Food Rant

Okay, so here's a food/restaurant rant from Saturday's dinner with my mom.

After coming back from a very long day drive to Yosemite, I decided to take my mom out to a semi-nice dinner as a Mother's Day treat since we won't be spending next weekend together. I wanted to take her to a Thai restaurant but I can't find one in Stockton where she lives. I know nothing of the area so I called a couple of my friends who lives there and funny enough, they don't know of any Thai restaurants in the area.

So as I was driving aimlessley on Pacific Ave. near March Lane, desperately looking for a decent place to eat (no Chinese or Oriental Buffet please), I saw Chili's restaurant. And I thought, okay, let's just go to Chili's. It was a leap of faith because I already had a bad experience with them in the past. But I thought maybe it would be different this time around.

I ordered a rack of baby back ribs and my mom ordered a half-rack of baby back ribs and Carribean Chicken with some sort of a Spanish Rice. We were so hungry since we only had brunch in Yosemite. Food came and it was the driest, blandest (is this a word?), most horrible ribs I ever had in my whole freakin life! I was so embarassed because I wanted my mom to have a good dinner. Since I was so hungry, I decided to eat everything in my plate and so did my mom.

After finishing our dinner, server asked us how it was. So I told her. I had to. It's just the way I am. I told her that the ribs were the driest and blandest I've ever had and that she should let the people know in the backroom so they could at least do something about it. A few minutes later, the manager came over to our table and offered us free dessert etc. I declined. He apologized for the experience and said they will only bill us half of whatever we ate. I told him that wasn't necessary, that I just wanted to let them know the food was really horrible and that eating at their restaurant was a leap of faith because of another horrible dining experience (Chili's in San Jose.)

About 2 years ago a friend of mine and I went to Chili's for a Friday dinner and guess what. There was a single strand of hair in my rice - and it looked like a cat's hair! Yep! The length, the color, the texture was of a cat's hair! The manager apologized and offered dessert which I declined. I mean, c'mon who would wanna eat something else after finding cat hair in your food! I told the manager it's ok but this is the last time I will ever eat at Chili's. He ended up giving the meals for free - a meal I barely ate.

So I told that story to the manager of Chili's in Stockton. And that I think it's about time for me to step up and write a formal complaint to their corporate office. I mean for the price I pay to dine in their restaurant, I better get a decent meal. Not some dry, fucking bland pieces of bones!

Man, it was shit.

The manager took 50% off the bill so I just left a $10 tip for the server. I didn't wanna seem to be like a cheapskate trying to get away from paying the whole thing. But shit, it was really one of my worse dining experience.

Maybe not. I just got reminded of a very bad experience at El Torrito.

But I'll leave the details of that experience for next time.