Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Mesa

Our first visit to this location was absolutely amazing. When we attempted a second visit, the seating was chaotic. We called ahead to ask if we needed to give any notice of a large party and were told they noted it and would see us at the designated time (which is when we arrived). We did have a rather large party, but were informed that rather than seating large parties in a way to accommodate all groups, two parties had been seated in the middle on opposite sides of the establishment and we would have about twenty minutes until we could be seated. Absolutely understandable. After forty five minutes, we followed up with the hostess and manager because she came over. They told us the table had paid more than an hour previously, as did the other large party in the restaurant, but they hadn’t left. They let us know that they wouldn’t say anything to the tables about time, but we were welcome to split our party up and be on separate sides of the restaurant. While I understand doing the best to accommodate seating, it should have been organized better or communicated better with us from the start. If we had known from the start that the parties had closed out and still were seated, we wouldn’t have waited at all. We stuck to it because it was a birthday celebration, but will not be returning. At that point it was over an hour and we left and went somewhere else. That’s on us for waiting, but we had so looked forward to another amazing experience. The lack of communication regarding seating, seems to be from not wanting to either address the needs or wants of patrons or address any problems, as well as the attitude we received from the hostess when we asked for an update after 45 minutes, were not precursors to a positive dining experience. Overall, the first experience was amazing, absolutely worth it. Unless you have a party of four or less, expect to be waiting and for that wait time to be inaccurate...

This may have been one of my worst experiences in a restaurant ever. And I've worked in restaurants. I'm pretty easygoing usually when a dish isn't great. However, we ordered the skillet queso. It came out like a liquid soup consistency, tasted like a spice i couldn't even name, but that was all I could taste. No cheese. Just some awful spice and otherwise flavorless. We asked our server to take it back. And she did, with no issues. But then, the manager came out with a new one, that i didn't ask for. She said they stired it up from the same batch. I told her we didn't want it because it wasn't good. She said to my my family that she didn't think we were being very honest. First, the one we sent back was nearly untouched. All 3 of us tried it on one chip and agreed it was awful before sending it back. Second, I didn't ask for a replacement. She said she would leave it and take it off the bill. And walked off. We never touched the new one with the exception of me taking one bite to tell the manager that while it was suddenly thicker, it still tasted awful. I definitely let my server know how the manager treated us. The GM came out and spoke with us. And offered my mom a free desert as we were there for her birthday. The GM was very nice and our server was great. I don't know if the manager that came out just had a bad day. But she managed to ruin a person's entire birthday celebration. I was nice enough not to complain about my mom biting into chicken bone in her salad. But more out of fear of being told I was being dishonest again. I truly hope the GM did speak to her. Because that is awful service. To our server, thanks for still being amazing through all of that. On a follow up note, I went home and today decided to make the copycat recipe online just to see. And it came out tasting like queso. So not sure what they have...

Our Waiter Dillon was very oblivious, rude & unprofessional. If you end up with him I advise you to ask for a different waiter. When He first arrived at our table to greet us his overall attitude was gloomy like he didn't want to be there. It took him a while to even come to us after we had been seated, about 15 to 20 mins. He messed up our order multiple times. I ended up having a question about a cost on bill and what we got. But when I questioned him about a cost on bill he just argued with me rather then helping me with my concerns, I eventually had to get the manager to get answers. After we talked to manager about cost on bill & mix up of orders, Dillon was rude to us & acted annoyed everytime he came to our table. We had to ask every time to get our drinks refilled after they were empty for a while, he never filled them otherwise. He barely showed up at our table. He never cleaned up our dirty dishes or empty glasses, we eventually had to push all dishes to the end of table near wall to have space so the area was disgusting during most of visit. We saw him just standing talking with co workers & on phone alot during our visit rather then attending to his tables. We over heard him saying how much he hated working there. We saw him mess up the orders of the other people around us during our visit & He acted the same way towards them as he did to us. We were at chillis for 2 hours due to his lack of work & unprofessional behavior. We even caught him complaining to other co workers about us when we didn't do anything to him other then ask for a manager because he wasn't providing answers. His overall performance & attitude ruined our entire visit. We understand someone can have a bad days but please dont put that on your customers. We understand people make mistakes but the way he handled it was very...