Willie’s Grill & Icehouse No 5

I love the concept and the self serve beer buckets. The food is above average bar food. Very good experience and great service.

Whats up Willie’s Ice house… You shorted me last night, 5 pounds of tiny crawfish that included 2 ¹⁄₃ pieces of corn and 2 potatoes. When I complained you brought me 1 more of each?! Gee thanks… And then you charged me 7.99 for 5 slices of onion rings! My husband and I left hungry and my man needed a sandwich when we got home!

Yippee. Kay yay. It’s crawfish season again and one of my most favorite places for crawdads is Willies.
Ordered 2 pounds of crawfish with sausage and s side Order of 5 onion rings.
Service. I’ve always found the service here to be excellent and today was no exception.
Atmosphere is always warm and friendly with a sand box for the kids and the place is usually pretty clean.
Food: ok. The crawfish was a bit light for 2 pounds and the size was about what I’d expect for this time of year. Early March.
The sausage, corn, and potatoes were excellent.
The onion rings here are excellent here. My only comment would be if the were warmer they would have been better.
My wife ordered a side loaded baked potato. See pic.
All in all a decent meal.

A nice patio lunch after church is always enjoyable (especially when it’s 70 degrees outside)! Today the wife and I decided to have a quick meal at Willie’s in The Woodlands. We have eaten here several times before, as well as other locations of theirs around town.
It’s a bit of a different set up from other restaurants. You walk up to the counter to order, get your drinks, and you go pick a seat wherever you’d like. You take your order ticket with you that’s provided by the person who takes your order at the counter. Then, once seated, your waitress/​waiter will come take your ticket and review your order to make sure everything is right! If all is good, they will take the ticket to the kitchen and begin preparing your food. A little bit of a different style set up, but generally quick and effective.
So to backtrack a bit… When we walked up to the counter to order, the person who took our order assumed we wanted drinks with our meal and automatically tallied that into the cost when all we both wanted were waters. Umm, isn’t protocol to ask the question, «What would you like to drink?» Oddly enough, the same thing happened to us last week at another restaurant. Oh well, not a huge deal but just a bit irritating when it happens.
Once we got to our patio table, our waitress (who was very sweet) came and reviewed our ticket with us. All was good to go so she took the ticket to the kitchen!
Now we wait.
About 10 minutes went by and our meals were brought out. I happened to order the same thing I always do (the small catfish plate). Trust me, the small is plenty of food for a grown man! Anyways, it’s time to dig in.
I am a bit of a weird eater, and my wife would have to agree. I generally eat my food in sections. What do I mean? So I started off by eating all of my catfish, followed by all of my fries, and then took a leap of faith with the coleslaw. (All of this is included with the small catfish plate by the way.) Well, I should have known from past experiences, but I had left the worst for last. The coleslaw at Willie’s is well below par, and that’s disappointing seeing that the rest of their food is above average.
So I cleaned my plate (other than the slaw). Shortly after our waitress came to inquire about how we were doing, and/​or if we were done, which we were! Stuffed!
She brought our final bill, we paid, and made our way to the car! Overall the experience was great! We love Willie’s and will continue to be customers!
If you’re in the area and are open to trying somewhere you haven’t had before, drop in Willie’s for a satisfying meal! Cheers!

The service is great. The food is acceptable. Nothing really above average. The atmosphere is super casual and for a dinner night out with the kids that is exactly what we needed.
I would dine here again.

Went here for lunch yesterday with a friend. Ordered the large ($ 8.95) salad with grilled sliced chicken on top. The chicken breast tasted good, but was a small amount. There was a lot of chopped romaine lettuce, four cherry tomatoes and ranch dressing on the side. For the price I can go elsewhere and get a delicious salad with more ingredients. I tipped the waitress 20%, but don’t know why. I should have tipped myself as I got my own glass, ice and drink, my own silverware and tore off a paper towel for a napkin that was sitting on the table. The only thing the server did was brought a plate of salad. It’s a self service restaurant. I won’t be going back.

Great food, great service for a busy night, Crystal took party of 12. Onion rings were awesome. Everyone enjoyed there food, from burgers to nachos to shrimp to chicken fried steak. Accommodated us well, Even adjusted the order that we got wrong without any fussing or bad attitude.

I love Willie’s Grill.
I go there several times a month mostly for lunch. The food is fresh, and well priced.
The large salads are so big, my wife and i can share one for lunch.
I highly recommend this restaurant.

Great place for kids. Good service and great margaritas. Food is that bad either. Good hump day dinner with the family

We have never been here, thought we would give it a try. I had the Mexican shrimp cocktail, I was quite surprised how good it was for not being at a Mexican restaurant. I would go back there next time I am in the area.

Slow service but food is good. Nice place to eat during the week. The fried catfish is never disappointing. They recently updated the menu and added chips and queso as an appetizer.

