Shannon's Irish Pub — Restaurant in Glen Ellyn

First things first, if you are ok with a ridiculous wait time for your food, terrible service and mediocre food, this is the place for you.

With that out of the way, these places need to start putting Irish in quotations when they call themselves Irish pubs. The most Irish part of this place is the usual American fanfare dialed down to almost non existent. Stained glass with Celtic knots, a single stained glass tricolor in a window pane and of course at least one piece of decor that references Guinness. Barren walls, a drab and colorless bar. The issue with Irish Pubs in America is they tend to try way to hard. This place doesn't try at all. Every TV was playing American college football. No Soccer, which sure, it's America, I get it. But they weren't even showing the Notre Dame game. And don't get me started on the top 40s playlist.

Onto the service. This would have been a better experience had we never even interacted with a staff member. But Mariano F (at least I think that's his name, he didn't tell us his name when we sat down I had to get it from the receipt) made sure that our 2 hours at the establishment was about 96% waiting for our food, and the remaining 4% was spent dealing with him being rude. The most bizarre interaction with him was when he brought our boxes over for our food. Instead of just handing us the open boxes like any other restaurant would, he separated them and closed all of them before handing them to me one by one. I then had to reopen them to put the food in them. I know this seems like a weird complaint, but it was just the weird end to a night of terrible service.

The food was the best part, which isn't saying much with such a low bar set. I had the buffalo burger, it was good, cooked well and had a nice big side of fries.

My wife got the "shepherds" pie. Ground beef with no seasoning, topped with supposed mashed potatoes, but I'm pretty sure it was just paper mache. Shepherds pie is Lamb. I wouldn't usually make this distinction, but 14 bucks for ground beef and mashed potatoes that isn't even cooked properly is just disappointing.

My mother in law got the Filet, and she said it was cooked how she likes it, and she's very particular about her steak. So...

Love the food here. Called to have food made to be picked up but drunk customers kept answering the phone and this happened several times. Kinda funny actually!! Can not recommend eating here unless going in. 😅 p.s.... it was not just a speech impairment, it was what was said, very rude. I'm really sorry and would not make fun or light of any disability but my gf called as well right after and had similar experience, Something to that effect. I have 5 stars for food but who ever answered your phone was more then slurred speech. There was no reason to have that demeanor and say the things that were said, that is why we were convinced this was alcohol motivated. I'm am sorry if I completely mistook not being able to understand a basic order and laughing as someone with just a speech impairment. This is just my experience and your bar has really great reviews, I am just being honest about our experience over trying to place an order here. Have a good day and thanks...

Incredibly slow service for a place that was nearly empty. Over an hour to get a grilled cheese for my 2 year old as if they didn't put in our order until we were already waiting for 45+ mins. The waiter was weird as if he just didn't want us there, I'm not sure if he was actually a manager and didn't normally deal with customers? Came to our table a few times, again this place was nearly empty. I don't expect someone to be by us all night but we barely saw him. We were sitting down for 2 hours and maybe 25 mins of that time were actually eating. I don't know, I don't think the meal would've felt so unappetizing if the waiter didn't seem to dislike us? Even at the end, we asked for boxes he came back with the 3 open containers and then, for some reason, had to close each one of them before giving them to us. Which we then had to open anyway to put food in, so why? It was just strange, I don't know how else to describe the experience. Food...