Houlihan’s

Rolled the dice and tried Houlihans again this weekend. We had guests from Ireland and were looking for a casual, ‘American’ experience to share. This time, the food was good, and our server, Wendy, was really friendly.
The only criticism was the bar area seemed understaffed for the number of guests, and the hostess stand was unmanned on several occasions. We watched a couple groups come in and stand around for several anxious minutes, looking around for assistance.
Understand Houlihan’s was sold a couple months ago to an investor group, so perhaps the transition explain the hiccups.

I am blown away by the food I had here. Not only does everything taste delicious but the presentation is beautiful.
I had the lettuce chicken wraps and the tortilla soup. The chicken mixture for the wraps has an Asian inspired sauce on it. It comes with a sort of mustard sauce that I thought was unneeded but was also tasty. The tortilla soup was super flavourful with tortilla strips in it to add some extra crunch which is a great touch.
I tried the spicy chicken and avocado egg rolls which had just enough spice and the avocado added wonderful creaminess to the dish.
I also tried the artichoke poppers which for someone who doesn’t who like artichoke, they were still pretty tasty and super creamy.
Finally our server Wendy was super nice and funny. Overall a great experience here!

There are a few restaurants where the food and service are consistently good. Houlihan’s is one of them. Everything — from the side salads to the wine to the desserts — is great quality and value. I love the top sirloin with grilled asparagus and a loaded baked potato. My husband got the almond crusted tilapia. Both were perfectly prepared. And we had just enough room to share a piece of the caramel nut crunch pie. Heaven!

I have come to this location for happy hours numerous times. The drink menu they offer from 4 – 6 p.m. each day is better than most of the other menus in the area. You have your choice of numerous mixed drinks, flights of smaller sized drinks, beers and a variety of wine. They carry Barrel Burner Pinot Noir, which is a favorite of mine, so drinks are a no brainer here for me.
The happy hour portion sizes are quite small compared to some other options in town for the price, and a lot of the food that is offered on the menu is fried, which is something I usually try to avoid at all costs. The larger dinner menu is a better choice if you are trying to eat healthy. They offer a small variety of spiralized vegetable options in place of pasta and clearly mark their gluten free options, if that happens to be an issue for you.
The food here ranges from «pretty good» to «very mediocre and could use improvement». I do find the happy hour menu to be more well prepared than the actual meals here. The scallops I had here were extremely overcooked, but the risotto was decent. In the future, I would most likely stop here with friends for drinks only, but would probably grab dinner elsewhere after happy hour is over.

Still going with 4 stars because the food and atmosphere are still great, but we had such a clueless waiter this time. He brought me the wrong wine, brought the chicken wing appetizer without wet wipes or dipping sauce, took forever to refill things or bring the check back to me after I’d given him my card, BUT was very quick to ask us if we wanted dessert– while we were still eating our entrees! Ugh! I hate that. Give us some time, please. My daughter ordered an ice cream dessert and when it came it was half melted. Disappointing.

Nice place, but not our Houlihan’s we are used to in Garland, Texas @ Firewheel Mall! It just didn’t have that upscale vibe we had come to love and our salads were a bit blah. Seems like a great place to meet a friend for dinner and drinks, but just not quite what we had experienced in the past. It’s smaller and more low key and the hostess and wait staff seemed rather bored with their jobs. Oh well, we were thrilled to visit our old friend, as we don’t have this chain in Colorado, but we will still look forward to the next visit at our favorite Texas location.

Saw some good reviews so I was excited to try this place out. I came in and nobody was at the front so I looked at the menus at the front. I took a seat at the front and continued to wait to be seated. 3 different parties showed up after me at different times were seated first. I didnt have any acknowledgement so I
left after 10 minutes because it just felt super awkward sitting there alone. Wish the service would have been better because I just started to try to go out to eat more. Very disappointed. It wasn’t very busy either. Not sure if it matters or not but I’m an asian male. I use Unilocal all the time but never write reviews so I guess this will be my start. Maybe this will help others out somehow.

