Chili's, Maplewood - July 21, 2007

Her Perspective: C
His perspective: C

We went to Chili's at 2:30 pm on a Saturday for drinks and appetizers. We went to the rail of the bar, but there was no one behind the bar and we had to wait several minutes until the bartender came back. She seemed friendly enough at first and we ordered two Presidente margaritas, which is one of our favorite drinks. She made them right away, and we were trying to watch her make them so we could figure out what is in them. It was hard to see because there was a partition in the way, but we did notice that she used four different bottles. When she brought us the drinks, we asked her what was in them. Her reply was that she wasn't sure! Considering that she had just made the drinks, it's disturbing that she didn't know what is in them and had to look it up in the drink menu. Not to mention that when she started to read the names of the liquors off the drink menu, she couldn't pronounce any of them. She handed the drink menu to me to read for myself. There are three liquors and we had watched her use four.

William's drink tasted different than mine. His had a distinct whiskey flavor in addition to what was supposed to be in it and mine did not. I think she grabbed a bottle of whiskey by mistake and made his drink with it and mine without.

We ordered two appetizers: Queso and Southwest Eggrolls. The queso came out right away, but didn't taste very good. It tasted a bit burnt like it had been sitting for a while. When the eggrolls came out, I noticed that they looked very light in color like they had just changed the oil in the fryer. When I tasted them, I confirmed that they were cooked in new oil. They were very tasty. We put aside the queso and when the bartender came to take it, she asked if we were done with it since we didn't finish it. She did not ask if we were unhappy with it. We told her that it tasted burnt and she rushed off while saying that she would see if the manager would take it off the bill, which they did.

She made one more margarita for William, this time with three liquors, but then gave us our check. We might have stayed longer and had more drinks, but since we already had our check it seemed like we were being asked to leave. We did not feel inclined to stay in light of that, so we paid our check and left.

The bartender was very inattentive during our visit and seemed stressed and busy even though there were only three groups in the bar area including us. Overall, we were quite disappointed.