22nd
AG FTL
I like Austin Grill. I’ve had more than a few birthday celebrations at Austin Grill. I’ve paid money to park my car to get takeout from Austin Grill. Between the Bethesda store (where several of my friends worked during college) and the Silver Spring store (where I have shown up for happy hour and made “friends” such as Grillz and various vets out from Walter Reed for the evening).
In all of my years of AG patronage, I think that last night I had the most hilariously, ridiculously bad experience of my entire life.
There was no wait. The bar wasn’t full. My friend and I weren’t even seated in the area behind the bar. A guy comes up to us and says “I’m not your waiter, but I can take your orders.” 1 High Test, 1 Dos Equis draft, 1 chorizo quesadilla to split, 2 bowls of chili. Simple. 20 minutes later, the drinks arrive. 15 minutes after that, the bowls of chili arrive, along with a plate of chorizo tacos, all brought by a second server. We send back the tacos, eat the chili, and another 20 minutes go by before I flag down a third staff member, who turns out to be our waiter. Nice to finally meet you. I point out our empty drinks and chili bowls, order another round and ask him to check on our “appetizer.” He brings it out, sets it down, apologizes for the wait, and leaves. Neither of us feel right about this quesadilla, as the plate is nowhere near greasy enough for this quesadilla to contain chorizo. I opened up one of the slices with my fork, and at this point, I want to take a break to ask you what YOU think was in the quesadilla along with a modest amount of chorizo.
You’re probably wrong, so take one more guess and I’ll tell you.
SCRAMBLED EGGS.
I go to the host stand to consult a menu to make sure nothing has suddenly changed. Nothing changed. We flag down the waiter again and ask him if it’s changed as far as he knew. He was genuinely confused again but took the quesadilla back and had them make us a new one. It came out, we ate, asked for the check. The quesadilla has been removed from the bill, but the tacos are still on it. Those tacos are $1 more than the quesadillas! Send the bill back for fixing, and in the meantime I decide I don’t even want to see what might happen if we try to split the check on two cards, so I get cash. Pay, leave, and spend the next two hours trying to figure out WHO THE HELL WOULD PUT SCRAMBLED EGGS INTO A QUESADILLA.
If that chili didn’t have so much crack in it, I wouldn’t go back.
