The Chili’s in Tuscaloosa, AL served Mike an “Awesome Blossom” that looks like it was run over by a truck. Mike didn’t complain to his waiter or the manager, but he did write to us:
We ordered our food and I ordered the “awesome blossom”. I’ve been a professional cook for 14 years and when I saw what I got I was personally offended. It looked to me like the cook had just scraped out the bottom of the deep fryer and threw it on the plate. I took a picture of the menu and our plate to show what they were advertising it as and what you actually get. They weren’t very busy, most of the tables were empty. It seemed to me the cook was just lazy.
Did I send it back? No. I don’t do that. Having worked in restaurants I know what often happens when food is sent back. Did I complain to the waiter? No. I didn’t see the point in that either. He was a nice guy, (we even gave him a pretty good tip) it was something beyond his control. So instead I silently fumed about it and vowed to never return to the restaurant. The sort of passive aggressive thing that probably happens thousands of times every night at restaurants all over the world that don’t deliver what they visually promise in their menus.
Mike, you are a paying customer; you should not have to stomach unacceptable food. A polite and quiet conversation with a manager wouldn’t have placed the blame undeservingly on the waiter, nor would it have subjected you to the possibly retributive wrath of a clearly reckless cook. If you haven’t already, send a letter to the corporate office.
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are you serious? give me a break people, my big mac never looks like the picture, every restaurant with menu pictures has a professional take those photos.
I really used to like the consumerist stories, now i am getting aggravated with the crap getting posted here, i mean seriously. Sorry to tell you but your a damn fool if you think that your food is going to look exactly like the menu, but hell i respect you for paying for the meal still, i just think you shouldn’t hold it against chili’s. I mean tell me one restaurant that has a menu picture that looks like the real thing
I think the real question is how did it taste?
Sorry – presentation is part of what you’re paying for in these cheesy-fake “theme” restaurants.
Why else do they freeze the beer mugs but to preserve the mystique? The “Awesome Blossom” should look like something that at least approaches awesome.
I can get the same menu items at the local trough and brew that I can get at any Chilis – doesn’t that mean that paying a few bucks more per plate at Chilis buys me consistent execution and decent presentation?
If not, what’s my rationale for visiting there? I can tell you – after visiting more than twenty Chilis over the past fifteen years in several states, they’re usually score about a four on the quality scale – but they do it consistently.
Why do you think Starbucks is so popular? It’ a’int for the execution of the coffee, but for the consistently quaffable level of caffeinated drinkage and service that one receives at every Starbucks. That’s what the customer expected at his Chilis, and that’s what he shoulda’ gotten.
Complaint is justified.
@iamjames: Red Lobster which is owned by Darden, the largest causal dining restaurant company in the world, employing more than 150,000 people. For comparison, Microsoft employees ~60,000 worldwide and Google employees ~10,000 worldwide.
Microsoft and Google have food franchises?
Seriously – point taken, but try to use a relevant example next time. Apple employs ~15,000 people worldwide, but that doesn’t affect the quality at the Outback Steakhouse 300 feet away on DeAnza Blvd.
The worst offender, IMHO, has to be those “chicken fries” at Burger King. There should be a class action false advertising suit on those…
The advertisement:
[www.foodfacts.info]
The reality:
[www.johnnyamerica.net]
[www.johnnyamerica.net]
@BURAN: Victim? This man is not a victim. And you say that he just wants the restaurant to do their job. How do you propose they do that if he’s not willing to complain?
Getting crappy food puts the consumer between a rock and a hard place, even more so when it’s an appetizer. Send it back, and chances are either that or your next item out of the kitchen will be “specially prepared” for you by the cook staff. If you haven’t seen the movie “Waiting,” you should. It will make you want to learn to cook and eat at home more often.
BFD.
So they have a rookie at the fry station. Is it worth condemning the entire chain?
1) tell the waitress, not post it on a blog
2) not everyone gets their food styled the way the photos do.
@Buran: There’s nothing wrong with liking those appetizers (I don’t mind splurging empty calories on junk food like that now and then), but in my experience I’ve learned not to go out on a limb and order those things unless you or someone else you know has had a decent order at that particular establishment. Maybe we just have different standards, but to each his own.
