Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in California

Unacceptable--I would like rate 0 if I could. Thursday evening-semi busy, arrived with husband and 3 young kids (ages 6, 5, and 2). Waited a couple of minutes for a hostess to arrive to the front. Provided information for seating and requested for a booth. Hostess showed me to the table and I asked for the booth across the aisle. It was dirty and she said she would get it cleaned. I also requested for an additional Chili's electronic "tablet" (where you can order, print receipts, and play games)--Remind you, I have kids so I didn't want them fighting over one tablet. I was willing to pay the extra $0.99 so each kid can have one to play with. We don't go out much, would like a semi-peaceful dinner. Hostess never came back.

A waitress came by a table close to ours and I asked for a rag so I can clean the table. Wait 5 minutes. No rag. I got up to get extra napkins so I can cleaned the table myself (no big deal). Same waitress saw me and informed me that she will be by with the rag. Wait a couple more minutes. Table wiped down. Placed orders for waters and drinks for kids. Still no extra tablet. Both 6 and 5 yr old shared and fought (whatever, it's normal). 2 year old starts to cry wanting a drink. I entertain her and my hubby entertains the older two. 10 minutes passes by. I get up and ask waitress for our drinks that we ordered. She says she has to break $100 for a customer. Approx 10-15 minutes passes..we get our drinks. We place orders. Appetizers (not kid friendly--onion rings) comes 10-15 minutes after we get our drinks. Drinks are (have been) empty, waitress walks around us about 10 times and doesn't ask us or inform us that our food is delayed/on the way/whatever. A manager had to ask if we wanted refills. I was scared if I asked the waitress for refills, we would never get our food as we have been at the restaurant for 50 minutes and no FOOD! Get our refills, kids are screaming, adults are hungry...we want to leave and hurry and go through a drive thru to feed kids! Food comes out about 50-60 minutes after we have been there. We don't accept. We are not the type of people who take advantage of the system and try to get free food from restaurants. We tell the manager that we will pay for what we already consumed. She said we didn't have to. We left. 1 hour at Chili's = free water and chocolate milk from Chili's.

I called the manager to apologize for the food being wasted (I felt really bad). We understand if it was semi-busy, or new waitress, or whatever, but COMMUNICATE! I was more than happy to come back another night or accept the slower customer service, but COMMUNICATE with us so we can plan accordingly.

In that hour that we were there, another station waited by another waitress, a couple that came in after us was seated, greeted, got drinks, refills, appetizers, updates to the food status, dinner, and dessert. All we got was water and chocolate milk. So upsetting because we like Chili's food. But never coming back to this restaurant. :(

We don't want staff/company to be penalized, but maybe a better strategic training plan for staff and management or a better understanding of proficient customer service or communication skills will improve...

I will NEVER go back to this Chili’s location! I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt from bad service two weeks ago. For a Monday night they were not very busy but we still had to wait nearly 30 minutes for a table. When the hostess seated us, she pointed to a general menu that was on the table and said to scan the barcode for an actual menu and walked away. Then we were completely ignored by everyone and had to flag someone down after approximately 10 minutes just to get water! They got that wrong! We ordered 2 waters, one with lemon one without… we never got any lemon. We ordered our food quickly when they brought the water. Our order was very simple, my son and I both ordered bottomless soup and salad with chips and salsa. After about 25 minutes we had to flag someone down again to refill our drinks and to check on the status of our food. (Again, super simple soup and salad) We finally got our soup approximately 30 minutes after ordering so we started to eat. About 10 minutes later they brought our salads but no utensils. It took 7-8 minutes to flag someone down just to get a fork to eat our salad. When we pulled the utensils out of the paper bags that they put them in, both of the forks had dried up crusted food on them and the knives were greasy and grimy. From that point it took another 5 minutes to flag someone down again to get new utensils only to find those were even more dirty than the first set! I will not ever step foot inside this restaurant again and I would not recommend it to anyone ever! The only thing they got right tonight was realizing what a bad situation it was for us as a customer and they did not make us pay for our meal that we...

Rating is based on my visit last night. What could have been a 5-star visit was ruined not because of a mistake, but because of how it was handled. The staff would not own their error and instead tried to convince me it was not an error at all (even though it very clearly was). Mistakes happen—not a big deal normally—they are easily fixed, but the staff chose instead to double down.

For my order, I got the Santa Fe chicken salad. The menu described it as having ranch dressing with a Santa Fe sauce drizzle. I ordered mine with dressing on the side. When the salad came out, it was tossed in (lots of) ranch with the drizzle on the side. I very kindly explained I may have received the wrong order, that the salad they brought was tossed with ranch dressing instead of on the side like I’d ordered it. The runner then took my salad back to the kitchen. A few moments later, SHE RETURNED WITH THE SAME SALAD and told me the kitchen said I should have ordered I’d “dry”. I’m sorry, what? When a customer orders dressing in the side, it means they don’t want the dressing tossed in the salad. This is not an uncommon request.

The fact they brought it back to the table to convince me it was prepared correctly (when it was not) was very off-putting. A little common sense goes a long way, dressing on the side means not tossed the salad.

On a positive note, the hostess and server were friendly, and the food was tasty. Prices were...