Jameson's Charhouse — Restaurant in Elk Grove Township

To celebrate my first Mother's Day, my husband and I decided to give Jameson's a try. They were offering a nice prime rib special, which sounded like the perfect meal for the occasion......wrong!

We ordered our feast at 1 p.m. for a 5 p.m. pickup. My husband arrived at 4:40 p.m., but it wasn't ready when he first got there. (Understandable since he was early.) The lobby was already packed (so much for social distancing....), so they instructed people to stand outside to listen for their names to be called. This would have been fine if it weren’t 39 degrees and raining. 5:00 came and went. His name didn't get called until 5:50 PM, which means they had him stand outside in cold, rainy weather for 70 minutes SEVEN, ZERO!

Now let’s talk about the food: not only was it cold but they didn't even get the order right. They gave me a tossed salad instead of the ceaser I had ordered. Then, they completely forgot to my side of mashed potatoes. This special Mother’s Day dinner was not going so well.

The next day I called and spoke with the supervisor, Harris. I described the events to Harris. Unfortunately, Harris only had excuses and nothing that remotely resembled any sort of apology. But he did offer a pathetic "I don't control the weather". No Harris, you don’t. You are far from God, but you could have called people and had them wait in their cars. "We had other orders from weeks earlier". Okay again, Harris, a little restaurant management 101: don't take my order if you already had too many.

"We were completely slammed". Harris, Harris, Harris.....I can't imagine I'm the only call today, a holiday, when dining out is the only way to patronize a restaurant during a global pandemic. He snarkily responded that people were actually calling to thank them for working. Hmmm......

I couldn't believe Harris was trying to defend what happened. I would have simply ordered from somewhere else. Oh, one more important point of neglect: I had ordered the Mother’s Day special I saw online for a prime rib dinner for $29.95. When I initially had ordered, the gentleman on the phone asked me what size, and I said I don't know, whatever the mother's day special is. He said, oh that's the 16oz. Turns out the phone answerer had no clue what I was talking about and just went ahead and charged me 9 bucks more for that 16oz dinner. And guess what our friend Harris had to say about that?

“We didn’t have any mother's day specials running and you likely saw an ad for a different Jameson's.” Ok, then, why did the person on the phone act like he knew about it? After the call, I checked the ad and it WAS indeed for Harris’s location. I emailed the marketing manager. (Guess who that was? HARRIS!!) During our conversation, Harris cut me off saying "I'm trying to offer you a $25 gift card." Gee, thanks, considering I already paid $9 extra bucks more for an INCOMPLETE dinner I didn't even order, without my mashed potatoes. Happy Mother’s Day to you...

My wife and I went here last night for our first date night in what seemed like forever and it was not what I was expecting. My wife had been here quite a few times before and she always talked about it in high regard, so I was expecting (at least) above average everything. The waitress we had was nice, even though she wasn't very attentive. Mind you, on a weekend I would understand waitresses being stretched thin on all of their tables, but this was a Monday with not many people there. The soup and salad were good but then the New York strip I ordered was about as tough as shoe leather. My wife's sirloin was good so she gave me a few bites of hers. Not being one to complain I was going to cut my losses and move on (we had other things we wanted to do that night), but my wife is different than I am and wanted to say something. Not trying to get our money back or a new steak or anything she told the waitress about my steak, she said she would talk to her manager about it. So we sat there for a few minutes, really just waiting on the check and the manager comes up to the table hovering over me and my plate in an almost dominant posture I guess trying to assess the situation and intimidate me at the same time. He asked what was wrong with the steak and I told him it was extremely tough, he asked if I wanted a new steak and it being the end of the meal I said no, I just want the check so we could leave and that we were just letting him know so he could monitor how things were being cooked. He commenced to stand there and sigh and stare down at the steak and then at me and huff and puff, grab my plate and then walk off with out saying another word. If this is your management you need to seriously reconsider who you have running your establishment. So without me knowing, he took the steak off of my bill but left the soup and salad on there as separate items. First off, the soup and salad are supposed to be included in the price of the meal and second I didn't eat much of either because I was holding out for the steak that I was paying close to $30.00 for. So all in all I'm giving this 2 stars, the waitress was at least nice, not attentive, the food was sub par at best and the management is SERIOUSLY lacking when it comes to customer satisfaction. First and last time I'll be eating here. Get your...

The food is great and the waiting staff is amazing. I am never going back to this restaurant again. Up until my most recent visit I gave this place 5 stars because they deserved it, they don't anymore. I mostly blame management and here is what happened: So my girlfriend and myself come here quite often and usually leave a sizable tip (25%-30%). Over the past 2 times before we didn't leave a good tip. The first time was a complete miscalculation on the total bill and we don't make that much money. The second time was due to less than good service we left a less than good tip. We were told after our meal that the management was going to punish us by making us pay gratuity on our bill and the only reason that this was not going to happen is our waitress for us that day knew we were every other time great with tips. There are ways that would have made this better like telling us before we started ordering food. In all reality though the reason up until this point I gave tips I believed was being generous I no longer feel this way because of this negative experience and the tips I leave are going to suffer because of this. When you can make up your own rules you get what you want... Lastly the reason this was happening is because the staff at Jameson's is getting paid 6$ an hour and requires the generosity of the customers tips pooled together to properly pay their staff. This is horrifying to me. I always thought I was being kind and charitable, I wasn't. I was paying the employees wages. The tips were never optional here because the management was too cheap to pay their employees the correct amount.

PS Just a tip for management. DO NOT rely on the generosity of strangers to properly pay your employees. I am surprised it has worked for so long. It is truly shameful. Paying tips are nice but it is optional. I wanted to be generous and only did what I did because of bad service or the complete inability to give a good tip. You taught me that in some cases it is not optional and that there is just an invisible tab...