Nice place with great atmosphere! They were able to take care of 25 person party! We had our hockey team and parents come for lunch between games. Food and services were great… especially consideration multiple checks!

Didn’t seem fair to not give credit where it’s due. The Leawood location didn’t give me the best experience, but this location always does. The food is always worth the wait, the wait staff is always friendly and professional, and there typically isn’t a wait for a table. Specifically, I recommend the tomato bisque soup with grilled cheese fritters as an add to any meal.

Houlihan’s is a great place to go when you are looking for a high quality, upscale restaurant, but want affordable prices. Houlihan’s has been perfect for all of my client meetings during the work week! I love their edamame, mussels, flatbreads and drinks.

Dropped in for dinner. Nothing special, or unacceptable. I enjoyed the Martini flights. Server was prompt and polite. Food was good.

Stopped in for lunch, one in a party of five. Nice, casual ambience, full bar and the KC vs Toronto game on the big screen. The table mates declared the cocktails very good and the beer choices were numerous. Our server was efficient and everything was as ordered. Among the many dishes we gave the following subjective ratings: the healthy salad with fruit and poppyseed dressing=excellent, hot wings salad= okay, pot roast sliders=very good, hamburger sliders=good, fries=very good, margarita flatbread=good and goat cheese/​artichoke poppers=very good. All agreed that we would return and recommend.

Houlihan’s is one of my favorite restaurant chains. The inside is modern and chic. It’s the perfect place to unwind after a busy day. This particular location has a really nice bar area with a built in fireplace which gives it a great ambiance. I’m a huge ambiance girl and most Houlihan’s I’ve been to have this going for them.
The food here is always incredibly delicious (regardless of location). That being said I always order the house salad with balsamic vinaigrette. The soups are always delicious and if you’re on a lunch break, the soup/​salad combo is a great way to go. Flavor is
. All other entrees I’ve had are also very flavorful and cooked to perfection.
Favorite appetizers:
— firecracker shrimp (not a huge portion but flavorful as it’s covered in a tangy/​semi spicy sauce)
–parmesan frites (comes with garlic aioli and if you’ve ever had this and are a Garlic lover you’ll love!)
Favorite drinks:
Anything! But really their Bloody Mary’s are delicious (not too tomatoey and you can customize the spicy) and if you’re feeling feisty the Georgia peach drink is delicious. That drink can run pretty big so make sure and ask! Houlihan’s is a great place for good drinks.
Pricing is good and portions are pretty standard.
Stop in with friends, family or yourself — you won’t be disappointed! I’ll always choose Houlihan’s and my mouth is actually watering right now.

3 stars because of how small the happy hour portions are now. I understand that the price was lowered but the portion does not match. This used to be one of our favorite places for happy hour too. We loved the location across the street. This location definitely has a different feel to it.

Holy Makeover! I’d not been to any of their locations in years. My friend and I were at Oak Park Mall and decided it’d been too long and should stop in. Love the lighting and décor which created great ambiance. We waited more than 10 minutes to be greeted. In fact, we weren’t even sure we had the correct entrance because no one else was waiting and several people looked at us and walked by, but didn’t address us.
After we were seated, we had a super attentive server and it seemed all tables around us had the same as well.
Our appetizer was fantastic. Since we had a difficult time deciding on entrees, we shared them. They were fresh, perfectly made, and DELICIOUS! We should’ve saved room for dessert… next time… there will be a next time.
*high five*

Went to lunch. Thursday afternoon. Parking lot packed and they were very busy but they were very kind and attentive. I ate at the bar and Jeff did a fantastic job of taking care of me. I had a side salad and the scallops the lunch menu and it was superb. Overall great experience.

A once frozen, store bought veggie patty, under a cheese slice that wasn’t quite melted. Mmmm. But that’s OK, that’s what I get for going to Houlihan’s. It’ll probably be another 8 years before I go back.

