Fire Mountain in Taylor Michigan is located just off of Eureka road and 1-75. Fire Mountain is owned by the same company as Ryan’s Steakhouse which used to be at the very same location. Fire Mountain is an all you can eat buffet that does have a lot of variety and offers steaks on their buffet during dinner hours. Their prices are reasonable at $6 for lunch and $10 for dinner, but that does not include your beverage.
I have visited other Fire Mountain locations in other areas of Michigan and I was pleased to see that one was located near a friend’s new home. We walked into Fire Mountain on a Friday night and the line was a bit long but nothing worse that what you can expect at any other sit down restaurant on the weekends. We had a party of seven people so we expected to have to wait for a table, but when we had waited over a half hour I went to ask the hostess when she thought we would be getting a table. To my surprise they had forgotten about us. Not a great way to start off a visit but nothing to harsh that the visit couldn’t turn out to be wonderful.
After another 10 minute wait, we were finally seated. Being that it is an all you can eat buffet we sat our jackets down and headed to the buffet bars leaving our drink ticket on the table for the server to pick up. When we got to the bars over half of the dishes were either empty or so dried out that the food was not edible. The lettuce on the salad bar was not a nice green color rather it was a color that signals it is a day away from turning brown. The salad bar was also a huge mess with dressing and salad topping items everywhere. I mentioned this to a manager whom I could tell was more interested in flirting with one of the young waitresses than he was in trying to fix the situations going on in the restaurant.
After heading back to my table with a near empty plate I realized that our drinks had not arrived. Our drink ticket was still on our table and that means that no one had even come by the table. I sat and waited for a server to come by and after another 5 minutes of waiting finally approached a group of servers to see whom I need to talk to so our table could get their drinks. They all looked at each other saying it wasn’t their table. Finally one of the girls says with a roll of her eyes “I guess I can do it.” Gee thanks for doing your job and all, I don’t want to put you out of your way or anything. I told her to forget the drinks and to send a manager over to my table.
Our whole party of 7 people was very disappointed in what we had thought would be a fun dinner out together. The manager finally showed up at the table and of course it was the same man from earlier who was flirting with the waitress. I explained the issue and just requested a refund. He didn’t even apologize to us! Just walked up to the register and handed me back my money. I guess I shouldn’t have expected anymore from him, his flirt partner was still waiting for him and he had other things on his mind besides his job.
Needless to say, I took our group over to the Denny’s across the street and had a good meal. I can’t believe how different this store was from all the others I have been in, but believe me we will not be going back to that location ever again.
