Lavender Crest Winery — Restaurant in Colona

Where do we even begin?? Gloria, her family and the entire Lavender Crest team that run this facility are just amazing! We held our wedding and reception here a couple of weeks ago and there are no words to express how happy and grateful we are for this! From the very beginning, Gloria and Lavender Crest were super friendly, flexible, timely, informative, patient, and so easy to work with! They were willing to meet with us anytime we had questions or let us stop in anytime we needed to if we needed measurements or to check out anything. Very responsive when we would email questions or information for the wedding over. The venue itself is so gorgeous with the grape vines and the gazebo and the flower berm! We didn’t even have to leave the venue to go take pictures. We did our ceremony out by the flower berm and the arch and the pictures that are coming back with all the flowers in bloom are stunning! The cocktail hour and reception were inside and just as nice! They have a cute cafe/bar area that guests could meander through and then the reception hall was right next to it and just so pretty! They pretty much let you decorate it with anything and everything you want to. If there was anything we weren’t sure on they were willing to help with suggestions! The food was exceptional! We did the buffet style and we had so many people tell us how good the food was. If you can swing it we highly recommend the prime rib carving station! That was probably one of the best prime ribs I’ve had in a long time. I need someone I know to have a wedding there so I can have that prime rib again haha! And also, a surprise wildcard…the seafood lasagna rollups! They had this at the food tasting and we never would have given it a glance if it hadn’t been there. It was so incredibly good! They also have different options for the bar. We just decided to do all items open bar and it was very reasonably priced! And so worth it…the wine is fantastic! I heard a couple people say they were going to pick up a couple bottles from the gift shop. But overall the pricing for everything is very reasonable! That being said I am sure there is something we left out but thank you Lavender Crest and Gloria so much for truly making this one of the happiest days of our lives and we can’t wait to get back there for our anniversary or even just a weekend lunch and...

The place was very nice I got there at 207 my friends were already sitting at the table they were served some water the owner came over and dropped a water for myself and my friend that just showed up waitress finally showed up at 2:26 to take her orders because we were getting dirty looks from the cooks and the waitresses had to go to the bartenders for silverware had to go to the bartenders we didn't get our orders right so I'm going to order it applesauce and got chips instead we kept on getting dirty looks from the staff and then we were ordering the wine bartender was wonderful with the wine tasting had to go at the waitress for our checks she started doing them and then stop doing she doing and went to go do something else I had to ask our bartender 15 more minutes later for our checks finally received them found out that it's $0.40 per plate for a cake that we brought in didn't know that didn't say anywhere in their thing about if we bring it on cake they would charge us 40 cents that's no problem it was the atmosphere of the owner Gloria and her wait staff she got into a verbal yelling match with one of the ladies when she trying to explain to Gloria what was wrong with our service or was like what do you want us to do they're tired. I'm sorry you're way staff is tired maybe you should hire more wait staff. Oh no it is a very nice place if it was run by a different owner and different White staff if you want to enjoy yourself there plan on being there for 5 hours for someone finally to notice you to get service without the rude comments and if you want some silverware contact the owner don't contact the wait staff I had my first time in Illinois going to a winery I had wonderful wineries out there in California and I will never go to this winery Nor will referred anyone to go to the winery in Eldridge such nice owners such nice...

Servers are wonderful, no complaints there. However, Gloria who I believe owns the place is impossible to work with. I got the Spinach artichoke dip which I (nor any of my family members) were a fan of as it had no flavor and dry. I asked the waitress if I could swap it out for a side salad and she said yes. the dip and chips were not even ate, it was the full plate!! I got the bill and it was not swapped and still got charged with the Spinage dip and side salad. If I would have known, I wouldn’t have got the side salad. Not the waitresses fault, as Gloria would not allow it. You’d think she’d take off $8.00 if I was getting information to have a wedding there! If she couldn’t take off $8, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like working with her with a wedding. Handed back all the information to her along with the box of Spinage dip she told us to keep. $8 is not what I’m complaining about, its...