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Wild Jack’s Restaurant: Sickly Steak, Rancid Ribs

Posted in Food, Spring Break by Elliott Back on March 24th, 2005.

If you’re going on a vacation to the International Drive area of Orlando Florida, maybe to visit Wet & Wild, Universal Studios, or Walt Disney World, please avoid dining at Wild Jack’s. On About.com dining, the restaurant has mixed ratings at best. There is a grand possibility of a bad night, as I will tell you.

We came in through the front doors and were greeted by a large open lobby and empty lectern. There was no one there to assign us to a table, so we craned our necks, gawking, until a gruff, overweight waiter came to direct us to a sticky table in the corner. Unfazed so far, we purveyed the menu, deciding to share a rack of ribs in several varieties over ice water. The service was extremely slow. After perhaps half an hour we were given reconstituted mashed potatoes and the ribs–which looked very limp.

Trying them, I found them quite cold. The meat slipped off the bone in that telltale way of old food, the fat was clustered and globbed up, and the whole dish was lukewarm and unevenly heated. Our ribs were not fresh: they were some old, reheated things. We told our server, a curt russian lady, that the quality of the food was unacceptable and that we wanted to leave. The manager met us on the way out, and insisted that the ribs come straight from the grill. I politely told him that they tasted old, were cold, and not at all from the grill, and that we did not want a replacement meal. We just left. He didn’t complain much–he knew that ribs at Wild Jack’s were reheated on demand anyway.

The moral of the story? There’s a good wings place down the street.

Wild Jack’s Steaks & BBQ
7634 International Drive
Orlando, FL

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2005 at 12:22 am and is tagged with walt disney world, front doors, international drive orlando, russian lady, lectern, moral of the story, ribs, walt disney, steaks, half an hour, orlando florida, universal studios, orlando fl, waiter, potatoes, dish, wings, disney, international drive area. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

Viewing 9 Comments

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    In three visits to Orlando we have found Wild Jacks restaurant to be the worst on International Drive.
    This is due to the poor quality and presentation of the food which was poor to put it mildly.
    We had Steaks and salad. The salad was swimming in dressing and the steak seemed to have been re-heated (as per the previous review).
    We informed our waitress of this who in turn called for the manager.
    He attitude was unapologetic and rather arrogant (we have found this very unusual in the US where customer service is generally excellent).
    We would not recommend this place to anyone as there is so much choice available and this business does not deserve to survive.
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    My collegue and I ate there on August 14th, and the food was probably the worst restaurant food I have ever had! The ribs appeared to have been boiled, as opposed to BBQ'd, and barely tasted of sauce. They were dripping white fat, and were disgusting. My collegue's filet mignon was of the quality of something from Ponderosa. The side dish was bland garlic potatoes. The ice tea almost looked like water. To add insult to injury, there is a manatory gratuity on the bill!

    Eat anywhere else on International Drive except this dump!
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    This review definitely hit this spot on... I tried this place 9-3-07....

    If I could rate a '0' starred restaurant, this would be it. This was by far the worst dining experience I have ever had. Granted, I had tried it once before and thought that it was ok. But after last night, NEVER again. A friend and I went together. We were seated promptly and then noticed the table was sticky.

    The waitress was polite and took care of it and we started off with an appetizer of potato skins. There were 4 on the tray and as we opened the first, we noticed that they were a little brown, pobably overcooked. As I cut into the last one, notice that it wasn't the cooking, but the potatoes were spoiled. The last one was almost black and oozing... YUCK! I politely sent it back and asked for a replacement. They replaced it, but with another spolied one.

    After setting that to the side, we got our entree, before the side salads ever arrived... The NY strip I had turned out to be a fatty cut of Sirloin that was charred. The T-bone my friend ordered was well-done, which was ordered medium-rare. He sent his back... They re"cooked" his... it was barely even touched by the grill. Not even rare - tar-tar... Then we both had mashed potatoes with our meal. The potatoes were brown and spoiled. I called a manager after explaining that the server was polite and friendly, but the kitchen had some problems.

    They sent out a manager who appeared 15 years old... Who started off with an attitude... I politely explained the food problems and that I expected this to be fixed or we would not be paying for the meal. She refused and then actually started screaming at me in front of her other customers. Finally agreed to discount food items by only 10% after sending me SPOILED FOOD!!! Then ran the charge for the full price anyways....

    I called her manager the following day with no recouse... I had to have my bank reverse the charges...

    After my experience, I would have rather licked the sidewalks of I-drive than eat there again.
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    I so agree with the writer, and all of the responders!!!

    We went to Wild Jack's last night (11-5-07) after a day of fun. We were HIGHLY disappointed. We came in for the $9.99 steak and seafood special. The steaks were the leftover cuts of good steaks. They were horrible. Full of gristle, and absolutely no seasoning.

    My husband ordered the chicken tenders appetizer. Half the plate was undercooked, while the other half of the dish appeared to be chicken wings that were overcooked. It definitely was not the "chicken tenders" that you think you are going to get.

    The bathrooms were nasty. They smelled like sewage. There was no changing table to use. A waitor told us to change our child in one of the empty booths.

    The servers could barely speak English, and were obviously not trained servers. The prices were extremely high, and the food and service came NO where near the pricing. (I.e. I go to McDonalds, I get what I pay for. I go to the Melting Pot - I pay top dollar for quality food and service!) You are REQUIRED to pay 15% in gratuities and it is already put into your bill before you even receive it! Regardless of whether the service was worth 15% or not.

