else on the menu to eat. If you want to splurge on steak, you'll probably be happier going literally anywhere else.

One of the biggest complaints you see about steaks from most chain restaurants is that cooks simply didn't cook the meat as ordered, with customers getting them too rare or too well done for their liking. Unfortunately, this isn't the only thing we're seeing customers complain about at Outback. Additionally, it seems that some steaks are poor quality in the first place, and the cooks don't always send an edible piece of meat to the table. Lots of customer reviews and social media complaints mention the steak being over-seasoned or over-salty or completely unseasoned. 

The texture is a problem, too, with even re-dos coming back tough and chewy. Some customers have even gotten steaks that were mainly charred black. And some have complained about getting steaks that are more unchewable gristle and fat than edible meat. Thus, lots of people just avoid the steaks altogether.

We don't know about you, but we remember first being lured into Outback Steakhouse with tales that the Bloomin' Onion was going to blow our mind — and it did. Somebody would always order one the size of your head for the table, and everyone would dig in because no one was going to get through it alone and still have room for a meal (probably). Yes, it's a greasy deep-fried mess, but it's delicious, and the sauce is crave-worthy. Unfortunately, even the Bloomin' Onion is a shadow of its former glory.

Customers who have been getting Outback's Bloomin' Onions for years have taken to social media to express their shock at how small they've become. People on social media claiming to be Outback employees have explained that there are certain times of the year when onions grow smaller, but we've seen complaints from various seasons of the year. Disappointingly, the price stays the same no matter the onion size. However, some managers would rather not serve small ones than have customers complain. If you do get a disappointingly tiny Bloomin' Onion, some locations may be willing to replace it with a larger one if available.

Although there are reasons behind why the onions might sometimes be small, that doesn't excuse ones that are made poorly. There are customers lamenting getting ones that are burnt, overcooked, unevenly cut, overly greasy, and just not as good tasting as they remember.

Another common customer complaint at Outback Steakhouse is its long wait times. We're talking about long wait times to get into the door in the first place and to get your drinks and food. If people are sitting around forever waiting on their food, new people coming in the door have nowhere to sit. Unfortunately, those two problems aren't always related.

So, what type of waiting times are we talking about? One customer left a review complaining about waiting to be seated for 90 minutes, despite there being open tables. Then, when they were finally seated, they found out the kitchen was already closed down. Employees told another reviewer with a previously-made reservation that they don't take reservations. After 90 minutes, employees told them there simply weren't tables for a large party. Another waited 90 minutes despite having a manager-approved reservation for a large party.

Customers might also find themselves waiting a while once seated. Waiting for a server for 10 minutes isn't too unusual, but customers find waiting a half hour to be excessive. It's also excessive to wait an hour or two for your food after ordering. Some people have even reported waiting as long as 45 minutes for a check after asking for it. Some people have suggested that offering delivery service may be making the kitchen slow since it's doing over twice as many delivery orders.

If you've waited a long time for your food, you at least expect that it's going to be fresh and piping hot from the kitchen, right? Well, unfortunately, a common complaint at Outback Steakhouse is that the food comes to the table cold. If you like your hot food piping hot like we do, getting cold restaurant food is especially disappointing, especially after a long wait for food in the first place.

One complaint we've seen in reviews is people getting food like potatoes so cold that they've become hard. Another reviewer's potatoes were so cold the butter they put on it stayed cold and unmelted. Customers have talked about food only trickling to the table over the course of an hour, and even those items arriving cold. Even the steak tends to arrive cold, which is just one more layer to the bad steak saga when it's also badly seasoned or already has a less-than desirable texture. One person even mentioned that the plates their meat came to the table on were cold, which ended up chilling their steak and lobster from warm entrees to cold in a matter of minutes.

As you can imagine from the fact that customers often have to wait a long time to be seated or to get their food and that food often arrives to the table cold, there are lots of service complaints at Outback Steakhouse. Don't get us wrong; there are some phenomenal Outback waitstaff members out there. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

There are some basic expectations when you visit a restaurant, like having servers come by occasionally to ask if you need anything, fill your drinks, or actually give you everything you need to enjoy your meal. We've seen reviews complaining about getting food with no utensils (like no knife to butter bread), apps with no app plates, or not getting everything in an order. Other complaints include servers ignoring some party members, not offering drink refills, and not offering bags for to-go orders. It can be especially frustrating when customers watch a server taking care of one family quickly while they themselves end up ignored.

