# Chili's restaurant- how spicy hot would you rate their Mexican dishes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 12, 2015, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347 "2015-11-12T02:04:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347/21 "2015-11-12T18:32:35Z")
> [@Spud](#): > > I have to agree… the logo has more spice than anything. Eating the logo from the napkin would be as spicy as anything they serve. We avoided going to Chili’s for many years because of that logo. We went yesterday because we needed to stop somewhere for an hour to avoid 5 pm rush hour traffic. Chili’s happened to be in the same shopping center we were visiting. We were quite impressed and will be going back. I ate and enjoyed mildly spicy food before Acid Reflux. One of my fondest vacation memories was a road trip through Texas down through the Big Bend area. We ate at local Tex Mex diners almost every day. Acid Reflux changed everything, ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347/22 "2015-11-12T18:48:43Z")
Not spicy at all. This is run of the mill, frozen, corporate food. The whole point is not to offend anyone with taste or spice. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347/23 "2015-11-12T18:51:47Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I will say this for Chili’s, of all the chain restaurants in that range, their food is the closest to home made. I worked as a cook in a lot of places when I was younger, both independent places where we made everything from scratch and large chains. At Chilis, we punched potatoes to make fries, made ribs by putting them in a smoker, etc. At places like Bennigans, almost everything came pre-made in a bag and mayyybe you reconstituted it with some added water. I’ll eat at Chili’s before most other chains. My knowledge is somewhat dated (summer of 1989), but back then it was as you describe. We got daily deliveries of meat (ground beef, fajita beef, chicken breasts) from the local meat processing company (steaks weren’t on the menu yet), and got a twice-weekly produce delivery of tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, etc… We’d date them and store them in the walk-in or in the back, using them first-in, first-out. We also got fresh bread products from the local Rainbow/Mrs. Baird’s bakery every morning (I had a little racket where I’d give the bread guy a free coke and he’d give me a couple packages of still-warm powdered sugar donuts… they’re actually quite awesome when still fresh) The cooks started at about 8 am; they’d fry all the day’s tortilla chips, taco shells, taco salad bowls, etc… and then start in on prepping the salad ingredients- making the dressings, chopping the veggies, etc… and also doing whatever other prep/mise-en-place they needed, like slicing tomatoes, etc… They also would slice potatoes on one of those wall-mount fry slicers, soak them in water, and then par-fry them for later crisping up. (am still amazed they literally twice-fried their french fries from fresh potatoes every single day) Once a week they’d fire up the big gas cauldrons and cook about 10 gallons of chili from semi-scratch (meat & veg were fresh, spices came in bags from Chili’s corporate). They also smoked the ribs once a week as well- in an electric smoker that looked like R2-D2 with a smokestack. Then they’d crisp them up on the grill as ordered and sauce them up. Some things were pre-prepared however; stuff like mozzarella sticks were pre-prepared, the chocolate shake mix was pre-prepared, and the brownies/desserts were all pre-prepared. A few things were a mix; salsa, for example, was fresh tomatoes chopped really fine mixed with a salsa base from a gallon jug in a specified proportion. I suspect they still do it like that- it tastes the same anyway. Same thing for chicken tacos- they had a spice blend they’d mix with cooked chicken, and stuff like sauces and condiments were all pre-prepared and came in big cans or bottles. I’ve heard that their fries are out of a bag now, but that’s about the only thing I know of for sure, other than some of the appetizers. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347/24 "2015-11-12T19:15:19Z")
It sounds like we worked at Chili’s at about the same time. You’re right about the premade items, I had forgotten about them, but in general, Chili’s was closer to ‘real’ cooking than chains like Bennigan’s, or Ruby Tuesday’s (both of which I worked). ---
**Author:** ![chancetx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cdc98d/32.png) [@chancetx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chancetx)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347/25 "2015-11-12T19:30:45Z")
My mom and sister are big fans of Chili’s so I eat there maybe a couple times a year when I’m visiting. Mom especially is not tolerant of very spicy food and she orders the fajitas pretty much every time. My sister always requests they don’t dump some red spice mix on the fajitas before they serve them - not because it’s spicy but because she says it tastes weird and artificial. I always think, you’re eating franken-chicken fajitas at Chili’s. How much more artificial can you get? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347/26 "2015-11-12T20:37:51Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > It sounds like we worked at Chili’s at about the same time. You’re right about the premade items, I had forgotten about them, but in general, Chili’s was closer to ‘real’ cooking than chains like Bennigan’s, or Ruby Tuesday’s (both of which I worked). I was a busboy/janitor, so I spent more time in and around the kitchen than any of the other non-cook employees, I think. Anyway, I remember being fairly impressed at the time with the relatively fresh and from scratch nature of the food, and am doubly so, now that I’ve been in the real world for a while. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chilis-restaurant-how-spicy-hot-would-you-rate-their-mexican-dishes/737347.md?page=1)