Chilis

Airport.
Trapped.
Must feed family before long flight.

Stuck.

$9.00 burgers from dirty chili's.
Edible.
Seating.

'Nuff said.

My sister and I spent 9 abysmal hours at the Fort Lauderdale airport this past Saturday.  The line for security was about 5 miles long and the line for Chili's was about half that.  We were hungry, it was approaching lunchtime and we still had a fortnight to go before our flights so we decided to eat something here.

We waited in line for over an hour (there were really no other restaurants in this terminal) but that didn't really matter seeing as we had nothing else to do but wait anyway.

We joined up with a couple from near Vancouver which was fun.  Hey Bob and Renee!  

I ordered a flavored margarita of some kind, frozen, but our waitress informed me that there was a slight possibility that 1) I wouldn't get the drink for awhile and 2) they might not be able to prepare a frozen beverage at all.  WTF?  Whatever, I said, I'll take it regular then.

Lucky me, they were magically able to make it frozen!

I'm a vegetarian (self imposed, I know) so there was very little for me on this menu, which I knew.  I despise flying and really just needed to get drunk so I was there for the liquid nutrition.

I ended up ordering a black bean burger (ugh, I ate black bean burgers like every day for lunch the week before and frankly was pretty sick of them at this point).  I stated that cheese was fine on it and asked what else came on it.  Our waitress told me and I said "Oh good, as long as there isn't any mayonnaise on it, I'm good."

Everyone else got their food about 20 minutes before me.  Eventually, mine came out and imagine my horror when I discovered that the bottom bun was slathered in mayonnaise.  Fortunately, I wasn't very hungry so I only ate half of the top bun (with half the black bean patty) and felt pretty full.  

My sister got a quesadilla or something and I don't remember what Bob and Renee had.  They split something and I know there was a buffalo chicken salad in there somewhere...  They got an appetizer or tortilla chips and some kind of dip which they shared with us.

Understaffed and unable to deliver.

We ordered sandwiches at the take out window 20 minutes before our flight started boarding.  A ten minute wait for the sandwiches was promised.  After 35 minutes we had to leave without our food as final boarding was called.  By this time the overwhelmed staff had abandoned the order window, leaving us high and dry.