Crusade Burger Bar — Restaurant in Kendall Township

Took my wife and kids here for a late lunch on a random Friday afternoon. We were seated right away and had great service from what seemed to be the manager or someone in charge. Friendly and prompt. While the service was very good, the food was phenomenal. I had two little ones who wanted mac and cheese, my wife and oldest went with the build your own beyond burger, and I had a real burger. Everything was house made, which I love (other than the beyond patty, I assume). The mac and cheese, the fries and chips, the aioli, the sauces. Nothing prepackaged so I know I was buying real food. My burger was ordered medium well, and it was still very moist and flavorful. The buns were soft, I ordered house made potato chips (which everyone liked) and my burger was topped with fresh ingredients. All in all, I'd go back tomorrow and eat there again. My daughter said it was the best burger she's ever had, and my wife said it's the best burger she's had in a long time (I agree). Don't know if that goes all the way back to when she stopped eating meat, but we all left happy and full. My middle tried the burger and will skip the mac and cheese next time and order her own. She's the gourmand of my little clan, and I trust her palette as she eats like a grown up. Crusade will be a regular stop for us from here on out. We've lived in the area for years and finally made the stop in. Should have done it sooner.

after a recent trip I wanted to add to my initial review. The food is still good, but not as great as we had on our first experience. The service was a bit slow despite not being very busy, maybe that affected the food quality if it sat a bit before it was brought out to us. But, the thing that really got to both my wife and I was that the music was SUPER loud and not family friendly at all considering it was dinner time with multiple families there. Lots of foul language, and we don't like that for our kids. It's hard to have a conversation when you have to yell at each other over the music. Knocked my initial review from 5 stars to 4. Still good, just not exceptionally so. Barring the music, we'll...

We drove an hour to meet another couple to experience what was supposed to be an awesome experience! Got there at 1:50 and didn’t leave till 4:15. Service was so slow! My cousin asked if we could have a booth and was told no, due to distribution of waitresses. Which was strange since our waitress was the manager and also very busy at the bar, etc The ambiance was dark and the Heavy Metal music filled the place, making it hard to talk and hear. Itwas soooo loud it made me nauseous. We asked our waitress if she could lower it. She said sure. She did and in a few minutes it got loud again. I asked 3 times and she kept saying she did, and was it still too loud? Then at one point it became so loud and ear piercing and all the people were looking at the bar to see what was going on. The waitress came by and said sorry about that. We’re having trouble with our system. We asked 2x to move to the back area and she wouldn’t allow it. We even asked one of the waiters if we could move and if there was a manager present? He pointed to our waitress and said she’s the manager. I said well that won’t make a difference! I said that if the music would continue to be so loud, we were going to get up and walk out even though we had ordered. She finally lowered the music. We ordered our burgers and they took forever, at least 50 minutes. They were good. But nothing like the picture showed. The green bean side was tasty but green beans were almost raw. Then we ordered one shake and that took quite a long time as well! Almost 45 minutes. The waitress came by twice to apologize. We were dying for a milkshake. There were only 3 on the menu. When it finally came, there was only about 4 oz of milkshake in the glass, which was topped with a super sweet piece of apple pie, a cookie, a scoop of ice cream. And it was $15! So, all 4 of us were disappointed with the service. We had water to drink, 4 burgers and a milkshake. After an hour and a half the waitress came to refill our water. The bill was $75 and the tip was $15. We will...

First I want to say that the server for the described incident below was decent and my complaint is not based on service or food quality necessarily.

I’ve been here once before on a lunch break, and I thought it was a lot of fun, good food. So, I just brought my girlfriend for lunch. I spent 90 bucks on two burgers, two shakes and a thing of cheese curds. We waited about 45 minutes for the burgers. After about 30 min, I went and found the waiter, told him I wanted the check and the burgers to go. I know I wasn’t explicit, but I would have appreciated some extra customer service at that point, and allow me to keep my dignity of not making a stink at a restaurant. “Of course. Everything alright?” That did not happen. Instead, we waited another 15 minutes. If I was a manager, I think I probably would have gone in back and lit a fire. 15 minutes would have been the amount of time to cook 4 on-the-menu burgers back to back on a domestic frying pan over a camping stove out in the woods. There’s a fancy Italian restaurant down the street from my house that can reliably have 2 steak dinners ready for pickup in 20 minutes during the dinner rush on the weekend every single time.

When the burgers were brought to the table, it was handed to us in a bag, without a word as if that was just the plan all along. The server had nothing to say. I went to find him, mentioned that I was disappointed how long the food took. He didnt have a consolation for me. We take our 50$ worth of burgers home, and start to eat them while getting ready for the rest of our obligations for the day. The burgers are ordered pink. They were gray. And cold. BUT… they were good considering. The flavor combos are novel and match-made. The ancho brisket was awesome. The whipped goat cheese and pepper jam was addictive. The fries that come with them are inedibly cold, naturally, as we had driven quite a ways to get there.

I really do like the idea of the place. But I can’t come back knowing I cant trust them with a time obligation. A real...