Surprisingly Lackluster Chili

I recently went on a trip to Ireland, taking a week off not just from this site but, basically, from everything. It was a pretty solid time, and I’m glad I did it (just about everyone in my family has made the journey over to Ireland at least once, so this was finally my turn), but mostly I’m glad because it let me eat at a ton of places so I could then review all of them for the website. It’s all my brain thinks about when I go on a trip. “I ate at a new place. Let’s review it!” Hell, the Food section of this website is larger than any other section because, well, I just love eating and writing about food.

I’m basically going to travelogue my way through the whole Ireland tri[, reviewing every place I ate at as I went along, but the trip technically started before I even got up in the air. The very first stop was the airport itself, Washington Dulles in Virginia. Because it was an international flight, I showed up way, way early, leaving me with three hours to kill. And since I had that time I had to go and find something to eat while I waited. I mean, you can only browse your phone so much before you need to find something to do.

As I was traveling with my wife, who has gluten and lactose issues, I tried to find a stop in the airport that seemed relatively safe. We ended up at Ben’s Chili Bowl, which has a location in Terminal B of the airport (which seems to handle all the international flights at Dulles) since chili is generally safe for someone that can eat gluten or dairy. It’s mostly just meat and beans and those are a-okay. So we got a selection of items just to see what all this place could do.

First up is the turkey burger, which I got topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. It was a fine burger, although not anything special. It was a little underseasoned, but it made up for that by being very moist. That moisture really helped to raise it up a fair bit as, very often, turkey burgers from fast food joints can be dry. This one at least had moisture, and while it wasn’t flavorful that could easily be fixed with more toppings.

Next was the spicy chili dog, featuring a special smoked sausage along with spicy chili sauce. I didn’t get anything else on it, assuming that would be greasy enough, and I wasn’t wrong. This was an incredibly messy, drippy dog. While very tasty, with the dog both featuring a solid, smoked flavor along with a lot of spicy heat, it was very hard to eat. I burned through a stack of napkins trying to keep my hands even reasonably clean and not get chili sauce over everything. Now, okay, it’s a chili dog. Those can be messy. So whether you think that’s a knock against this item is really a matter of perspective. What I will say is that I didn’t like eating it in an airport, far from home, just in case I spilled crap all over my shirt. It was tough to enjoy.

My wife, meanwhile, got a cup of their chili con carne (meat chili) in a combo with fries. She only got raw onions on top of the chili since the rest of the toppings on offer were cheese, cheese sauce, and more cheese. Naturally, as she was trying to avoid dairy, none of that was going on her chili. Sadly, her chili really could have used some punching up as it was sad, bland, and very thin. This is probably one of the worst chilis she or I have ever tried, and that’s surprising since this is a chili place. You’d expect that if they could nail any item on the menu it would be the chili.

My best guess is that they expect you to put a bunch of cheese and other stuff in the chili. Hit it with spices, dairy, and really kick it up. I can understand not wanting your chili to be too salty in this context, which is fair, but Ben’s really needed to have any flavor in the chili to begin with. This was just such a sad little bowl of chili, lacking in any real flavor at all, and my wife wished she’d gotten a burger instead. From a chili place.

Oh, the fries sucked, too. They were sad, dense, and a little cold by the time they got to us (and I was standing right at the window). They felt limp and underseasoned, requiring a lot of ketchup to make them palatable. Dipping them in the chili didn’t help since the chili was so bland and runny, and if you can make good chili fries out of a combo like this, what are you even doing? The whole experience was really bad, and it made me feel sad for my wife since my food was at least edible and hers… wasn’t.

There’s an addendum to this as well: we’re pretty sure Ben’s Chili Bowl also gave us food poisoning. Her chili was the only item we both shared that day, and then by the time we were off the flight to Ireland and at our hotel, suddenly we needed to spend a few hours there dealing with, well, intestinal issues. She’s a health inspector and, from her knowledge, she could figure out that what we had was likely a stomach bug from improperly handled food eaten six to twelve hours earlier and, of all the items that fit the bill that day, Ben’s chili was the only food we shared. So… yeah. Not great at all.

In short, many of Ben’s Chili Bowl’s items are fine to middling, but their chili, the thing they should be best at, is pretty awful. Their chili sauce for dogs and burgers is good, but their chili itself is bad. And then when you factor in the intestinal issues we had afterwards, it makes this a restaurant (and likely a chain, since they have a few stores all around Washington D.C.) I doubt I’ll ever go back to, even if I’m stuck in Dulles’s Terminal B, waiting around for another international flight. One sad meal was enough.