OK, I know that I'm probably in the minority here based on the aggregate rating for this place, but I had a pretty good experience here.
I admit, I have not really been a Chili's fan. My last experience at a location up in Dayton was not at all positive. Mediocre food, not great service, etc. Even on our way to this location, my husband was preemptively apologizing if it was bad, but we were headed to Fresh Thyme and were looking at places to eat nearby. I am not a real fan of BW3s so this was next in line on Montgomery.
We went in on a Wednesday night and got seated right away. I opened up the fairly sticky menu, and perused through the lighter options (trying my hardest to stick to the daily WW point allotment). I settled on the 6oz. sirloin with the roasted garlic tomatoes & side salad. The hubby opted for the Southern Smokehouse Burger. It took a little longer than standard, but the food was brought to us as ordered and nice & hot.
The food was good...really good for a standard mass-market chain. The steak was cooked to the requested medium rare. The sauce drizzled on top and the grilled avocado made a nice contrast to each other. The roasted cherry tomatoes & garlic were yummy...I smiled and cackled at the hubby as I ate whole cloves of roasted garlic and told him any kisses that evening were going to be fragrant. The mixed green fresco salad had some crumbled white cheese (queso fresco maybe?) and what I think was the honey-lime vinaigrette. I ate everything on the plate. The menu states the whole thing was 410 calories (calculated 11 WW points based on the nutrition stats on the restaurant's website) but I added a couple of points since the salad seemed that it may have been a bit heavier on the dressing and cheese than normal.
As a bonus, they have these little terminals at every table. Lots of games ($1.99 for unlimited play) for the kids that we did not make use of, nor did we ever need to click on the "call server" button, waters were filled promptly. But it DID have this nifty pay at your table feature. No trying to flag down your server and it even had a split the check button. We were able to add the tip at the terminal as well, and I had the receipt e-mailed to me.
So other than the sticky menus and the slightly slow food, it was quite an enjoyable experience. And against my initial thoughts and reservations, I told the hubby that I would be more than happy to return. I've got other lighter options to try, but I would be hard-pressed to order something other than the steak. Yum! read more