Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Naperville

I drive about 34 miles every weekend from East Dundee to Naperville to see my sweetheart. We have lunch at Chili’s on route 59 in Naperville every Saturday without fail and dinner at Maggianos in Naperville.

We have always loved lunch at Chili’s. The atmosphere is fun, the food is great, and up to this point the service had been exceptional.

Unfortunately, this past Saturday 06/15, We experienced the ABSOLUTELY WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE WE HAVE EVER HAD AT ANY RESTAURANT AT ANY TIME!

We arrived at Chili’s about 2:45 PM. We asked to be seated in a booth and we’re promptly seated in a minuscule booth for two people. We were sitting about 10 feet from the hostess station. Keep in mind, that the restaurant is nearly empty and there are easily 15 to 20 open booths available. But yet, we get seated in a tiny booth that looks like it was suitable for children. I’m not a big guy (5’8, 180#) but it felt claustrophobic and cramped.

After waiting 15 minutes in a nearly empty restaurant and not having anyone show at our table, we decided to have lunch elsewhere.

We stopped by the hostess station on our way out to let them know that we were leaving. There was a large gentleman with an unkempt appearance in a faded shirt leaning on the hostess station talking to a young lady.

We assumed the gentleman was the manager, even though he looked like he worked in the kitchen. We let him know that we had waited 15 minutes and that nobody came to our table and that we were leaving to dine elsewhere.

His reply was to simply say OK. He did not stand up straight, he did not make eye contact, he did not interrupt his conversation, he did not apologize for the CUSTOMER SERVICE failure, he didn’t say I’m sorry, sir how can we make this right?, He didn’t say anything except OK as he continued to lean on the hostess station as if to prop himself up.

What this guy did manage to do is to drive us away and damage the brand, image and reputation of Chilis in our minds.

It boggles my mind that Brinker International would have such a person in their employ. Brinker is all about customer service and improving the guest experience. But they sure did drop the ball hiring this guy.

I certainly hope other people did not experience the same type of horrible service we received. But it’s been my experience over many decades of dining out that if something occurs once with a bad employee resulting in a negative customer outcome, it has occurred before with the same employee.

The one saving grace to this dumpster fire of a customer service failure was that we had dinner as usual at Maggianos and as always the food was stellar and the service...

Working as a server in the past, I can tell these employees are doing their absolute best. I’ve gone to chili’s many times over the years, several different locations, and they’ve never disappointed, even on busy nights. Food is always good, and they have a huge menu with many options for vegetarians, which is amazing. They also always take my seafood allergy very serious. Once the host told us we couldn’t be seated for about 45 minutes due to them being understaffed. This is 100% understandable due to so many places hiring because covid. Even though we saw a few tables open, one server can only take so many tables without risking ruining an experience for another table. Personally I see this as very respectful and caring, I know when I get my table I’ll be treated to a wonderful time with my husband and our son. To-go is wonderful as well, they always get our order right, and if we ever ask for a sauce they always get it to us super fast. We ordered To-Go last night around 7:30, and they were pretty busy! But I was still treated with kindness and my order was 100% correct. The girl who answered the phone, (I believe her name was Ashley) I could tell she was new taking orders, was super kind and made sure my order was correct. Then, when my husband went in to pay, he told me that a very nice girl made the process super easy, even though the devices they have were causing issues. She knew exactly what to do and was super quick. (He said she had pink hair, and it makes us SO happy that restaurants nowadays are allowing beautiful self-expression, and not seeing it as “unprofessional”!!!) Now the only reason I didn’t give it five stars is because a few times we’ve managers being disrespectful to employees. We’ve heard comments and sometimes seen them talking with employees and not being as kind as they could be. I can tell there’s a minor issue with management in this restaurant. We’ve never spoken with a manager, but I’ve seen one female manager recently at the To-Go desk, she was super sweet and kind and I can tell the employees really like her. Regardless, amazing experiences always! (If anybody else is reading this, please be understanding with covid and low employment right now. people aren’t getting jobs because of unemployment checks, and many restaurants are understaffed, especially now with many kids going away...

My family and I dined at the Naperville Chili's this evening and experienced one problem after another. We called ahead for seating and were told that it was not necessary because there be no wait. I had them put us on the list nevertheless to insure that we would be seated promptly as we were heading to a movie after dinner. When we arrived there was nobody waiting for a table but they still made us wait and seated 3 parties that came in after us. It then took a long time for a server to wait on us and when she did bring the appetizers one of them was wrong. We had the manager, Ryan, come over and he agreed to swap the appetizer for a dessert. That was fine with us as we just shared the one appetizer and didn't have time to wait for them to make it right. After that it still took another 10-15 minutes to get our orders. Of course one of the orders was incorrect and at that point I just told them to keep it. The manager offered to make me something to go but I didn't have time to wait so I called in my order on the way home from the movie. I should have known better to check my order before I left as when I got home and opened it, it was wrong! They gave me chicken instead of shrimp fajitas and the tortillas were rock hard and dry. Terrible service all around! I will be contacting the district manager tomorrow to hopefully deal with the...