An Open (and REAL) Letter To Chili’s
Posted in Going Vegetarian, letters on 02/01/2010 10:13 pm by beckyDear Chili’s,
On Saturday January 30th my boyfriend, son and I chose your restaurant to dine in. We had many choices that evening but specifically chose YOUR establishment. (This information will come in handy later).
Our first (this is foreshadowing…) disappointment was that you no longer offer the “2 for $20″ special. We got over that piece of bad news and carried on like champs. But you should really recondisder bringing that deal back. It was a good one.
The second disappointment was your new menu. You see Chili’s, about a week ago I decided to no longer have meat in my diet. I would happily go into the reasons why I chose this way of eating but something tells me you won’t really care. Some like to call leaving meat out of their diet being a vegetarian. Ever heard of that? Apparently not since as I looked and looked at your new menu, I noticed you HAVE NOTHING VEGETARIAN on there. Seriously, NO. THING!
I asked my boyfriend, “Hey, do you see anything that I’m missing? Everything on here has meat doesn’t it?” To which he replied, “They have salads.” Me: “All with meat.” Him: “Well what about soup?” Me: “THEY ALL HAVE MEAT!”
In case you guys are too busy killing cows and chickens to buy a calendar, it’s currently 2010, not 1943. People of my kind are plentiful. In fact in Madison WI, we are everywhere. Damn Hippies! Rumor has it there are even people who don’t eat CHEESE! OR EGGS! OR MILK! You might want to look it up. Just sayin’…
Because I am a good mother and girlfriend and have a New Years Resolution to not throw fits in public, I ordered a side salad and french fries. It was a very sad and boring sorry excuse for a meal.
After our dinner I said to our very nice waiter, “Excuse me, do you realize you guys have no vegetarian options on your menu?” He smiled and said “Yeah sorry. There isn’t much. But there is a Black Bean burger.” I looked at him confused as did my boyfriend. We picked up the menu on our table and showed him that in fact there was no Black Bean burger on the menu. “Weird,” he replied. ”Well there is a Sweet Corn soup that has no meat in it.” Again we proved him wrong. No corn soup on the menu. Clearly even your servers aren’t aware of your fabulous new menu.
So dear Chili’s, even though you were once a favorite of ours, we will not be returning. You have the choice to not put vegetarian options on your menu and I have the choice to not be your customer.
Also you should also know I am one of those annoying “Mommy Bloggers” and I will be cuting and pasting this letter on my website. I’d be thrilled to post your reply to my site too if you are so inclined to write little ol me back.
Until then Chili’s, you can keep your Baby back Baby back Baby back ribs and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine.
Veggie love from me to you,
Becky princessmikkimoto@gmail.com
**I tried to send this letter to Chili’s via email. They have no email address on their website. I tried to fill out the form on their contact page but after many attempts it never was submitted. So my only hope was to direct the link to this post on Twitter and their Facebook page. Customer service fail… again.
02/01/2010 at 10:35 pm
The waiter bit cracked me up.
Damn, they didn’t even have fried cheese curds for some protein?
02/01/2010 at 11:51 pm
Sorry, Princess, but if you’ve chosen Chili’s you’ve already chosen wrong. Madison has SUCH a large variety of fantastic locally owned restaurants and there’s is no excuse for not patronizing them instead of this dreary chain. My .02.
02/02/2010 at 9:14 am
Okay, two things:
One, you are kind of inspiring me to give the veggie thing a try, at least in the month + I have leading up to this well, um, semi-naked calendar thing I’ve got going in March.
Two, even as a person who is currently eating meat, I agree that their new menu blows. I ordered takeout a few weeks back (without knowing the menu had changed) and got a turkey sandwich with bacon, my standby. Got home and discovered that it was completely different, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. Fast forward to this past Saturday night when hubby and I were exploring takeout date night options (takeout on the couch with kids running around screaming. Romantic, I know.) and I had multiple restaurant menus open on the laptop at once. I read the Chilis tab and then closed it. We won’t be back any time soon. (Except for Skillet Queso. Dang that stuff is yummy.)
02/02/2010 at 9:46 am
Eric, I do eat 90% of the time at the fantastic locally owned restaurants but on this day we were on the far west side and USED to like Chili’s. Also Matt and Ben aren’t going vegetarian so it seemed like a good choice since I, WRONGLY, assumed that they would have at least just ONE item that I could eat.
02/02/2010 at 9:47 am
Kim, Yeah I figured I can do it for 30 days. Truth is I already feel better…
and their skillet queso, ALSO HAS MEAT IN IT! Grrr.
02/02/2010 at 9:59 am
I think the final insult to you was that you had to become a “Fan” of Chili’s on Facebook in order to tell them you’re not a fan of their new menu.
02/02/2010 at 2:02 pm
i jus wanted to throw this out there..
yes everything on the menu does have meat but
im pretty sure if you dont want meat you can simply
just tell your server “i want this with no chicken”, or no “meat”
Chili’s is a pretty awesome place and im sure if there is
a certain way you want your food prepared they will
do anything to please you..
Thanks.
02/02/2010 at 2:15 pm
take a look at this maybe it will help you out…
http://www.chilis.com/EN/Vegetarian%20Menu/Chilis_Vegetarian_Menu_Generic.pdf
02/02/2010 at 9:33 pm
really? no veggie options?? not cool friend. not cool.
02/02/2010 at 11:14 pm
Hannah, the problem is, without the chicken I would have just a bun or just lettuce. I’m not asking for the moon, just one or two veggie options on the menu. If Chili’s is so “awesome” this shouldn’t be a problem for them.
Thanks for reading….
02/03/2010 at 3:28 pm
Chili’s has a vegetarian menu and although the black bean burger is not on the menu anymore, they still carry it and can make it. You can also order any of their HUGE salads without the meat. Next time, inform your server that you are a vegetarian and they can bring you a vegetarian menu or suggest the different options to you. If your server doesn’t know what they’re doing (which could be the case), ask to speak with a manager.
02/03/2010 at 4:05 pm
why can’t restaurants have the vegetarian menu included with the “regular” menu? it makes it sound like you’re different (= bad) to have to ask for a different menu than what is handed to you when you’re seated. most of the restaurants offer vegetarian dishes along side omnivore dishes. being a veggie-saurus shouldn’t be this difficult.
02/03/2010 at 4:15 pm
EXACTLY!! Perfectly said. Thank you Zeghsy!
02/03/2010 at 4:53 pm
Big fail and I’m not even a vegetarian but I’m not a big beef eater.
02/03/2010 at 5:03 pm
i don’t mean to take over princess mikkimoto’s comment section, but whitney, could you please explain to me how she is supposed to know to order this amazing black bean burger when it isn’t on the menu??
i don’t think becky should have to go on some sort of quest to get the food she wants. she should be able to find it on THE MENU.
i hope i didn’t overstep.
02/06/2010 at 9:30 pm
Clearly you forgot to come equipped with the SECRET PASSWORD to access the fabulous vegetarian menu. Chili’s fail!
02/08/2010 at 2:20 pm
This is awesome! Go you for writing them!