Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Webster

I do not usually leave reveiws as at a chain restaurant I do not think they are super helpful. I'm leaving the reveiw mostly so management can know about out unique dinning experience last night. I'm a chili's rewards member and got the email about chili's birthday celebration and asked my partner and our best couple friends if we all wanted to go grab dinner their on Thursday night to celebrate. Our one friend said they wouldn't be back to the webster area until after 9pm but that both of them still would like to come out for dinner with us. Around 8 my partner was starving so we decided to head over, get a table, some apps to snack on, a margarita or two, and hang out until the rest of our party joined.

We got there around 8:20 and were seated in Julian's section. At first Julian was very attentive, got our drink orders and some app orders. I even remarked to my partner how he seemed nice and attentive. However after the first round of apps came out and without talking to us he assumed we were only ordering apps and drinks. The dynamics switched as soon as he assumed this and we then not only became not a priority but we felt very ignored. Our drinks went unrefilled, as did our chips and he didn't check in with us really, despite serving the tables around us very attentively.

After about 45 mins our friends arrived, and we were still ignored despite two new customers joining. Someone grabbed drink orders (that came out with ice depite the request to not have any) but other than that we agian were left in the corner un attended. I have been a server before and can understand feeling tired and like a small order is not worth the effort but ignoring us felt unexceptable. I would rate our service from julian a 1 star experience. I believe he is probably a wonderful server, but it felt he was only going to give good service if your order deserved it.

Around this time in the night I think julian got cut and we had Kimberly take over our table. And WOW! What a difference in the whole experience. She immediately checked in with us, asked if we were going to be getting food (to which we excitedly replied yes! Because at this point we had all been decided on our orders for quite some time and had been wondering where our waiter was). She took all of our orders, made sure she got our drink orders as specified. Checked on us multiple times, and was VERY VERY attentive, funny, and overall a wonderful server. Kimberly deserves 5 stars and honestly more. Incredible, and patience too. A few times she walked up to check in with us and we were mid conversation and she waited till we finished scentences before asking us. Completely turned around the night.

All in all we spent over 150$, so the assumption that tips would be low was all wrong and honestly disrespectful to assume. When filling out the survey after paying Kimberly informed her that those would reflect on her as she was the one closing us out but after sharing our feelings about our service, she incuraged us to post on google or yelp so management would know. After we brought up how we felt she shared that when they were switching tables he said that we didn't really matter because we were just getting apps and drinks. She told us she didn't think that was true since we still had menus and new people had just showed up. It was disheartening to have confirmed that our bad service was correlated to the incorrect assumption that that's all we were getting.

I understand everyone is human, it was near the end of his shift, serving is a rough job and maybe he was not having the best day. But we deserved the decency of a conversation before being completely ignored. This definitely won't be the last time we go to this chili's but hopefully next time Kimberly will serve us for the...

The experience I had this afternoon was far less than stellar. I’ve given the experience a one-star rating based on the customer service I received from the three Chili’s employees with whom I had the displeasure of interacting. The first employee was the hostess who greeted me promptly upon my entrance and allowed me to choose the booth where I wanted to sit.

The server introduced himself as Chris and seemed to have a lot of opinions on my decision to refuse his offers of napkins—even though I showed him I brought my own hand wipes. I ordered a strawberry lemonade, that was given to me by a carrier, and when I asked for a to-go cup for the beverage I was given sass and a dirty/sticky cup (see blue substance on lower part of cup in picture). Moments later, Chris brought a second strawberry lemonade—that I neither asked for nor wanted—that looked drastically different from the first. He said “here is a refill, so I don’t have to come back over later.” I was taken aback by his statement because, again, I didn’t want/need two giant cups of strawberry lemonade and the temperature of his tone was rude. He then INSISTED on giving me an absurd stack of napkins—stating “even without the ranch this burger gets messy.” My burger was brought out quickly by the same carrier and, before I could make a request, she sarcastically said “you’re welcome” and hastily walked away.

I sat and waited for Chris to come check on me so I could ask for a to-go container, as the energy I was getting was far less than welcoming, but he never came. After a while, I asked the hostess if the restaurant offered a veteran discount and asked for my check because I no longer wanted to be in such a negative space. She walked off, I heard her speak to someone, and then she handed me a to-go container, said nothing and walked away. I waited, but ended up picking up the kiosk to pay with my card—even though I’d planned to pay with cash—because no one ever brought the check I requested.

After I paid, the kiosk started a questionnaire and, as I was answering the questions, Chris looked over my shoulder and saw that I responded that I would not be returning to that Chili’s location. At this point, Chris started complaining about how it was a bad reflection on him and kept asking me if I wanted to speak to the manager. I had to repeatedly tell him I didn’t and I just wouldn’t be returning. I wasn’t rude and found myself being reassuring even though he was part of the problem. Lol

Overall, the experience was the worst Chili’s experience I’ve had and the other day an employee at the Pearland location told me they didn’t carry strawberry lemonade at all and said “We have blackberry. You were close; just remember next time it’s a blackberry—not a strawberry.” So, for me to say this experience was less than stellar than expected is saying something. Lol The fries were decent, and the burger was meh, but the light lemonade (see picture) was perfect—not too sweet.

UPDATE: Look, even the “response” from them is disingenuous! Terrible. Absolutely terrible. If zero stars...

No one standing by the door to greet us when we walked in, we had to wait a few minutes to be seated (whatever, it happens sometimes), then it takes forever for the server to come get our drink orders. We had a Chili’s reward coupon for a free order of chips and queso or guacamole, when I asked the server for specifics of which queso was included, her answer was “I don’t know, whatever the coupon says.” ... well that’s unacceptable, at least ask a manager because the coupon didn’t specify which one was included. So I just told her we wanted the guacamole and chips. 15 minutes passes and people that walked in after us are being served their appetizers. Our server tells us “Due to the high volume and how busy our kitchen is, it’s just taking a little longer. Bear with us.” Well that’s funny because again, people that came in after us were getting the SAME appetizer that we ordered. My theory is she didn’t care because our app was free due to the coupon, but we still ordered entrees so we were paying customers just like everyone else. Another server in there seemed to really care about his customers and was super quick with getting their orders out. I wish he had been our server because we would have stayed to eat. After about 5 more minutes we decided to just leave. All we had at the table were waters, no food ever came to our table. The server wasted about 25 minutes of our time just for us to not get anything we ordered. I don’t know her name but she was working on 5/30 at 9:00 pm. As we were leaving a huge group of people were standing by the door waiting to be seated, plus a few other parties. This location clearly needs better management and better customer service skills because they are seriously lacking in that department. If we’re ever visiting the Houston area again, I will steer clear of this restaurant. You’re better off just going to a drive thru in the area for quicker and...