Sunday was the first bad experience eating out on this WOE. Every place we go we has no problem with substituting a salad for the fries and not charging extra (in fact we usually get more salad or bigger portions). Go to Perkins (thought we'd try someplace new), try to order a bacon cheesburger, hold the bun, slaw and fries and sub a salad. Was told we couldn't do that, but we could get a side salad for $.99 more. So you're going to charge me $7 for a hamburger, a slice of cheese, 2 strips of bacon and charge me an extra $1 for a salad, for a total of $8???? Nowhere on the menu did it say no substitutions! We're marking them off of our list of places to eat at.

Actually, I've found quite a few places that want to charge extra for subbing a salad for fries. That really honks me off. Why should I have to pay extra to eat healthy??? Are potatoes, the oil they fry them in, and the salt that much cheaper than a few lettuce leaves?

Sorry about your bad experience at Perkins.

Same thing happened to me at Applebee's. They wanted an extra $1.99 for a side salad instead of a baked pot and garlic bread. I said no thanks. I just emailed them about this ridiculous policy.

My daughter doesn't eat that much bread - she doesnt really care for it. We were at Perkins and she ordered the hotdog meal off the kids menu (2.99) and an extra hotdog - please hold both buns. The server didnt say a word, food came and was fine...then we got the bill. They charged us 3.99 for each of the hotdogs and another 1.99 for the side order of fries. With drink just her portion of the bill was almost 12.00!!! When I asked the server he said the holding the bun was a substitution so in order to put in our order he had to make each item a separate item. And the cost of a hot dog on the adult menu was 3.99. His manager backed him up and was refusing to credit us the outragous cost of the hotdogs. She said that there was no way to give us a credit because they would have to delete the whole order and start over and that would mess up their paper work for the day.
I told her that if I had a hair in my meal they would have found a way to credit my meal - so she can do it now. And that I absolutely was NOT going to pay that much for 2 plain small hotdogs and the 15 french fries that were on my daughters plate.

She credited it - we haven't been back.

Just amazing.... Perkins and Applebee's used to be two of my favorites back in my carb consuming days. Hard to believe that the fast food places are now more Atkins friendly than these places.

Cheers!
BrewWa

I had the same experience at Red Robin. THey charged me $1.49 extra to sub a salad for the "endless steak fries". Then the salad came covered with all these strips of colored tortilla chips after I said no crutons. I haven't been back.

Shannon that is just AWFUL! Now I will NEVER go to Perkins (haven't been to one in years).

On the subject of salad vs fries the answer is YUP, fries are a LOT cheaper for them to produce and asking .99 cents for a side salad is not a lot but they should meet the customers half way if they want to be cheap about it and say that for an extra .50 cents you can have a side salad. If they really had their merchandising hats on, they would offer low carb desserts and let you have the salad in place of the fries so you may be hungry and oder a low carb dessert.

I generally have no problem at the local Denny's and their hamburgers are DELICIOUS without the bun - my husband has started to order them that way now

Still LMAO ~ SCORPIO381s comment "that really HONKS me off" lol