Shoreline Brewery & Restaurant — Restaurant in Michigan City

Although I’ve visited Shoreline a number of times, my favorite trip was for Towel Day last year. Towel Day, for the uninitiated strags out there, is a celebration of the author Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy held by fans each year on May 25th.

Just outside Chicago in nearby Michigan City Indiana, situated in what used to be a billiard ball factory Shoreline Brewery stands as the Restaurant at the End of the Lake. Although brew pubs are a dime a dozen anymore, Shoreline stands out and does it in a way that is distinctively Northwest Indiana. Great food, better beers, and fantastic service, you are always going to leave with a smile.

We had come for the promise of $3.00 pints of Shoreline’s Don’t Panic. It should be noted that a three dollar pint of any craft beer is pretty swell, but the Don’t Panic is exceptional. A medium bodied English style pale ale, the Don’t Panic is a tasty glass of suds. Having our towels prominently on our heads and/or across our shoulders respectively, our hostess asked if we had come for the Towel Day event. Resisting sarcastic urges, we nodded thirstily. She told us they were serving Gargleblasters too.

So this is going to be that kind of night, is it?

It should be noted that while I am a fan of a myriad of this planet’s Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster recipes, and I have tried a bunch, I’ve never had the privilege of having one offered up without having to explain the concoction to the bartender on duty. There are dozens of different versions of the fabled beverage. A few years ago, from the rooftop pool and bar of the Waldorf hotel in New Orleans I had made a proclamation in my capacity as a Towel Day Ambassador and over my third triple mai-tai with blue curacao; Due to multiverse theory and general availability of local ingredients, any beverage can be declared a Gargleblaster so long as it is (A) Silly Strong, (B) Blue or Green in color, and (C) More or less tropically themed, with a bonus for little umbrellas.

What recipe was Shoreline employing for the big day’s tidings? They say it’s a secret. No surprise, the teeth of Algolian Suntigers are hard to come by in this part of the galaxy. I wouldn’t want to reveal my source either.

We were not disappointed when our beverages arrived. They were bright blue on the waitress’s tray. As she stopped to drop off beers at a nearby table our party’s thirst increased as she as she accurately described their origin to the inquiring table. Points A, B, and C were definitely intact. What was in it? You’ll have to go in and have one for yourself. We enjoyed a few rounds before switching to the Don’t Panic when our food began to arrive.

Like many Galactic Hitchhikers, our war party is quite receptive to pub food and appetizers. We ordered a few. The Scotch Eggs were fantastic. Artichoke Fritti amazing. The Giant Bavarian Style Baked Soft Pretzel was in fact giant, and Bavarian. Dipped in Hot Pickled Habanero Beer Cheese, heaven. We threw in some of their Shoreline Poutine with Black Pepper Ale Gravy for good measure, so so good. One might think that adding an order of the house made Pierogi to the mix would be overkill, but again we were wowed and well satisfied. And if you thought it would be overkill then you do not know us very well.

We told the waitress that we were starting to panic just a little, she brought another round of beers.

When dinner arrived the foray of food continued to put smiles in our bellies. Pastrami Melt on Black Rye with Red Cabbage…oh my! Grecian Lamb Burger sat well with my brother, while his wife enjoyed the Shoreline Mac. My lovely wife had the lovely Fish and Chips. Everything was just fantastic.

Well fed and beveraged, Towel Day was a smashing success. Although we didn’t see any other froods toting towels there is always next year….

Special thanks to Shoreline for giving Northwest Indiana a hoopy haven for Towel Day! I am looking forward to seeing what they do for Towel...

