Portillo's Algonquin — Restaurant in Dundee Township

My father and I arrived around 10pm 4.12.24 and it was... disappointing. I understand the time may have been a factor, however as a former restaurant worker and a current manager, I was less than impressed.

There were a couple of tables still uncleaned, which isn't a big deal and honestly the least of their concerns.

The person (teenager, long curly dirty blonde hair, male) was lovely. He was patient while we ordered, and reiterated several times everything to ensure accuracy and called out the items on the ear piece to ensure expediency, and overall he deserves every dime of his pay and probably a raise. He was consistent about sweeping up and cleaning multiple areas, not just his own, and was honestly the highlight of the visit.

We then went over to wait for our take out order, and honestly, I wanted to just leave, but had already ordered. It was... not great. My dad and I had a full view of the drive thru area, and the fry station, and could see a decent chunk of the line area and some of the shake area.

Garbage cans were overflowing (onto bread trays, no no for risk of contamination) the fry area was covered in fry grease and old fries, and a guy who appeared to be a shift lead (a little on the hefty side, brown hair about an inch long) just started wiping it onto the floor and wasn't properly cleaning anything, going from area to area in the same gloves and kept touching his person, again with the gloves.

The guy working fries was diligent about appropriately cleaning up a few times, but seemed new or at the very least inexperienced with the station and struggled to keep up.

The drive thru girl was on top of it and consistently cleaning, verifying orders, and just moving. She should be training people and ensuring stuff gets done because she had it in her.

What I saw of the line seemed okay, a little messier than it should be but the guy was hustling and doing a damn good job if it.

The shake station had residue on the floor, and the machine was covered and didn't look like it had been cleaned. There was food and other residue all over the floor of the area and the person who took our order was doing his utmost to clean them up without veering to far from his position.

The only time i saw a manager was when he informed several staff he'd be cutting some people loose to save on payroll and call an orders attention to come to the counter. I didn't see him at all after that.

There are some good hard workers who could genuinely make this place go from eh to amazing and right now those people are being under utilized. I waited maybe 15 minutes for my food, maybe more, I wasn't keeping track, but there was just so much room for improvement and it looks like lack of adequate...

For a simple hotdog, jumbo hotdog, it took them well over 15 minutes to get it to me and the place had just opened and was not crowded. My order number was on the prompter/video screen for a long time and it indicated it was in the queue but never was moved to the ready status. I waited so long that eventually I went to the counter only to see my order # just sitting there on the back table. I thought maybe the hotdog was not ready so I asked is the order ready and only then I was handed the bag. They did not have the decency to call the number for the order. When I received the order, the hotdog was barely warm.

Another problem with this place is one customer exiting the drive-thru decided to accelerate out of the place maybe at 35 mph and almost hit me as I was cautiously exiting out of the parking lot (going straight to the point to make a left turn out of the parking area). The drive-thru exit is right there and the driver was not courteous enough to slow down or even yield as I felt I had the right of way. There should be perhaps a stop sign there for the drive-thru customer exiting to either slow down, pause or stop before deciding to put on the gas to exit nearly causing an accident. For this reason, this place may not be safe.

There is one entrance and one exit. Maybe it needs another area for parking lot customers to exit without crossing the area where the drive-thru exit is. Poor design.

In summary, first i received slow service, they never called the number of the order after waiting so long and when I tried to carefully exit the place, a car almost or could have hit me by speeding out of the exit lane nearly causing an accident. That was just too much for what otherwise a nice &...

Just dined at the new Portillo's restaurant in Algonquin. One word describes the experience, disappointing.

The "garage" themed decor misses the mark and is not up to the design level of tradition Portillo's restaurants. The 2 dimension decor consists vastly of obviously new reproduction advertisement signage and freshly printed reproductions of magazine covers, article pages and ads. There is smattering of actual vintage material and local interest material. The faux wooden tables with black smug lines do not fit the decor. The un-upholstered bench seat backs of the booths look unfinished and uncomfortable. Even the bathrooms are substandard, with stalls so short, one needs to staddle the toilet in order to open or close the stall door. The single slope, trough sinks are just plain wierd and are unrelated to the "garage" theme.

Our group found the self-service memorabilia and desert station a positive addition. However, the zig-zag ordering queue made no sense.

Ordering and order pickup were as commonly experience at any Portillo's.

The beverage stations are a bit congested, even with only several customers using it. This could be improved by providing more separation between the soda/tea dispensers and the area with the lids.

When we arrived at a table and were passing out the sandwiches, I briefly thought that our order was wrong. It turned out that the package containing the Italian beef sandwich that I ordered looked like a hot dog. It used to be the beef sandwich was readily identifiable from a hot dog just based on the size of the wrapped sandwich. Wow, have the portions of the Italian beef sandwiches been greatly reduced, yet the prices...