There is no doubt that it was gross, but Chiles did offer to replace the meal. It seems like a reasonable offer. The post reads "Neither me nor my husband ate hardly any of the appetizer or meals we were given, and were only refunded for the one meal." There was nothing wrong with the appetizers, which probably came out before the meals, and your husband's meal was fine. People need to stop asking for full credit when one facet of the service is sub-par.

There's only thee possibilities here, all of them disgusting and unsettling.

1. The person filling up the cup didn't notice the food chunks inside the cup (which is highly unlikely).

2. The above mentioned person didn't care.

3. The sour creme itself was contaminated.

Quote:
"He didn't even suggest taking the meal off of the receipt".

Meal. Singular. Not mealS - plural. And no mention of removing the appetizer.

What did you read?

This was, sadly, always a huge issue at basically every restaurant I've ever worked at as a waitress. Granted, there don't tend to be actual chunks of leftover food remaining on plates, but they tend not to be as crystal-clean as you might like, especially since they often just go through the big steam-cleaning dishwasher for just a few moments.

But, having said that, servers really ought to be keeping an eye on these things.

My mistake. Forget it.

My mistake.

@blackmage439: the bottom two are disgusting and unsettling, the first one could be an honest mistake by a server probably in a hurry during the lunch rush. after she said she didn't want the meal replaced the server should've taken it off the receipt, but if she was that disgusted why eat the appetizer, and at least some of the husband's meal, and then think the whole meal should be comped?

the server offered a reasonable comp and when she said no ok he made one more mistake.

chances are the ramikin just went through the dragon and was put away sanitized but without checking for stuck on food.

Chili's has been on our do-not-eat list for a while now. The most obvious reason being that the food is sub-par and the prices don't reflect that. Beyond that, the last three times (and three different locations) we were at Chili's, the service was awful. Once to the point of me penning a big fat zero on the tip line.

I suggest the OP do the same.

I would agree that asking for full credit when only one aspect of the service is faulty can be a problem. However I don't think that is applicable here.

When I buy food at a restaraunt I am trusting the cook to use some reasonable amount of hygene when in its preparation. Once some food becomes untrustworthy it all is untrustworthy.

Suppose we order food and it turns out that my steak comes out with a big turd right on top of it. Just because I can't tell what bodily fluid is in my wifes salad doesn't mean I now trust that there isn't any.

If the chef had simply overcooked my steak that would be completely different and asking for a complete refund in that circumstance would be unjustified.

Chilli's food is fucking disgusting anyhow. Only reason to ever go there are the 2 for 1 marguritas.

You should be supporting local eateries anyway. Why should your hard earned money go to some executives in Orlando or Dallas when they can be put towards supporting families in your area. Local places pay the cooks and dishwashers better, too.

OH for crying out loud. Are we gonna see articles everytime someone gets a dirty spoon or class at a restaurant now?

Talk about an attention craving whore. This OP realllllly needs to find something to occupy her copious time.

I can just see her sitting around, absolutely CRAVING something to write consumerist about.

glass, not class.

We need an EDIT button dammit!

@zerj: "Once some food becomes untrustworthy it all is untrustworthy."

but this person still ate at least some of the rest of the food. and so did her husband. right to complain after initial problem = lost.

OP is definitely an attention whore. Get over yourselves. And stop eating at crap chain restaurants.

A quick call to the local health department before setting foot out of there would have been the next step after being reimbursed. And in front of the management too!

The chilled bins for the sour cream, bacon chunks, tomato, and green onions are probably right next to each other for ease of topping potatoes in a hurry. Probably just fell from one bin to another while they were spooning it out. That's my theory anyway.

That doesn't sound like a case of not checking for leftover food, that sounds like they were flat-out reusing the sour cream container from a previous meal. Chances are someone else had sour cream on the side and dipped their food into it (and transferring their food into the sour cream), and then they just topped it off with more before they brought it out.

Doesn't surprise me, since most places do this with things like bread and rolls all the time anyways.

GAG

do you know for a fact that the dish was not clean? I have worked at a chili's and the food service station tends to have several different toppings (including a chunky salsa) along with sauces and sour cream all in the same area, all served with a spoon, and if the sour cream had recently been replaced then and a new spoon not been provided the cooks may have used the salsa spoon to serve you sour cream.....so YOUR meal refunded is the normal procedure

yo quiero Taco Bell?

My mom works in a bakery. This one time someone tried to get their money back saying they had found a fly in the cake. My mom asked where the cake was. They said they had eaten the entire thing. Right.

Restaurant patron has grip... Youtube at 11!

Sour cream is high in fat and will kill you dead faster than a hybrid, duh!

that's gross but so is the fact that you went to chili's and ordered appetizers, two big meals and extra sour cream.

It was a mistake and the restaurant responded appropriately. Mistakes happen - that mean they're a good thing, but they happen - get over it.