To whom it may concern: We have been to this restaurant 2 times now on vacation to the dunes. We brought friends tonight and were speaking highly of this restaurant and food. We ended up having a horrible experience and so did our friends. I’m so highly disappointed in management. As a person with over 12 years of experience in the service industry, I can tell you the service we received was below par and so truly disappointing. Our experience started off good. Our server was great… our complaint does not pertain to her. She took our order and brought our drinks and food, minus one persons order. We waited over 20 minutes for her to finally receive her food. We all had finished our meals by the time her burger arrived. On top of that, our other friend ordered the specialty Mac and cheese (Kentucky fried steak Mac) and it was missing the protein. There was no meat on it. I assume our server trying to wait on the burger but. Hadn’t returned to our table until she delivered the burger. We waited almost 20 minutes with no return of the server. We needed refills and, had no protein on one meal and were STILL waiting on my friends entree. We were kind and considerate to our server, and she apologized to us. When it cam time to pay they gave us a full bill with ZERO discount . As a server for several years, I can tell you that is NOT good service. When someone is waiting that long, there should be some sort of compensation… at the very minimum there should have been a compensation 10-15% discount. I have had so many experiences in the kitchen where accidents happened and I explain to my manager the situation and our manager would help in any way she could. She would even give her employee discount to a family if she was not able to comp the food for whatever reason. After we expressed our frustration with our server she said she would speak to another manager, and his response was that the best they could do was give $11 off the Mac and cheese, which they sent us home with after “insisting” on remaking our order. My friend left hungry and had to eat at our Airbnb. I’m almost never write reviews or send compelled to email but as a person with a lot of experience in this field, I can telll you that BOTH of the managers on site were not helpful, and neither of them checked in on us, before or after our meal arrived. This is not the experience I hoped for my friends. I was embarrassed and super disappointed. I’m sorry to say we will not be back, and we no longer have anything nice to say about this business. We were not treated with basic decency or given the service that we expected and deserved. I truly hope someone addresses this situation in upper management. Feel free to reach out with questions, I just really don’t want anyone else to spend almost $200 on an experience like this. Absolutely not acceptable. Again our server did well, but the management fell through on...

WORST EXPERIENCE EVER!!!!!! I have never had so many employees try to convince us NOT to wait or order. The wait was actually the best part of our night. We had an easy check in and an area for the kids to play. The wait was relatively fast. The real problem came when we actually got our food. We ordered two kids meals, French onion soup, Pierogies, and a sandwich. We were warned about possible rain and we accepted the possible complication that we would not be seated in the indoor seating area if it were to rain. So despite a third person trying to talk us out of ordering…we placed our order and hoped for the best. When our food came our waitress gave us the check in case the weather would take a turn for the worse. My husband handed her our card and when she returned he noticed we didn’t have our soup. Our waitress quickly replied that they ran out of the soup and apologized, however we were charged for it. She went to try to remedy the situation and seemed to have talked to a manager. She came back to quip that they in fact will have our soup out….and this was of course when we were all done with our meals. Before we could talk or process what she said she was off. 5-10 minutes later she came out and produced a bowl of something…that would not be classified as soup. There was no liquid only a small island of bread on top of some dark dry onions with poorly melted cheese that looked Iike it was warmed in a microwave. I immediately said we were not going to eat that and she agreed that it must have been from the bottom of the pot. However….SHE DID NOT ATTEMPT TO REFUND THE SOUP! She came back and handed us the check. We told her that it was not acceptable to forget our soup (and by that time also forgot our last beer) try to pass off some left overs which we did not eat and then make us pay for it. She went back to her manager and in the end said she was unable to refund us as they can’t reverse a credit card. Me and my husband worked in the food service industry and it is insane to think she nor her manager knew how to reverse a credit card charge in the year 2021. To top the night off she came back to us with a soaking wet credit card receipt and said she couldn’t reprint a new one then proceeded to ask us to sign a blank piece of paper!!! Horribly unprofessional. We understand the service industry is horrifically understaffed during these times however I directly blame management who let this poor waitress hang and stare blankly, powerless to do the right thing. Shame on this establishment it is clear they don’t care about their patrons given the complete lack of professionalism or respect. Do yourself a favor and skip shoreline next time you want to support the...