Critic's Review
Chili's has just finished a makeover of their restaurants and they certainly look nicer from the outside. I haven't been to Chili's in a few years; there used to be one right across from my office on Long Island back in the late 90s, and it was always good for an occasional burger. My other choice for the day didn't appeal to me once I got on the road, so I ended up here.
The makeover is very disappointing. "Cheap" seems to be the theme. It's barely above cafeteria quality.
They used to have some really nice booths at the one on Long Island; green was their color back then. Now the booths are just benches that are barely more comfortable than a table.
I asked for an iced tea (for a change), and my server dropped it off as he ran by without any lemon at all. The next time he flew through I asked for some; even the lemon seems cheap here.
They have a pretty big menu, but until 4pm they have an express lunch where you pick a soup or salad and then pick another item for different prices. The burgers and steaks didn't even look good in the pictures, so I went for the Mac and Cheese Chicken with the "Spicy Sausage and Chicken Soup".
Why places put tortilla strips into soup I'll never understand. This soup had cheap ingredients like a cheap canned soup; even Chunky soup has better ingredients than this. It wasn't spicy at all. Not terrible, but not very good either.
The chicken was dropped off; another quick spin and dart move from my server. He didn't bother to take away the empty soup bowl; in fact he didn't take the soup bowl away until I paid the bill.
This looked decent; how can you mess up mac and cheese, right? I guess it was ok, but they use the kind of "grilled" chicken here that you see in the packages in the supermarket; some sort of chicken loaf, with cheese that wasn't all that tasty. In retrospect, if you're going to eat Mac & Cheese, it needs to be a lot better than this.
My server had left the bill on the table like they do in a bad diner. No refill on the iced tea. I hated to even give the guy $1 but I did; the service was insulting to be frank.
It was just after 4pm when I left, and the bar had already started filling with the Friday happy hour crowd. Im really glad that I didn't eat at the bar.
With the new decor and menu, Chili's is now on the lower rung of fast food with Burger King and McDonald's. It used to be better than that; an alternative to a place like TGI Fridays. But this is low end stuff. Another chain bites the dust.