Came here a couple years ago when visiting the woodlands so we decided to come back. I ordered the seafood platter grilled. The catfish and shrimp was great but the fried crawfish was horrible. My husband order the crawfish it was good. They have IBC root beer in the soda fountain so that is a plus.

Bathrooms are terrible.
Our waitress was super nice and we enjoyed our food.
Bathrooms…ehhh… Not so much.

I ran a marathon. I’m not saying this to brag (ok, maybe I am), but just so that you don’t judge me too harshly by the amount of food I ordered.
So, I ran a marathon. Later, I got hungry and this was the second closest restaurant to our hotel (and the closest was more of a bar and I wasn’t really feeling that scene). You wait in line, you order. Maybe you order fried pickles, a side salad, and buffalo chicken strips and fries because in your stupor, that’s what sounds the best in the world right at that moment.
Then, you get your drinks and sit down, having no idea how your food is going to get to your table without an order number or beeper or whatever, but it’s magic because they do. The fried pickles are an unexpectedly giant plate for the very small cost, but they are delicious. Chips, not spears.
The salad is pretty epic in side for a side salad. I shared some around the table because I figured if the pickles and the salad were that big… the food was going to be epic.
And, it was. 5 giant chicken strips, not frozen cafeteria fingers, freshly breaded, with tons of spicy sauce, tons of fresh fries. My husband got the plate of fried shrimp and catfish and those were amazing as well. My dad got a giant burger that he seemed to be a fan of, and my mom got steak and salad and veggies. She said it was a little chewy, but for a 11? (I think) dollar steak meal, it was perfectly fine and everything else was great.
I took half of it back to the hotel with me. Let’s be real, I ate it a few hours later because I just ran a marathon, but in normal people food, this would have been two, if not three meals with what I ordered.
I’m signed up for the race again next year. I’ll definitely consider hosting my post race celebrations here.

I’ve been coming here for about 4 years now for crawfish on and off. This is Not my first choice in The Woodlands area for crawfish.
I usually like to go to Tailgator’s for crawfish but the entrance to the strip center was closed off by the sheriff probably for construction again. So I went across the street to Willies to get a few pounds of crawfish to go. I’ve maybe had one very good experience in about a dozen times coming here. There always seems to be a problem of some sort with their crawfish. Examples… Barely warm, mushy, small, dry, tasting like the frozen kind or pricier than the nearby competition.
Tonight I got 3 pounds to go. When I got home they were almost all mushy and had an obvious odor like old ones or like there had been spoiled ones that had been cooked in the pot stock boil prior to mine. Plus they were smaller than Tailgator’s crawfish I had last week. Either they were in the crawfish stock boil to long or possibly frozen ones. They also had very small claws overall which I have noticed several times in frozen ones.
Miserable meal didn’t finish it. Plus they were $ 7.95 for mushy, smelly small quality.
The guys that helped me were very friendly and did a good job for their employer «Willies» to make them sound like they were really good quality. My crawfish were done within 5 minutes. I assume they were soaking in the boil for too long.
The cook should not have packaged them and allowed that quality to be sold to me a consumer.
Very disappointed! Don’t see any reason to return to this Willie’s because of so many mediocre crawfish experiences tonight and in past years.
Unilocal review #286

Just left soo full– best Chicken Fried Steak we have had in a long time– their gravy is its own food group! Service was excellent as well.

Great place! Love, love, love.

Good Food, Reasonably priced and the staff is VERY attentive! Regardless who is assigned to our table, everyone seems to want to be helpful!
Good for business meetings too.

Okay food, decent prices, menu has a lot of variety. I don’t come here often but every once in a while during crawfish season I make a stop here. Their crawfish is tasty not too under-​seasoned or over seasoned, usually a good size. Actually came in yesterday for crawfish, $ 6.99 a lb comes with corn/​potatoe. Both my bf and I had a beer a rita, those suckers were strong! In the warmer months their restaurant is opened, they have garage style doors that open out and they are always showing a game. This is a good atmosphere for families with kids, who want a chilled place to eat and maybe catch a game or something.

Ordered a «hand cut ribeye» to-​go (literally most expensive item on their menu, $ 18). Told the girl taking my order very clearly medium RARE (emphasized the rare). Went to pick up food, asked her to confirm the order was for a medium RARE steak. Confirmed. I cut into the steak and sure enough its cooked medium well. The manager did get me a new one with no question, and I told her to make it just rare. Apparently that is not possible for some reason as it came out a little more on the medium side, with one outer edge rare. I’m not sure how they pulled that off. The steak was okay. The salad that came with it was minimal and plain.
The place seems to only hire high school kids, and is run by people who aren’t much more professional. They were very nice, but not very good at their jobs. All in all, skip this place, because Applebee’s is a lot better for the same price.