However, he is hardly a victim. He chose not to ask for the manager, he chose not to complain, therefore it’s his own problem. Yes the presentation is bad and the err is on the side of the restaurant but if you don’t tell them about it THEY’RE NOT GOING TO FIX IT.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil, not the passive aggressive one. End of story.
This is what to do in you have a complaint:
Talk to someone who’s in a position to do rectify the issue.
Do this in a timely manner.
Articulate the issue
Specify your complaint
Be clear in what you expect him/her to do.
In this case:
“I’d like you to get the manager to my table, please.”
“This dish isn’t acceptable. It bears no resemblance to the product you advertise. I’d like you to take it away and take it off my bill.” (If you’re worried about retribution from the kitchen.)
If not:
“I’d like you to take this item away and replace it with one that you – as a manager – would be happy to have served in your restaurant”
If the manager’s clued up, he’ll do that, apologise and give you a voucher to use on your next visit.
I mean, just how HARD is that?
@blkhrt1:
The percentage rate fluctuates, depending on which restaurant. A local dinner my cousin worked at gave 10% to the busboy and no one else. The busboy also got screwed on his wages, and most of the waitresses would lie about how much they earned, so they were constantly rotating busboys.
TGI Fridays takes 34% out of the tips collected to split between the hostess and busboy. I don’t think the cook is included. This I know, because I knew a girl who worked there and she’d always over tip the waitresses due to her own experience [as a waitress]. It would annoy me to no end, because she’d expect everyone to match what she put it.
there’s a war on you know, but its pretty sad about your onion too….
Wow, seems like a lot of people hating the guy for complaining at Consumerist. Sorry not everybody is going to talk to the waiter or manager to complain about poor looking/tasting food. If it is raw or something was really wrong with it to prevent you from eating it, yes I would complain. If the food taste like crap and looked like crap (like most fast food), then most times I would think people would just not go there again or try something else from there. For instance, I used to get a bourbon street steak from applebee’s and many times it was terrific, then once it tasted bland. I tried to twice more (over a period of time) and it tasted the same. I switched to other things at applebee’s and they too didn’t taste that great, so I just stopped going altogether.
When I go to a fast food place (haven’t been in years), I expect the food to look nothing like the advertisements and to taste half way decent. When I go to a higher scale restaurant like Chili’s, I expect the food to look closer to what is advertised and to taste pretty good. If I go to an expensive steakhouse, I expect the food to look great (most places like this I’ve gone don’t have pictures of food on there menu) and taste great.
when i worked at chili’s we served a dessert that was called “diet by chocolate cake.” i think it’s gone now, but it wasn’t too awful.
one day we were bored in the back and looking at the nutritional information and someone figured out that you could have something like 6 ENTIRE diet cakes (regular cake-sized cakes, not slices or cupcakes or anything) to match the caloric intake of one awesome blossom.
i’ve never had one other than the sample they have you taste when you get hired. but it always cracked me up when someone said something along the lines of “oh, i’m not very hungry. i’ll just have an awesome blossom.” eep.
in any case, i think this was a silly article. i don’t want consumerist to be a site where we just whine about bad service. i’d like to focus on stories where bad service occurred, what was done to rectify it (or not), and how to prevent such events from happening in the future.
Word of advice: Never create a scene at a eatery. Sure you might get a real pretty plate back with some extra love to it, so you will be happy. Trust me, you do not want to know what that extra love is.
Mike did the right thing. He didnt say anything and vowed never to come back. I would have done the same.
And to all of you who have complained before…try to remember if that ranch tasted any different.
Hey, I agree with the poster to some degree. I can understand him not wanting to upset an evening out with confrontation. I own a restaurant and I or a manager always ask every customer if everything is in order. I personally wouldn’t have allowed it to be served if the presentation were not to my standards. As for the tip issue in my place the waitress keeps it all, and they bus their own tables. The bar tenders are paid a little bit more and do quite well on tips. The cooks are paid the most and understand what I expect.
I used to work at the Outback Steakhouse where I live. They have this same item there, but they call it the Bloomin’ Onion.
Seriously, they’re not hard to make. They’re already pre-sliced into the right shape. You batter it, making sure you get in between each petal and keep them separated, and then you fry it. I think they need some new cooks–perhaps some that graduated middle school.
At the restaurant I work now, if I tried to give a server something that looked like that, they’d throw it away and I’d make a new one. What restaurant employees often forget is that they’re offering a service AND selling a product.
