Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Dr. Phillips

On a Mother’s Day were all the businesses are ready for a busy day, this restaurant managed to get people to leave or become angry. All the businesses on this area are constantly busy, it’s full with tourists. When we ask the host for the waiting time, looking around and seeing multiple tables available, he mentions 20 to 30 minute wait. Why? He said that the manager decided to close an entire section of the restaurant. Looking around you can see families angrily waiting for tables and looking at that empty section, wondering what’s going on. The manager that made that decision was not around to help her staff or personally be accountable for that decision. The host took us to our table at 7:34 and it wasn’t until 7:50 that the waiter greeted us. He apologized for the service and left us there until 8:22 were he brought our drinks. Mind you this happened because I asked for the manager and explained my discontent with the service. Don’t get me wrong some of the staff here was working very hard but this particular waiter was the cherry on top of all the bad things going on tonight. The table next to us and the one behind us were equally upset with the service, both took advantage of finally seen the manager’s face to express how poorly the service was. She apologized and made it clear that it wasn’t her fault, then try to make us feel better by offering chips and salsa or a soup. Unacceptable! Food was at the table after an hour of wait, brought by the manager who blame the waiter and apologized again for the poor service. Again the waiter, that was only attending 4 tables at the moment, forgot to refill our drinks. At the end she decided to gives us the food for free for the whole table. People in the restaurant business should know that giving the customers the food for free, offering chips or a gift card doesn’t take care of the problem or fixes what was already done. I’m not there because I can’t afford a meal, want to be problematic and therefore eat for free! That’s extremely rude! I can pay for my food but I can’t accept or tolerate bad service. For that, no chips, gift cards or free food work. There’s no excuse for what happened tonight. Don’t know if this is a one time situation at this location or what’s going on with the Chili’s around Florida. Is not the first time that I experience a bad service at these restaurants and the biggest reason for not sponsoring them anymore. That restaurant desperately needs a new manager and some direction....

Chili's isn't my favorite restaurant, because the food and service can be hit or miss. But the $20 for 2 deal makes it a decent deal, and their Chili's Rewards program convinced me to give them quite a few chances. But now they're closing down the program and I need to use up my 479 points by the end of the year. For that reason, we chose this location about 8pm yesterday evening.

I checked the app on the way there, and was pleased to see no wait. The parking lot had empty spots and we got a spot near the door, which also pointed to no wait (or bad service/food, in retrospect). When we walked in, there were two other parties waiting in front of us. The host was rushing around frantically, but not accomplishing anything. About half of the tables in the restaurant were empty, but almost every single empty table was full of dirty dishes.

Eventually, one party in front of us was seated. We heard the host tell the party of 2 in front of us that he had a table he could seat them at, but the waitress just had two tables seated so they wouldn't get good service. It was about another 5 minutes after that before they were seated. Two other parties came in and were waiting behind us. There were no clean tables visible, and the host continued to rush around frantically.

He told us that he had a table he could seat us at, but that the party had just left and the table hadn't been cleaned left. (A lie. We had been there almost 20 minutes and NOBODY had left during that time. EVERY SINGLE DIRTY TABLE had been there at least 20 minutes.) I asked to speak to the manager.

While I was waiting, I pulled up Yelp and saw that the other reviews were horrible. When will I learn to check Yelp FIRST? It would save so many bad experiences like this.

It took about 5 minutes for him to find the manager. I explained the situation to the manager and he said he would get a table cleaned off and seat us right away. I told him "No you won't. We're going somewhere else to eat." And we did.

The 25 minutes we waited should have been almost enough time for us to be seated, get our food, eat, pay (Ziosk is fast!) and leave. (Our normal visits last 30-45 minutes.)

From our initial experience and the other reviews, I wouldn't have been surprised to have poor service and bad food.

This is obviously a management problem. Whoever owns this location needs to...

This is not our local Chili's, we were in the area and thought we would give it a try. It was an utter mistake. Wish it was possible to give a 0. Party of 5 people, and 4 out of the 5 orders were wrong. Going 1 for 5 on orders is not good. Will give the waiter a little bit of a pass, as the waiter was new, and it looked like no training was given at all. However, it is unacceptable to not bus the table periodically. We had stacks of cups at the table that we had to eventually move to the server's station. And I'm not done. The back was full of jokes, while the front had no movement. There was jalapeño peppers in a kid's cheese pasta. How in the world is that even possible? Multiple times where drinks were not refilled, waiter was nowhere to be seen, and requests were literally ignored. A nice waitress came to refill our drinks, and that was when we were told that our original server was new. At that point, we had received more service from her than our actual server. Simple requests like no sauce on a sandwich and no jalapeños on the cheese fries? Not honored. My brother ordered the brisket quesadillas. They came out soggy, cheese not even melted, and he ended up vomiting due to how it tasted. The chips did not feel fresh, with a taste of old oil, almost acrid. Food came out almost an hour after we originally arrived, with no wait at all. Groups after us recieved their food ages before us, meanwhile we were waiting for drink refills. We didn't even bother asking for new food because it had taken so long for it to arrive in the first place. They tried to make a right, however, by taking the pasta off of the check, and offering a cheese pizza. And I appreciate the gesture. However, there was just too much wrong to accept this fully. This is a terrible restaurant, which pains me to say because my family and I frequent our local Chili's, at least 4 times a month. I myself work in a restaurant, which makes me feel sad about the service that we were given. Other servers were very attentive to their customers, however we were left in the dark. You can probably guess that I will never return to this location ever again, and nothing will bribe me to return. I will still go to my local Chili's, but for a tourist zone, this restaurant...