Houlihans Restaurant and Bar

By David Garcia

For this blog post I will be reviewing the Houlihan restaurant & bar located in Orland Park, IL.  This restaurant was chosen in particular because my girlfriend and I have been to this location multiple times in the past two years that we have dated. Our past experiences were not always as great as this visit, however since we have not dined together at this particular location for quite some time we decided to give it another chance. This review will be broken down into five key aspects, those being:  Restaurant presentation, service, cleanliness, food costs, and also the food quality itself. With that being said, I will start my overall rating for Houlihan's restaurant & bar and then give my overall recommendation for this dining establishment.


RESTAURANT PRESENTATION- 3.5/5


Upon arrival to Houlihan's restaurant and bar around 9 p.m. we found it to be quite crowded around that hour, however since that it being a Friday night the amount of people waiting to be seated was quite understandable. For the presentation portion of the restaurant I went ahead and gave it a 3.5 out of 5 stars. There were a few things the restaurant could have improved on. The first thing I noticed once you walked through the door into the restaurant the hostess was right in front of your face, not a bar or television sets, only a huge hostess stand. Second, I noticed that while we waited to be seated that there was no more space than four seats guests to stand and wait. My girlfriend and I had to stand and wait for our table in front of the freezing cold door because of the lack of space. We felt this was very inconvenient for us and others because everyone was almost on top of each other while we all were waiting to be seated which was slightly uncomfortable. However, after only waiting for about ten minutes we got seated and we were really satisfied on how the presentation of the dining room was. The dining area really looked like it was kept up to date and had a really nice setting to the whole room. One aspect that could have been fixed though would have been the lighting. While eating our dinner we felt as if was a bit to dark in the dining room to eat our food, but it was not at all something that would ruin our night.

SERVICE-5/5 


The absolute best thing about Houlihan's restaurant and bar was their service. It was Phenomenal! Ten minute waits were worth the service we had that night, it had to be one of the best dining experiences I have had in quite awhile. Our waitress was very reliable on coming to our table and asking if we needed anything. She would ask how did we like our food for every coarse, and she even brought us refills right when we were close to finishing our drinks. On top of that, the restaurant even had their manager going around the whole restaurant asking if anyone needed anything or if that there were any problems someone could speak directly to her. With that being said, it really showed on how their customer service was really important to them. Also at the end of our dinner our waitress gave us the opportunity to join their emailing as well as their texting club to receive promotions for deals as well as discounts for our birthday's which we found that was very generous of them.


CLEANLINESS- 5/5


Cleanliness is one of our key factors on picking a good restaurant because working in the food business prior gives you a different aspect on what your looking for. Upon arrival to our table, our table was completely clean with absolutely no left over crumbs from the guest prior. This made us very happy, because when we have to go into a restaurant we usually inspect the area we will be sitting at because there is always something that has to be cleaned again. Even with their bathrooms we felt that they were very attentive to them. Houlihan's employees going in them to make changes with toilet paper, paper towels, and also soap. We weren't able to fully inspect the bathrooms but from the looks of it, it was very clean to us.


FOOD- 4.5/5


Our food was prepared properly like how we asked and was very good. First off, we started with an appetizer which was the parmesan garlic fries. The fries were fresh coming out and were so hot that we weren't able to to eat them right away. Some people may find this bad, but for us it was great. Knowing that they were extremely hot tells us that they were prepared properly and were not under cooked.

Our next thing to come to us was our starters. We had the opportunity to choose a soup or salad. We went ahead and both chose the chicken tortilla soup.The soup was really good but the only thing that seemed to bug us was that they decided to put tortilla chips on top of it. There was so much tortilla chips it was overflowing with them. The soup was still good but there were too much tortilla chips for anyones liking.

Finally after we were done with our soups our main entree came out. My girlfriend and I both went ahead and chose the Classic Kansas City Strip. With that entree we both had the opportunity to choose from two sides. I went ahead and picked mashed potatoes and fries for my sides, while my girlfriend chose just strictly mashed potatoes. I had my steak prepared Medium rare while my girlfriend had it well done. My steak was very juicy and prepared how i liked it, while my girlfriend said that her steak was prepared exactly how she likes it.  Our mashed potatoes were the most disappointing out of the whole meal because they tasted quite dry which some gravy could've helped.While the fries were just as good as the parmesan garlic ones but not as hot as those were. But overall the Meal was Fantastic.

OVERALL- 4.5/5 


Overall the Meal was fantastic and everything about the establishment was amazing. We definitely will look forward to coming back again on a date.We were very satisfied with the pricing as well.The food was well worth the wait and money.We definitely will recommend this restaurant to family and friends for quite some while.

Here is also a review that helped me determine my review.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/houlihans-orland-park?hrid=8OBkJHryCQoDAmlrc9Jhaw