Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant — Restaurant in Wheeling Township

I am a frequent diner at this particular CH location and a wine club member. My last few visits have been, to put it mildly, lackluster. My last visit on Friday, September 2, 2022, is what has prompted me to write this review. I hesitated after the visit before, and even left a voicemail for the general manager, which has not been returned, after several weeks. This last visit, service was slow, but rushed, if that makes sense. It took the waiter, Anton, almost an hour to ask for our order and about the same amount of time to bring us drinks, other than water. When he did finally take our order, he would only come to check in on us if we got his attention by flagging him down, and would quickly leave our table without hearing all of our requests. He did pay much more attention to the table behind us, so the excuse of the restaurant being busy is void. He even took the check before we were ready and charged four cards, evenly, without the last card, after we told him it should be split, evenly, five ways (mind you, he told us beforehand that splitting it any other way would be something too hard for him to do which I’ve never heard before at CH). He came back to the table and said the fifth person owes us. (I’m almost sure we didn’t all receive our club member points but I’ll look into that later and have saved my receipt.) The icing on the cake was when he gave me a very small container to take my more than 50% of remaining meal home, saying that there were no large containers. He must’ve forgot that he’d just given the table behind us three large containers. Perhaps he saw me glance over to that table and then miraculously, he found a large container for me.

Now, to the visit before this… CH takes their last reservation at 9:00, which was the time of ours. As soon as we sat down, our waitress (can’t remember her name but left her name on the GM’a voicemail) told us to hurry and order because the kitchen is closing. By 10:00, the staff was rushing us out and even took away our wine glasses without asking and, when we still had wine left to drink. Minimally, we should be expected to eat our meal over a 90 to 120 minutes timeframe. However, CH expected us to be in and out in an hour and to know what we wanted for appetizers, meals, and desserts BEFORE we sat down. If this is the case, CH should advertise their 9:00 reservation as an hour reservation. We felt unwelcome and rushed. This was the first time I thought about canceling my membership as this was the second time this happened for a 9:00 reservation. The first time, I thought it was just an off night but no, this appears to be the way the staff treats diners after a certain time. CH used to be very diner-oriented and would have the manager walk by to check in on their guests but unfortunately, what was once my favorite restaurant, CH doesn’t appear to care. My friends and I, at a minimum, spend $300 per visit and we are all wine club members. We’d expect a certain kind of service and to feel appreciated for our patronage and loyalty (wine club members for 10 years). I may give this location one more chance to see if my review sparks a change. Otherwise, I’ll wait for the Gurnee location to open and give it a try before I cancel my membership and no longer support...

The Wheeling location has gone through some renovations and the place looks great and it is still packed. The whole wine tasting/buying area is larger and they have an area to buy wine accessories and accoutrements.

We made a reservation last minute (day of) and were able to get a table at 8pm. When we arrived, the wine tasting area was packed with people and tastings, the bar area was full and the restaurant was also pretty full (I'd say about 90% full). We were told a couple minutes and it truly was a couple minutes.

Our server came by and brought water and asked if we wanted any drinks and was a little pushy on the wine and joining the wine club. We said we weren't interested in the wine club nor getting wine that evening and she seemed a little miffed by my Coke Zero order.

We ordered our food and our server brought out a fresh pretzel bread round with whipped butter. Freshly made, this bread is delicious and a perfect precursor to the yumminess that is about to come out of the kitchen.

We polished off the bread and our server brought refills of our drinks and asked if we wanted more bread. Is that even a question? Yes, please. We polished off the second bread round (it was 8:30pm and we were hungry!) Then our meals came out. I got The Prime sandwich with au jus, pickle, and a large cup of fries. I didn't know it was large, but it was and they were good. The Prime which is a shaved prime rib sandwich was fresh and juicy. The roll was toasted perfectly and came with a side of seasoned mayo (serious, why?) and horseradish cream which was nice and not too spicy as to take away from the flavor of the prime rib (this did not). It was a delicious sandwich that I easily polished off and ate most of the fries.

My wife got the turkey burger and she said it was/is the best turkey burger she's had anywhere. It was large and she cut it in half and ate half her fries and wanted to take the rest of her meal home. The server came by and asked if we needed boxes. We said yes for my wife and the server responded by saying, "maybe you guys shouldn't have had all that bread." What. The. Actual. Hell. I don't think we deserved the snark. She wasn't the friendliest person as soon as she knew we weren't ordering wine or joining the Cooper's Hawk Wine Club.

I would definitely give this location 5 stars, but the server was very snarky and rude.

We shrugged it off her attitude and said on the way home that if we were to ever join their wine club, we would never do it from the Wheeling location. If their staff gets all rude when you don't join/order, why should I give her the commission? We just hope that management sees this review and takes some extra time to train their servers in the art of treating patrons with respect whether they order wine/join the wine...

Our company hosted our annual holiday party at this location which initially we thought was a lovely and well coordinated event. We selected this establishment to house our 35 employees that travel from near and far, and spent roughly half of our contracted time [3 hours] doing a holiday gift exchange. As we dispersed and paid up our [3k] tab, a handful of people (7) from the group went to the bar to order drinks and watch the rest of the Bears game and to our surprise, the bartender notified us that we were “cut off” by the two waiters from our private party.

Obviously this was quite surprising and disappointing considering a) not one person was over served or even “warned” during the private party that they were over served during our meal and b) the investment put forth on both the food, drinks, and gratuity for our small group of employees that subsequently resulted in the Coopers Hawk staff making an unwarranted decision to stop serving us after the private party.

When we requested to speak with the manager and expressed our dissatisfaction, she stated that the “cut off” was based on the allotted time of 3 hours in our “contract,“ and that they could no longer serve us. When I asked which term in the contract this was specially in reference to, she then stated “well, it’s not in the contract but the waiters basically said that we can no longer serve you.”

As a former long- time service industry worker and Basset-certified bartender, cocktail waitress, and banquet hall worker; I. Have. Seen. It. All. I HAVE cut off bar patrons for legitimate reasons—And I can whole-heartedly say that our group was nothing but tasteful, kind, and generous (maybe too generous) to our two servers. At one point, when we ordered a chocolate martini, our server “joked” and said “the bartender is [now] probably going to have to make these the whole night” and subsequently; when they ran out of the Godiva liquor to make any more chocolate martinis, we were completely understanding—never irate or disorderly. However, when I saw that this location only staffed 1 bartender to support the overly crowded establishment on a night with sporting events, I could imagine making martinis wasn’t an efficient or favorable task for that person. So perhaps that’s what drove the decision to cut us off? Either way, I can only speculate why Coopers Hawk decided to stop serving our group at 9:30 pm when they close at 10:30pm, and that is why I’m writing one of these dreaded long reviews.

Please take this into consideration when booking corporate events. There are many other establishments in the area that can accommodate for half the cost, and we certainly can attest to that based on our poor...