If you've come to read something profound or relevant, well, you are definitely in the wrong place. Hell, even if you wanted to read something grammatically correct, you are again, probably in the wrong place. And yes, that is a dig at you Gwynne.
Now we left off with your faithful hero (in this situation, me) and his brother defying the odds by venturing off to a Chili's in a galaxy far away (well, Arlington Heights). The first bad sign was that this particular Chili's shared a parking lot with an Olive Garden, which inadvertently led to a far walk to and from the restaurant, and I'm not going to suggest that this was going to help us burn off the meal. I think it's probably pretty obvious that we weren't concerned with burning off our meal if we were choosing to dine at Chili's.
We walked in, and it felt like, for a moment at least, that we were back in Deerfield. Although, the same could be said for any Chili's. Architecturally, they're all the same. Bar with a few booths in the middle, smoking on the left, non-smoking on the right. Clientele looked about the same, with a mixture of families and high school kids.
A married couple entered before us, and they were told it would be a few minutes by the high school aged hostess. My brother and I were told the same thing. Looking around, there were no fewer than 10 open tables.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was good to be back.
A few moments later, we were seated in the last booth in the back of the restaurant, presumably so no one would see us. With the exception of the layout of the menu, everything else was looked unchanged over the past 15 years. It appeared as if the menu had more offerings with "Buffalo" and "Kickin'" in the name, but I suppose that was only a matter of time.
Our waiter came by shortly after and asked how we were doing. Fine, thanks, how are you? There was like a 3 second pause then, where he laughed, and said fine too. It was unclear why our waiter was on a tape delay and laughing at us, but I know the track record Chili's has with waiters so I assumed our waiter was building towards something greater.
Two cokes and chips order in, we were on our way.
Sadly, things only went downhill from here. The disparity from chip to chip was great, with some being greasy and overly salty. The salsa lacked any sort of consistency to it. An ominous start to the meal.
My next mistake can't be blamed on the restaurant, however.
I decided to abandon my standard order of the grilled chicken sandwich (I couldn't even begin to explain to you how over time my go to order at a tex-mex restaurant became the most plain item on the menu but you're going to have to trust me on this one, it was a good sandwich pushed over the top by a much better than average honey mustard dressing). I went for their version of Ruby Tuesday's mini burgers, aptly titled the Big Mouth Bites. They were not good; in fact, they weren't even mini burgers. They just cut up one burger into four pieces and threw it on a plate with some overcooked fried onions. I spent the whole meal thinking about how much I would have enjoyed the chicken sandwich.
My brother got his standard order- appetizer sampler. The name evolution of this particular item has been fascinating. While everything else on the menu has kept it's name, the appetizer sampler has a had a pretty standard stretch of switching the name every 5-6 years. As far as I can tell, the progression was
Mombo Combo> Triple Play> currently, the Triple Dipper.
While the current incarnation allows you to pick the items you want in your sampler, 99% of the items appear to be deep fried chicken pieces, so it ends up coming off as false hustle on Chili's part. You can't pull a fast on this consumer, Chili's.
My worst fears turned out to be true; we'd been writing a revisionist history all along. The restaurant my friends in college once referred to as the old stompin' grounds was no more. The mehh food and service finally caught up to the mehh charm.
The thrill is gone.
Cicchetti
9 years ago
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