Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Athens-Clarke County Unified Government

My daughter was ordering off the kids' menu and asked for a lemonade. The server asked her if she wanted it in the small cup or if she'd prefer a bigger cup, and my daughter, wanting to feel older and cool, said shyly with a smile, "a bigger cup is fine." When we went to pay the bill, the server had charged us $3.19 for an adult lemonade, and when I showed her the kids' menu clearly says the entree includes a side and a drink, the server stood arguing that she put the kids' drink in a bigger cup. I tried to reason with her that (1) we never agreed to pay more, (2) the kids' drink comes with free refills so size of cup doesn't even matter, and (3) that when my daughter ordered the chicken tenders, the server asked if fries were OK as a side, but she never asked what kids' drink she wanted, all proved that the server knew we ordered a kids' drink. Nothing worked until I finally said I would just take the drink charge out of the tip. Only then did she finally agree to ask a manager to clear the charge. Afterwards, in the car, my daughter was mortified, saying "Dad, I never would have said 'big cup' if I knew she would try to charge you extra for it!" I just told her, "I know, no reasonable person ever would have thought she'd try to charge us."

I'm not sure if it was just the server trying to scam us for a bigger bill and therefore tip, or if it's actually the restaurant ownership/management encouraging it, since they also make a higher profit margin with the scam, and since the server seemed so comfortable with arguing for her original extra charge. Either way, I now think of Chili's as a scam restaurant, and I won't be back. Judging by response rate on other Google reviews, the owner will reply to this post, so others will be able to tell how the owners truly feel...

I’ll start by saying that the food was delicious. Myself and my three sons went for a late lunch, and all of us thoroughly enjoyed our meal. I had the chicken enchilada soup, which was amazing. My sons said the hamburgers and pizza was great as well. My issue with this restaurant was the lack of service. We waited ten minutes for a table, which isn’t a huge deal, except there were many tables available. Just from the waiting area, I could see an entire section of maybe ten tables cleaned and empty. There were probably ten or so tables in the other section that hadn’t been bused with piles of food and dishes on them. When we got our table, we looked over the menu for several minutes, and waited for our waitress who arrived to take our order after about 15 minutes. Once we ordered, the food was out quickly. We ate our delicious meal, paid, and left. While we were there, a young couple sitting near us asked about the long wait for a table (I saw them waiting for at least 20 minutes). They were told that there were only three servers working and that caused a delay. I personally witnessed two of those servers (ours included) chatting about personal, non work related issues. If they were so short on staff, they should have waited to have a personal conversation. I tipped her well above the 20% anyway, because I know it’s not an easy job especially when you’re short staffed and the personal conversation seemed to be initiated by the other server. I highly recommend that management put enough servers on the schedule and make sure they keep business work related when at work. It’s a good restaurant, and I’d hate to see them lose business over staffing issues when that’s a very easy...

If I could give less than one star, I would. I havent been here in a while due to a previous bad experience here. So we decided to give it another chance. We came on a sunday afternoon at about 1:30 and it was not busy at all. There were over 20 open tables, but after being seated, it was literally 30 minutes until we even saw our waitress, who it turns out was working a table with around 20 guests. If our waitress wasnt able to take care of us, it should have been handed off to another waitress. After ordering the food, it was not fresh at all. The salads had wilted lettuce and the cheese was hard and looked more like shredded carrots. The other group that was in our party ordered fajitas, and when they came out they were burned to the skillet and was unedible. After they said they werent going to eat it, the manager showed up and remade their order. I hate that the waitress bears the burden(the tip) of the sorry service when she was not to blame for the horrible service. It is up to the manager to take ownership of his crew and the situation and make it right for the customer. I still gave a good tip even though a comp or discount of the ticket wasnt offered because once again it wasnt the waitresses fault. I will never be back here again because this sealed the deal for me. If you want to wait over an hour to eat sub-par food, this is the place for you....