Island Party Hut — Restaurant in Chicago

Back in the spring, my friends and I reserved one of Island Party Hut’s boats to celebrate our combined birthday party with a decent sized group of our friends over the summer. After all was said & done, we all had a good time so mission accomplished. However, there were a few annoying hiccups during the planning process that I think the company could improve on in the future. For the thousands we spent on this thing, we could not get a tour of the boat beforehand. In order to see what we were reserving for myself, I had to pay another $50 for a ticketed tour. At the reservation time, I was told it’d be no problem but got the run around after the fact. The cost structure is not transparent. This makes it impossible to budget and plan for. It’s not a base rental plus food/drinks per head, as I understood the site to say. Add to that the fact that the invoices are links in an email. Every time the reservation/headcount changes, so does the link. It does not allow one to go back for reference. I recommend taking screenshots. After calling so.many.times (SO MANY) to get instructions on the required cable to connect our friend’s DJ set up, I again got passed around with no clear answer. Figuring this out the day of ate into our 3 hr reservation, so that was cool. I understand there’s no real solution to leaving late, as I imagine they had another ticket tour or reservation following ours. But I mean, if we got straightforward answers from the get go, we would’ve been fine.

Again, everyone did have a good time. But my personal experience with the planning part was not great. The poor communication and feeling duped ruined the experience for me. I brought up all of these concerns with the company shortly after the July reservation, but wanted to make sure to put this out for future party planners.

I’m not saying don’t go, but proceed with caution, have minimal requests and an incredible amount...

We stopped by for a bite with our 2 kids. It was busy mostly with people grabbing drinks. It was around 721 pm when we placed our order.

While we waited we played some of the board games and waved at passing boats. The setting is nice and pleasant. And the location is nice for an outdoor restaurant, away from the noise of the street. However, if I wanted just a nice place to sit, I would find one of Chicago's many parks. I came to eat.

At 757 our food arrived with a pleasant waitress. The cold jerk chicken wrap was mostly lettuce and red onion. However, it wasn't too bad flavor. I ordered the Big Kahua pulled pork sandwich. It couldn't have been colder if it came straight from the fridge. It's obvious it had sat for a while (I managed restaurants for 6 years, and was a chef for 7, I know what hot food looks like when it gets cold). The sandwich had a sad looking piece of bacon and a dab of sauce on the meat.

Luckily, the waitress was attentive and had it reheated (no idea how, but I assume microwave - I can't fault them for that, it happens). Afterwards, I can basically say it was pulled pork. No real flavor. It was very moist, so they cook it well.

Either way, 30 minutes and $60 later equalled a pretty blah meal. Our kids food (grilled cheese and hot dog), were equally cold. Kids don't care, but I felt we kinda let them down on a parental basis.

On a positive note, my wife ordered a drink that was basically orange juice. It had stuff in it, like 2 straws and ice. I can't discern what it was supposed to be. I guess that wasn't positive at all.

We will permanently scratch this off of our "repeat visit" list. Maybe better for just a beer or two, or...

I saw they do a fall fest during the month of October so me and a few friends bought tickets. We thought it was a good deal because the ticket says it’s all you can drink, “fall cocktails, beer, cider, etc.” and includes a slice of pizza, brat, or hotdog. When we got there the place was super unorganized. The people working there didn’t even know what was going on! One of the ladies working behind the bar stated that she wasn’t ready because she, “just started” when it was 1:30pm and the event started 30 minutes prior. The lines to get drinks too were very long because they were obviously understaffed, which is the person who planned its fault. Anyways when we finally got to choose a drink they only allowed the people who bought the tickets to pumpkin cider and spiked hot chocolate, even though the ticket said otherwise. If you wanted a different drink you would have to pay up to 15$ for a drink and they were charging for water. The food wasn’t out till 30 minutes after the event started as well and was very cold. The bun to the brat was HARD. Almost like they just pulled them out the freezer from last year! The pizza was in a big box but was super misleading because the slice was no bigger than my hand. I liked the decor I guess but I would...