Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Timonium

Hadn't been to a Chili's in several years. Not as good as I remembered it - but what is these days, amiright? ;-) Summary: Extremely average experience all around, from the service to the food.

The experience: Lunchtime on a Monday. GF and I split the texas fries (bacon on side since she's pescatarian) + the quesadilla explosion salad, which usually comes with chicken - since she doesn't eat land meat, we had some back-and-forth with our waiter, Will, over what could be substituted. He mentioned salmon and shrimp, but when my gf asked about black beans, we were told it would be an upcharge. We said no thanks to the upcharged beans (for that reason) and settled on the salmon substitute. When the check came, there was an upcharge for the salmon, a surprise since from the aforementioned convo it was pretty clear we selected the salmon bc it was a substitution for the chicken, not a charge. Fortunately it was rectified as soon as we brought it to Will's attention.

The food itself: the Texas Fries were just fine / nothing to write home about; I swear I recall Chili's having better fries than this back in the day. The Quesadilla Explosion salad (w salmon) was tastier, my gf got the lime (?) balsamic vinaigrette after sadly learning they apparently no longer had her favorite dressing, the southwest ranch. Everything came out pretty fast which was good since we did have a bit of a time constraint.

One standout: God bless our server Will; it was his first day and he handled everything like a champ. We asked him a bunch of questions about the dishes and had some customizations as mentioned above, and he answered as best he could, running back to the kitchen to get the answer when he couldn't. It truly felt like a surprise pop quiz on his first day and i feel like he passed. He was also attentive and remembered the lemon for our waters, something a surprising amount of servers fail to do.

Other feather-rufflers: the staff at this location seem to spend all their time in the back of house, by default. Maybe it's just because it was a slower (but far from empty!) lunchtime, maybe they were trained to do this for [reasons], but the result is that it took several minutes to get seated bc no one approached us at the hostess stand / no staff saw us enter. We ended up having to flag down a runner (who was speedily on his way back into the kitchen after delivering an order) to get any help. Seems very odd to me for there to be zero staff floating around the dining room during active daytime dining hours. Take note, local teens: could be a great dine-dash spot until they wise up 😉 (JUST KIDDING! WE DO NOT CONDONE SKIPPING ON THE BILL!) but like cmon guys, you shouldn't be spending all your time in the kitchen, that's why you are called "front of house" staff.

Needless to say, I'm probably good on Chili's for...

We have been to this Chili's many times over the years and usually have a good experience. Last night could not have been much worse of a dining experience. My food came out cold through the center and vegetables had so much salt on them I nearly choked. I am not one to complain but it was inedible. By the time I got my replacement meal my family was finished with theirs and were ready to leave. They sat and waited while I ate and we asked for the check. My daughter and I went to the bathroom while we waited and it was absolutely filthy. It was close to 8pm and quite obvious no one had tended to it since before the dinner rush. My 20 year old daughter didn't want to use any of the gross stalls but had to. We returned and still did not have our check. The new on table computer system was an absolute horror. It wouldn't work so I asked for a paper check and never received one. 30 minutes later the machine was brought back while still restarting and again did not work properly. Eventually we got it working and were able to pay. I tried to fill out the survey, but the keyboard of the device was horrible and has the @ sign on the center of the keyboard where the space bar should be and is on every other keyboard. The manager never came over to apologize for my uncooked meal and didn't take anything off the check until I asked the waitress for it to be removed. Again, I am not someone who usually complains or leaves bad reviews, but it was truly a...

The food was okay, not terrible. But theres nothing more disappointing than dry meat and my ribs were exactly that. Overcooked to a point that I asked for extra BBQ sauce to excessively dip the meat to try and make up for the dryness. A sad day for my poor rack of ribs. I cant remember the name of the meal but it was some kind of huge combo platter with ribs, clucks and fries, and I think it's called street corn? The corn had a bit too much seasoning on it for me. The best way to describe it would be certain areas of the corn where I'd take a bite would have so much seasoning chewing felt grainy and there was an overwhelming taste of salt. The fries and clucks were A1 as usual, I've never had a bad order of those at a chili's. Our server was super friendly but we ended up seeing 3 other people in the course of our meal and to be honest that makes tipping difficult and hinders the quality of customer service in general. No one wants to tip a waitress something one person should get, no matter how sweet, if they cant ever find her and end up asking or flagging down other employees that arent working her table. My fiance, her parents and I enjoyed our meals for the most part. There's just a few things that could've gone smoother. I'd definitely give it another shot but 3 stars because unfortunately there are better places to go choices wise so who knows...