Reader Linda was having lunch at Chili’s and decided to order some extra sour cream to eat with her mashed potatoes. She was surprised and disgusted to learn that like peanut butter, Chili’s sour cream comes in “smooth” and “extra chunky.” Her letter, inside…
My husband and I went to Chili’s in Killeen, TX to eat lunch yesterday. We ordered appetizers, and 2 big meals. The chips and dip came out, and everything seemed to be okay until my plate came. My plate came with loaded mashed potatoes so I asked the server for sour cream. No big deal.
The server comes back with the sour cream and I dump it on to my loaded mashed potatoes, only to discover that chunks of tomato and some sort of green chunks I can only assume might have been edible at some point in time. I was totally disgusted. It was apparent that they had not washed the small cup that this sour cream dip came in, as it was not used prior to me dumping it on the baked potato.
My husband and I were totally grossed out and disgusted. If they can’t even take the time to wash a small cup like this, we can only imagine how clean the plates are our meals and appetizers came on were. After explaining to the server what had happened, he asked if I would like my meal replaced. I told him just to bring me my check. He didn’t even suggest taking the meal off of the receipt, I had to ask for a manager just to get this done. Neither me nor my husband ate hardly any of the appetizer or meals we were given, and were only refunded for the one meal. Eww.
Chili’s, please try to remember to wash the dishes, you are a restaurant after all. You should understand the psychological impact that a few loose bits of chunky debris smothered in thick sour cream can have on your customers. Shame….
(Photo: ninjapoodles)
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in my experience having worked in a restaurant, if there is a problem with one food item like the one you described (it wasn’t razor blades, after all), you refund the cost of that item and offer a coupon for a free appetizer or something. expecting to get an entire $40+ meal free because of a dirty dish is unreasonable. as to the other comments here, i doubt anyone would voluntarily eat from a dirty dish. everyone’s just pointing out the fact that while your “ordeal” was most likely pretty gross… it IS chili’s, and most people would have just sent the plate back for a re-do. i’ve been at diners and poured cream into my coffee that had chunks in it from sitting out all day. sure it’s gross, but you just send it back and ask for another.
@yesteryear:
Wow, you obviously are pretty incompetent. First of all, there’s a big difference between creamer that is in an individual package, and ‘just one dirty dish’. The one dirty dish gives you an idea of what you can expect on the OTHER dishes your food was served on. and “it IS chilli’s” I guess, because it’s chilli’s it can be expected that some of their dishes are dirty, but “meh, for the most part the rest are PROBABLY clean, and you didn’t point out any evidence that they weren’t”. I mean for christ’s sake, if one dish is dirty, I think it’s safe to assume the rest are, I wouldn’t eat any of the other meals as well, this is ridiculous that people should just have this attitude that ‘meh, it was only the one dish.’ I mean obviously if they were too lazy to clean just that one dish, the rest of them probably aren’t clean either, and nobody’s going to eat their meals because of it, and because of that, those meals should be refunded, since they aren’t going to be ate. The notion that the meal should be replaced is just as ridiculous, what are you going to do, make me a new order, and put it on the same dirty dishes that still haven’t been washed? Come on now people.
@linda_S: You are welcome. And Linda’s post is completely relevant, despite the naysayers. Why? 1. Because when people spend their precious $$ at the restaurants, they deserve much better than a leftover petri dish. And 2. Much more of our income and patience is pilfered bit by bit through bad everyday goods and services than by big-ticket items–and both types deserve our attention.
What’s with the attitude that a complaint/problem has to have boutique cachet to be worthwhile? Why are restaurants less important than the cable company? Some are addicted to snobbery–they think not only is the complaint itself unworthy, but the OP has the jejune temerity to eat at Chili’s.
If you get spoiled food, there should be immediate and generous correction by the restaurant or you should walk out. I don’t want to eat anything in a restaurant after they serve me curdled condiments. And you should call the health department. Spoiled food × staff apathy = scary².
@Jenng: Don’t stress too much yourself with stupid people who likes to argue or start an argument. I learned my lesson and I won’t bother to reply their posts.
I’ve been in Chilli’s once, and I didn’t like the food (too greasy and and spicy for MY TASTE), service was OK and the restaurant itself wasn’t clean.
I also didn’t get this lady’s concern with so much going on and the changes on her menu. But, her point was that the server gave her a dirty sour cream or dip (?) and they didn’t want to refund her whole menu.
