Lincoln Highway Tavern — Restaurant in Evanston

I was going to skip this review to be polite, but since Google kept pestering me, here you go.

We were "greeted" by bartender A, who seemed annoyed we were there and confused because my wife ordered a hot toddy. She never recovered from the idea of mixing whiskey and hot water, promptly forgot to put our food order in, dropped off a cup of limes (when my wife asked for lemons) and proceeded to ignore us for the rest of the evening. At first I took it personally but after watching her interact with some of the other patrons I realized it was just her dim bulb of a personality shining through.

Ah, to be young and naive again.

Bartender B using her spidey sense gained from years of actually caring about her job and someone other than herself, sensed something was amiss in our transaction and stepped in to pick up the slack. Affable, attentive, and quick with some conversation, although she had little time to do so as there was plenty of slack to be picked up. She made the best of it with a smile and is probably the only reason we'll be back.

Although the menu looked fantastic, the food was so so, wife loved her chili, but was bummed out by the meager salad. My hot Hawaiian burger was like the heat in my Peterbilt, mediocre at best, but after an hour and a half I would have eaten the menu, so I inhaled it and we headed for the sleeper.

They say you never know what somebody is going through, who knows, maybe we came in at the tail end of a wild wing night, so I won't hold this lackluster experience against the place and we'll give it another go next time we're in town.

Ample truck parking out back is...

The shepard pie and a Guinness is the perfect combo! UPDATE: I have been here several times in the past and really liked it. However, I was just there yesterday and i don't know if ownership has changed or what but we probably won't be back. The whole time we were there it felt like we were in an episode of Bar Rescue and Jon Taffer was going to come out at any minute. The bartender had an attitude like no other, as did other members of the staff. Berating customers and potential customers alike and not in a good way. We saw at least 3 groups of people come up to the front of the building, get a puzzled look on their face and then walk away. Come to find out only a couple of the neon signs were on and the rest were off. The staff mocked the people that were leaving but the geniuses had no clue that their store front looked like a derelict business and people couldn't tell if they were open or closed. The place smelled of old grease, as if the deep fat fryer hadn't been changed in forever. Then the bartender and waitress were taking out the garbage. They both came in and were laughing that the bags were leaking and when they tossed them in the bin that stuff went flying all over. Pretty funny until you realize that they went right back to waiting on customers without washing their hands. At that point we bailed and went...

2pm on Saturday. We walked in with our 6 year old boy named Lincoln. I’ve been telling my wife and son for years about the Shepard’s pie so we did an 8 hour road trip from Colorado literally just to eat here, spend the night and go back the next day. They immediately said we couldn’t stay because they’re a bar and we had a kid. We weren’t there to drink (not that there’s anything wrong with drinking at 2pm - don’t that myself 100s of times), we were there to eat and get a t-shirt for my son. Never seen a place in the food and hospitality business be so callous and less hospitable. I’ll find a new place to drive 8 hours to for Shepard’s pie. 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻 They said there’s a note on the door disclosing their distaste for kids in their restaurant, but that did me no good when I looked up their hours on google and it made no mention of the “we hate kids at 2pm on a Saturday policy” Even the Griswolds eventually got...