This was my first time at this particular Houlihan’s. It’s beautifully decorated– more upscale looking than the one we frequent in Fairway. Same great food & drink menus, and we had the most wonderful waitress. Her name is Emma, and she’s an absolute delight. Looking forward to dining again with her. She took such good care of us, and was so sweet and totally on top of everything. Just a perfect server. Thank you to her and whoever made the very wise decision to hire her.

Happy hour menu for food is not worth it. You will spend more on them for a filling meal than getting a normal menu item. The atmosphere is great.

Happy hour is daily at different times, but the bummer part is that you have to sit on the bar side of the restaurant in order to enjoy happy hour. Of course when you sit on the bar side it’s always quite noisy.
I ordered the stuffed chicken with Asparagus, mashed potatoes, and baked potato soup. All of the food was excellent. The soup is homemade and came with all the fixings. We also ordered the brownie and also the apple dessert, which the brownie dessert is a lot better.
We had a good server, but I think we started to wear our welcome out because he started to become a little pushy. Sometimes you just get that feeling that you are not wanted any more… We still tipped quite well despite being practically pushed out. It’s the holiday season so I brushed it off, but any other time I may have taken it a lot more personal…

We went to this restaurant for the first time and were very much pleased with the ambiance and environment. We ordered Beef Sliders and Chicken Parmasean Pasta. Both entrées were mouth watering especially beef sliders. If you ever try this restaurant, beef sliders are a must have!

It’s rare that I’m in the Oak Park Mall area so I was saddened when I saw the Houlihan’s was gone. Luckily, my sister kept driving to find somewhere else and saw that it had just moved locations! Whew.
It looked like most people were there for the Happy Hour and the dining area was maybe half full. We were greeted and seated right away in a comfortable booth.
Our waiter quickly took and delivered our drink orders. I got the margarita and my sister chose the martini flight. My margarita was tasty and strong (but not too strong). I got to try each of my sister’s mini martinis and the best was definitely Blueberry Mini though Key Lime Pie Mini was good too. I wasn’t so big of a fan of the third one — Adam & Eve Apple but I don’t really like that tart flavor.
We both ordered salads which were large and crisp.
My go-​to at Houlihan’s is chicken tenders and my sister was feeling some tenders too that night. They were, as usual, delicious and we had plenty of leftovers.
I’m really glad Houlihan’s did not close and it will probably still be the place I pick when forced to go to Oak Park Mall in the future.

HELLO HAPPY HOUR! I’ve just found my new favorite place to hit up for HH! $ 3.95 a dish from 3 – 7 and 9-​close, but all day on Sundays! Holla!!!
$ 3.95 HH dishes:
*Pulled Pork Slider with French fries: it’s like a happy meal but as a HH appetizer! Never have I seen an app where u get a mini burger plus fries! Great deal!
*Thai Chicken Wings: MY FAVORITE dish here! You get 4 – 5 wings each perfectly crisp drenched in Thai sauce with a side of siracha. Literally ate down to the bone. Will definitely come back for the wings alone LOL.
*Spicy Avocado Egg Rolls: delicious! Ugh anything with avocados will find a way to my heart… err stomach lol.
*My friend also ordered the spinach dip which was hard not to love! :)
Shareable Appetizers: (2 – 3 times larger than the happy hour plates)
*Chicken Lettuce Wraps: oh my oh my… loved how they added crunchy wonton bits to add into the make your own wraps. Not to mention that the chicken was seasoned quite well and that Asian sauce tho! I just love this dish :) oh ya Props to the presentation of their plates! Very photogenic food I may say.
*Chipotle Chicken Nachos: such a huge portion of nachos! Crap load of guac, cheese, and sour cream! Delicious!
Love how they give you so much food here, we had a party of four and we were definitely stuffed by the end of our meal!
I have to admit that Houlihans has stepped up their game since the last time that I went to one… bout 7 years ago for my high school homecoming dance dinner. LOL the food was not good, but then again I bet they didn’t treat us fairly well for having bout 20 rowdy teenagers causing a ruckus at their restaurant! Haha
Place looked quite nice! Very classy and just a really upscale interior (any place that has a cool fireplace fixture is always nice). Outdoor seating was quite fancy too complete with wicker chairs and nice furniture.
My only gripe was that it took a long time for us to get our HH appetizers… but truthfully it was cuz the waiter thought we wanted our food to come out all at the same time. Don’t really wanna dock any stars from this review, because the waiter was really nice!
Can’t wait to come back and explore more of their HH menu! Huge variety plus try their long island teas for $ 3 during HH, but be careful cuz they’re friggin delicious and you can easily get wasted with those drinks haha
Happy Eating!