@amoeba:
Her reply is right here:
@linda_S
it wasn’t a dip, it was sour cream. And it was the bowl/dishes that were dirty. Her complaint is dirty dishes = yuck, I’m not eating any of this food, for heaven’s sake the rest of the food could be on dirty dishes as well.
does no one on this site work in a restaraunt. if you have ever worked on a kit line you know that the sour cream is stored right next to the tomatoes and other vegies! im not excusing chilis for they are gross but lets use some common sense. get the facts and then move on.
in this case im pretty certain the dish was not dirty, just that that the cooks putting the sour cream into the dish were careless. still bad but not ‘gross’ or ‘uncommon’.
again i point out that i despise ‘chilis’ and think they might be the worst of all restaraunt chains ( i am a restaraunt gm ) but you are making too big a deal on this
This reminded me of something that happened when I was pretty young, maybe 10 or 11. Was at Sizzler, having salad bar. Something crunched. Then something hurt. Glass. I remember just feeling really really creeped out, then just about everyone who worked there apologizing and staring at me. I’m pretty sure we got everything free. Someone said that sometimes things break and scatter and get where they shouldn’t be.
It was just food. It’s not like it would have killed you. You should have just had the meal replaced. If they were a good restaurant they would have given you either the appetizer or the meal for free.
@Lucky225: newsflash: i think everyone in the world has at one time or another had something served to them on a dirty dish. i’ve had water come out with lipstick already on the glass… this stuff happens. there are no elves in the back handwashing the dishes, laying their lives down on the line to be sure they are all perfect… it’s a gigantic dishwashing machine that doesn’t have eyeballs.
i still contend that asking for a refund of your entire meal because of one dirty dish is going overboard. i’m not defending chili’s, either. in my opinion, chili’s and restaurants like it are only in existence because people who have zero taste in food still need to go out to dinner sometimes. it’s glorified fast food… and their commercials make me want to kill.
@yesteryear:
Newsflash: If you aren’t doing your jobs, and washing the f’ing dishes like you’re supposed to, I’m not eating here or paying for anything that was brought out, esp. when it hasn’t even been ate. You’re supposed to wipe down dishes before you throw them in a machine, I guess you’ve never done dishes like the lady suggests. Again, this whole notion that “it’s Chilli’s, it should be expected.” is completely ridiculous. I don’t care if I go to Jack-in-the-box. If they try to give me my food in wrappers that somehow got food gooped on them, I’m not paying for that food.
@Concerned_Citizen:
Actually if you read her comments, she stated she was illegal to peppers. Who knows what the gunk was in the bottom of her bowl? Have you ever seen someone get a breakout from peppers? It is seriously something, you could die from.
@Lucky225:
illegal/alergic, god damn I just woke up and my brain is scrambled
Also, if they were a good restaurant, they would wash their dishes and not expose customers to air borne pathogens, germs, diseases, etc… If their problem is that they’re serving so many people a day it’s “impossible” to make sure everything gets clean, they need to hire more staff, or stop serving all together.
While we’re beating up on Chili’s, which to be fair, I have had good luck at most of the time, I will relay two incidents over the years that did disgust me. First one – I saw a waiter come to deliver food at a neighboring table and did such a thorough job of spilling the food on this poor woman patron that the aftersplash landed on ceilings walls, her fellow patron. It was like chili soup or something – totally nasty. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he just ran off, didn’t apologize or anything. Probably went home. Anyway, nobody else came out to help her for 10 minutes, and I was infuriated for her. I almost had to tackle a waiter who acted like he was going to steamroll right over me headed away from there to force him to get over there, apologize and get a manager NOW. She raised holy hell and I was glad she did. Accidents happen but you mess somebody up that bad, you never just run away, and as “connected” as the staff are with headsets, I couldn’t believe they either weren’t aware or didn’t care about a big commotion like this.
Separately, I once had a seat that was loose and I actually went under the table with it. Waiter laughed at me, but not for long. Got the meal comped when he didn’t help me back up after laughing and walking away.
I suppose I can and should say here they seem to hire young people mainly who don’t give a damn during the “tough stuff”, and will act friendly to your face but then do things like the above and not clean dishes as per OP.
They can’t then really be mad when people complain. And those of you who are going to start in about “well, look at how little they make”, they know that after the first shift, so if they stick around that’s not my problem, just shut up now.
@Consumer007:
See, that’s what I’m talking about. Not a simple bashing of the OP that she had the audacity to eat at such a place as Chilli’s, but an actual comment that contributes in addition to the Original article. I applaud you 007, and your license to spill. I also agree with the ‘look at how little they make’ comment. I’m under the impression that you CHOOSE where you want to work.
