Burgers & Beer — Restaurant in Kankakee

I want to preface my review by stating that my visit at Burgers and Beer was not the norm. My husband and I dine there regularly, and never have problems with the service, but on this occasion I did.

What started out as a normal dining experience took a turn for the worse. When our food was dropped off and we were asked the standard question, “does everything look good” we both responded with yes.

A few bites into my chopped salad, I noticed it was missing the egg. I drank my drink and waited for a bit for the obligatory second check (that good servers do) to request an egg for my salad. I finished my drink, 10-15 minutes later, still no recheck.

During this time, a couple came in and were assisted by the same server. I thought, she surely will come to our table when finished taking their order, since we were right behind the new customers’ table, and it was not busy. Didn’t happen. She didn’t even look our way as she dashed back to the bar area.

She began chatting it up with a coworker, and I attempted to get her attention twice during their exchange, as now I wanted another drink and my egg. I could not get her attention. She was too busy talking. When their conversation ended, she seemed to look right at me, so I held up my hand with my empty drink and motioned again. She looked the other way and went into the kitchen. At least ten more minutes had gone by before she came to bring the other table their appetizers. This time, I was ready in case she turned and bolted back to the bar without checking with us. When it appeared she was finishing her conversation, she took a step away in the bar’s direction again, so I raised my hand and said, “excuse me”. She responded with a firm “just a minute, I’m with them right now” as if to insinuate that I was being rude. Saying I’ll be right with you would have been a more respectful way to communicate that with me. She was the one who forgot about her customers and that is rude.

When she finally came over to our table, I explained about the egg and ordered another drink. I also explained that I had been trying to get her attention for a while. She said she would be back and darted off to tell the kitchen about the egg and then went over to her coworker and started talking again. I finally received two eggs an my second drink.

When we received the bill, she apologized about the egg, but never about her poor service and attitude, and that was what the real issue was.

TIPS stands for To Insure Prompt Service. She didn't deserve the 20% tip we left, but what can I say...we are classy. :) It would have been more if she would have been more observant.

I hope this type of service won’t become the norm, as we really like the food there and would like to keep it in our local...

This was a hard one to write. This location in Kankakee has always been perfect. I mean PERFECT. It slipped it seems, however. Came in with my wife and we were offered any table. Ended up sitting at the bar. We were greeted by the bar tender and given, I think, solid service for explaining options. That said, we sat for a heavy 5-10 mins waiting to order. To be clear, we were one of 4 or 5 people at the bar at all, so the wait with our menus down seemed awkward. I ordered the boneless chicken wings and my wife got the olive burger, medium. The food took a while, which is always how wings are. It's clearly labeled and communicated so no worries. Drinks were good, nothing wrong there. The food, however, caught us off guard. Usually, the boneless wings can literally be a mix bag. I've seen small popcorn chicken looking ones before usually supplemented by a handful more of them to equal the amount of food you typically have with 12 full boneless wings. Let me tell you, I had 10 overcooked popcorn chicken pieces and 2 actual wings. I showed my wife and she even remarked you can fit 2 of the small pieces over one or the 2 larger ones. There was a blackened one that was hard as hell that was counted as one of the 12. We had just drove from 40 minutes away and had our favorite restaurant closed near us so we were starving. We didn't want to drive anymore and the bar tender was not really there after he dropped off the food. I had already ate a couple to see how they were - dry and very crunchy. I just used them as dippers to each the sauce. My wife's burger was nicely made but the meat was undercooked for medium. There was still a bright pink center that made me question if it was raw, and she wasn't sure so she felt the temp and it was likely medium rare. Not the end of the world, she enjoyed it also. She did remark that the hot chips were some undercooked and chewy and some crispy and a couple overcooked with very little seasoning. I wouldn't have been so angry with the wings at a KFC or something, but for $17 you better at least beat Buffalo Wild Wings! We completely ate our food before we were offered a refill or asked how the food was. I was just trying to leave so I said "it was ok" and paid and left. Yes, it's "Burgers and Beer" but you folks always had good boneless wings too. If that's going to be how they're prepared, just take em off the menu and save the grief. I can overcook a $15 bag of boneless Tyson wings in my air fryer and get better results. My goodness. To anyone reading this, per my wife, if you like green olives, try the olive burger - even off spec she absolutely loved it and it was under $14. Based on our food, she got like triple the food I had. I ended up snacking and cooking when we got home...

Worst service I’ve ever had at a restaurant. We were seated in the back, right by the kitchen entrance, and we watched everyone else’s food get brought out before ours, even people who were seated long after we were. When we asked our waiter where our food was, he quickly responded, “oh yeah, I know” and then we got our cold food within moments. It had been sitting out for probably 30 minutes - I ordered my burger medium and my boyfriend ordered his rare, so it couldn’t have taken any more than 10-15 minutes to cook it. When we told our waiter that our food was cold, he acted like it was somehow our fault/our problem. He left, came back, said he would handle it, went into the manager’s office for 2 minutes, came back out and then we got our bill for what we ordered and we actually ate (a pretzel and two beers, which the pretzel was amazing, I’ll give them that much). He acted very indignant, like we were inconveniencing him by being upset over cold food that we were going to be expected to pay for had we decided to eat it. So disappointed in everything else though. You’d think that the manager would come over and talk to us and maybe offer to remake the burgers or at least comp us what we had already received. But no. I can tell from all the other negative reviews about this place that it’s the same. No response from the owner on any of the reviews trying to correct their mistakes either. It’s hit or miss at this place - enter at your own risk. You might have an amazing meal or you might walk away hungry. And if you have bad service, don’t expect the manager to do anything about it. Oh, and their beer selection sucks. You’d think for a place called Burgers and Beer that they’d have a good beer selection. But they don’t. Mostly all the regular domestics and the typical craft beer selection. Go to Paul’s Place if you’re hungry and you want a great...