Chili’s. From 0 to 100 it Scored -1.
So 5:00pm rolled around Saturday and Tony showed up as we headed out in search of a bite to eat. Not really wanting anything here local we decided to head to Baltimore to hit up Chilis.
Mistake!
Lets just start with the fact that we got there and were seated. At this point everything seemed to be going well as there was no wait in getting seated and it didn’t seem as though the place was overly busy. Now keep in mind that Chili’s is like an hour or so drive away, so at this point I could go for a drink of water. We’re sitting. Waiting. And waiting some more. Sigh. To be sat quickly only to have to wait for a server that takes forever to finally come to the table drops the experience a great deal in my book.
Finally the server gets to the table takes our order for drinks and food. Tony ordered up a Long Island Iced Tea, I order up some water. A few minutes later she returns with the water and then the Iced Tea. Visually it didn’t look anything like tea. Perhaps a double water downed version of the lightest green tea you can find. No brown color at all. It was just sad looking. Then there was the moment of truth when Tony took a drink of it. Total disappointment. For a drink that has like 4 or 5 different types of alcoholic beverages in it Tony tasted next to no actual alcoholic flavor. This wasn’t going to stand. So the drink gets sent back with Tony telling the waitress that he can’t taste any alcohol in the drink. What seems like 20 seconds later the waitress reappears with what looks like the same drink. Still ugly in color, still lacking in flavor. Again Tony goes to send it back. However this time he picks up the drinks booklet from the table and says “Make it like that” as he points at the picture of a Long Island Iced Tea with all of it’s browned glory and description of amazingly mixed alcohols. Well this time the manager comes back. She asks “what seems to be the problem” in which Tony explains what the obvious problem is. She then proceeds to ask Tony if he’s 21 or older and to check his ID, again. The manager brings the drink out and it honestly looks exactly the same. As if they just took the drink out of sight from the customer and then brought it back trying to pass it off as a new drink. Tony takes a sip, still crap. This point the manager states “well this has a lot of alcohol in it, if we put in more we’ll have to charge you for a double”. Needless to say Tony wasn’t going to pay for a double when the regular doesn’t even have anything in it.
So then there was the food. I admit on this front the Southwestern Egg rolls were great. However in my opinion it’s kind of hard to fuck up something that is pre-made and you just dip into a deep-fryer for a set amount of time. But then there were the mini burger bites. When you aren’t asked how you’d like your meat done most places tend to error on medium-well to well done. For health reasons. Well somehow, with mini burgers of all things, they thought medium-rare to rare was okay. Big NO on that one. So now I was sending back food. Once they came back out, looking sad as can, I was able to finish the rest of my meal. Pay the bill and get the hell out of there.
I guess the next time I find myself in the direction of Chili’s I’ll be ordering up just Southwestern Egg rolls and Tony will probably have better luck just ordering water as well. Todays Chili’s experience gets a negative one in my book. Perhaps next time it was do better.
On a side note: they had a pretty clean bathroom for those that are interested in such things. Edwin.
Clean bathrooms should have elevated it to a “0″ at least.