I’ve worked for Chili’s for about two years now, and don’t get me wrong, I in no way WANT to defend Brinker Inc., nor do i enjoy my job at all, but claiming the ramekin the sour cream comes in wasn’t washed is somewhat silly when you have a basal knowledge of the setup of the Chili’s kitchen. The sour cream comes from the same area that the diced tomatoes comes from, as well as the guacamole, which is what the “some sort of green chunks I can only assume might have been edible at some point in time” can be contributed to from someone who doesn’t know southern food too well, and considering how the complainer called her ‘salsa’ “dip,” i can pretty safely assume that somewhere in transit from the back line to the front line, some tomato and guacamole can easily fall or make it’s way into the sour cream ramekin. Saying that it was “unwashed” is just a little imaginative and just makes it sound you want to be the ‘good guy’ of the transaction and how you were robbed by not greedily receiving the full meal for free.
@mitchelld00d:
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it was SILLY of her to think the dish was unwashed when she found it in the bottom of her “ramekin” or whatever you want to call it. She doesn’t work there, she has no knowledge of the kitchen, and seeing as how it was BELOW the sour cream and not on top of it, whoever poured the sour cream in to the “ramekin” should have noticed that prior to pouring it in. Further more the OP was not given any explanation as to why her “ramekin” had such things in it, so I think it’s pretty fair of her to assume that they obviously don’t wash their dishes, and the dishes her meals are on may be unclean/unsanitary as well. And this is why people don’t go to Chilli’s, they hire punks like you who can’t see things from the customer’s perspective.
haha, you’re funny. i find my experience as a waiter makes me a better customer because i’m more understanding than most of the pompous a-hole clientele like you. if this happened to me as a customer, i really wouldn’t mind, because i like to make things less stressful for my fellow human being, but that’s just me. God forbid there is ever an understanding soul somewhere else in the world that can just take themselves a little less seriously. And you dont need to quote the word ramekin, i’m not making it up, and most restaurant’s call their items like small cuppy thinigies by technical terms. Chill out, seriously.
nevermind, just disregard my posts. i was trying to offer simple explanations for those of you who are quick to jump on and flame and complain about things, but i realize you just can’t reason with people. sorry i bothered yall, please carry on.
So, she got sour cream and something green (chives?) for her potatoes?
More than likely the sour cream was near the tomatoes and green stuff on the back line and it had fallen in.
Now, had the green stuff been mold, then you should have had the meal comped.
This has happened to me at Chili’s as well. I ordered Sour Cream with my Fajita Quesadillas, and the sour cream that I got — as well as some other sour cream — was rather … different. First, it was frozen, except for the top of the sour cream in the ramakin that had… sort of melted, I suppose (or, more accurately, had sublimated into a sort of gelitin). And then it tasted funny. I asked for another thing of it because it was frozen but it tasted horrible.
I actually didn’t say anything because my sister (who was dining with me) and I both worked at Chili’s for a combined 8 or so years, and so we don’t really expect much more from the place. Plus, the waiter/waitress would have gotten the brunt of the punishment from management, when it is usually management or corporate’s fault for how the Sour Cream is handled… I didn’t want our otherwise sweet waitress to have to deal with getting a hard time from management for not catching something that *they* caused.
This is the same with Chili’s salsa, which is entirely hit or miss. It comes in a large paste, water is added. To save money, more water is added to the salsa, which is why you sometimes get pretty good Chili’s salsa, and then a week later, get pretty weak and watery salsa.
ChuckeCheese said:
“Until about 18 mos ago, I found Chili’s tolerable as chains go. It has taken a strange nose-dive since then, and I try to avoid it.”
– I feel the same way. I used to actually like Chili’s, even after working there (waiter, bar, host, the whole tier of crap jobs), but in the last 2 years, I dunno, I’ve had a mix of bad experiences and average food.
I worked at a restaurant that made a kid’s drink with Gummy Worms in it. One time, the kitchen manager mistakenly ordered Gummy Bears instead, so he kept the giant bag in the restaurant for the employees to snack on. We kept it in the cooler, above the dressings and employees would go in and grab a handful. Somebody must have fumbled, because a guy I was waiting on found a clear Gummy Bear in his ranch. It was pretty funny. The guy was pissed at first, but I explained the situation and he ended up being fine.
I guarantee this wasn’t an issue of the ramekin not being washed. The toppings probably just fell into the Sour cream throughout the course of the day. The person over-reacted. Probably just looking for a free meal.
Ok you are so mistaken and uneducated. What you seen that was so “disgusting” is called ‘pico de gallo’. Its contains diced tomatoes, jalepenos, onion, & cilantro. Its served with/on many items at Chili’s from Chicken Tacos to the Buffalo Chicken Salad. The sour cream, pico de gallo, dressings, ect. are all kept in the same cooler beside eachother. Theres no way to always keep one from falling into the other a little… which is why there was some with your sour cream. Don’t just assume the worst.
Source:ME ~ server at chili’s