Kettlestrings Grove — Restaurant in Oak Park

I’m not sure what happened to this place, but it’s definitely not the same. When they first opened, the ambiance was great — dim lighting, great music, and exceptional bartenders, especially Eric and the girl bartender that worked with him, the original ones who really knew how to take care of guests.

We there on Saturday around 9:15 to celebrate a friend’s birthday — a group of 12 of us. As soon as we arrived, we were told they were closing at 10 due to a private event. I ordered a club soda, a glass of wine, and a mixed drink — it took them 30 minutes to serve the drinks.

Just 10 minutes after finally getting them, I was handed the tab. I told the bartender we’d like to at least finish what we had just received, since we had about 10 minutes left before we got kicked out and he replied, “Well, if you’re not done, you still have to go by 10 pm.”

This was by far the worst service I’ve experienced at this place. The new bartenders don’t seem to know what they’re doing, and the drinks were terrible. I will never go back to this place while the two bartenders are...

It's a cool place with what seems like a nice menu, wish I was able to order! The servers did everything they possibly could to ignore my party of three sitting down, despite the fact that the server bumped into my chair that I was sitting in at least three times. They literally told everyone the kitchen was closing except for us, walking up to literally every section of the building except for us, even though we were pretty obviously trying to flag down a server. Guess we looked poor, I don't know. And when I went up to order a drink after 12 minutes of obnoxiously trying to get a server, they looked super inconvenienced that I tried to spend money with them at all. And then when I finally got someone to close my tab, they seemed upset that my party had only gotten one drink. Like bruh, we were trying to spend more money but 45 minutes of being ignored is 45 minutes of...

The recent poor reviews are because they lost ALL the good staff…especially Eric. He would always greet us IMMEDIATELY and find us a spot even when packed. Great service and drinks! Now it’s awful. We have walked in twice in the last month (not even busy) and still haven’t been greeted within 10 mins. We left both times and no one cared. It’s sad. One time a female bartender was just chatting with (what seemed like a buddy) at the bar. We were the ONLY other people in there and still not greeted or acknowledged at all. Bizarre Whoever let Eric go is a fool. This place will fail. You can’t charge that much for drinks and not...