The waiter is not responsible either? What? The waiter absolutely has a part in this. As the last person to see the food before it is given to the patron, he/she has a duty to look at what is on the plate and if it is not satisfactory to point it out before even taking it to the customer. If the chef put a band aid on the plate, should the waiter still give it to the customer?
Obviously whoever plated this needs to be talked to, it may not have been the chef, whoever expedited this didn’t catch it, the server didn’t catch it, and if that many people didn’t catch it or care, then the management of that restaurant probably is not the best either. I wouldn’t go back.
I am so glad that someone did this for the franchise dining companies. I have seen the pics for the fast food companies and have always thought that someone needed to do the same to places like Chili’s, Red Robin, Outback, etc.
Actually, the real lesson here is that if something is sub-par (or extraordinary!) you should let the manager know. I’ve spent a couple of years working in foodservice, so I’m familiar with what goes on behind the scenes.
“Does it taste good?” is a fair question, but part of what you’re paying for is presentation. If it’s ugly and unappetizing, the kitchen has failed, and if not brought to the server’s attention, it should be brought to the manager’s. If that manager were at all interested in customer service and customer retention, he would have comped the appetizer and/or offered you a future free appetizer or dessert.
The only thing being passive aggressive gets you is high blood pressure.
@cookmefud: You don’t have to “raise a stink,” but yeah, you have to tell them.
You can do it on your way out the door if you don’t want it to ruin your dining experience. But if you don’t tell them, how do you expect anything to change? No, telling them doesn’t mean it will change, but not telling them guarantees it won’t.
I never said you should keep anything private between you and the restaurant. But b*tching to a blog accomplishes nothing except making you feel better. I said if you’re going to complain, at least complain to somebody who can fix it first.
This reminds me…
I never had nearly as much fun with my Lite Brite as those silly slackjawed kids on the box. Fuck.
There’s a lot more that goes into a lousy product than meets the eye. I worked as a fry cook at a northern Michigan Chili’s for two years and have seen all sorts of mishaps that lead to customer disatisfaction. A couple points to be made:
For starters, the author said that the Chili’s wasn’t busy and there wern’t that many people there. It’s common practice for managers to send cooks home early in order to save labor, and as a result, the managers themselves become the cooks. Considering most managers I’ve ever worked for have little to no kitchen expertise, their best product was often my worst.
Secondly, Blossoms were the biggest pain in the ass to make. If there was, say, a new guy working the station and he was improperly trained or out of practice, his best efforts would still provide you with what you see in the picture. Since the goal of any establishment is to keep the customers coming back, offering another item off the menu or comping the entire meal is a willing sacrifice for repeat business.
Corporate restaurants have some of the highest employee turnarounds of any industry I’ve personally witnessed to date. Cooks typically are overworked and underpaid and are rarely given credit for a job well done. To the less devout, sending out garbage or sending out a work of art pays the bills all the same and rarely do they benefit from going the extra mile. Before you guys go and judge an entire chain of restaurants over a single mishandled food item, perhaps come on a different night and/or try a different food item. Unless the establishment’s entire kitchen is SEVERELY incompetent, you’ll rarely have two meals back to back in the same spot that’ll leave you walking away disappointed. Should that ever happen, a simple and polite complaint will almost always yield you free food for your troubles.
Once again, commenter posts mess up the story. So much rudeness going on in the Internet world these days. The basement dwellers parents would be proud.
Well, though this really sucks for you, im actually very surprised. Chili’s is my husbands and mines favorite place to go eat when i dont feel like cooking. we actually dont order the awesome blossom, both other around us do and it looks almost like the pic. i guess you always come across a really sucky restarant owner or two, but this is very un-common. whatever. just thought i should share. =) now i want a quesadilla. mmmmmmm…..
Add me to the list of people telling FalconFire that the wait staff does not split tips with the cooks. I used to make $2.13 and hour waitressing, and the cooks made at least $12. If anything, I should have been asking *them* for tips everytime they screwed an order up. =P
that’s pretty funny (the picture). however, i must say, that the few times i’ve ordered this product, it’s always, at least somewhat, resembled the picture. i think the cook in this case has just finished a smoke of the whacky-tabacky or something.
Am I the only one who would have eaten it without a second thought?
