Shore Club Chicago — Restaurant in Chicago

To start our experience getting here was a bit tricky. Google Maps wanted to bring us directly to the restaurant. However there is no road or parking lot here. We finally realized that we had to park in the public lot nearby and walk over. It was annoying to realize that we had to pay $27 just to be able to enjoy a meal here.

On our walk over from the parking lot we were amazed at such a beautiful location in Chicago! The wide open beach views are fantastic! As we got to the restaurant I was amazed and excited to be there! The atmosphere here is fantastic! If I could give it six stars I would! This type of place is right up my alley and my kind of vibes! They have built and furnished something very impressive here! All the decor, colors and tropical plants and flowers are wonderful!

Then the appreciation started to decline rapidly after we were seated. Somehow after we were seated we were forgotten about. I thought maybe the server was busy. Then we noticed more people come in and order and receive drinks before we were even talked to. If the atmosphere wasn't so amazing we would have left by this point. After what felt like ten minutes I went back to the hostess to let her know we hadn't seen a server at all yet. She apologized and went off. (I assume to find a server, but she didn't specify, just left.) Another few minutes after that a server finally came by. He apologized and we remained friendly because of course accidents happen, but it was definitely a sour experience in the hospitality area.

Once we ordered we received our drinks and then food fairly promptly. My first drink - a majito wasn't made right and was missing the frest mint, but it was ok otherwise. I order a Mai Tai next and that was done well.

Our food was overall really good! The flavors were really good. The presentation was also done very well! The fries were the best I've ever had in life! Seriously up there! The steak I ordered was placed on the fries rather than next to them. Having the steak on top made the fries absorb the flavors making them fantastic! We were due to catch a flight so we took our club sandwich to go and it was still fantastic hours later when we finally ate it!

Overall I think this is a fantastic place due to the amazing atmosphere and good food. However bad service always makes me hesitant to give a full recommendation. I really hope this was just an off time and that they generally have good service. If not this is definitely an area to improve on. Had the service been good I would give 4.5 stars! The remaining half star would only be dinged due to the expensive parking situation. To be fair though I have discovered that to drive and park anywhere in Chicago is an expensive experience. So if you are going to pay to park this would be a place that's...

A group of my girl friends and I thought this looked like an amazing place to celebrate our friend during her bachelorette party. The advertisements were awesome- the photos, drinks selection and atmosphere were exactly what we were looking for. When we arrived to the Shore Club, it was a little early so we grabbed a drink at the bar before checking into our reservation. The general ambience seemed to exceed our expectation. While we all agreed the tiny cups of frozen cocktails were overly expensive, we all agreed to make the entire experience worth our while. It came time to check into our cabana and we were told that it would be a free minutes to get the previous party out. Fast forward thirty minutes and we were still standing around waiting for our cabana. Finally, we had an employee ask if we were waiting and stated he would promptly get a server and cabana for us. When we were finally in the designated area, our server took another 20 minutes to get our drink orders (which needed to equate to a $200 minimum). We ordered four six packs of domestic beers. After talking to two separate servers, they told us that our drink orders were never put in. Our original server ended up bringing 24 canned beers in a plastic container (not the yeti cooler- or any cooler at all) about 45 minutes after we ordered them, stating that the cooler and ice were following directly behind. We asked our server for a food menu, to which she stated would be promptly brought out. After another 20 minutes, two guys brought out a dirty, broken Igloo cooler out without any type of lid. Still not no menu. While all of my friends and I are relatively relaxed individuals, we were all growing very irritated with the service. I ended up going to the bar to ask for a menu- where a handful of servers and bartenders were socializing- and was told I needed to go outside to see the hostess at the front of the establishment for a menu. I eventually was able to secure a menu. We ended up asking to speak to a manager regarding our experience. While the manager was extremely nice and immediately asked what she could do to make up for our grievances, we were all still very peeved by the entire experience. The advertisements promise a fun, stress-free, energetic experience. That was so far from true. We chose the shore club because of the fun, party environment because we were trying to make our friend’s party memorable. Unfortunately we paid an exuberant amount of money to sit on a cheap mattress and extremely overpriced domestic beers in a broken dollar...

Amazing food, average service (strange encounter with waitress), automatic 20% gratuity which is then followed by a prompt to tip more.

Food: I had the Seared Salmon, my friends had the Mykonos Board and Shrimp tacos. The food was amazing. The buttery sauce that comes with the salmon is to die for and the roasted vegetables were cooked perfectly. My friends enjoyed the Mykonos Board and Shrimp tacos as well. We ordered the frozen cocktail flight ($45 for 6 small drinks) which I believe is reasonably priced. All of the drinks in the flight were tasty.

Service critique: my friends wine class clearly had water spots all over it (which is fine, idk why they don't polish the glasses though?) BUT also had yellow debris on it that looked like snot. Clearly visible. I'm not sure how the waitress didn't notice it. When my friend politely asked for a new glass and a new pour and the waitress agreed but seemed annoyed by the request. I don't think that's an unreasonable request at all. As I said, it literally looked like dried snot on the glass.

Automatic gratuity charge: When you pay by scanning a QR code, there is a service charge automatically applied which is 20% of your bill. I understand some restaurants opt for automatic gratuity when there are many people in the party, but I found this to be a bit questionable, especially when we only had 4 people in our party. Furthermore, it did not make clear that the service charge meant tip. You were prompted to tip more on top of the already automatic 20% added. Shady. Our server was fine, but I don't really believe in adding auto-gratuity especially when its for a table of 4. Almost got tricked into tipping 30% for very...