Chili's Grill & Bar

See previous review.  This is a continuation to that visit....

Before going to visit Chili's this particular night, we called ahead to speak to a manager about our previous visit.  Our last experience was a to go order which was completely wrong.  The steaks were over cooked and cold, the sides were wrong, and the fries tasted like they were cooked an hour prior.  The manager that I talked to said that he would put a gift certificate in the mail to compensate our order, since I wasn't able to drive back to the restaurant and get a refund.  I called and explained this situation to the manager, Ian, that night before showing up.  I also told him that I have not received any gift certificates in the mail yet.   He said when we showed up, asked for him and he would take care of things.  We arrived at 5:15 and had to wait about 10 minutes for a table.  We asked our server, Amanda, if Ian was available, she said that she would go tell him.  We waited about 15 minutes and Amanda came back and said that he was busy, but would come out and talk to us shortly.  We proceeded to order the $35 deal, with the appetizer, entrée and dessert.  The appetizer, a half order of Texas cheese fries, was pitiful.  It was a small cast iron skillet of about 15 French fries with burnt cheese and green onions on them.  We ordered the petite sirloins for the entrée.  They came out surprisingly fast, but once again, with cold and over cooked sides.  The loaded mash potatoes were cold and the broccoli was baby food mush.  I still haven't figured out how they cook steaks.  It seemed that they sear one side, flip it over and barely cook the other side.  Now, I did order a rare steak, but one quarter of is was raw, not rare, there is a difference.  We asked Amanda for another side of hot mashed potatoes, which she got back to us very quickly.  Still no Ian.  We finished our steaks and then came out dessert.  Finished that, still no Ian.  After Amanda's helper bussed our table, we were ready to leave; all we needed was the check.  After about ten more minutes when the check was processed at 6:40, an hour and 25 minutes after we got there, out comes Ian with our check.  He told me that he was sorry about our last experience and that he took off the appetizer and dessert.   I would think that if I called ahead of time and told you about a bad experience from the last time, that you, as a manager would make a special effort to make sure that my next experience would be perfect.  It wasn't.  I emailed Chili's "customer service" about my problem and nothing happened.  One, if you are in customer service and don't even bother to respond to a customer about their experience then you aren't doing your job and should be fired.  Two, if you have bad customer service (or zero, for that matter) then what does that say for your company.  Congratulations Chili's, you lost customers because of your so called, "customer service."  It doesn't affect you too much anyways because you are a corporate chain and really don't care about two customers and their bad experience.

It's not the worst Chili's ever. But first off let me say I've been there 4 times since living in North Carolina and we've been here for exactly one year. Every time I walk in when they are not busy servers will walk right past us and not seat us. Last time we waited with 3 other couples for about 15 minutes all the while watching servers stand around at the bar talk to each other and watching them walk past us. Today when we went it took about 8 minutes before anyone noticed us. The person who did looked like a manager or someone and she felt awful. Our server was meh she was socially awkward to say the least. Not talkative and kind of blah and boring. No drink recommendations which was ridiculous. If you are a server and you work at Chili's you should be talking about the margaritas there especially if the person is pulling out the margarita menu. They had a new menu and she didn't even tell us about it she just handed it to us and said there is some new stuff. No big deal. I'm like um? Okay don't try to promote your new menu items.....

The food is always awesome though. Props to the people who cook. the drinks are pretty decent. The bartender could use some work whoever it is does not know how the right of amounts of liquids....definitely worst margaritas I've had at Chili's.
The servers helper or whatever didn't even introduce himself. He was awkward. And actually the servers stood around at the frotn like a crowd of about 4 of them just standing there. I'm like wow well you have nothing to do but it took you 10 minutes to seat us.
Honestly the food is good but I recommend going to have it to go because you won't be missing anything if you eat there.

It gets really bad when a MANAGER has to seat you because she sees no less than 3 different waitresses walk by you without saying a word as you're standing there waiting to be seated... are you kidding me? She had to apologize to us because she was in the back and watched as yet another waitress walked right by us without even asking if we were being waited on. She only came up to us when she saw us getting annoyed. You obviously don't want our service that bad, right? Not only that, if you're a manger, I'm pretty sure you'll say more than just, "oh yeah we have some new stuff.. we have a new steak with stuff on top" to two new customers.

The food is great, and AFTER you're seated, the waitresses are nice & helpful without being annoying.

If this happens again, I'll just take my business somewhere else.

EDIT: This has happened every single time I've come (about 3 or 4 times). Seriously, Chili's, hire some new waitresses that actually care about their job. The only reason I even go here is for the chicken.