(and doesn’t condemn the poster for not wanting to? What can I say, I have low standards.)
@Falconfire:
At Applebee’s the kitchen staff get ZERO percent of your tips, and I would assume the same goes for Chili’s. Tips go to Front of the House staff (bussers, hostesses).
In any case, this is worse than anything I’ve seen at my job. I would have spoken to a manager, gotten it taken out of my bill, and left the same tip for the server. But the server does some of the responsibility for bringing that trash to the table (unless of course the food was run by another server or a busboy).
UTSASTUDENT:
I am in san antonio, and I believed the waiter when I ordered it.
That was 4 months ago. See the issue?
@cookmefud: so defensive! Apparently more than just burgers and fries!
Next time, try asking a manager take it off the bill – exactly what Carey said. It works. I do that about 1 out of 12 to 15 restaurant visits (average number of times something was outside of acceptable). Never once was it a problem or caused any commotion that you seem so worried about.
@muckpond: Yeah, reminds me of the ads on airline tray tables complaint. Besides, wasn’t there some lawsuit about Burger King burger ads not looking like their ad pics? Or maybe it was McD?
[www.thewvsr.com]
Here’s a web site giving instructions on how to photograph foods for ads!
[www.choice.com.au]
(notice that last one was from Jan 2002, this is really old news)
@utsastudent: yah that’s what i meant. I worded it wrong. 1% of server sales go to each. But still…the back of house (cooks, dishwashers, etc.) don’t get a dime from servers.
Bad service… I leave 2 pennys as a tip. My “two cents worth” and all that. But this? I step it up a notch and take the plasic menu on top of my water glass put a buck inside and flip it over. Then slide the menu out. Big mess when they go to get the tip, great revenge. Even if they have seen this trick they usually got to take the extra time to get a bucket to avoid the mess.
Seriously the blooming onions were absolute crap in this post and they should have complained and got at least the screwed up appetizer taken off the bill.
“Having worked in restaurants I know what often happens when food is sent back.”
Well, when you support restuarants which actually care about their food and service, you know what happens in a situation like this? THEY FIX IT. Stop dining at corporate freezer-based mess halls like Chilli’s.
Wow, that looks like someone already picked through it and left these scraps…three days ago.
I think it’s fairly obvious that the food you get doesn’t look like the picture, especially in casual restaurants like Chili’s. Get over it. If you want a blossom of cheese or whatever that looks like the picture, you’re going to pay a LOT more than what Chili’s charges.
@AcidReign:
The Bright Star in Bessemer is awesome, but another great recommendation for Tuscaloosa is the Cypress Inn, which is on the Black Warrior not far from 20/59. Having grown up about 30 minutes from that place and about 10 mins from the Bright Star, and having eaten at both numerous times, I can say that neither will ever leave you disappointed.
On that note, what Chili’s served was in no way acceptable. I may be a foodie, but I do occasionally dine at chain restaurants, and Chili’s is usually one of the few that are consistently at least decent. I completely sympathize with the OP’s position on not reporting issues to the wait staff; having dated a chef from a high end restauraunt nearby, I know better than to send food back anywhere that isn’t privately owned and of high caliber. Also, I recently had a terrible appetizer at the local high end Italian place, where I was served calamari coated in Fish Fri. I said nothing and paid for my dinner quietly, tipped well as the service was fine, but between a poorly made appetizer and an entree that excluded a major ingredient listed on the menu, I won’t be back.
Presentation matters as much as taste. I agree with Mike after having worked in a kitchen before. Saying much of anything about the quality would have caused some sort of retribution. Only difference I would have pulled would have been to walk out without touching it. That is just a difference in personality.
@junkmail: “First of all, the server definitely should have taken some of the responsibility for the way the food looked. Unless he/she delivered it blindfolded, that plate never should have made it out the kitchen door.”
This is absolutely correct. I’d have docked the wait-staff’s tip in a heartbeat. Tipping exists for a reason. The wait-staff’s job is to cater to your needs (not your every whim). When they don’t, make sure you penalize them for it and when they do make sure you tip a bit extra.
Here’s an example of a great waitstaff:
My wife and I took a friend of hers form work to a local restaurant a couple days ago. This is a place we frequent because the food and service are impeccable. It happens to be a “greasy spoon” type place with the kitchen in full view of a particular table. Anyhow, I ordered a burger with Swiss instead of Cheddar the other day. The lady waiting on us noticed the cook had given Cheddar and made him replace the cheese. A minor thing but so many would have ignored that.