5-​star service! Have to start out there because we had really great attentive service from our server, Bria. Everything was fast and she was very friendly.
I really like the new digs, too! They’ve done a nice job of decorating with some interesting artwork.
The food was good. Not great, but good. My hubby had a 6 oz filet which he really enjoyed and he ordered fruit as one of his sides. He couldn’t stop raving about the fact that he had a bowl with three different kinds of berries in it. He’s a berry fiend, so he was in heaven.
We had a bunch of happy hour food and it was ok. I wouldn’t order the mushrooms again as they were fairly flavorless, but the white bean hummus was excellent. We had three different happy hour sliders and I thought the pulled pork one was the best. The veggie burger one was half good… the patty wasn’t cooked evenly, so part of it was overcooked. Happy hour drink prices were excellent and I loved my black cherry mojitos.
It’s great that they have HH all day on Sundays. We’ll definitely be back to check out this Houlihan’s again.

Figured I would give this place a shot. Came in around 11:30am. Bartender seemed too busy doing her morning chores for the day to offer us a drink or take our food order. Finally got a drink and it took quite a while for the food to come out.
The reason they are getting a 1 star is at the end of the bar stood the ENTIRE waitstaff chatting and laughing and having a great time. VERY loud and disruptive and one lady continued cursing and swearing in front of me and other customers… could not believe this. Soon enough, these actions carried on behind the bar as the manager watched from a distance as this was a normal practice.
Food was okay.

This is an update to my review– Again would still give 0 stars as it took over a month to get a manager to contact me and I did email corporate regarding this incident (they never responded). A marketing person did respond to my review, but it took a week. I responded back on ⁶⁄₉ and provided my email address as a contact for their GM to contact me regarding this location. I never received a response from their GM, so I emailed the marketing person again out of principle.
My email to the marketing person on ⁶⁄₂₇ (more than a month after this incident):
I just wanted to let you know that no one has contacted me regarding my horrible experience. I feel that this is a very poor reflection of your company/​restaurant chain. As a consumer, I’ve never had a business not respond to a complaint in an effort to rectify their mistakes or poor service.
They responded advising I would be contacted, but that to check my spam (from the emails below you can tell I never received a spam message) and I doubt the GM had the incorrect email as claiming.
I am contacting you in regards to your Unilocal review about your visit into my restaurant. I am very sorry that you have not received a response yet, it is completely my fault as I have sent an email to the wrong address twice trying to reach out to you. First and for most I want to apologize about the experience that you had at my location. Secondly, I would like to know if you would like to talk about it via a phone or if you would rather communicate directly through email. Please let me know how you would like me to further communicate with you. I would like to rectify this situation and make it up to you. Thank you for the feedback and I look forward to speaking with you and the opportunity to make things right.
Thank you,
Evan Deegan
My response (guess the manager felt that was good and left it at that) —
Evan,
Email is the best way to reach me as I work all day. At this point, I am not sure the situation can be rectified. I am glad that someone has finally acknowledged and taken ownership for the situation. This is all I wanted in the first place and it is how our experience should have initially been handled.
Again overall horrible experience and horrible follow up (not sure who truly is to blame there).

