Chick-fil-A — Restaurant in Costa Mesa

10/10 A+ 100% great drive through and dine in experience. As the captain of cacophonous chicken chains; like canes or a certain cheeseburger chucker across the street) you can expect to be treated with the absolute best of what a drive through fast food joint can provide, whether it's the menu choice, customization, quality of ingredients, preperation and freshness, etc.

Unlike their only drive thru chicken competitor, their menu expands from breakfast through dinner, with as many chicken choices (and a select few other) as one could possibly expect from a chicken themed megachain. Somehow they manage to get the food out as fast and efficiently as either opposing competiting restaurant that serve only one main menu item. When all your mains is either cheeseburgers or chicken strips, from a food prep and service point of view it is near infinitely easier to get out accurate orders quick and easy, especially if the rush is bad, because with every item they serve comes a possible error. For example both competitors only offer a hardly palatable "secret sauce" for their mains, which I guess is an admission they secretly don't serve sauce for the only one menu item they can provide? Would you like some ketchup for your chicken strips sir? Hell no I won't but now I darn freaking have to because that's your only red sauce. Why don't you go ask Chick-fil-A if you can borrow some of their 8 different sauce selection? They serve at least 3 red sauces, and that's not counting ketchup. It's no secret to anyone why Chick-fil-A is number one in it's class.

Although their drive-thru learning curve might have been slow at first, Chick-fil-A handles the worst rush hour with agility and aplomb, directing traffic safely through the chaos that is harbor boulevard whilst churning out chicken; like an orwellian, well-oiled, futuristic, drive-thru equipped, happiness inducing factory line of a machine; leaving you feeling full and satisfied, 100% of the time.

Even when circumstances leave their team a little shortened for the day, or they are nary-equipped for a unforeseeable super rush of hangry customers, you can always expect a good experience except on Sunday, which is pretty much my only gripe here. Due to conflicting schedules, the calendar always reads Sam's slimy secret sauce Sunday, every page, all the way down the line. You'll keep your place at the top, until they decide to con everyone into shutting it down for all of our own sakes. What a joke! Chic-fil-ever! Keep up the good work and see you every Friday or Saturday night!

P.S. I'm not going to post pictures of my food. It's so busy all the time that I'm sure by now, numbers are so high everyone knows what a perfectly prepared and delicious chicken sandwich with waffle...

The bathrooms and dining rooms always need to be cleaned at every Chick-fil-A I have ever gone to. Chick-fil-A really needs to step up their game when it comes to the cleanliness of their bathrooms and dining runs.

That said, the food has always been great at every Chick-fil-A I have ever gone to. However, I am still new to the Chick-fil-A game. I think I have only gone to Chick-fil-A a handful of times. Not more than 10, that’s for sure.

In this particular instance, we went to the drive-through. All the employees with whom we interacted were fantastic, as usual. Our order was accurate, hot, and we got it very quickly.

Unfortunately, while we were eating our food in our car, we saw through the windows into the restaurant that there were several people waiting for quite a long time on their to-go orders.

We could tell by their body language that they had already been waiting for quite a while by the time we pulled around with our food.

We do not know what the malfunction inside the restaurant was, but we somehow avoided the problem.

If it had not been for that and the undesirable state of the dining room and bathroom, I would have given them five stars all around.

Every single Chick-fil-A needs to hire one or two additional staff members just to keep the dining room and bathrooms clean. They are not living up to expectations in that area.

Even if they have to increase prices a dollar on their sandwiches, that’s fine with me, because whenever I see a dirty dining room or bathroom, it always makes me wonder what THE...

Blah.. it kills me to rate so low because their customer service is outstanding but our last few trips through the drive thru have left us seriously disappointed. They do a decent job trying to get through the dinner rush at the drive thru but they seem to compromise their food and serving sizes in order to do so. The last 3 times we've driven through and picked up dinner at least one item we've ordered has been wrong and the fry containers are only halfway filled. I understand mistakes happen which is why we've given them the benefit of the doubt but three times in a row doesn't feel coincidental to me.

Their prices are on the higher side for fast food and they're downright ridiculous when you get less than a dozen fries in a large size. This last trip we spent just under $42 for 4 meals.. one of the sandwiches was missing bacon (that we paid extra for) and both large fries were less than halfway full. Ironically the medium fries had more fries in them.

As much as this is a family favorite, we'd be pretty hard pressed to return unless we happen to find ourselves in the area when they aren't crazy busy and we have time to dine in.

Pics of the 2 large fries for the...