Barley House

Should have paid attention to the earlier reviews posted.
We all had issues with the food and service but what really bothered all of us (4) was the attitude of the two managers. After our waitress took our orders we waited forever. The girl had too many tables and they appeared to be just as upset as we were. Our food finally arrived and it cold as well as wrong.
Overwhelmed waitress & cold/​wrong food = We decided to leave. We tried to speak to the managers and were informed by these managers our waitress would have to pay for it if we did not. No offer to make it better or to help her. We felt blackmailed. As we turned to go, I was called a «b — -» because we gave the waitress some cash just in case that was true.

The problem with this place is the service and not the food and drink. Our first bartender «Roger» was more interested in watching the clock and talking to the two ladies at the corner of the bar, then getting our order correct or refilling our drinks. We closed out our tab with him as he was leaving and tipped him well because he apologized for getting our order wrong and removed the charge. Unfortunately things went down hill from there. It took us 20 minutes to get a refill, @ a near empty bar, because the new bartender was to busy paying attention to roger and his two lady friends. We left shortly afterwards.

I have been to Barley House a few times, but I somehow forgot to write up a review.
It is located in a strip mall so there is plenty of parking.
They carved up the interior of a large building to make it look like multiple smaller rooms. I liked the feel of it.
The beer selection is excellent. There are a respectable number of taps, but the vast majority of the beers are bottled. I like that the huge beer menu is grouped by style. My wife and I like to work our way through the menu by each ordering one beer from each page in order to explore all the variety.
The food is fair, but that is not the reason that I make the trip to Barley House.
The service has never been very good over the course of several visits. I have sat at the bar and at tables. It is not bad, but I always feel like something is missing.
One thing that we like to do after a day of drinking at Barley House is to walk across the parking lot to the Borders and drink coffee and read in order to prepare for our long drive home. Another benefit of finishing one’s beer adventures before 2AM.
Overall, I like the beer selection, but Barley House is kind of far from my house. I prefer fresh brewed beer though, so it is hard justify the trip to a place that does not brew their own beer. I would definitely stop by if I was in the area, but I don’t make it up to Algonquin very frequently.

The Barley House is average, but there are more times in life where I feel like going somewhere casual and average than dressy and gourmet. So, with that said, I am going to stick up for the Barley House. I love the interior, which is full dark wood, stained glass and little nooks. They have a nice selection of beers, a fun-​to-​read/​quirky menu, good food and comfortable places to sit, eat and have a few beers with friends or family. As with most «average» places, Barley House has it’s flaws. The servers seem a bit ditsy, and they play horrible pop music (it just DOESN’T match the atmosphere at all).
Overall, I think you should gather up your friends, or call up mom and dad and have everyone meet at the Barley House. I have never left disappointed.

I have been here twice. First time was over a year ago and frankly, I wasn’t impressed. However, I went here recently and was fully amazed by my dinner. We started with the artistic cheese platter, which for $ 10 is a great selection of sliced cheese, and it was the highlight of our meal. I had this Mexican club sandwich for dinner and while it was very tasty there was way too much butter on the toasted bun. Very good overall and worth the trip.

Dont go here… its as simple as that

A brief scan of the current reviews seems to point to a common trend, when ratings are all over the place the culprit seems to usually be service (or lack there of). I’m my visits here the staff has been accommodating (have moved inside/​outside a few times due to high winds in the patio area). I do recall waiting for water refills or the bill a little longer than what would be considered normal during off-​peak hours (read: empty dinning room).
I recall the first visit getting a bland mango chicken sandwich but really the beer is why you go there. But since I try to avoid Randall Road like the plaque (except for sneaking into Trader Joe’s off-​hours) we most often go to Duke’s for a micro-​brew fix (in between other sneak-​attacks of Binny’s for the home stash).

What a great place to go!
We saw this restaurant one day while driving down Randall, and after looking up their menu online, we decided we NEEDED to try it. I became their «friend» on facebook the same day that they changed their menu which was lucky for me. I had already looked at their menu, and decided a few things to try, but when the owner emailed me the new menu (which I thought was VERY awesome of him), some of the things I wanted to try weren’t on it. That kind of sucked.
We got seated right away at 7 on a Friday night. Huge plus in my book! Our waiter was very attentive right from the start, and recommended some things for my husband (the brew king) to try.
For his beer, my husband ultimately decided to try the «Goose Island Bourbon County Stout» which the waiter hadn’t served before. My husband LOVED it!!! He said it by FAR one of the best beers he’s ever had. And that is a huge compliment coming from him since he is very picky about his beers. I just said that it better be a good beer for $ 11 a pop! Whew!
For our meal, we got the fried pickles. they were good, but a little soggy, and the mayo was a little iffy. I didn’t really like the flavor.
For my meal, I had the BLT, and that was REALLY good. The bacon was incredible! My husband had the «Tallgrass» burger and said it was amazing as well. So our meals were a huge hit! The fries were even good the next day!
So I highly recommend Barley House for great beer and good food!

