Portillo's Arlington Heights — Restaurant in Wheeling Township

Review Date: August 22nd, 2016

An icon of Illinois indulgence.

It wasn’t until a few years after I started traveling that Portillo’s was mentioned to me. My friend Chad is the one who brought it to my attention and once he started talking about it, he would not stop. He told me every time he stopped there with his family and made it out to be the best thing he’s ever had. That’s some hype that I was going to put to the test as some point.

My girlfriend and I were up in Chicago for a Luke Bryan concert, I think, and stayed overnight. During the drive home, I mentioned Portillo’s and she was on board. All I had to do was tell her about these cake shakes they are known for. Since Portillo’s is centrally located around Chicago, we made plans to hit up on that was just outside the city to avoid traffic and large crowds. We found one in Arlington Heights that was perfect for our requirements.

We were able to find it easily with the help of our GPS. We both got giddy to try out this legendarily-hyped place. As we entered, it was an assault on the visual senses. It seemed that every inch of the walls were holding some kind of poster, case, pictures, etc. On top of that, there was stuff hanging from the ceilings. It was a lot to take in but it didn’t stop there. After visually decoding where we order, we stood in the area while letting others pass so we could see how you properly order since it seemed a bit different than your normal place. You tell the cashier exactly what you want and then walk down this line doing… something that I don’t recall. Maybe telling the cook how you want your meal prepared. I believe everything is plain until you customize it. They write on your bag what you want and how you want your food prepared from what I remember. Then you wait at the end of the counter for your food to come out. Maybe they bring it to your table but my girlfriend snagged a spot to sit while I waited for the food.

I hauled our bit tray of food to the table and we both had a look of ‘where do we begin’ on our faces. The sheer volume of food that we had was overwhelming. We may have bit off more than we could chew when we ordered. We slowly dug in to our food. I know I got a chili dog of sorts, some fries, a soda and possibly a burger. My girlfriend got a cake shake along with what she ordered so we could both try that out.

We set about trying to put the food down but in the end, the food won. We couldn’t finish it. Which is a blessing in disguise as we still had 2 hours to drive. No one wants to drive 2 hours on an overstuffed stomach.

Did it live up to the hype? For the most part. The cake shake was better than I could’ve imagined while the food itself was great. Worth the praise but maybe not worth driving 2 hours to get. So, yeah, Chad hyped the place up and it pretty much matched the hype. The only thing I didn’t care for was the ordering process and the waiting. It seemed to take forever to get our food despite there not being many people before or after us in line.

If you want to see something even more unique about Portillo’s. Watch their drive-thru line. They have a person outside before you pull up to the menus to order. What’s the purpose of this? I have no idea but it’s fun to watch for some reason. I’ve seen it quite a few times at the newly-opened Peoria location and it’s always amusing to watch for...

My family and I love portillo’s food and have it for dinner 3-6 times a month! We go to this location because it’s so close to us, but will try to avoid it from now on. So many issues recently in the past few months: they gave me 2 cheeses when I ordered and paid for 3. I didn’t realize until I was home so I called and I provided receipt number and was told I would get refunded for one cheese. I never received a refund! Fries were cold and food was just blah one time we went around 3pm. After that, we just stick to late dinner time when everything is fresh. I understand 3pm is not their busy hour and fries are probably just sitting there. Through the drive thru, my Italian beef was not dipped when my receipt said dipped. I called as soon as I got home and was asked for receipt number and was told I would be refunded for the Italian beef. I never received refund either! I wasn’t given the option to bring it back for a new one either. Today, 11/6/24 around 6pm I went to Portillo’s because yesterday 11/5/24 I received a text about the buy $50 in gift cards get $10 gc for later use promotion. I went inside. Teen girl at register was so confused. She didn’t know what I was talking about. She went to ask the manager and came back and told me that the promotion hasn’t started. I pulled out my phone and showed her the text. She then asked when I had received it. In that moment the manager comes over and asks for me to show him the text I received from portillos. I showed him and he was so annoyed and pulled out a $10 promotion card right away. Not friendly at all. He then had teen girl scan a $50 gift card and the $10 promotion card and walked away without saying anything. I then asked the girl if there’s a receipt showing the $10 gc is activated (I know won’t be able to use until late December), and then teen was so confused. Manager came back and he just kept saying “not until December. Not until December” and he wouldn’t even let me speak. The receipt I was given only shows the $50 gc I bought.

Food is delicious, but I’ve had it with this location. Will look for other...

I am a vegetarian and ordered the chop salad with no meat through the drive-thru. I ate part of the salad before hitting an unusual taste and spat out a few pieces of chicken. I've been a vegetarian most of my life and feel physically sick about eating meat. They told me that I needed to get drive back out in the night to return the salad in order for them to remedy their mistake and be given a new salad. When I returned the salad, they re-entered the correct order without meat into the register and insisted that I double check it to confirm that the order was right. I felt like this wasn't necessary and suggested I had just failed to order correctly the first time..There was no apology at any point and I was left feeling gross and nauseous :( I don't think I even want to eat the new salad, I still feel so awful about eating the meat in the first meal. The last time I was mistakenly fed meat was maybe 10 years ago, so I want to emphasize that this isn't a routine occurrence. It's huge deal for me, I felt a lot of distress about it, and I don't believe that they really saw it as an issue.

Edit: I want to point out that the guest services response below does not contain any sort of apology either.

7/28/23 update: As management assured me this would not happen again, I went back a month later, where it happened again. I guess what I’m warning people is, if you have a strict dietary restriction, this may not be the place for you.

12/11/23 update: Gave them another shot, still small pieces of bacon in the salad. I think it's just something you're going to have to be comfortable with if you have a dietary restriction that, they're never really going to be able to be able to ensure that the restriction is...