Chilis

Chilis
1312 Londontown Boulevard
Eldersburg, MD 21784
(410) 552-9970


I wouldn't normally write about Chili's. It's not fancy. It's not unique. It's just different meats covered in melted cheeses and bacon. Nothing more. But this is a my forum to write about eating at restaurants. And when you have an absolutely crappy experience, it deserves to be written about.

Some background to add emotion to the whole situation - in October my 3 year old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. My wife had to quit working, so we had a sizable loss of income. We have wonderful friends and family and many gave us gift cards to restaurants that we could use when we didn't have time to cook a meal or just needed to get out.

I hadn't gotten anything out of the freezer for dinner tonight, so I convinced my wife that this was a good opportunity to use our Chili's cards. My wife placed an order online. Chili's has a 2 for $20 special - an appetizer and 2 entres for $20. We got the Texas Cheese Fries, she got the Southwestern Quesadillas with Bacon and Ranch and I got the Jalapeno Chicken Quesadillas (all 3 covered in cheese and bacon). We also ordered the Cheese Quesadillas for my son. She submitted the order. It came to $26.07. It said it would be ready at 6:44pm, which was 15 minutes from when we placed it.


Living 15 minutes away, I left immediately. When I got there the place was packed. There were several people ahead of me in the carry-out line. Once I got up to the counter she gave me my total and I paid - $25 on the gift card and I gave her a buck seven.

We waited for a while, but that was expected given how many people were there to eat. We finally got our food at 7:04pm. I'm not going to complain about that. It was busy. I get it.

When I got home 15 minutes later, I realized that the Jalapeno Chicken Quesadillas were not in the bag. Shame on me for not checking before I left. I called the restaurant, she seemed confused, but said to return and I could get the missing part of me meal.

When I got there she said that I never ordered the Jalapeno Chicken Quesadillas. She then showed me an itemized receipt that just showed "2 for $20 on one line and the Kids Cheese Quesadillas" on the other. "See?", she said. "You didn't order the Jalapeno Chicken Quesadillas."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This doesn't even freakin' make sense. First of all - she was blaming me for not ordering the quesadillas, but then she was inaccurately telling me that the itemized receipt showed I didn't order it. It didn't show anything except that we ordered the 2 for $20 deal! Okay, whatever. She reordered the quesadillas and I waited another 10 minutes or so for them.

I finally got home (it was now 7:48 - more than an hour and 15 minutes after I had originally placed my order). After I ate my meal, I went back to their website and tried to reorder the 2 for $20 deal without including the 2nd meal. It's impossible. You MUST select 2 items. Therefore, there is a flaw somewhere. Either Chili's got it wrong or the error was between the seat and the keyboard.

So in summary, I am less inclined to revisit Chili's in the future. Unfortunately, we still have $30 in gift cards to there. Perhaps I could give them as presents and let someone else deal with the grief that they deliver. By the way, the food was decent. No complaints on the taste.