The cook had a serious attitude about it. It was chance that I happened to be in the right spot to notice this but the waitress was doing her job well. When paying I thanked her for “watching the cheese” and handed her the tip, including a bit extra above the normal 20% I give for decent service (they do put up with extra crap from me so they get a bit more if they do their job well).
My main point is that it’s your wait-staff’s job to make your dining experience pleasant, not to cater to the whims of the cook or management. How hard is this concept to understand?!
First of all, I agree with the poster. The picture gives you an approximation of what the product looks like, and should be as close to it as possible. That is restaurant 101. Anything less is failure. Second, the only whiners here are the ones saying that this post is a waste. I love the fact that there is actual evidence of something besides hearsay from all the other mundane complaints. This is what it should look like, this is how it looked. Any questions? And for those that whine about why people would eat such food…..Because it tastes good. I’m a vegetarian, but I’m not dead. Why fault someone for taking part in a guilty pleasure. For gods sake. We are all commenting about a picture of food. If that ain’t the biggest waste of brain cells, what is?
@Falconfire:
I believe you may have misunderstood the concept of tip sharing. I’ve worked in several different restaurants and NEVER shared tips with kitchen staff. The ONLY time I personally have shared tips was on a particularly busy holiday at one restaurant where we were short on trained waitresses who could handle the rush. Management called in some extra dishwashers to bus tables. Since we normally bussed our own tables, and by having bussers, we were able to wait more tables and earn more tips, the bussers were punched in at the lower, waitress wage, and we were expected to give them enough out of our tips to make up the difference between the waitress wage and their regular minimum wage. If someone is talking about having to share tips, it’s generally in a restaurant where waitstaff puts their tips in a jar, and they are later divided equally, but only among WAITSTAFF. I personally would never work in such an environment because I’ve worked with too many lazy waitresses who earned far less tips than I did.
In reference to the original topic. While Mike had every right to make a polite complaint, I give him credit for not being the type of person to make any ridiculous complaint to simply get a free meal and abuse the “customer is always right” policy.
Regarding the Awesome Blos – you guys are cracking me up. I received the same item and what it is -a blossom stack. Chilis would not serve the onions they normally use because the onions were so small. They used onions petals cut from smaller onions and you can eat 100% of it not like 50% of the awesome blossom. It is essentially the same item. Some times you just need to ask.
@cookmefud: I wouldn’t say that smaller restaurant chains go out of business just because the service sucks and patrons silently boycott. A friend of the family had started a restaurant that focused on traditional Hispanic foods. In the end regular customers who started dining elsewhere said that it was because a store down the street offered a menu with a slightly lower quality, but a much better price.
Of course, I don’t come from a wealthy side of town, so a lot of business is fueled by price and not quality, but I just wanted to mention that with small businesses sometimes it’s just because they can’t afford to offer a better deal.
To: Whom it may concern
My name is Matthew Combs I work at chili’s bar and grille in North Olmsted Ohio. I have been having numerous problems since I have been there with one particular manger named Pricilla Martel. There have been other employees that have had problems with her as well people had even quit because of her. now I love my job I don’t want to quit I would just like to be treated with respect and treated fair. She has threaten me about my position at Chili’s and has cut my hours, I have another job She knew I had another job when she hired me because of my application I had filled out when I started. I have gone to my general manger about her I have even talked to her about the issues we where having and she tells other associate’s about what we have talked about. And slanders my name. I have been off work at Chili’s for about 3 weeks the first week Pricilla had taken me off the schedule because she said I wasn’t smiling enough and the remaining two I had a calendar written out that I will be working at my other part time job a little bit more. I also thought when you talk to your manger in your office it remains private! My general manger has caught her doing a lot of stuff on camera but yet no one has talked to her. She is spreading rumors about me that make’s it an uncomfortable work environment for me. I have legitimate proof of all of this. And how she is an unfair manger and how rules don’t apply to her. I am very hurt by this I have never been treated like this before at a work place! I just want to be treated fair and with respect.
Names of other employees are available upon request as well as phone numbers.
Please fill free to contact me anytime for questions and concerns