@stevegoz: You can find low-fat sour cream in the supermarket.

That being said, it tastes weird, IMO. We don't eat SC often, but when we get it, we get the full-fat kind.

@mergatroy6: totally agree. Why not get another meal and eat it? Were you so grossed out that your tummy was doing flip flops?

In most restaurants I've worked in, all the condiments, especially salsas, sour cream, and other fajita-type ingredients, are on a line together, like at a self-serve salad bar. It is common for ingredients from one container to drop into others, and in something as opaque and thick as sour cream, it would be easy for a couple chunks of tomato and a scallion or two to go unnoticed.
Servers also place your silverware onto the table holding it by the end that goes into your mouth.
And wipe excess sauce off your plate with towels that have been used all night, for all kinds of sauces.
Etc.
I'm always amazed at people going to restaurants who don't understand that no matter how strict health regulations are, food service is FILTHY. FOOD is filthy. Get over it.

Would you rather the server have picked the chunks of pico di gallo out of your sour cream with their fingers? BTW, the green stuff is green pepper.

OK I'm totally confused by this persons post... apparently I can't read between incomplete sentences and changing food?

"everything seemed to be ok until my plate came. My plate came with loaded mashed potatoes so I asked the server for sour cream. No big deal."

This sentence makes no sense... everything was ok until my plate came... my plate came with loaded mashed potatoes...no big deal." Maybe I don't know what loaded mashed potatoes are and thats my problem...

"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."

Does she have a baked potato or mashed potatoes? Is it sour cream or sour cream dip? If it was dip I would expect some extra seasonings. I guess it doesn't make a difference but then she states that is it apparent that they had not washed the cup as it was NOT USED prior to me dumping it?

Maybe I just need more coffee this morning to figure out how to read between her lines. :o) Or maybe it is because I don't eat at Chilli's and don't understand WTF she ordered.

Anyway if you are that grossed out about it #1 your state health department lists violations on the web of places around you so make the effort to check it you would be surprised how many places have violations. We don't eat at a lot of places by us based on what they have scored with the health department and violations. Honestly no place you eat out at is going to be as clean as you would like to think it is that is what happens when you are serving hundreds of customers a day and making food in mass quantities. Eat at home that way you know your stuff is clean. :)

JMTC

@katylostherart:
"@zerj: "Once some food becomes untrustworthy it all is untrustworthy."

but this person still ate at least some of the rest of the food. and so did her husband. right to complain after initial problem = lost. "

Actually the article doesn't say that they continued eating after discovering the bogus sour cream. It specifically says that the author asked for sour cream that wasn't supplied with the meal when it came out. Naturally they would have continued eating upto the point where the bad food was discovered.

Almost exactly the same thing happened to me. I was at Chili's with my ex, and I ordered some quesadillas. They put sour cream all over it, which I wasn't very happy with, but I can handle small doses of it. I took a bite of one of the quesadillas and it was immediately clear to me that the sour cream had turned. I looked at my ex and she told me to go to the bathroom, so I did. Got there, puked, came back, told her let's go, and walked out.

dysentery.. it's not just for Vietnamese prisoners of war anymore..

@Jenng:

Wow. This website has really turned into a place for anti-consumerists to hang out and complain about consumer's complaints. Are you REALLY trying to belittle this complaint by justifying that its acceptable/expected for a restaraunt to serve you food on dirty dishes?!?!?!? LOL! That comment is better than the other guy who said that eating the food up until the point where you noticed you were eating someone else's discarded possibly pre-chewed dishbucket chunks means that you have no right to complain. I think these posters belong on mercantilism.com

Hey Linda! That'll teach ya' for not showing your I.D.!!!

You will eat your discarded food chunks and you will LIKE IT!

@mrnitropb:

No I think she would have rather ate only what SHE ordered and not what someone from 4 hours ago ordered and left in the bus boy's bucket. Are you trying unsuccessfully to be funny or are you a fucking retard?

There are just too many retards on this post to keep up with. Apparently it has become socially acceptable to eat other people's lip-droppings even thought its AGAINST THE LAW. I guess people who prefer to eat off of clean dishes and not eat some one else's left-out left-overs have become yet another outcasted PARANOID minority..

@not_kosher: Really not your business what they eat, is it? What if it was a celebratory meal? What if they decided to order everything they wanted even though they knew they wouldn't eat it all, so they could try it?

Obviously I advocate good nutritional choices but it is not anyone's place to criticize someone else's meal, especially when the circumstances or situation is not known.

This sour cream with "chunks of tomato and some sort of green chunks" sounds suspiciously like the appetizer avocado-ranch dipping sauce, shown in the top left picture on the site:

[www.chilis.com]

It makes me sad that I'm familiar enough with the menu to have known that.

LOL. I would have just walked out. What are they going to do, ban you for life? That would be a favor.

