CHIKO — Restaurant in Bailey's Crossroads

I had one of the worst dining experiences at Chiko Arlington on Labor Day around 7 PM, 09/01/25 and I need to share this. We’ve eaten at Chiko before and enjoyed it, but this location was a complete disappointment in both service and food safety. We placed an order via DoorDash about 30 minutes before arriving. From the moment we walked in, the staff was rude and unprofessional toward my daughter. We know the menu well, but what we received wasn’t what we normally pay for. The menu online shows whole chicken wings, but instead we were given tiny “party wings” smothered in orange chicken sauce when we had actually ordered spicy soy glaze. On top of that, they tried to overcharge us $2 for “spicy sauce,” a charge that doesn’t exist on the menu. It really felt like someone was just making up prices to pocket extra money. The rice portion was insultingly small, barely enough for a toddler, and the food quality did not reflect the prices being charged. The chicken smelled burnt, was overcooked, stuck together, and tasted charred even though I never requested charbroiled wings, in fact, I didn’t request party wings at all. Bland, nasty, and already smelling off, I couldn’t even finish one bite before throwing it away. To make it worse, it came in a heavy, soggy container that made the whole meal even less appetizing. The rice was decent but nowhere near the quality we expect from Chiko. What really turned this from disappointing to alarming was the behavior of the staff. They were laughing, fooling around, and making inappropriate remarks in Spanish, assuming we wouldn’t understand. My daughter, who is multilingual (including Spanish), understood every word. She is disabled, and the way they joked about her was cruel and degrading. She kept her composure with grace, but no customer should have to experience that. Even worse, the same employee who smelled as though he hadn’t bathed in years was the one preparing food. He used the same dirty glove to scoop rice into a tiny container. Gloves are supposed to be changed between tasks to prevent cross-contamination and food allergies, basic food safety 101, but that clearly didn’t happen. Based on the smell and how careless he was, I doubt that glove had been changed in hours. We even had to drive back after they messed up the DoorDash order, only to be met with the same dismissive and unprofessional behavior. Clearly, management does not care, because these aren’t small mistakes, they’re repeated patterns. After coming home, I checked other recent reviews and found reports of food poisoning and diarrhea. Now I’m literally afraid to eat what we brought home. This location is unsafe, disrespectful, and poorly managed. Overcharging customers, serving the wrong food, ignoring hygiene, and mocking people with disabilities is unacceptable. Management needs to step in immediately before this becomes an even bigger problem. We will definitely stick to our original Chiko location from now on. This experience is exactly why it’s better to just cook at home, at least then you know the food is safe, clean, and...

Beware!!! This restaurant needs its food handling practices reviewed. I had this restaurant on my google list for a while. My boyfriend and I decided to try it this past Thursday(Aug 28th). We were not aware this wasn’t a full service dining restaurant like the restaurant next door until we arrived. We ordered the Garlic and shrimp dumplings, Half a Cado Salad, Orange-ish Chicken, Jjajangmyeon bowl, the Napa cabbage Kimchi and Double fried chicken wings. This turned out to be a lot of food. We ended up taking the orange chicken, 4 of the wings and an additional dumpling (so good) order home. Now the food was delicious but the aftermath not so much. My boyfriend who had never experienced food poisoning in his life experienced it for the first time. We believe it was caused by the JJajangmyeon bowl because although it was my choice he ate majority of it and I only ate tiny samples of it. I had minimal diarrhea when we returned home and he got it the next day and it was so bad. Mind you this was the only food we had eaten hence the big order. I finally ate the orange ish chicken today his order he was afraid to eat it. (Sunday Aug 31st) And it caused me diarrhea within 3 hours of consuming. (Only food I had today.)I also do not like how the cashier handled my leftover orange chicken while packing it. She picked it up with a gloved hand and put it in a container like it was mush. Mind you we ate on the patio so she had so come outside. I didn’t want to cause drama so I didn’t saw a word. Mind you an elderly woman and my party were their only customers at that time. And as someone noted their son also got diarrhea as well in the reviews. And another noted the restaurant being slower ( business wise) than others in the area. This may be the reason. I will not...

We absolutely love Chiko and frequent all the the locations. We were excited about a location in Alexandria not far from where we live but the takeout service is subpar. We have asked a few times that our bag(s) be stapled, only to be met with firstly, the manager informing us that the drivers need to have their own staples, and secondly, the store agreeing to staple the bag but not doing it. Today was the 3rd time it happened and unfortunately we won’t be ordering here again. Why is stapling your takeout bag important? If you haven’t seen any news on it, I am happy to share my experience. My daughter was sick in her dorm so I thought I’d order Ford for her. I used UberEats but when the food arrived, 20 minutes longer than the original ETA, she called me and said she couldn’t eat it because it showed signs of being tampered with. The driver had picked up her boyfriend, stating later that it was because she was afraid of delivering the food by herself. Mind you this was to a well lit college campus - Georgetown. They had parked the car in one location and stayed there for close to 20 minutes (per the UberEats tracker on my phone) and then drove to the campus. Uber refused to refund the money which was close to $40. However, out of an abundance of caution and disgust, my daughter and I decided to throw out the food. Drivers have been caught on camera eating and drinking from food they were supposed to be delivering. This is a major safety and public health concern. That’s why it’s disappointing that amazing places like Chiko refuse to go the extra mile to ensure that their food gets to their patrons in the same condition that they packed it. The cost is 2-3 staples on a...