Wild Onion Brewery & Banquets — Restaurant in Lake Barrington

Our burger club visited this place on a Tuesday night and the place was empty. It's a large place, sizable bar area with high top tables and booths and a smaller dining room with standard tables. There is a nice sized deck but it wasn't open the other night.

First off, this place is seriously off the beaten path. You'd never know of it's location unless you lived in the immediate area as it is not on a major road. It is tucked away in an industrial/commercial area near a sports complex. When you first drive down Pepper Rd and come upon the sports complex and your GPS says in not within the complex but is another 900 ft away and you look for a sign and don't see one until you're almost upon it. The building is quite a bit back from the road and covered in vines/ivy. It's actually quite a nice looking building, but the lot was large and so few cars were in it, we thought it was closed.

They sat us in the dining room and we were the only people in it. We sat at a half booth and the entrance to the kitchen was to our left. Servers kept banging into and out of the kitchen area making it a point to bang whatever they were carrying or pushing into the doors which was quite annoying.

Our server was quite attentive as we ended up being one of only two tables in the area). We started with the cheese curds for the table and there are a few choices for dipping sauces. We opted for their house made beer cheese and their fig jam. The beer cheese sauce was actually a lot lighter and thinner than I expected and was quite good. However, the fig jam was fantastic. This is a hidden gem. And we asked our server which dipping sauces we should get and she didn't even mention the jam. If we didn't decide to order something off the beaten path for us we would have never discovered this tasty option.

Three of us got the Western Burger and one got the Jack Burger. The Western Burger comes with fried onion rings on it with bacon, bbq sauce and on a pretzel bun. I got it that way with the sauce on the side, with fries and a side of ranch (I hate ketchup). Some else got the same burger with the onion rings but on an onion bun. The third order got grilled onions on an onion bun. The Jack Burger comes with bacon jam, carmelized onions, on an onion bun. We asked for pickles and they gave us a mix of pickle chips (for sandwiches) and wedges.

The burger I had was good, but the meat was on the dry side. It was a large bite with the pretzel bun and onion rings. I tried the bbq sauce and it is sweet, tangy and thick. A bit different than I'm used to, but it was really good. The ranch dressing was really good as well and was perfect for the fries. I even dipped my burger in it. I eventually had to deconstruct my burger because it was quite a mouthful. I give the burger props for taste, but needs to be quite a bit juicier. My compatriots had the same thoughts for their burgers as well.

I definitely would like to go back and try some other items on their menu and maybe try the burger again. The other table got their sliders, so that may be worth trying as well. There was a monster Bavarian soft pretzel on the appetizer menu and that looked good too. This place seems like a good place to try with friends and/or family or to catch a game. Lots of space and lots of parking, if not off the...

Drive by this place at all cost! This was our 1st and last time at this hole. We had high hopes for The Onion Pub, however our hopes were dashed as soon as we were seated. We went in late Saturday afternoon and we hoped to have some good beers, food and conversation. What we had was a disinterested hostess that sat us in a depressing back room between the kitchen and toilets, that truly was gods waiting room. Our fellow diners were a Korean war vet and his wife, 6 golden girls, grandparents making string ties with their bored grand daughter and a woman and son that were obviously kitchen staff family members, not the Saturday crowd we would have chosen, but the Korean vet and his wife were pleasant company and we did enjoy talking with them. They were the only thing we enjoyed about the experience . Our waitress was one of the worse, she told us about the soup of the day but did not wait around to see if we wanted it, we ordered two burgers and we had to tell her how we wanted them cooked, I asked for mayo on the side for the fries and she came back with a teaspoon of mayo and sat it down on the table, returned shortly while my husband and I were in conversation and banged a bottle of ketchup down between us that we did not ask for, I set the timer on my phone to see how long the mayo would sit on the table before the food arrived, since you don't leave dairy out in a hot room, it was on the table for 12mins, my husband asked for another since this was sitting too long, and she brought back the same teaspoon of mayo. We had to beg for the beer menu, I had heard this place had a great selection, she proceeded to scratch out the ones they did not have. We decided on two big boys, the beer was good but not worth a return trip, no mention of flights or any of the things on the website, maybe you had to sit in the bar for that, but since we were not asked where we wanted to sit, who the heck knows. We asked for well done burgers, what we got were two thin black orbs, I had to check to see if it was a blacked burger, McDonald's at least has the good graces to have burgers that are burger color, not the color of the bottom of my shoe, they were barely edible. Ive done better on the grill at home. We were not made to feel welcomed at all, I don't know if it was because we are not 30 or a young family and just two 40 somethings that are not obese or unattractive that just wanted a few beers and a meal. After our meal the waitress did not ask if we wanted the fries wrapped, I would have said no, but its standard to ask or ask if there was a problem when you see the diner has not touched them. I was expecting something like the Cary Pub, or Emmett's, what we got was a sad...

This review focuses on the Great Hall venue space in the back of the building.

Me and my fiancee toured the venue, along with her mother in consideration of hiring Wild Onion to host our wedding reception. It's readily apparent that Wild Onion does not pay close attention to how the venue space is maintained or cleaned. There were large stains everywhere in the carpet. In fact it didn't look like the carpet had ever been cleaned since it was installed. It didn't help that the carpeting was a light gray and highlighted every little stain. You can also notice the high-traffic areas in the carpet, because when it never gets cleaned, the tracks the servers (and guests) take become rather visible. To the owners: part with a few nickels and get that carpet cleaned once or twice a month.

Another notable oversight was how clean the venue was kept otherwise. There were food splatters on the walls, stains in the fabric on the room divider that folds in and out of the wall (these were visible because the last two segments are still visible when it's fully retracted), and I even saw a 5-foot long dust bunny hanging from the window moldings in one spot. Who the heck knows how long that or any of the other obvious giant cobwebs have been left there.

Lastly, I'm not sure they keep up on the maintenance with the Not-So-Great Hall. There were sections of wall that looked like they'd received 10 years of abuse from countless gatherings, with the paint scraped off and various shades of rubber deposited in its place, and were never repainted. Broken window treatments were also a common theme, especially in the side room that contains the lounge area, bridal suite, and bathrooms.

Why am I going on about this in a google review? Because I am convinced that the wedding industry is one giant PsyOp. Wild Onion managed to censor our negative reviews on every wedding site, so no wonder literally every venue on those sites has a near-perfect rating. I also felt it was a huge waste of our time given how the space was portrayed versus how shockingly poor it is kept up. The mother of the bride, albeit jokingly, said that if we got married there she would be...