Straw Wrappers and Salty Cracks

Have you ever noticed that Chili's has two restaurants? One for lunch and one for dinner.

The Lunch Chili's is clean. It looks like they just put the restaurant through a car wash. The tables are gleaming, the floor is spotless and the servers look put together.

The Dinner Chili's is....falling apart? The tables look like they have been rubbed off with a busser's hand and there is a combination of Sweet 'n Low, Splenda, salt and pepper stuck in the cracks of the tiles on the tables. Not to mention that the floor has now been littered with white straw wrappers that seem to jump out of guests and servers hands from 11am-7pm. For entertainment on your next visit, try to see how many straw wrappers you can count on the floor, stuck in the side of the booth, or hiding behind the drink menu.

There is usually a wait at Chili's for dinner - and it's not related to how busy they are. If you glance around the restaurant you most likely will observe that there are 326 empty dirty tables. The hostess and bussers with their headsets can't clean them fast enough.

After you're seated and have counted your straw wrappers, cleaned the salt out of the cracks on the table and are now ready to open the menu you may find that certain pages are stuck together....with BBQ sauce or butter or salsa. Your server will come to greet you and much like your menu they will have some form of sauce stained on their black t-shirt. Don't dare going to the bathroom to wash your BBQ sauce covered hands. You will have to walk through a battlefield of paper towels thrown on the floor. Why? Why do guests feel the need to delicately drop their paper towels all over the floor instead of putting them in the trash can?

At the Dinner Chili's the food doesn't taste as fresh as at the Lunch Chili's either. The Lunch Chili's always has prompt service, a clean restaurant, and pretty decent food. The question is, when does the Chili's transformation begin? Is it right after the lunch rush and they never clean up the restaurant or does it slowly progress into a tex mex pit of straw wrappers? It gets progressively worse throughout the day. By 10:30pm, its not the same Chili's it was at 11:00am.

If you're going to go to Chili's you should visit during lunch. You are bound to have a less contaminated experience. If you are going to go for dinner, bring the cleaning supplies.