Sometimes, it's not just one thing but a lot of little things that add up to a bad experience. First, there are long waits; then customers don't get what they ask for, and what they do get is subpar. Finally, customers get charged for things they didn't ask for or get. Especially when complaints to the manager end up with shrugs, customers decide that it's not a restaurant worth returning to.

When customers end up getting poor service and poor food, the sticker shock of the menu and their ultimate bill just hit harder. If you've been out to eat at a restaurant lately, the higher prices aren't a surprise, but you expect prices to match the food and experience. When they don't, there's a disconnect.

Reviewers who once considered Outback their favorite feel disappointed when they spend $100 for a Bloomin' Onion and meals for two when the food and service are bad. If you end up with burnt, unseasoned steak, don't get the sides you ordered, and have a generally bad experience, it doesn't seem like a $100 expenditure that you want to repeat. Customers seem to especially find the steaks overpriced.

Interestingly, though, even those who end up with good or just-okay food and service are feeling the burn of the high prices. Even when customers manage to keep a meal for two under $80, they often don't feel that what they actually get justifies the expense. One person mentioned enjoying their meal but still feeling shocked after spending $275 for four people after tipping, since the per-person price came out to nearly $70. If you're going to spend that much, you want something far fancier and not a meal that's merely okay.

While there are certainly good menu items at Outback, some dishes get more complaints than others, with some of the lower-ranked Outback Steakhouse menu items being real disappointments. When you're spending a lot for your meal, you don't want something that fills you with regret.

There are several disappointing meat dishes. One lower-ranked item that seems like it should be difficult to get wrong is Grilled Chicken on the Barbie. Unfortunately, it shows all the signs of being microwaved from frozen rather than being cooked on an actual "barbie," like being warmer inside than outside. Plus, many find it nearly inedibly overseasoned. Another item that we've previously mentioned as being better left unordered is Outback's ribeye. There are far too many customers lamenting just how horrible their experience is with this particular cut of steak, which often arrives ultra-rubbery, dry, fatty, unseared, and flavorless.

Meat isn't the only thing on the menu not making the cut anymore. Even ordering Aussie cheese fries can leave you wishing you'd gotten them elsewhere. While they might have been good in the restaurant's early days, they seem to have gone downhill with time. Customers complain of not enough cheese and the cheese sometimes being burnt rather than melty. Since they come frozen rather than being cut fresh now, sogginess can be a problem. Plus, toppings like bacon are add-ons now.

When your favorite menu item disappears, it can often leave you feeling bereft when you pretend to visit the land down under by dining at Outback Steakhouse. Perhaps these beloved discontinued Outback Steakhouse menu items will boomerang back one day as the wedge salad did, but we're not holding our breath over here waiting.

There are lots of discontinued menu items at Outback from all over the menu. While some quietly fall off the menu without anyone really missing them, others get nostalgic mentions from customers that miss them. A couple that get a lot of mentions are the Queensland Chicken Salad, the Alice Springs Chicken Quesadilla, and both snow crab and king crab legs. The Parmesan Herb-Crusted Chicken was good enough to have people begging for the recipe. People also seek out recipes for the discontinued Walkabout onion soup. The Cinnamon Oblivion dessert has lots of people wishing it would make a comeback. However, if you miss Sydney's Sinful Sundae from the dessert menu, there are reports that you can sometimes still order it if the ingredients are still on the menu.

Some people get nostalgic for items that are still on the menu but have undergone changes over the years, making them not as good as they once were. For example, they miss earlier incarnations of the chain's chicken fingers as well as the old made-in-house steak fries.

Shrinkflation seems to be ever more common, but that doesn't mean we don't get frustrated every time it happens. Unfortunately, Outback customers have been complaining about shrinking portion sizes for years. Eventually, smaller portions at higher prices have people rethinking whether it's worth visiting Outback again or not. Several have mentioned they'll consider dining at locally-owned restaurants rather than chains in the future to get better portions.

Customers sometimes end up aghast at how tiny the pieces of meat they get are. Those who visit frequently definitely notice when items like Grilled Chicken on the Barbie are suddenly far smaller than usual. We've also seen portions of Alice Springs Chicken that look more like the portion for a side dish. This is where buying steak by the ounce comes in handy since you know exactly the size of the portion in that situation.

Even appetizer and side portions tend to be smaller than they once were. We previously noted the shrinking size of Bloomin' Onions. However, even the shrimp appetizers often come with only around six shrimp, making them cost over $2.50 each. We've seen diners complain about getting their sides and salads in sizes that are more like a sample size. Customers have even noticed baked potatoes getting smaller.