I stopped going to Chili's awhile back when they charged me $1.29 for a small ramikin of sour cream and didn't tell me there was a charge. The waitress said if it comes with your meal, you can get as much as you want, but if it doesn't it costs extra. I told her that $1.29 was absurd, paid the bill and never went back.

I also found part of a frozen french fry in sour cream that I got from Applebee's. *shrugs* I told the waitress and she opened a new thing of sour cream for me. Yeah, a little gross, but it's not that bad.

Chain restaurants remind me of communism , granted this could happen anywhere

My guess is that a lazy line cook used the same spoon to scoop up dressing/salsa and sour cream, thus mixing up food. Salsa in your sour cream will make it lumpy and watery.

I've gotta say, calling a woman a "wh**e" for making a submission to this website (and one that gets printed, at that) seems offensive and extreme, and sexist.

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 would like to suggest to everybody to be careful about chains these days, especially if you've noticed a drop in business. Fewer customers often lead to demoralized staff and old food and other inattentiveness.

Final suggestion for your full-fat lovers: Make your own sour cream. 1 cup whipping cream (leave it in the carton). Mix in 2 tablespoons buttermilk. Let sit someplace warm-ish overnight, up to 18 hours. It's amazing stuff.

@Libertyreign

I never said it was acceptable I said I didn't understand her fricken post because she kept going back and forth between mashed potatoes, baked potato, sour cream, sour cream dip etc. Dip to me sounds like something that would come with chunks of something in it that is why I was asking WTF. I don't eat at Chilli's I don't know WTF is on their menu. Never in my post did I say it was acceptable to eat off dirty dishes so get the fuck off your high horse of self righteousness.

My family and I don't eat at places like Chili's the reason being if you bother to look at your health department reports, that are available on the internet, they don't ever seem to get good reviews/scores.

So if you aren't going to be active about researching WTF you put in your mouth or where you spend your hard earned money and you just expect a big chain food place to be clean then yeah you're right I sure as hell don't feel sorry for you nor do I want to read about your complaints. Obviously you put way too much trust in food chains.

Should we expect as consumers food chains to be clean and to get clean dishes... of course but in REALITY that just doesn't happen at ALL places. So I suggest you take the time out to research crap you can find out who seems to be running a clean place and who the hell doesn't. Then you will know where the hell to spend your money and feel safe about how your food/dishes have been handled/cleaned.

I don't eat there either anymore. I watched the movie Waiting and all these chains are fast food anymore...even Olive Garden! I eat local!!!

It was a loaded mashed potato, not baked potato(sorry about the error). Loaded mashed potatoes is mashed potatoes with cheese and bacon on top. It normally comes with sour cream, but in this case it didn't so I asked for a side separately. I'm well aware of what pico de gio looks like, and I've never ate pico de gio with green slime in it. It was just a plain side of sour cream, not the dip. It should have just been white, which it was until I dumped it onto the potato and saw the chunks of other food in the bottom of the bowl. Also, I'm alergic to peppers, so if any of that green stuff was peppers, that would have been just great. Once this was realized we both lost our appetites, if they can't wash that tiny bowl, how do we know what we were previously eating on was washed, that is why I felt a refund of the entire meal was necessary. I didn't even SEE the chunks until all the sour cream was dumped out. So how do I know there's not chunks of something underneath my appetizers and meals.

i agree that it's gross to find chunks in your sour cream, but this is just going a bit too far. you can't expect to get a full refund for an entire meal AND appetizers just because of this. that's ridiculous. besides... you had to know when you walked in to the restaurant that chili's is basically sit down fast food - right?

@yesteryear:

Sure I can expect a complete refund on the food when there was like a bite taken out of the appetizer, and we received our meals right after the appetizer was received. There was like one bite taken out of my meal, and 2 bites out of my husbands. I ordered the sour cream and when I received it, dumped it on my food and noticed chunks in it, no more food was touched after that, because I couldn't be for sure if the rest of the dishes my food was on was clean as well, and weather or not when I got to the bottom of my plate if I was THEN going to find more chunks of food caked on to that -- which is why we didn't EAT any more after we discovered the bowl wasn't clean. I typically don't like eating food that could have came from someone else's mouth, whether I go through a drive-thru window or go into a place to sit down, I expect what I eat to be fixed properly, the way that I order it, on clean dishes or in a clean box/wrapper(drivethru) and I don't expect to pay for someone else's meal that they've already eaten. It might be OK for you to go waste your hard earned cash for someone else's mistakes, but it's kind of like when I go to the grocery store, I don't buy expired milk, because I figure it's no good. And if I see someone drop something on the floor, I'm not going to pick it up and shove it into my mouth. But I guess for some of you, hard times call for desperate measures. By reading a lot of your comments, I can see why Chili's doesn't wash their dishes. I'd really hate to go over to one of ya'lls house , because who knows if your dishes are clean, since ya'll seem fine with paying for food that comes on dirty dishes to begin with.

@ChuckECheese: I would just like to say thank you.

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