    We advise the locals and anyone coming to Orlando to visit to steer FAR, FAR away from Wild Jack's!! Don't feel like us that you could have gotten a MUCH better meal somewhere else for less than what we paid!
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    I really wish I had seen this website before making the mistake of going to this so called steak house. My first impression after being seated was "YUCK". There was garbage, straws, fries, and other stuff in between the space between the table and the wall. We had gotten there minutes after they opened and were the first customers of the day so I know it was there for a long time. Next, the salt and pepper shakers were very sticky and nasty.

    The steaks were less than tasty. I always get the filet. It was under season, under cooked and just plain bad. I had to use steak sauce to get it down.

    We were a party of 4. My 10 year old had the kids burger. My 15 year old had nachos off of the appetizer menu and my husband and I both had over priced steaks. I had one daiquiri and my husband had a large beer on tap. The total of the bill was $95.00. Needless to say, I was in shock and could have gotten a better meal at Denny’s.

    They also realize that they are so bad, that they charge you the gratuity up-front to make sure that they are gonna get tipped. If someone is not watching out for this, they can really get screwed.

    I am really sorry I had this experience, but rest assured once in the parking lot, we made sure that other people getting out of their cars did not have the same experience.
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    Wow, I had no idea! I went just recently and thought to find their number on google, and I found this. I dont know if I would have gone had I read this! I dont know, but I had a good time. Maybe the place was sold?
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    I am so sorry my wife and I did not warn you all earlier. We were married in 1999 and spent part of our honeymoon in Orlando. We spent 3 days in the area enjoying restaraunts, attractiions, etc. On the 2nd night, we decided to try Wild Jack's because we had never heard of it prior, and it looked like such a promising steakhouse.

    I ordered a sirloin, she ordered bbq shrimp. We were drinking,and didn't really think much about the food. I hate seafood, but I eveb tried on of her shrimp.

    When I say drinking, I mean 3 beers for me, 1 margarita for her. Hardly excessive... But we both commented that the table was sticky, it took 10 minutes to seat us even tho nobody was there, and my steak looked grey and fatty for a sirloin. She only ate half her shrimp because she said they tasted foul.

    One hour later, in our hotel, she had the worst case of diaharreah you could ever had as a human being. It was so bad, we had to leave the room with the front window open for an hour. My stomach hurt so badly I didn't even eat breakfast the next morning.

    Word to the wise. Stay away from this place. It is 2008 and we STILL JOKE ABOUT IT TODAY.
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    You could almost copy and paste every other disparaging comment made and place it into mine. Foreign waiters with barely a grasp on the English language, and absolutely no personality! He showed up after about 4 minutes, and took our order with out writing anything down. Oddly enough he didnt make any mistakes. This is the only good thing about his service. Our drinks sat empty through the delivery of our appetizer, and our entrée. The appetizer was nachos, and they had the consistency of stale rubber, they also had a not so meat like substance sprinkled on them. Utterly disgusting. Next come the entrée's, the filet was shaped oddly, and was full of fat, kind of like what you would expect from a frozen tv dinner. The potatoes were brown, and also rubbery. The pork shank was ok on one side, but a petrified piece of inedible awfulness on the other side. I wasn't very hungry so I added a salad to my girlfriends dinner, along with a loaf of honey bread, how could they screw up bread and salad right? Salad was room temperature which made me think about all of the bacteria making its way down my throat, and the bread had a huge hole in the center of it, and had small amount of honey drizzled over the top which I couldnt even taste, but it didnt really matter as I wasn't going to finish it anyway. My girlfriends ribs were very puny, and not very tasty, I think she ate 2 of them. She sent her brown potato back in exchange for fries which never arrived. We asked 2 servers to see a manager before one came out of the kitchen with an apron on, the fact that he was in the same vicinity as the poor excuse for food, told me alot about the place. He said something about getting a bad shipment of nachos in. If you knew they were bad in the first place, why the heck would you continue to serve them?!?!? Then he proceeded to tell us he was baffled by the steak being bad, because they are prepared in house and there is nothing wrong with them. He said he would take half off our bill. And yes, they added gratuity, but by law in Florida, it is not mandatory to pay it, so we didnt. Bottom line, STAY FAR FAR AWAY from this dietary nightmare.
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    Worst restaurant we have ever been to. Charging Outback Steakhouse prices for third world food and service. Not one of the waiters could speak English, they couldant even understand the word booth, and they work in a restaurant. Every part of four meals was disgusting from anemic salads to pathetic overcooked potatoes, the salad was supposed to be sirloin and it was clearly not. In any case we called for the manager and sent it back, she started arguing and we said bring out the chef, which she refused to do. We walked out without paying and then he came out, but he was claiming to be the manager aswell. We asked for the bill which he would not provide, because the waiter had clearly typed it in incorrectly. Thus we refused to pay.
    He then called the police! ( or pretended to ) and we drove off. Needless to say the manager/chef is a complete idiot.
    Those of use who ate a little felt sick for days afterwards, DO NOT EAT HERE, this restaurant is a black mark on Orlando's good name and can ruin your holiday and is a tourist trap.
    I will be contacting Floridas Immigration, Foods Standards, Trading standards and Tourist boards. I would appreciate if all those who were conned by this place would do the same.
 

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