Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Southgate

Worst visit we ever had.

We went yesterday, Father's Day. ( For me - Dad. ) now I know it was probably going to be busy and we would have to wait so ok, no problem, but as soon as we walked in there was no host / hostess to great us. We were first in line.

After standing there 13 minutes, ( we initially arrived at 8:11 pm ) - someone finally came to great us. Also by the time she walked up 4 other families walked up behind us. Then she said it would be a ten to fifteen minute wait and we would have to wait in our car even though we had our masks on.

She took my phone number and the five of us went back to our car to wait. Now its 8:27 and we turned on the radio in our car and talked. We were first in line as it said on my phone we would be called between 8:34 and 8:43 and after 20 minutes we were called in. ( ok it's Father's Day - I still get it. ) Remember now we arrived at 8:11 pm.

Now it 8:50 pm. And we sat down to read the menus. After ordering fairly quickly ( We had a very good waiter - It's about 8:58 now ) - we began to wait. And wait and wait ! 9:15 ... 9:30 ... 9:45...

At 9:53 we finally got our food. My daughter had a steak and corn on the cob and the corn was COLD. My son ordered his meal with broccoli steam cooked which came RAW. My other daughter ordered loaded mash potatoes with her meal and they never arrived. After asking for a re-heated corn on the cob, new broccoli, and the mash potatoes we again waited. My one daughters steak was eaten by the time the corn arrived hot, but after asking for melted butter 4 times she had to wait more so her hot corn began to cool. My taco's I ordered were slightly warm not hot but I started in anyway. ( My wife had eaten at work so she just ordered an ice cream dessert which was delicious and fresh. ( Best part of the whole meal. )

Finally the manager and waiter brought out her fresh hot melted butter but her corn now was only slightly warm. ( After waiting 20 minutes when her cold corn first arrived cold ) they also brought the warm steamed broccoli and the mash potatoes after both of the other meals were already eaten.

As we told her of our horrible dinner experience she just she ' Oh, sorry ' and quickly walked off not seeming to care at all. Our waiter was EXTREMELY polite and apologetic and he did the best he could.

We we done by just before 11:00 ( after arriving at 8:11pm remember ) .

People I understand it was Father's Day but getting cold food after waiting close to an hour is no excuse. Usually we have great service there and hot food but my Father's Day meal was horrible and I'm not happy about it. My reviews are usually 75 - to 90 percent good and I DO understand when a restaurant gets swamped but in this case it was awful !!!!

We asked the waiter for some kind of compensation and after he pleaded with the manager, she only took off the price of my wife's dessert but had no apologies or anything. Five stars for the waiter, 1/4 star for the food, and minus one for the...

If I could give -5 stars, I would. (sorry in advance for this long review.) When we first sat down it was pretty okay, but after about 15 minutes we hadn’t even been greeted. After we had been brought our chips and salsa and drinks, our server, Marla, apologized and went to speak to another table. She ignored us for a half hour and then came back and took our order. My mother literally had to place her own order on that tablet because she couldn’t figure it out. It took another 30 minutes for our food to come out, with several apologies from Marla, and it turned out it wasn’t even correct. The explosion salad came out with little to no lettuce. We sent it back and our server kept blaming it not being fixed on other people. Mind you, she made about 10 mistakes the whole time we were there and didn’t take responsibility for ANY of it. We were never rude to her, and my mom always explained that she had experience in customer service and got that stuff happened. When we received our carne asada we wanted guacamole. We ordered it and waited for no joke 40 MINUTES. She kept saying she put it in when we told her, but there’s genuinely no way it would take that long to get one thing of guacamole. She did eventually come out with two tiny ranch cups full of guacamole, which we appreciated. Near the end when we were brought the bill, our server had overcharged us a salad. Now by then we had been there for 2 1/2 hours and were tired, so we requested the manager. Our server took offense to this and tried to blame the errors on the chefs. We still wanted the manager, and when she called him over she HUSHED my mother. After that, my mom explained what happened to us the entire time and how we were being ignored for an unnecessary amount of time in-between visits, he fixed our bill and discounted us 50%. That wasn’t the end of Marla reign of terror though, because she came back and told my mom she “came from a generation that apologized” and that she could “rip on her all she wanted” in a very rude tone. She then ignored us and didn’t bring boxes because she was mad. My mom was nothing but nice to her the whole time, but as soon as we were tired of it and wanted it to be fixed she completely changed. The manager was extremely nice and helpful though. We just wanted to have a nice mother’s day dinner. Shoulda gone...

We came Friday night 1/19. The food was serviceable. We received it roughly one minute after receiving our appetizers, which is usually not a big deal to me but all of our appetizers were fried and having to wait 30 minutes to get it only to receive our entree so soon after, needless to say it was put to the side and was pretty much a waste of an order. The chicken on the fajitas trio was shockingly cold in comparison to the steak and shrimp that were also on the plate and we didn’t receive our sides of Guac. But it’s a friday night, stuff happens.

Now to get to the real issue of our visit: The service.

Brian. Bryan?

He took our order not in front of our table, but sitting down at the bar adjacent to us. Which was right under speakers, surrounded by two booths with people, and multiple televisions emitting sound, we had to repeat what we were saying twice and had to even raise our voice a little to be heard properly. Then throughout our meal, my date was never asked once if she wanted a refill. We never asked if we needed any napkins or even the obligatory “How’s the food?”; the only time we were checked up on during our meal was to see if I wanted another beer. Which refills AREN’T free for so :))

At the end of our meal, we were visibly not pleased with our service and instead of asking us if were familiar with the tablet-paying service (which, mind you he HAD explained to other tables around us when they were ready to pay), he quite literally reached across the table to grab the tablet away from us and proceeded to tip himself the amount he believed he deserved and then asked for the card so he could swipe it. Something he did not do to the other tables. He wouldn’t even let us look it over before asking for our payment method. he KNOWS he did a mediocre job and tried to squeeze the best he could out of it. I’m all for over-tipping but for the first time in my life, I wanted to tip LOW and I wasn’t even given the option. He chose it for himself, which a server should never do. Very unfortunate service for a $70+ meal, that just quite frankly made it a poor customer experience that I don’t think I’ll be coming back to or recommend any time soon.

We just...