Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Sterling

My girlfriend and I had just checked into the nearby Residence Inn after a long day of driving cross state from Pennsylvania, and we were too tired to make a grocery run and fix the evening meal ourselves. We looked within the immediate plaza, but there were no gluten free options. My girlfriend is the one who has the sensitivities. She said "why don't we go to Chili's" as they do have gluten-free options -at least, they do in Texas where we are from, and those options are clearly marked on the menu. There were no marked options here. We ordered cheese fries, which I thought were passable, she thought were overdone. I ordered a burger, and requested no onions, a request which was ignored. My girlfriend ordered a burger too. They weren't sure if there were any gluten free buns. It turns out there were not. She had requested that if there was not, that they skip the bun and place the burger patty on top of the lettuce and tomato. They did not, the patty was to the side. In one sense, this is not a big deal, but exactly because it is not a big deal to simply place an item as requested by the customer, it is a big deal. The fries on the side? Dry and flavorless. I did not finish them. They even screwed up my girlfriend's refill and gave her the wrong flavor of lemonade. The server was fine, we did not take it out on him, I left a fair tip. The problem clearly was in the kitchen, the staff there not paying attention. And pre-tip this was all $40, which is an absurd amount of money for the quality. We were back home in Texas two nights later, had a great 6/8 oz sirloin and loaded potatoes for 35% less. This must be what I have to come to now know as the ""Loudon tax", the cost of living in this Virginia county is disproportionate to the average cost in the nation. Too much money all for some something very mid. And to top it off they know have these consoles on the table where you can pay, which is convenient, but also has "games for the kids" on it, as if the children cannot occupy themselves otherwise or do not have their own phones to kill time, but the up shot for adults is that this table consoles have been touched over and over during the day and obviously never wiped down. I happened to have Purell on me, but come on! Obviously we should have read the reviews before we made our selection, but when you're tired and hungry, you don't really want to vet...

This review is based upon the recent visit. Typically, it could easily be a 4-star review but one bad situation can put a sour taste in your mouth.

We were put on the wait list and were told 5 minutes due to the kitchen bring backed up. That was fine but then when we were then informed we would be seated as soon as they caught up, we asked how long that might be and the hostess stated 5-6 minutes. At that point, it had already been 8 minutes from the original time.

We started asking amongst ourselves what we were going to do. The hostess thought we were speaking to her for some reason...

My wife answered that we were just discussing if we were going to go elsewhere. She went on about how it wasn't their fault and so on and so forth. I told her that we had already been waiting and that despite what she was saying it was an inconvenience. She then proceeded to argue with me the definition of the word. She said that it wasn't so because were deciding to stay...not really sure where she was going with her argument. All she was doing was push us to leave.

I asked her name and then skirted away to look for the manager. We had already decided to leave...the manager just apologized but did little to help or make things better.

Disappointing to say the least. Not sure why we couldn't at least be seated and given drinks. We understand there is a back up but what's the point of "controlling" the traffic. Plus, this whole stance on arguing with customers...and making a point is perplexing. You're doing little to do anything but push...

Im not the one to usually complain about places but something does need to be addressed with one of the servers. This place is a great restaurant with good food, great atmosphere, and very clean. My server Micheal was not nice at all. Targeting one of my friends because they were nice to the server. Barely checking ID’s for drinks except my one friend who was “too nice” and when he ordered his drink his id needed to be reviewed in the back but everyone else's was good even though they barely checked and just glanced. The attitude of not caring about their job is not okay especially as a person who is also in the service industry. Not speaking at a volume so everyone hears and getting little to no eye contact does not make fellow employees in the serving industry look okay. This should no longer continue because this will damage the other employees since the rest of the team is amazing! The server SHOULD NOT work around customers and if they don’t want to do that then being fired would be the best option for them. I love this location and don’t want to stop going because I am a regular customer that thinks that this one person should not drag the rest of the amazing team of staff down with them. Please take my review into...