I've eaten at Chili's all over the country, and had varying experiences at all of them. I've been to this Chili's twice over the past 4 months, and was disappointed both times. The first time I went with a friend for a little after work drink and dinner. The service, if you can call it that, was horrible. We saw "our waiter" maybe twice. It took us 3 hours to eat a couple of burgers and drink a couple of margaritas...not because we were being slow, but because that's how long it took to get everything and not have things messed up (during this time we also had to flag down other servers to find our server because they were MIA). Anyway, that was a bad experience, but my husband and I decided to give it a go this past week for dinner. The evening started out well enough, and we were introduced to our two servers (one was in training...still haven't figured out which one, though). We started off with drinks and their southwestern eggroll appetizer. I order their Skinny Patron Margarita, which has tequila, sugar-free triple sec, and lime juice. Let me just say that I've had a lot of "skinny" margaritas from a lot of different places, and what they served me was an abomination. It shouldn't be that hard to make...it only has 3 ingredients. When they served it to me (in a martini glass) I took a sip of it and had to resist the urge to spit it back out. After swallowing that disgusting mouthful, I could only utter the words "That was disgusting." I let my husband try it and he agreed. All you could taste was that sugar-free triple sec...and that artificial sugary sweetness is awful on it's own. Ironically enough...when it was brought to us by one of our servers, they assured us our drinks were going to be delicious because "the manager made them himself". After that drink, I think the manager should leave well enough alone. Anyway, during this time one of our servers noted that I did not like my drink and so brought me a replacement (made by the bartender) without me having to ask. I give the server props for that. However, if the other version was super sweet, this version was super sour...it tasted like sucking on a lime. Also, while I was tasting the second version (and giving my husband a taste), I got to listen to the server's rendition of their talk with the bartender and manager. Apparently the bartender and manager both said "well, what did she expect? She (me) ordered a diet drink, and she can't expect it to taste good like a non-diet drink." First off...I am not a child and I know damn well what I ordered and what it should taste like. Second, why are you serving drinks that don't taste good? Third, it was completely unprofessional for that server to share that conversation with me. Plus the server followed up with their own commentary on my likes/dislikes. I didn't end up drinking the second version and actually became convinced that it was just a glass of lime juice. At this point in time I just wanted to leave, but our food arrived then. My husband ordered just a regular burger and fries, and it was all cold when it arrived. Not cooling down...it was cold. However, he was hungry and I wanted to leave, so he ate most of it. I ordered the grilled shrimp tacos, which were also cold. On top of that (literally), the slices of avocado that come with the tacos were rotten. Not overripe...they were rotten. I could hardly see any green on them at all through all the black. I sat staring at them a little while wondering how anyone could justify serving something that looked like that, and then I finally just took them off. Our servers didn't say anything...didn't ask us if we liked our food...nothing. The tacos were cold and bland, just like the rice. The dish also came with beans, but the spoon they brought with it was dirty and had stuff caked on it. So I ate the beans with a fork, or at least tried to..
The only good thing about the night were the eggrolls, although I guess it is kinda hard to mess up something that is fried. We will NOT be going back to this Chili's. There are lots of other chain restaurants in that area (Applebee's, TGI Friday's, etc.) and next time we will be going to one of them. read more