Mediocre service, mediocre food, lack of food for dietary restrictions.
Our group of four required a gluten free menu, and two vegetarian menus. The gluten free menu was very small, and had left me feeling unsatisfied when ordering, as there was nothing that I truly wanted. The vegetarian option is near invisible. When we asked the waiter what her opinion would be (as she disclosed that she was also vegetarian), she stated, ‘Well, there’s the vegetarian burger shooters, or salad with no meats. The only soup that you can have is the tomato bisque… Oh, I’d recommend the grilled salmon panzanella, without the salmon!’ …the grilled salmon panzanella was $ 15, as cited on the menu. If you thought they were interested in ordering a $ 15 salmon salad, without the salmon, you must think we’re crazy. As the gluten sensitive patron, I ordered the black angus burger, no bun, with a side of fries. I requested for the burger to be made well done. The burger tasted season-​less and rather dry, and the only additional ‘condiments’ included were tomatoes and lettuce.
Our waitress did not refill water glasses, and took a while to take our orders, or to check up on us throughout the meal. We had to ask another waitress to please run the card, as our bill was ready for quite some time without anyone taking the card.
Positive side note, huge 1 liter hand-​held long islands for $ 5 during happy hour. Yum.

Three words to describe the new location:
Sexy. Sexy. Sexy.
Tonight we dined at the Houlihan’s guest serve. This unofficial opening of their doors was created to give the staff a full on house full of people, but in a controlled atmosphere. This way they can try on their new digs without truly taking the training wheels off. The guest list was VIP only ((pops collar)) and dinner was on the house. The proceeds from any cocktails sold all going to the Ronald McDonald house.
Our first impression of the new place was of its size. It is about ¾s the size of the old spot across the street, but it packs a mighty punch! Unlike the old store, every bit of the space is used. The décor is very contemporary boasting dark woods, dim lighting and clean lines. The bar has a new fire feature! The familiar staff had new polos on and were looking extra spiffy!
Our service was grand. The door was opened on our arrival. We were seated immediately and immediately greeted once we were shown to our comfy booth. (daddy loves a good comfy booth!) Drinks were served very promptly. My Stoli martini had just the right amount of trouble to make it dirty. These bartenders have always known how to make a great cocktail. Chocolate milk was served for the monster-​princess, and iced tea for my jealous and expecting wife.
For tonight’s service guests were offered a special menu with a few different entrée options and either appetizer or dessert. My wife is very pregnant and prefers her red meat the right way, so no well done steak or meatloaf for her. She wanted something else so we asked our kind server if there was any way we could see a different menu that had other non red meat choices. She quickly brought back a copy of each menu and allowed us to take our pick. And that was the theme of the night folks. It was all about the customer experience. Our server took extra good care of us and made sure that everything was just right.
Now you would expect this type of treatment when coming to an event such as this. But the thing is, I always feel like I am treated like this when I come here. (well, across the street). I have dined in Fairway, Olathe, Leawood, Springfield, and Lee’s Summit. The staff here is more friendly, more caring, and more attentive than any of the other Houlihan’s I have ever been to.
This evening the kitchen was doing everything right. I spoke with one of the bartenders who said, «I have always eaten this food and its always been good. But man, in this new kitchen the food is AWESOME!» I have to agree 1000%. Im telling you, my scallops have never tasted so juicy and my risotto has never been so creamy. My wife’s chicken was tender, juicy and flavorful. This may sound patronizing, but I seriously wonder if the pasta was f’ing home made tonight, because this shit was tender and delicious.
We had a wonderful experience at Houlihan’s tonight. If you haven’t been to the old location across the street for a while, know that it is a whole new ballgame over here. I hope that you will come and give them a shot in their new home.
And to the Houlihan’s team, we loved you in your old busted place and love you even more in your new place. Best of luck to you in your new swanky sexy digs!