So considering I trekked ALLLLL the way out to Elgin from Chicago just to visit my friend whom I havent seen in a while actually turned out to be a good choice.
After driving through plaza after plaza of common food places, one actually stood out: Barley House. Now upon first glance, it doesnt look like much, but dont let the décor fool you. This place really shines w their eclectic menu and super friendly wait staff (shout out to Brandon!)
Where do I begin… oh cheeseburger soup. Now how can you not like something called cheeseburger soup?! It is quite filling (considering I ate 2 cups, and then it kicked in) and the price is kind of funky. Whatever the temp is outside at 11a.m. that day is the price for the soup. $ 0.48? SOLD!
Along w their disclaimer, if its colder than 0 degrees F, you eat for free and they pay YOU!
Next up: sweet potato fries w blueberry ketchup. Wow. Going off fellow Unilocal reviews here, I was eagerly waiting to taste this… and I must say well done Barley House.
I had the ultimate burger, which was cooked perfectly through, just how I wanted (medium rare).
Their beer menu… wow. I didnt get a chance to try anything since I was DD for the night, but they have quite a selection! I want to come back here just to try the beer flight!
One thing that caught my eye: «the nobody will probably order it skillet»
Whats in it? Foie gras, lobster, crab. $ 25. If it was brunch (it was a brunch item) I would have ordered it w/​o batting an eye.
Hats off to Barley House for their wide selection and large servings, as well as their menu which is definitely «out the box.»

Okay we start with the beer. It’s simply amazing. Even if you don’t think you like beer you ought to be able to pick out a beer you like.
Now moving on to the food, usually when a place has a beverage selection like this they often fall flat on the food side, fortunately that is NOT the case at Barley House.
The food is good and the presentation makes you question if there was a mistake in the pricing. This review was written based on my 4 trips there.
Keep up the great work ladies and gentlemen!

Gastropub… I think not.
We decided to go out of our comfort zone and try barley house… something totally new to us being from south barrington and Chicago.
On this Wednesday night at 9, the place was pretty empty and mainly the bar area had people.
Our waitress, was to say a word, dense. When ordering my girlfriend was wondering what type of veggie burger was available. When she had no clue what she was talking about, the waitress went back to the kitchen to ask. Her reply when she came back, «there’s no label on the plastic baggy». This should have been the first sign.
Moving on to our food, which I ordered the simplistic Cobb salad and she had a quesadilla. The salad was boring, lacked well… effort, the hard boiled egg was warm (gross) the tomato was warm and mushy, lettuces were wimpy and the grilled chicken was probably defrosted pre-​grillled chicken. Absolutely terrible.
The quesadilla was equally horrible. It was literally shining, sopping wet with grease. We were both disgusted and appalled. There was a pool of grease underneath the wedges of quesadilla.
When we told the waitress about this, she basically looked like a deer in headlights and said ok. No offer to re do it, no offer to remove the plate from our table.
The manager came over, apologized, and took the quesadilla off our bill. The waitress continued to be inattentive and we had to share water because she was too busy socializing to pay attention. It took 10 minutes for us to get the bill, and then we waited another 7 for her to pick it up till we got up and went over to her and told her we would like to pay and leave.
Never going back… don’t know how this place can be called a gastropub.

Great beer selection — fantastic beer menu that rivals the best wine lists!
In truth, this is a slightly reworked Claddagh Irish Pub that now calls itself a British Pub. They even have a rule against playing Irish music (yawn). But there’s still a painting of St. Patrick on the wall! But overall, it’s a great place to hang out, with big screens on most every wall.
Food is passable, but not a Gastropub by any means. We tried the smoked salmon spread — you’ll love it if you love cream cheese — it’s at least 50% cream cheese, we didn’t like the texture… Then we had the duck flatbread pizza. It would have been really good if they hadn’t drizzled some kind of cherry syrup all over it. My wife had the roasted chicken. It was okay, but the mashed potatoes were at least a day old. Yew. Buffalo Burger was very good according to someone else at the table. Turkey sandwich was HUGE!
Overall, come here for the beer, try some more of the fries and stuff or maybe the flatbread pizzas… Not a bad option in the neighborhood.

