Dairy Queen Grill & Chill — Restaurant in Portage

I walked into the restroom before ordering to drain myself of the previous night's (and day's) excesses. "Strange brew, kill what's inside of you" ran through my brain over and over. Wait. They were really playing it on the radio. Next up was some Stones. And it kept turning out dirty rock hit after hit. The ambience here was ideal, seemed like a place a man could really settle in for awhile.... no, I needed to leave this blasted state, and get back home. Today. The rats must be fed. We decided to order lunch as well as ice cream. We were already at a place with food, why make an extra stop. The food was froicy. I had to make up that word and use it for this review, as no adjectives adequately described its froicyness prior to this writing. Fresh made, greasy goodness. They forgot to give us our ice cream things that they tip upside down. The scene grew tense. I asked for them. They were super apologetic and made mine up for me. But not my companions. Again, they apologized and whipped them up. This was a weird place, but maybe they weren't into out of town weird. However the ice cream cup was amazing, a special limited time blend of reese's products and caramel whirled into ice cream. Genius of engineering and food science. We ate our cups and slunk back off onto the expressway, better for our journey. All in all, this is probably the best Dairy Queen in America. I don't know what in the hell it is doing out there in the middle of nowhere, it deserves a spot with the finest of chain ice...

At 3:40 on June 19th we placed an online order for curbside pickup at the Portage Park location. The order was confirmed by the “restaurant” at 3:43, and we arrived at the parking lot at the same time. The confirmation email stated the food would be delivered “by 3:59.”

At 4:05 I called the “restaurant” to advise them that we were waiting, just in case they had somehow missed our giant pickup truck in their empty parking lot.

They asked my name and said, “OK it’ll be right out.”

At 4:20 my husband went inside– mind you, as i stated the parking lot was completely empty at this time, and additionally, the drive-through was not particularly busy.

My husband got to the counter just in time to hear them FINALLY PUTTING MY ORDER IN.

SO.

We waited FORTY FIVE minutes for a malt, a chicken sandwich, chicken strips, and a kids’ cone.

Although the dining room was empty, the kitchen and service areas were full of staff standing around talking to one another, hanging out and having a great time not filling orders.

Nice “work” if you can get it, i guess.

I don’t expect Dairy Queen to be the Dairy Queen of my childhood. I understand that industry standards have plummeted and I wasn’t surprised at the mediocre quality of the food. But if I’m ordering FAST food, at the very least I expect it to be something approximating “fast”.

As a family we are done with Dairy Queen. We will not be back to this location...

At the drive thru....Boomers traveling back from YNP Wyoming to Ohio on a bucket list trip, refueling, I happended into this DQ as McD's across the street had no Mcflurry's. Wife having the chili-dog meal and I had a hankerin for some shrimp bites..and of course a Blizzard. However, after I ordered, the drive thru window person said they had no shrimp left. I little disappointed...but no worries, I''ll just have a bite of the chili-dog and some of her fries... I didn't realize the manager was close by and had heard of the shrimp dilemma. As the drive thru girl gave us our order she said they decided to give us some complimentary ckicken strips to make up for not having the shrimp. It just so happened that our trip involved a dispute with a hotel manager during our vacay...essentially poor customer service regarding an issue. Now, here we are at the perverbial last stop of the trip, at a DQ in Portage Indiana, and we have one of the best customer service experiences the entire trip. Kudos to the team that I had the pleasure of knowing for a brief moment in time. Thank you for the kindness that you showed. The Hotel manager where I'm paying a lot more than I did at DQ, could take a lesson or two from these...