7 Menu Items You Should Avoid Ordering At Chili's

Chili's is seen as a reliable option for many when they want to go out and get a filling meal. However, as with many other restaurants, the food there can hold some unpleasant surprises. Many of the dishes on Chili's menu are packed with calories, fat, and sodium, and even customers who adore the item will readily state it isn't the most nutritious food.

The food at Chili's can be polarizing, with some loving it and some hating it. The chain began as one restaurant in Dallas in 1975 and has quickly grown into a fixture of the national restaurant scene, so the people who like it clearly outnumber those who don't. But a few dishes get complaints from just about everyone, either about the texture, the taste, or the fact that the quality of the items doesn't seem to match up with the idea of paying to eat out. Here's a look at seven menu items you should avoid ordering at Chili's.

Just six of the Nashville Hot Crispy Crispers, without any of the sides that come with the "Combo" version, contain 1,770 calories. If you order the Nashville Hot Crispy Crispers Combo and get the sides, and you add another 860 calories for a total of 2,630 calories. That's more calories in one meal than most people need in an entire day. And while the amount of food you get in that combo is decent, it certainly doesn't look like it contains that many calories.

The total number of calories in the combo meal is more than most women and many men of any age or activity level would need to maintain their weight. Add in other meals, protein bars, that random handful of snack food you grabbed earlier in the day, and any desserts or other items you might order during your meal at Chili's, and you would easily surpass any daily caloric maximum.

That's not bad for a once-in-a-while meal, but a 2023 survey from U.S. Foods showed that Americans tend to eat out an average of three times a month and order food for delivery around once a week. If you're one of these average Americans and like to order from Chili's, you'll get way more calories (and fat and sodium) than you need on a regular basis if you aren't careful to adjust the rest of your daily diet.

The Nashville Hot Crispy Crispers are a caloric minefield, but what if you're not concerned about calories? What if you want to concentrate on flavors and texture instead of nutrition? You still may want to avoid the Crispy Crispers — all of the flavors, in fact. That's because Chili's made a change to its menu that had a lot of fans upset. Chili's used to have both the Crispy Crispers and original Crispers. The original ones were covered with a batter, and the batter was known for turning out soggy and lumpy. A lot of people actually liked them despite the issues with the batter. However, a lot of people didn't like them, and the Crispy Crispers reportedly outsold the original Crispers by a wide margin. That led Chili's to discontinue the original Crispers.

Unfortunately, the Crispy Crispers have their own problems, and they seem to have a really bad reputation online. Staff will tell you the Crispy Crispers sell well, but customers still complain online about everything from the fact that the crispy ones were basically like every other chicken tender available (in other words, they were generic tenders) to problems with the tenders' texture being dry, hard, and unappetizing. Some were so annoyed by the change that they even threatened to never return to Chili's.

Let's go back to the items to avoid because of the number of calories they contain and take a look at the Texas Cheese Fries. These are a starter, not a main course, yet the Texas Cheese Fries alone have 1,800 calories. If you get the optional chili along with the fries, you'll add 200 calories for a total of 2,000. Again, do you understand that this is a starter, a small dish you have before getting your main meal and dessert?

The calories aren't the only number you need to watch out for in this item. The fries alone, without chili, have 122 grams of fat, 51 of which are saturated fat, and 4,130 milligrams of sodium. With the chili, those numbers go up to 133, 55, and 5,440 respectively. The American Heart Association recommends that people get no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, and taking in too much sodium can lead to bloating, higher blood pressure, edema, stomach issues, and other problems. So again, you'd want this starter to be a once-in-a-while treat and not a regular feature of your daily (or weekly, or even monthly) food intake.

One menu item that seems to be universally disliked, at least online, is the chili. The main complaint is that it's way too salty, and according to Chili's nutrition information from April 2024, the cup of chili has 950 milligramsof sodium while the bowl has a whopping 1,900 mg. This is a relatively recent complaint, and according to those who claim to be Chili's employees on Reddit, the chili is now made off-site, so it's sent to each restaurant pre-mixed. The kitchen at the restaurant has nothing to do with the amount of salt in the chili now. There's also an answer on Quora from someone who says they asked a server what had happened, and the server mentioned the same change to the chili.

The salty taste isn't the only issue that staff and customers have mentioned. One complaint called the chili watery while another called it dry; one Redditor who was apparently a server at a Chili's said customers had sent the chili back while another said no one at their location ever ordered it. People have complained about the smell, too. All in all, this sounds like another menu item to avoid ordering.

The Bacon Rancher burger is one of those items that you don't want to order if you're concerned about excessive fat, calorie, and sodium intake, but that doesn't mean it tastes terrible. In fact, customers rave about it online. They love the taste, the messiness, and the utter decadence of this pile of bacon, ranch, meat, and bread. It's sloppy and is the subject of joking posts online that claim it will bring you closer to your personal demise only to be followed up with statements about how delicious the burger is.

But, yes, if you're at a stage where you need to consider issues like how much sodium you're getting at each meal, the Bacon Rancher burger isn't your friend. Before adding any fries or other sides to your plate, that meaty mess has 1,710 calories, 123 grams of fat, and 2,640 milligramsof sodium. It's yet another Chili's menu item that's good for a rare treat but may not be something you want to eat frequently, even if you find it staggeringly tasty.

Quesadillas really shouldn't be that hard to make, but several Chili's locations apparently have issues cooking edible quesadillas in general. There's no one type of quesadilla on the menu that's more difficult to make than any other type, but complaints about the category in general are legion. The top complaint is that the quesadillas end up burned, and Redditors who work at Chili's say this has to do with the impinger, the oven they use to cook the quesadillas. They claim that if the cook isn't watching the quesadillas carefully, the impinger can become backed up, and anything in there can burn quickly.

It sounds like Chili's may want to take another look at this process, because the complaints about burnt quesadillas and dried-up cheese have made the menu item one that people just don't want to order. Quesadillas should be among the easiest items to cook, even when adding a lot of extra ingredients. So, if Chili's cooks are constantly burning them because the kitchen is too busy for them to keep an eye on the oven, something's got to change about the kitchen workflow or how many cooks need to be in there each day.

A large, warm cookie full of melty chocolate should be a dream dessert for cookie fans. But Chili's Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie appears to be the universally worst of the chain's sweet items. Lists of what to avoid at the chain consistently list this skillet cookie as the number-one offender in the dessert category, and even reviews of the cookie's taste and texture aren't totally complimentary.

In terms of nutrition, the cookie has 1,230 calories; add one of these cookies to your dinner of Texas Cheese Fries and Crispy Crispers, and you have about two and a half days' worth of calories for most adults in one meal. But even if all you're planning to eat is that one skillet cookie, consider what you want to get out of eating it. Reviews say it tastes good and has a soft internal texture, but some also say it's nothing to write home about — it tastes like store-bought ice cream on a store-bought cookie.