Big Bowl Lincolnshire — Restaurant in Lincolnshire

Not bad, but I'm not amazed. I worked as a server at Stir Crazy in Northbrook for several years and the first thing I thought reviewing the menu tonight was, "Wow, this is literally a duplicate of the menu practically.." between the mai tais, homemade ginger ales, nutty noodles, make your own stirfry, etc. The only thing I had never seen at Stir Crazy were some peanut summer rolls. We didn't order those, so I can't say good or bad. We ordered the chicken lettuce wraps, crab rangoon and calamari. I personally thought the portions were pretty skimpy. Usually lettuce wraps are a great suggestion to larger groups wanting to share and between six people and two kids, five people got a wrap. The rangoons, you get five for $10? Ehhhh...come on now, guys. They were so-so. Calamari was decent but I got three rings in total. At this point, I was thinking it might be better for us to agree on doing the family meal where you choose 3 apps & 3 entrees considering its $23 a person and you are for SURE exceeding that between those $30 worth of appetizers and $15+ entrees, buuuut of course people didn't want to negotiate. On that note, I ordered the make your own stirfry with the chef's choice veggies/shrimp/yellow coconut curry/Chinese noodles. I think they need more noodle options. Saw my dish, and wow, I was fine with the amount, will obviously need to take some home with this one. First bite, leaned over to my husband and had to say, wow, I'm surprised at how lackluster this coconut curry was. It was like what I know coconut curry is, but watered down. Tried my husband's kung pow beef and yes, for sure spicy as it should be but I couldn't understand the lack of veggies for a $17 dish? I DID like the little minced up peanut bits, but otherwise, only green beans in there? Jeez. Was I comparing it to my memories of Stir Crazys kung pao? Absolutely, I had to. And yes, it's like five times better and I hardly ever ate that thing during lunch. Oh yes, let's not forget his side dish of +$1.00 fried rice. Again, lackluster, there was SOMETHING missing.

As for service, the guy was nice. We were on the patio, which I didn't initially want but it ended up being nice before the skeeters came out. I could tell by the end of our meal he was getting slowed down with the four tables around us along with ours, but he never seemed stressed or hectic and kept a good attitude. I always, always appreciate hearing "Thank you" for dining somewhere because at some places you just don't hear it anymore. Overall, great service but I was thoroughly surprised at the lack of flavors. Bill came to $196 between six adults, two kids. Alright, but again, I doubt I'd drive back there just because of what I know now. It's just not up to par and they need to knock down the prices a few dollars here and there to match the taste.

Oh! My daughter's did love their buttered noodles, so...

Food was very good. Service was very good too. Drinks were amazing. I really can’t complain about the overall experience. A little expensive for this type of restaurant but they charge what they feel you will pay, which is fine. I would have given five stars but…What really rubbed me the wrong way was the 3% surge charge hidden in our bill without up front explanation or warning. Luckily, I happened to review the full bill this time and noticed this. After reading deeper into the fine print, it was noted the surge charge was due to the increasing costs of everything (vague at best) and you could request to remove the charge from your bill. This seemed kind of dishonest to me. Yeah, we all know there’s been inflation, we all have felt it. It’s no longer Covid times. Inflation is down now so these weird profit tricks are just a weird and distasteful money grab. If you feel your costs are higher, then build that into my meal price if you have to but you should not be trying to sneak by a 3% charge to my bill for nebulous cost increase reasons. If it costs you more to operate the business then build it into the cost of the menu items up front. It’s like a 3% unexplained inflation charge on top of the inflation they’ve already built into the prices. This is a multi location chain. The owners are not hurting for money and I have to believe for them to run a successful chain restaurant of this size, they’ve got their labor and operations costs dialed in. So to me, this seemed like a, “Let’s see if we can con this table into paying us an extra 3% profit”. So I should donate to your already healthy bank account? Super shady and kind of disrespectful to customers. Kind of like, “Woe me, I’m a multi millionaire restauranteur, please give me 3% more that you could totally chose not to, because, you know, rising costs.” I guarantee you with multiple large locations like this restaurant has, the owner makes at least an extra $1000 per day per location from the people that either don’t look at their bill or are too polite to ask to have the charge removed. Shady. I do not see these shady practices anywhere but large chain restaurants. All the local places are up front and honest with the cost of your dining experience. We asked to remove the surge charge and tipped our server 20% since this practice is not their fault.

Otherwise everything was great but this really left a bad taste in my mouth with regard to owner integrity. I would have gone back to dine at this restaurant but this borderline 3% con will assure I find locally owned and operated restaurants that are more honest about their pricing for...

Two kinds of food places appeal to me: those with excellent food and those with cheap prices. I can live with either one. Both together are great! Having neither is anathema. In Big Bowl, the food is average-to-poor and the price is still sky-high. No inducement at all to ever come back. The menu is a hodge-podge of dishes, and it seems like I'm not the first person confused because the menu strongly recommends that you let the chefs choose what goes in your dish. I might consider doing that if the chefs were Thai or even Chinese and were intimately familiar with their national dishes, but all the chefs working behind the stir-fry grill were Mexicans. So I ordered Mongolian beef. Want fried rice instead of white? Add another couple of bucks. In a couple of minutes, out it comes... The few sad pieces of beef in this dish were covered by a sauce that tasted like someone put out their cigarettes in it. Unpleasantly smoky, overtones of been-in-the-fridge-too-long, and evidently finding its final resting place on my dish, the sauce and meat combination didn't match the menu description of "lots of tender all natural beef, shiitake & button mushrooms, green onions." There were certainly button mushrooms a-plenty, but the shiitake? Only the ghost of shiitake past made its appearance here. The only recognizable taste in the entire dish were oniony overtones from the fried onions and the raw scallions. Everything else smelled and tasted like the day after the Great Chicago fire. The blessing in all this is that there wasn't enough of the beef or the fried rice to be overwhelming. In fact, after leaving I went to McDonald's and had a couple of hamburgers because I was still hungry. When I told my first-generation Mexican waiter that there wasn't very much food, he said "Thank you very much, sir." I'm guessing he didn't understand me. Big Bowl, big deal. Next time I'm...