This Celtic themed restaurant has a fresh and different approach to dining compared to the other chains on Randal Road. However, this place doesn’t amount to anything special or out of the ordinary.
The food was a little below average. My wrap had an excessive amount of red-​cabbage with a soy-​sesame vinaigrette that overpowered the other ingredients. The fries were good but far from original. The price was average for this caliber or restaurant.
The best part of Barley House has to the beer selection. A wide variety of selections are available. In addition, the drink prices are below average!!! Even better still is the large and expansive drink specials that are available for the weekend. Cheers!!!
This spot is a great place to meet up friends for happy hour. Otherwise… choose a different place for dinner.

The quest for character in the suburbs continued with a Thursday night dinner at Barley House — and once again, I have been pleasantly surprised! My only sadness in finding Barley House is that it has been there for a year and the fiancé and I never tried it before!
The beer list is AWESOME! Rivals Bluebird and Map Room, popular Chicago beer snob hot spots.
The fiancé sampled two beers of their «threesday» special (on Thursday nights they have 4 craft beer selections for $ 3.00). We each got Monte Cristo sandwiches which were pure heaven. They came with sweet potato fries with a delicious dusting of sugar on top. The blueberry ketchup was to DIE for! This will forever be my favorite suburban guilty pleasure. I am counting the days until we can return.

I want to love this place, but I don’t. I’ve eaten here 3 times and the food is just way too hit or miss for me. One part of the meal will be great, but then another part is terrible. Most recently, I had the pork chop entrée. The pork chop was great, but the sides were terrible. I had a sweet potatoe casserole that was just plain awful. I sent it back… and I NEVER do that. I’ve also had a burger there. It was overcooked and disappointing.
Barley house has a great beer selection, but I think I am giving up trying to like the food there. Eat somewhere else first, then hit Barley House up fir some great brews.

This is one of my new favorites! I’m only bummed my husband and I waiting so long to try them…
Our waiter was AWESOME! Attentive but not overly so with a great sense of humor.
We tried the beer flight and they have some tasty brews indeed! My husband had the Monte Cristo sandwich which was great. Came with sweet potato fries and a blueberry ketchup. Yes, blueberry ketchup, and it rocks! I had the Fish & Chips which were delicious as well. It came with this wonderful apple and bacon slaw, hushpuppies (love them!), and they’re regular fries which are good as well.
We were too stuffed to try dessert but they sounded darn good.
Loved the atmosphere, food and the people. We did come for a very early dinner since we skipped lunch (3:45 p.m. or so) so the place wasn’t too busy at the time. I imagine they are pretty busy on Friday and Saturday nights.

Where are the half points at Unilocal!!! Not many places get a 2 star from me. And this place most likely would have gotten a 2.5 if it was possible, I went w/​a 3 bc it did have some perks w/​their minuses.
First off Im not a big/​chain restaurant type guy. I like the family owned, hole in the wall dives that really put their heart into the food and not some assembly line type cooks that dont care what they put out.
High level overview from my experience… Food was a hit or miss, waitress probably did to many hits of acid from back in the day… very slow getting to us and along w/​thought process, the bus boy rocked, and atmosphere was ok…
The details… Waited 10 mins until waitress finally came to our table to greet us and take drinks. Place wasnt busy and she didnt have many tables but I think she was overwhelmed or new at the job. Took her even longer to bring our beverages and finally takes are order. Food comes out in a decent amount of time. Rueben sandwich and Jerk chicken pita. Both sound good. Being in a Irish tavern setting I knew the reuben had to be good but unfortunately I wasnt the one that ordered that. :(I’ll start off w/​the good. The Reuben is really good here and I should actually state that the corned beef is really really good and it made the sandwich. The beef just melted in my mouth sliced nice and think probably ¼ inch thick. Tender, full of flavor, not dried out one bit. The overall sandwich was kinda sloppy w/​to much dressing but I was soo impressed w/​the corned beef it didnt matter. It came w/​a very tasty side salad by the way. Balsamic dressing w/​yellow raisins and sugar coated pecans along w/​the normal salad toppings. Again I was impressed w/​the simple salad. Luckily my friend was nice enough to split the sandwich due to my bad selecting. Ever since going to Jamaica and having their Jerk Chicken Ive been a fan of it ever since for the whole week in Jamaica I ate it at the very least once a day and trust me there were days were I took it down twice a day. But not once since I came back to the states and had a comparable or even lets say ok Jerk Chicken. And it gets me all the time bc im like well maybe this place will blow my mind w/​it. And again I was dissapointed. Would not recommend this pita sandwich. The sauce was horrible, the flavor of the chicken wasnt good, and then they bought like a mango salad on top of the chicken which I thought would give it a sweet and spicy flavor and it kinda just overpowered the chicken at times. It did come w/​sweet potatoes fries that were good and I was just picking on those until I was able to tell the waitress that the sandwich wasnt even satisfactory. She never came by to even ask how the food was or if we needed something. The bus boy came by and made sure we had more than enough water to drink and was picking up our garbage everytime he filled up our water. Really nice and polite boy. He almost deserved the tip over our waitress. Anyways after we were done w/​our food the waitress finally comes by and asked how was it. Here I have a one bitten pita and I said it would have been nice to ask us that when I first tasted this. She was puzzled, i was like you should have at least come to our table to check on us and you didnt. She apologized and said that she would take care of it. Then asked if I wanted something else and im like no I ate half of the reuben. Asked for a desert menu and ordered one my favs. bananas foster w/​ice cream and a brownie. I was sold one bc my friend wanted a brownie and never had foster before and 2 I love it! :) So we get that and it came out quick. Good flavor, nothing to brag about it. Its not a desert thats hard to screw up. A couple of spoonfuls into it, noticed no brownie. So we ask her and she comes back and said that it was yesterdays desert special and today it comes w/​no brownie. At this point I was just like fine whatever. She probably screwed up the order and just forgot it.
Well if it wasnt for the reuben and the side salad, I would have probably had to score it a 2. Plus the place does have hundreds of beers to try, so if or when I may come back… It would be for some cool brews and corned beef and cabbage.

