Woodfire Tavern — Restaurant in Long Grove

Let me start out by saying if I could leave a “0” star review I would! Probably the worse dining experience I’ve ever had at the local establishment.

We decided to visit Woodfire Tavern since we pass by all the time and see the smoke house burning and it’s always busy so we assumed it had to be the great BBQ.

We arrived and was greater by a young gentlemen as the host and asked us how many, we informed him we had 2 adults and a child. We were seated a table and notice the large dining room with plenty of spacing due to the social distance measures in place.

This is when the horrible experience started, we notice two waitress unprofessionally affair attending to about 25 tables or so. We waited like 7-10 mins before one of the ladies walked by and said she’ll by right with us... we waited another 5 before we she approached us and asked “what do we want”? No mention of drinks or even a “hi folks how are you this evening? I had to ask for waters to be brought to the table and then had to ask the buss boy for straws. With COVID still be an everyday presence we didn’t feel safe eating here. But we still decided to try and enjoy was was left of our evening.

At this point we decided to place an order for starters some boneless buffalo wings and the artichoke spinach dip. We also placed our main entrees of baby back ribs and beef brisket platter. Then was even asked if we wanted for our appetizers to be brought out first. SMH!

We waited patiently and it was now another 15mins or so before the appetizers arrived, The boneless chicken wing look like frozen chicken nuggets that you purchase at your local grocery store was a little bit of barbecue and buffalo sauce on the side. They weren’t even tossed! But I’m not even going to get started on the artichoke and spinach dip, frozen dip that came out of a can that they just warmed it up with over fried pita chips.

So about 15 or 20 minutes after originally placing my order for ribs the waitress comes back in and tells us that they don’t have ribs anymore for dinner so rudely.

It’s a Friday night and you consider yourself a BBQ establishment and you don’t have ribs for the dinner rush. That’s very hard to believe!

I then asked for our order to be completely canceled and requested check, which then I had to wait for another 10 minutes all the while the waitress attended to other matters. I was growing completely frustrated and disgusted with the customer service I was receiving. I had to request my check once again and asked to speak to a manager.

Upon speaking to a manager/owner and voiced my concerns, I was notified that they ran out of ribs because of a busy day prior and it was a so-called timing issue. WHAT? Maybe if I would’ve ordered my ribs 10 minutes earlier And not waited 15 minutes to get a glass of water... I probably would’ve enjoyed some ribs this evening. Guess not it’s a time issue.

Horrible service, waitress aren’t friendly and management doesn’t care about quality of food or...

I will start by saying that the staff are friendly and I mean no ill will towards them in particular. This review is for the ownership who clearly overlooks what ingredients they provide to their staff or thinks they can charge heavy pricing on cheap garbage. I visited the restaurant today with my family, we had a 50% completion rate of meals so perhaps there is hope for this place. Upon looking at the menu I decided to play things safe by my standards and ordered nachos as an appetizer and a pulled pork "sandwich". I will again state that the wait staff was courteous although seemingly had hesitations to offer personal reccomendations or review of selections. Anyways upon receiving our nacho appetizer I was optimistic, it seemed to be a large plate and filled with a variety of toppings as one might expect. This ends the pros of my personal experience. Upon further examination, and taste-testing it is quick to find the weakest quality of ingredients tossed into this pile. Perhaps being a pub they expect a bit more alcohol in their clients, but I fear that wouldn't have made it any better. Regardless, I did keep eating them so I'll give them at least a passing grade. I draw the line at the sandwich that was presented to me however, cheese outweighed the pulled pork which wasn't even the deal-breaker, I went right ahead past that. I picked it up and took a bite to find that BBQ is an unknown concept to this place, and they believe that a slimy tasteless meat mush is suitable to put on a French roll. Surprisingly that generous portion of cheese had exactly zero impact because it was completely overridden by the meat mush. I attempted to pick it apart with a fork after to salvage the sandwich into its individual parts but it was a lost cause. Afterward I had decided to cut my losses and just take my leave, but the waitress inquired as to why I wouldn't want to take the large majority of my meal with me and I spilled the truth that I had no interest in keeping it. She voluntary offered to replace it with something else without me asking, to which I had to decline after seeing other family members not interested in eating theirs to which she followed up by removing a portion of them from our bill. At the end of the day I'll give the place points for its atmosphere and staff, but when it comes to being a restaurant it fails on all marks. Future Patrons feel free to stop by and have a (pricey) beer and enjoy the game, but don't expect much from the food or they'll put on display how readily they expect their customers to want food removed...

We have dined here a few times since they opened. And our latest visit was a Thursday night. The place was empty, unfortunately, though we were told that the local assisted living places bus in their residents for Bingo night in the bar and it gets busy.

They have a large parking lot and (when it's warm) a nice outdoor seating area. Though, people smoke out there which makes it unpleasant for those of us not wishing to get the second-hand smoke and makes in unpleasant, so we have gone elsewhere because of this. This is January, though, so no worries about smoking near the food.

We were seating it their very spacious dining room. The hostess lead us to our table as the cook (or manager) barked directions to her as to where to seat us. Other people came in after us and that same behavior didn't take place. It seemed odd, bt whatever.

My wife and I were not looking for anything heavy so we both ordered soup and salad. She got the French onion soup and I the chicken noodle soup. Scratch that, I got the small cubed celery and carrot soup with a few noodles and couple pieces of chicken and a splash of broth. I guess I have to let them know that I prefer more broth in my soup because this seemed more like chicken noodle stew vs soup.

She got the southwest chicken salad without corn. and I got the wedge without tomato and blue cheese and subbed in ranch instead. The wedge was huge and covered in bacon and the ranch dressing was very good (like Wingstop ranch good). Instead of a wedge, this was more of a 1/3 of a head of lettuce. It was crisp and fresh. It was very good.

My wife liked her salad as well stating that it was flavorful and crisp, too.

Our server was quick to refill our waters which was nice as he just did it without us ever asking (a great trait, btw). There was another server who was more of an entertainer. He would come into the dining room, dance a little and sing. Woodfire doesn't have entertainment like this; he was just happy to do his thing, and chat with the tables. It was a nice change and made the dinner more enjoyable.

We paid our bill (which you can do online via a QR code on the bill) and left and the manager/owner experessed his pleasure in having us join Woodfire that evening and off we went.

It's a good place with some decent options which seem to change periodically. Not sure if it's a seasonal change, but it's nice to see. Their pizza is also pretty good.

It's a nice neighborhood tavern with good drinks and food. Anda...