Village Inn — Restaurant in Huntley

Approximately 45 miles northwest of downtown Chicago, lies the Village of Huntley. Thomas Stillwell Huntley, who founded this village in 1851, moved to this area from Courtland County, New York, in 1846. Originally, the land laid out by Mr. Huntley has grown as Huntley Grove. Some time later, the name changed to Huntley.

In 1851, Mr. Huntley donated a site for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and Huntley became one of the stops the railroad made on the way to Rockford, Freeport and Galena. The railroad stop in Huntley became a shipping center for milk, butter and eggs from the local farms.

In 1851, the first U.S. Post Office was established along with many other businesses. In 1862, the first hardware store was opened. In 1867, the first gristmill opened. In 1880, the library was organized. Huntley was starting to grow.

In 1967, a local resident named Beverly Kubis, who always wanted to own her own restaurant, rented a section of a building which was originally a tavern built in the 1800's. She equipped the kitchen, provided comfortable seating and called it the Village Inn and opened to the public, serving great food for almost 14 years. Finally, the Huntley residents had a place to come and eat, along with meeting many of their friends and neighbors.

On February 20, 1980, Beverly sold the restaurant to Mr. Bill Galanis. Every year the restaurant got busier and busier as the population grew and so did Bill's menu. Originally the building was built two stories high and opened as a tavern. The building next door was a hardware store.

Today the Village Inn occupies both buildings; now, turned into one historic restaurant by Bill. Don't miss your chance to taste a typical American breakfast if you're in Huntley. Great food, good prices and friendly staff. Here I post some photos of the...

My review on Yelp a month or 2 ago was removed for some odd reason. I'm not sure why but my rating (one star) still stands. All I can say is that our first visit here to the Village Inn was not a pleasant one. To summarize:

We were greeted with cold stares Food (beef stroganoff) we ordered was subpar, portion was fairly small We did not receive and rolls, butter, condiments, plastic utensils or napkins nor were we asked if we wanted any.

Needless to say we will not be returning. There are far better choices nearby.

Update 4/11/2023:

Thanks for your reply.

Just to let you know, we have recently moved to Huntley from one of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Our experience with the local businesses here in Huntley have been positive and the people have been pleasant - until we visited the Village Inn.

Back at our last home, we had about 4-6 restaurants that we considered our favorite dine-in or takeout places. We were hoping to make the Village Inn a regular on our list seeing that it is close to our new home. That all went away with our first visit.

Is it possible that the five star ratings are from your regular patrons? Are they treated better than new visitors? The reviews with low ratings pretty much reflect the same way we feel.

It is unfortunate that the Village Inn won't be making it on our list.

Fortunately, we found places nearby with better service, better food and an overall better...

I recently moved to the area and wanted to try a local place.

This is your average old school diner. Food is what you would imagine - ok but nothing special, nothing elevated. Prices are in line with that tho so that's good.

The place inside is kinda dirty, unfortunately. The walls look like they were painted by someone that was visually impaired at the time and the walls just generally need a thorough washing.

They have a slot machine gaming section crammed into the eating area which is unfortunate. Not a lot of good ambiance here which is sad because it's right in the middle of downtown Huntley.

On the day we came, it wasn't even that busy. Sunday at around 9am. We ordered one of the items the server recommended. We were sat right away.

When I received my food I saw a pile of mashed up Ingredients - like something a college kid would make after a night out drinking.

Food took awhile to come, when it did, it was luke warm. They didn't even butter my toast. Coffee is ok but nothing special. Thankfully they do offer Iriecup Tea, although they didn't bring my wife's until we were almost done with our meal.

I had to flag people down for coffee refills 🤷

The server was nice but seemed flustered due to the obvious issues the kitchen was having.

In the end although I appreciate the effort there's too many good breakfast places in the area that I will be hard pressed to recommend this...