Not much to say here. I tried it twice and both times, I and a mixed crowd of those I took with me, found the food to be horrible. The atmosphere though is nice so I gave it two stars.
Maybe I just haven’t tried the right items yet but I did sample a selection of the appetizers, got the waitress’s recommendation on my first visit, on the second the fish-​n-​chips, and tried one of the desserts. All were non-​inventive and simply not on par even with other local places. The free popcorn was nice though.
Recommendations: take a pass… too many better restaurants to try

I have been here twice now and both for different occasions.
The first time was for a friends birthday. We had an awesome time ordering all kinds of beer and the waitress was pretty good for an extremely busy night. I ordered the fish’n’chips and it was TO DIE FOR. The batter was light, but had a lot of flavor, apple slaw was nice and tangy, fries were crispy, and the hush puppies were sweet’n’salty. Tons of food there! Everyone really enjoyed there food – nachos, salad, popcorn, Italian beef, etc. Lots of good quality bar food.
The second time I was there my boyfriend and I were there just for a nice night out after the mall. We both ordered a meat dish and they messed up our «done preferences.» He got my medium rare and I got his well-​done. Not too happy about that. And the meat wasn’t that flavorful anyway.
I would say this is a great place to go for a fun night out for drinks and appetizers or just plain ol’ bar food, but not a place where you would find a quality steak.

I have been here twice now — once for drinks, and once for dinner — and I definitely plan on coming back here again.
Both visits, I found the waiters to be friendly and attentive enough, but without hovering. The hostesses, however, would benefit from having words like «hello» and «thank you» added to their vocabulary.
As has been mentioned, they have a pretty extensive (and delicious!) beer selection. Last night, we went with a reasonably-​priced pitcher of Purple Haze, and I would order it again. The milk stout I was drinking last time was great as well.
I appreciate having a basket of cold popcorn to munch on, and several menu options caught my eye. As a vegetarian, I get used to having pretty limited options, but at the Barley House, there were at least five or six things I could order, although only two fell under the «vegetarian» listing on the menu.
I ended up ordering the portobello mignon (three grilled portobello caps served with a bed of rice, grilled asparagus, and a delicious tomato sauce for $ 11). While it was something I could make at home, I thought it was quite good and I would order it again. My lovely lady friend had the grilled cheese tomato soup and the jerk chicken pita and seemed to enjoy it.
The overall layout of the place is nice. On a busy Friday night, we did not feel crowded in our cozy, corner booth, and nor did we have trouble hearing one another.
On our way out, we noticed live music playing on the patio. Something to keep in mind for future visits.

Note: this is primarily a review of the food and the service as it related to the food. I came here a few weeks ago for dinner and maybe a drink, though I ended up getting dinner and trying a companion’s beer.
I was very disappointed by the service. The waitress we had was a horrible listener and really did not pay close enough attention to me when I told her I JUST wanted water, but she ended up bringing me a water and a Sprite. She also had my friends repeat what they were trying to order on more than one other occasion and had an overall aloof, disinterested aura about her.
The beer menu is overwhelmingly extensive and varied — I’d come back for drinks, but not for the food or service. Inside, they feel a bit like an upscale pub and they present the food as such also. However, it’s sullied a LOT by the typos, bad spellings, and poor grammar in the menu as well as the bland food. I ordered the Portobello Mignon, which tasted no better (worse, actually) than something I’d make at home with everyday ingredients. For the price, I was expecting some more exciting flavors and preparation, but I was left pretty disappointed.
When you’re there for dinner and you see how they suggest on their own menu that if you’re looking for bruschetta to go next door to Biaggi’s, please take that advice.