McAlister's Deli — Restaurant in Missouri City

I had to update this review because the service has become worse with each visit since they have opened. The first visit, the service was outstanding. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th has been a horrible experience to the point, I don’t know where to start. To sum up my last experience, I had visited this past weekend with a friend. We arrived around 9pm and they provided our food around 9:30pm at closing. One of the employees, told us it was time to leave right when we received our food for dine-in! We had ordered 2 broccoli cheddar soups, queso with chips, sandwiches, chips and drinks. We asked for spoons, and server said “would you like one, or two spoons”, I replied, “two please”. She responded sarcastically as if we were a “couple”. As I was eating my soup, I had a piece of plastic in my mouth from the soup. To add to that, I asked for our chips for the queso, and the same server looked at us like we didn’t deserve the chips. We made sure that we had ordered the queso and chips. She went and grabbed about 4 cookie baggies of chips, and there were literally 3- 4 pieces of chips in the baggie lol. You cannot make this up. Literally, there is more food on a airplane snack than this baggie of chips. It took us about 10 minutes to eat our food. Towards the end, an employee told us to leave so they can leave. Which was annoying, because that employee was on there phone or talking the entire time. There was only one person in the front working / cleaning the tables while the majority were just existing. For having 20 plus employees in this store, the service should be a lot better. You can literally remove half of the staff and provide efficient service and a better customer experience. The food is good, but small portions. Price is too high for what they are actually serving. The food is good but the service and experience is not worth it. They can use extra training, and better hiring process here. I would go here when they figure things out for better service...

Let's get the best thing out of the way, the food. You can expect the same good food as you have at their other locations. Sadly that is where it ends. Someone has been spending too much time with focus groups etc. Why in the world would you make this location twice as small as your other locations? Maybe since there is hardly any parking nearby. So we were all excited about having this place so close to our home, but yah hard pass unless its a Tuesday afternoon. We went on a Saturday afternoon, crazy busy, or was it? There only has to be 5 people in line for it to look like OMG maybe we should go somewhere else. We actually watched multiple customers look and leave. The lined moved fairly well but there were very few tables available and the one's that were available were so squeezed in a corner that you had to ask the people seated already to move so you could sit down. FYI - you can now skip the line all together and order via their app "tableside". Can't speak to that as we did it the old fashioned way. Also, I might point out they do not have a drive thru, it is a pickup window. You must use the app to use the "drive thru". Several people were in line that didn't' want to do that. There are no utensils out for you to grab, and it was very confusing whether you should or shouldn't bus you table when done. We watched so many people unsure of what to do and because it was busy, people were sitting at dirty tables since that was all that was available. There is one little trash receptacle on the whole floor but it is right where the line splits to get to both registers. All in all, the good food in my humble opinion not worth all of that. Maybe this is a "boutique" location? Dunno but it's a pass for us. Too many other non-confusing establishments to choose from. So much potential but...

I heard great things about this deli on Nextdoor, so I decided to pop in to try it. I placed my order at 3:55pm as a to-go order. At 4:25pm, I began to see customers who ordered after me get their food. Meanwhile, there were several times I locked eyes with the staff and not ONE person commented to check on my order. Before I decided to approach the counter, I decided to wait another five minutes thinking maybe because I ordered crispy bacon on my BLT it took more time. I asked the person at the counter to check on my order.

The person went to the back to check the order because I guess the kitchen couldn’t hear him ask. Seconds later, my order appears. I asked the cashier if my order had been sitting back there and the response was yes. So, I checked my son’s pizza and it was no longer hot. The manager/ owner (not for sure of the title) came from the back and took the container to have the pizza re-made. “We can re-make it for you.” Ok…. Sure I had already been waiting, what’s a few more minutes. Upon receiving the pizza, I was told they were sorry for the wait. But here is what takes the cake, I get home to eat my food and there is a hair on my pickle 😔 At this point, I’m disgusted.🤮 I’m not sure if I would go back, but for...