Chipotle Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Palo Alto

Word of Advice: Eat at Sweetgreen!

I ordered an Al Pastor Chicken bowl on the evening of 7/10/24 from your Stanford Mall location. After eating Chipotle and going to sleep, I awoke in the middle of the night with an intense urge to use the bathroom. Turns out, I needed to vomit. I ate nothing other than Chipotle for dinner that evening and I believe I suffered from food poisoning as a result of your food.

To be quite frank, I wasn’t surprised. Over the years of eating at Chipotle, I have discovered multiple incidents of improper food handling practices from various Chipotle locations. On several occasions, I have also called out your employees on their infractions.

One of the most common improper food handling practices occur when there is a lack of employees at your restaurant. I have witnessed several times when your employees handle the food, then use the cash register, then without hand washing or changing their gloves, go right back to working with the food! This is why I often choose to skip the cheese and lettuce section because they are DIRECTLY hand picked (no ladles/spoons involved).

The evening where I contracted food poisoning, I, however, unfortunately added cheese and lettuce into my Al Pastor bowl. I don’t know with 100% certainty whether the lettuce and cheese were the source of the food contamination, but it possibly could have been. If not, then the source of the food contamination lies elsewhere in the process of your food production. At the time I went, the Chipotle restaurant was understaffed. This was the case as I only saw 2 employees there on 7/10/24.

I am writing in hopes your company will step up and educate and train your employees on proper safe food handling practices and its importance! People come to Chipotle because they enjoy and TRUST your food. I have been eating at Chipotle since 2012! So more than a decade! However, with the recent events, I honestly cannot say I trust your food.

Thankfully, I only ate 1/2 of the Al Pastor bowl that night. Obviously, after vomiting everything I ate I promptly threw the remaining 1/2 away...

The food and the prices are good... but:

Assume the Chipotle on-line ordering app will dramatically underestimate prep time. If you arrive on time, plan to watch other people get served for 20+ minutes while you wait... and wait. You'll actually get your food faster if you skip the app, wait in the walk-in line, and order in person. Or you can order on-line and assume it will take 45 minutes, and then reheat your food when you get home.

Expect unusually bad service. Like, whatever "bad service" means to you, assume the service will be worse than that.

Here are some unnecessary details of my unpleasant experience that inspired this review, which I wrote up for therapy.

On Monday, I ordered lunch for me and the kids at about 12pm. The app promised a pickup time of 12:10pm. I arrived at about that time, and my on-line order was late. At 12:30pm, my on-line order still wasn't ready, but the walk-in line had turned over a few times and was now empty. So, I went to the front and asked the front cook to please make my on-line order, which was now more than 20 minutes late. She refused, and said I had to just keep waiting while she did nothing.

Now, look, I get that they have two assembly lines, one in front for walk-in and one in back for on-line/catering. And I get that if corporate's app promises 10-minute prep time when you're 30 minutes behind, there's not much the local operator can do. But surely the front cook could pluck my order from the on-line queue and make it for me? I was right there, the front line was idle, and the on-line queue was overloaded. Refusing to do that... why?

So I asked to speak with a manager. The line cook disappeared for a second and then said that the manager was coming. Five minutes later, no manager. I asked again, and the line cook said the manager was coming. Five minutes later, same story! At that point, I just gave up and left. If the manager is not going to come, could you please just tell me...

I try not to leave a bad reviews because I know that everyone has off days, but I've been to this place twice, and both times, it was not a pleasant experience. I hope someone from Chipotle management reads this because this branch is hands-down the dirtiest, slowest, weirdest Chipotle I've ever been to. It gives Chipotle a bad name.

The first time I went their POS system was down so they were only taking cash and online orders, which seemed bizarre. I've never had that happen in a fast food restaurant before. The service was so slow. So slow, in fact, that while in line, my boyfriend decided he would leave to get McDonald's. He was able to walk, order, pick up, and return to Chipotle before I ever got to the front of the line.

The second time I went the lady in front of me had ordered a salad and was about the pay when she asked for the dressing on the side, and they told her there was no dressing available. No apology or anything. The lady was annoyed, and after some discussion, the guy behind the counter said he could make dressing, but it would take 15 minutes. I understand running out of dressing and needing to make it, but shouldn't the lady have been told when she ordered the salad? Every single table was dirty in this establishment, and people literally left the line as I was eating because it took too long and/or the food looked like it was left out too long. My food tasted fine, so that's why I'm giving it 2 starts instead of zero.

TLDR: There is no sense of accountability in this Chipotle & has really...