Porter Kitchen & Deck — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

My first time coming to the Porter and was left a little disappointed. I had a really great experience, staff was great and friendly, service was excellent and food came out fast but the food was in my opinion not worth the price. Now the atmosphere the aesthetic feel of the restaurant was fantastic I loved the place I admire the type of decor and design and the view of the river is amazing. This is a great spot for a date night, celebration, or even to get together with a friend for lunch but my family and I decided to come tonight to celebrate my sisters graduation and were greatly served but what we ordered was not what we believed was expected from this type of restaurant. My wife and I and my mom and her partner we all ordered steaks my wife the Steak and Frites and the 3 of us ordered the ribeye now we love our steaks and our meats etc I have been to plenty of steakhouses and have made myself steaks and have worked in a butchery to understand what and how a Steak tastes like and looks like and what cook temperatures look like but to make a long story short we all ordered medium rare only to get our steaks and were all over cooked especially my wife's which was rubbery and burnt and the rest of ours looked like they were beaten to death and the tiniest amount of seasoning our steaks were very bland it made Texas Roadhouse feel like the greatest steakhouse of course we informed our server and apologized and offered a free dessert which wasn't necessary we just wanted to let them know so other customers don't experience this but they still brought us a small cup of ice cream. Overall I wish the food was better and steaks were better in presentation and taste and hopefully they next time we come the food is better also $12 dollars for dinner rolls is way too overpriced but its downtown by the riverwalk so I get it but definitely would come again to see if the chef does a better...

My friend made a reservation here for my birthday based on the reviews it seemed like a good option. Our experience was far from 5 stars. First, the restaurant was empty at dinner time on a Saturday night (not a good sign) there were 4 different servers attending to our table yet our actual server didn’t check on us once after putting in the order. We ordered an espresso martini and a margarita, the espresso tasted like bitter syrup and the margarita was in a huge glass but was mostly sweet juice. We got the over priced bread and butter dish, it game out cold and the bread was very doughy almost under cooked. For our meals we went with the chicken sandwich and gnocchi (they were out of all the fish dishes so we had limited options). The food game way too fast to have been cooked fresh. The chicken sandwich was so big it was not edible as a sandwich, my friend had to take it apart to eat it and said it lacked flavor. My gnocchi should not even be considered gnocchi, it tasted like it was made with instant mashed potatoes, when o put my fork in it it just mushed into the butter soup at the bottom of the dish. The gnocchi was supposed to have truffle mushroom on it (the price reflected this) but instead had shiitake and enoki mushrooms which were soggy and flavorless because there was just so much butter.

On top of the horrible food, 2 min after our food was put down our server comes over to our table in a hurry and throws the check down (never checked on us once, took our order, didn’t bring us the drinks or food and immediately gave us the check).

The cherry on top was hearing our server complain that there were 3 bdays in the restaurant (only 4 tables were sat).

Highly recommend not wasting...

This was my first time dining at Porter Kitchen & Deck and it behooves me to explain why I will not be dining here again. Saturday night I was celebrating a birthday with friends and the service was close to nonexistent. Our experience was similar to the experience of other reviewers; we waited over 45 minutes for our server to attend to our table and deliver bread, the server brought the wrong drink several times, the food was mediocre, and they only served excuses after dessert. Speaking of dessert, the service took so long that my friend (who contracted the restaurant for her birthday) missed her next reservation. When I informed the manager of how upset this experience had made her, she reluctantly offered to comp her drink. The tab for the evening was $1.3k and the manager comped a single mojito. I paid the bill for my friend and hoped that would be the end of it.

My friend, who was under contract with them, discovered that they overcharged us for multiple drinks (we assume they were the drinks the server had to take back) and they never comped anything. After reading these reviews, it seems like this place has a history of providing poor service without offering compensation. For that reason, it’s looking like I’ll have better luck contacting my bank on Monday to dispute the drink charges. Luckily, we recorded the dinner for Instagram (don’t judge) and so while it will be tedious for my bank to review, it will prove that the extra margaritas we were charged for were sent back. This place has potential but it’s is not worth...