The Dawson — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

This review is in regard to our wedding that we held at The Dawson with the wedding coordinator, Jimmy.

Jimmy was an outstanding wedding coordinator, and we can't recommend him enough! He made everything about planning & executing our wedding easier, while also making sure every detail was handled to our liking.

He is is clearly very experienced. With everything that goes into planning a wedding, it's incredibly easy for important elements to be overlooked (especially because we chose not to use a wedding planner). Jimmy made sure that everything that we may need or want was discussed and considered - including some details that we never would have thought of on our own. Some aspects of our wedding were unconventional, but he was able to work everything in seamlessly.

Jimmy is part of the reason why we ultimately chose to have our wedding at The Dawson to begin with. He is an excellent communicator, and made us feel confident that he would guide us through a process that we found intimidating. He is also detail-oriented, and knows what suggestions to make in order for your wedding to go smoothly. He also helped to clarify next steps throughout the process by breaking things down into simple decisions we had to make, rather than leaving us unguided. He's also extremely kind, responsive, and fun to work with! He always made us feel like 100% of his focus was on us and our wedding, even though I'm sure he must have been involved in planning tons of other weddings at the same time!

Jimmy knows how to best leverage what The Dawson has to offer. Our wedding night made use of different parts of the space at different points throughout the evening, both inside and outside, upstairs and downstairs. In the end, it all flowed together incredibly smoothly, and we didn't have any awkward transitions between different parts of the evening. We used the outdoor courtyard for the ceremony, then went upstairs to the second floor for cocktail hour while the first floor / courtyard were rearranged for dinner, before ultimately having a space in the courtyard cleared to be a dance floor.

Additionally, Jimmy knows various Chicago vendors who have reliably worked with The Dawson before, and can be very helpful in guiding you through finding the right people to make your vision a reality. Jimmy's knowledge of the wedding industry made selecting vendors much less daunting.

On the day of, he is incredibly organized, and helps to coordinate everything seamlessly. He updates you regularly on next steps, who has to be where, and what is happening when. On our wedding day, it initially seemed like it would rain, which would have thrown off our plans to have our ceremony outdoors. He had a contingency plan ready, and re-arranged the patio area so that the ceremony could happen with a roof over our heads. Luckily, the rain passed, and just as quickly, he was able to set everything back to how we'd originally hoped it would be. Knowing that he had a backup plan for any issue that might arise was incredibly reassuring, and allowed us to focus on ourselves, knowing that we wouldn't be the ones scrambling to address whatever situation arose. He also made sure that everyone was in the right place at the right time - from the numerous vendors we hired, to family and members of the wedding party who needed to be reminded of their cues during the ceremony.

The Dawson is also SO beautiful and unique, and the food and drinks are amazing (as was our tasting!). So many people commented that it was the best food they had ever had a wedding. The staff were so helpful & friendly. And the venue offers indoor/outdoor space, upstairs/downstairs space, quiet areas, a room you can use to change/store wedding party stuff/etc., and a beautiful dance floor.

All in all, we have only good things to say about The Dawson & Jimmy. We are SO HAPPY we had our wedding here! Jimmy helped us realize everything we wanted in our wedding day, & made an anxiety-provoking process fun & manageable. We can't recommend Jimmy & The Dawson...

I've been meaning to try this place out for a while now and finally got the opportunity to. I wish it was under better circumstances with a full offering of their menu, but I'll take what I can get. First and foremost, love that they have an open kitchen, best thing in the world a restaurant could have. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're a liar and have no idea of what is aesthetically pleasing to the human eye. Secondly, I loved the patio area, it had a really rustic feel to it. The choice in music was a bit of a roller coaster for me. It had to be a playlist from someone's iPod back from the 90s or something, I swear; however, I digress. The food was absolutely amazing though. I give a 4 out of 5 for a good reason and I'll explain later on. For appetizers, ordered some fries, empanadas and elote. Reason number one: elote was whole instead of cut. Given, it was absolutely delicious, but it was a complete mess to have to cut it up to eat. Had I not been sharing, I would've just eaten it whole from the cob itself, but I'm sure it's a shareable dish, which is why a knife was provided with the dish. The fries are addictive and I couldn't stop munching on them. They were perfectly fried to a nice crisp and went well with the ketchup and aioli. Switching between the two definitely helped and assisted in the moreish-ness to it. Nothing bad to say about the empanadas except I wish there was more than just three to a serving. Moving onto the entrees now which were spectacular, but still had a bit of faults in each individual one. Starting with the Lobster BLT, it's a monster of a sandwich. I don't think the choice of bread was the best to sandwich everything in between, but I understand why the choice of brioche was used instead of normal toasted bread. I think sourdough would've been a good substitute, to cut the richness of the lobster and the fattiness of the bacon. The chicken and waffles was absolutely amazing. It was perfect from start to finish except the portion size was a bit off. I ended up with more waffle than chicken in the end, but that's a personal opinion and up for debate. The chicken was perfectly cooked: crispy, juicy, moist, tender, everything was just amazing about this dish. The sunny side egg on top made it all the better. The final entree was Ahi Tuna. I'm not a huge fan of tuna but it was an entree someone in my group ordered. The tuna cannot be had on its own here, it needs everything that is served with it. From the rice to the salad, to the sauce/dressing. Losing any of those items would just make the dish very bland and boring. I would've preferred the tuna to be either fully cooked and shredded perhaps, or possibly just raw and cubed into bite sized pieces. Again, this is a matter of personal opinion and preference, but this is my overall review of the place. I definitely recommend and will definitely be visiting once again, in the very...

I went here twice in the last week for dinner. Once with colleagues and once with my husband for their holiday burlesque experience. The food is 10/10! The spicy rigatoni is phenomenal! The mushrooms are a must-try and the ceviche and brussel sprouts were also favorites. Don’t sleep on the rabbit pasta, I had never had rabbit before and was afraid it would taste gamey but it did not at all, it was very good and I would liken it to ham. I had both the wagyu and the filet, I would actually say I liked the filet better, the wagyu was very salty and too well done for my liking (I order my steak medium rare for reference). The Mac and cheese side was not good, it’s very bacon forward but the cheese tastes like gross fake cheese. The dessert menu did not look appealing but we tried the peanut butter pie and it was not good, it was not flavorful at all. The Some like it Hot cocktail was very good, the wine list was good but they were out of the Barbera both nights when I went. Finished the night with a cappuccino.

The burlesque experience was weird and we wouldn’t go to it again. First off, the reservation was for 8pm so naturally we assumed that we should arrive the customary 10-15 minutes early in case it was a hard and fast show start time. They would not seat anyone until after 8pm so we were waiting in their main entrance with everyone else that had booked the experience and it got quite crowded while we waited to be taken upstairs. Then as you can imagine they took everyone up at the same time so that was also very chaotic because then everyone was ordering at the exact same time and took a while to get drinks. The burlesque show itself was odd, it felt more like a drag brunch than burlesque. It was also set to holiday music which made for a weird / bad vibe and I wish they would have made it clear in the promos because we probably would not have booked it. The DJ was good between performers though. I would rate it very low...