Chi-Chi's — Restaurant in Saint Louis Park

Truly, I am generally very patient, understanding, and laid back. I try not to be critical. But I came to Rojo with my friends for happy hour a few weeks back and, from start to finish, I have never experienced worse customer service than we did that night. We had a reservation at 8:30 pm and arrived on time, but it was obvious that they didn't save space for our reservation. It wasn't that busy, but we were seated at what is undoubtedly the "in case of emergency", last resort table that was in between two drafty doors, and under an awfully bright light that was positioned so that it would shine right into the face of one of the patrons. In this case, it was mine, but I volunteered to sit there as it bothered my friend who is prone to migraines. All fine and dandy, we didn't care all that much.

Our server stops by and we get our drinks and the free chips and salsa, queso, cool. At one point we asked for another bowl of queso, which was never delivered. For well over the next hour, we watched her make several loops around to every other table BUT OURS, too busy schmoozing her drunken patrons at other tables to stop by ours. She never asked if we wanted to order food, never brought or asked if we wanted water with our other drinks, and we couldn't flag her down because she didn't even glance or turn in our direction.

At 9:45, when we were just about to flag down another employee to get our server, she finally makes an appearance at our table and says that it's LAST CALL for food. Did we want to order anything?

Um... YES. Where have you been? We been waiting to order for OVER AN HOUR now. Not one to be rude to a service provider, I would not have said that to her, but I responded with an emphatic "YES, we are absolutely starving." One person in our group is both vegan and GF, so she orders and asks to have her meal made vegan which is typically not an issue. Our server asked, "dairy free?" to which we responded, "yes, vegan and GF". And of course, her order came out and was in fact NOT vegan, and had an aioli in it which is mayo based. 😑 By that point it was too late; the meal could not have even been remade, and my friend went hungry.

Lastly, and I want to say that this would absolutely not be a big deal in and of itself in pretty much any other case, but with everything else, it was just par for the course of the night. She brought us one bill, without having split it or even asking if we wanted it split. It took several minutes for her to come back around so we could ask for it to be split.

I want to reiterate, I'm generally a super reasonable and understanding customer. I understand that service can be rough when a place is busy and I don't ever give my servers a hard time, but Rojo was not that busy during our time there and there was no conceivable reason for the service to be as awful as it was. The drunk patrons already thought she was awesome. They were already likely to tip well. It felt to us as though she was purposely schmoozing them to get better tips, but ignoring us in the process.

MY food was good, but nothing could make up for the horrible service and my friend going hungry. We were very upset and will...

Just got back from the new Chi Chi’s. I’m not usually one for writing reviews so it says a lot I’m taking the time to write this. I can’t wait to tell my co-workers tomorrow CHI CHI’S IS BACK BABY!

My advice? Ignore the Negative Nancy’s trashing the place. For god’s sake the place just opened. Having worked in the industry launching a new restaurant always comes with headaches, challenges, and hiccups. Give these folks some grace. That being said, from the experience I had tonight they didn’t even need it. If I didn’t know they had just opened 3 days ago I would never have even guessed it.

We checked in and were seated promptly (MAKE A RESERVATION!) We heard someone just walking in get quoted a 1.5 hour wait and I would believe it because the place was packed. The decor had subtle nods to the original but it felt fresh and modern and not a kitschy reboot. Chips and salsa hit the table within 60 seconds of us being seated. The chips were thin and crispy and the salsa was fresh and delicious. I lived in Texas for 15 years where Tex-Mex is a religion and restaurants live and die based on their chips and salsa and their Margarita’s. Our server was right behind the chips and took our drink order. We all ordered Margarita’s and had them within a few minutes. The bar was full the entire way around and the place was super busy so props to whoever was working that service well! The margarita’s were on point. No cheap nasty Margarita mix in this place.

We ordered and it took maybe 20-25 minutes to get our entrees. I don’t think that was unreasonable at all especially as busy as they were. We ordered the queso and hands down it was better than anything I ever ate in Texas. It was super creamy and very tasty. The fajita’s I had were delicious. My companions all raved about their entrees as well. Everything was hot and well presented. I haven’t had Tex-Mex this good since I moved from Texas.

The manager stopped by and checked on us and later the owner Michael McDermott stopped by and checked on us. I was the only 1 in my party who had ever been to a Chi Chi’s before but it was nice to get to chat with him and share the excitement of an old favorite coming back from the grave. Our server was incredible and on top of everything from start to finish.

I 100% will be back and I look forward to hopefully many more years of...

If you like getting food poisoning, then this is the place to go for sure! My friend and I ate there a few days ago and we both got violently ill that night. Adding insult to injury - I spoke to the general manager about the issue thinking they would want to look into this situation. He immediately went into how the law doesn't require him to do anything about it. What does this tell you about him and his restaurant? That he doesn't make decisions based on what it right or ethical or safe, just what he legally HAS to do. In other words, if it is legal for a restaurant to have up to 12 rats in the kitchen, he would only do something about it if they had 13. If you are a woman and have ever had a man speak in a condescending tone towards you (and if you are woman you absolutely have) that is how he treated me. He implying I was either lying or didn't understand what was happening to my own body. He had a chance to tell me he was sorry about what had happened to me and my friend and that he would look into the situation and check the food to make sure if there was a problem, he would stop it and prevent other customers from getting sick, instead he just hid behind what his legal obligation are to act. We had ordered nachos with beef, he didn't even bother to ask me what meat we had on our nachos - which seems like an important question when someone tells you they got food poisoning from what they ate at your restaurant. All he did was make sure that he not only lost the two of us as customers but everyone we know and send the message that he doesn't care about any of his customers health. Also, this isn't actually authentic Mexican food like they suggest, its tex mex, which is fine, but they are lying about what they offer. So if you want tex mex followed by a couple days in your bathroom then you will be happy with this place. If you want actual Mexican food and to not be sick afterwards I would suggest some place else. The service is also slow and the servers behave like they are inconvenienced but waiting on you - which is odd since that is...