Chela's — Restaurant in Dexter

I have to say today was a very disappointing and unpleasant experience. The food is mostly good and most of the time the service too but if you don't order an expensive item, even if you order a full meal, sometimes they seem annoyed if you take 30 minutes to eat it. I'm not sure how much faster it is possible to eat a full meal, along with the very good refried beans that come included (rice is dry), but this was a little surprising as the restaurant was mostly empty. We counted at at least five empty tables so it's not like we were taking up a table, and there was nobody waiting for a table- it was a very slow day, plus we were at a small table. This doesn't happen all the time. But it was surprising. The food is pretty good as I mentioned. The carne asada is good, the fish is good, the tinga is not as good as the other two for some reason - I suspect it was fermenting!!

The service isn't great - they never refill your water - this happened several times we've been there, and they seem annoyed if you ask for more water. When they finally get you some more water, they don't fill the glass the whole way, only half, which seems super rude, since they still had plenty of water in their pitcher.

It was just not a good experience. It's very disappointing when you look forward to a relaxing dinner all day and then you are made to feel not welcome and like you should eat fast and leave, even though the restaurant is half empty and even though you order a full entree. The salsa on the chips is tasty enough but we won't be going back because of the...

After all the hype and expectation, my wife and I were left disappointed. We've been twice and might not go back. The first time, there was a mixup on the drinks and the food was cold, yet had come out in less than 5 minutes. My only explanation was that it was prepared in advance and microwaved, which I do not consider to be acceptable. The replacement dish wasn't even that warm. The second time we went, we had lowered out expectations, while hoping for the best. The chips clearly came out of a bag and the salsa straight out of the fridge. I'm still not convinced that the food is all being prepared fresh and the taste has been merely ok, at best. Unrelated to the food, but in regards to the atmosphere, I would suggest that the owners consider installing sound-deadening panels in the ceiling and around the room. I'm reserving some additional comments so as to not slander a business that I'd really like to see succeed, so I'll leave it at that. I've gathered that the owners seem to care about the business and may be new to operating a full restaurant, so I hope they'll take this feedback to heart. We'd love to have Chela's be a place we go every 1-2 weeks on a regular basis, but it's not there yet. I'd suggest that they check out Barrio in Plymouth and benchmark their food and operation, as well as Bakersfield in Detroit and Isalita's in Ann Arbor. If we hear from other Dexter residents that things are improving, we'll make another trip back. We're hoping...

This review is largely a warning about using the online ordering system. We eat Chela's fairly regularly and it's usually alright. The staff is friendly and the food is decent. Tonight was a pretty epic fail though and from reading other reviews, their online ordering seems to be a common weakness.

Our online takeout order didn't make it to their kitchen as we discovered when we showed up to pick the food up. This was an unwelcome surprise made worse by a non-existent host/front of house and 10 minutes of standing around before being acknowledged somewhat rudely by one of the staff. After a few minutes, the manager came out and explained that they didn't get the order and took a picture of my order confirmation email to expedite the order. After another 5-10 minutes, he came out with the food and again suggested calling next time instead of ordering online. I wrote it off as being solely a struggling online system until I got home and realized there were multiple mistakes and missing items from the order itself.

Overall, fairly disappointing experience. I hope it was a one-off and we will give them another chance since it's important to us to keep local businesses but it certainly won't involve the online ordering system. In the spirit of ending on a positive, the orange/hot salsa...