Uncle Mike's Place — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

Our visit was 12/21 I was visiting from out of town from Louisiana. I had Uncle Mike's before and I loved it. Great food and atmosphere. So when I came into town again I wanted to visit again and share the experience with other family visiting from out of town as well. Since it was the holidays, I knew there was going to be a little line. We received the pager and were told about a little shop next door to pass the time. We went to the shop all was good. After finally getting our table, we sat and waited for service. The restaurant was steady and we were understanding. The waitress helping the table next to ours looked over a few times and didn't acknowledge us. She continued with her other tables and then another server came into the area but still no one acknowledge us or greeted our table. After sitting for 20 minutes with no help and seeing another table sit down in that time and got service. (We over heard another patron tell a server bringing soup to the new table that we didn't get help yet). At that point, I got up and asked the manager( I'm guessing) for someone to assist us. We were a party of four and I was seeing larger parties get help and service faster than we were. Finally, someone came over and took our order. The food was delicious. The soup and our dishes were great. There was a mistake with one order but it was quickly corrected by a server we stopped who we saw going to another table. That was the end of the help. We never got a refill on coffee. No one ever came to check on us. We really didn't have a server. The restaurant by this time wasn't really busy. Finally the manager came with the bill, I gave the manager my card for the meal when he came over with the check. He left for about 15 minutes during which time a server bought us another bill which I stated I already gave my card to the other gentleman. I had to stop a server for a takeaway container. Finally, received the card back from the server who initially took our order. I can say I was disappointed with this visit. I was excited to share the delicious food with my family visiting from out of town. The next time I'm visiting, while I love the food I'll rethink sharing due to the...

This place is absolutely terrible, and does not deserve 4.7 stars, and here’s why:

We are ok with waiting, but don’t give us an estimate of 30-40 minutes, and then make us wait 60 minutes. Despite getting a text saying our table was ready, our table was not ready. We had to wait an additional 15 minutes because the staff were still waiting for our table to clear out. So all in all, we waited 75-80 minutes for a table at 1pm.

Once we sat down, we waited an ADDITIONAL 10 minutes before we were able to put our order in, and this was AFTER I had to flag someone down. A couple who came in after us at this point already had their complimentary lugaw, of which our table was not offered nor given.

Layout of the restaurant dining area makes it so about 30% of tables are in direct path of the front door, so you will catch a very cold draft in winter/spring months.

We ordered 3 combo plates. Menu says each combo plate includes 2 eggs. We were each given only 1 egg. When confronted, the waitress blamed it on an egg shortage. My husband asked if there was any sort of discount that would be offered for this, and the answer was no. When I asked about the complimentary lugaw, the waitress only brought out 1, and said they ran out. Listen, we paid for 3 full plates, each plate was supposed to include 2 eggs each. We only received 1 egg each. Uncle Mike’s charges $2.50/egg a la carte. Meaning we were robbed $7.50 and the waitress didn’t care at all about even trying to make things right. Her excuse was simply, “everyone today only got 1 egg.” A restaurant’s supply issues shouldn’t be the customer’s problem, nor should it come out of the customer’s wallet.

Coffee service was abysmal - 1 tiny tea cup of coffee, with refill offered 20 minutes into our meal.

Flavor was bland, and nothing special. Despite being neon red, the Tocino lacked flavor. It was essentially thick strips of unseasoned pork shoulder saturated in Red 40. Spam was plain, no flavor added - it was truly straight out of the can, plopped onto the flat top, and seared for maybe 2 minutes.

Come here only if bland flavors and horrendous customer service excite you. Waitlist, menu, and payment are also all done via...

I’ll save you the time and define this place in two words: abysmal service.

Now if you want to continue reading here we go: we arrived at exactly 12pm and put our names in the waitlist website, everything was okay, we waited 50 minutes and received a message that my table was ready, great! When we got inside a server (maybe the owner?) told me to wait a few more minutes, “a few more minutes” turned into 15 minutes while standing by the door awkwardly while receiving a very cold breeze every time someone opened the door. The whole time our table was occupied by another party that was in no rush to leave, but then again why would the owner mark the table as ready?

I don’t know how to run restaurants but I think it’s common sense that if you mark a table as ready, you don’t make your customers wait 15 minutes after that. It’s awful to be standing by the door waiting for the table when it was already supposed to be ready.

Now we sit and wait another 15 minutes for our order to be taken, great because at this points it’s been almost 1 1/2 hours of waiting!

We decided to get a few dishes like the combo and spam, which the menu says it includes TWO eggs each, and what do we get? Only ONE each, and when I ask what happened to the other one they say it’s due to the “shortage”, so why am I paying full price then? I asked for a discount and they say “no, everybody gets the same”. I guess everybody’s problem is my problem now too! This is literally robbery by removing items from the dishes without even telling us in advance.

Do you want your coffee refilled? Yeah that’ll be every 15 minutes (if they don’t forget about your table).

How about the flavor? Mediocre at best. Listen, I’m a Hispanic boy and I know a thing or two about spices and flavor but these dishes ain’t it. The tocino was bright red but no flavor whatsoever, sausage mid at best and spam literally straight from the can.

Obviously never coming back here and not recommending it even to my...