O'Brien's Riverwalk Cafe: User Reviews

This place is what the first Mayor Daley was telling us all would happen - a great riverside location.

It is truly a great location, and we had a nice sunny day in June 2009 - a treat in the year with no summer. But the hostess was AWOL for quite a while and once she appeared she had no sense of humor. Clearly the lunch and tourist crowd was challenging her big time.

A biker gal accelerated her pace down the steps to get ahead of me for a her name first on the list to wait. Once the res was taken, an elderly couple came up and paced and paced and then got someone from the back to seat them with having their name on the list.

The hostess first tried to seat our party of 2 at a table in the back for 6 - what was she thinking? (but this seems to be common at many places around the metro area - Hackney's on Harmes and Tommy Nevins come to mind.) We had waited pretty long already so why not wait a little longer and actually be able to see the river.

The order was taken by a friendly guy who didn't pay much attention and also disappeared a lot.

The food - two dogs advertised as Chicago Style were anything but - and took about 25 minutes to get to the table after ordering

My question - why don't the owners of this place read these reviews and get some free consulting? Virtually every review over the last 2 years notes that the service is consistently sub-par.

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Well, the view was nice...the weather was great, but the service overshadowed it all by being so bad. We waited to be seated, while the hostess talked with her boyfriend, when she arrived at the stand, the manager came up and talked to her while we still waited. Finally we were seated. Then after 15 minutes we had to ask someone if we were getting a server. Ordered got our food and then never saw him again until we flagged him down to get our checks. Which he had to go back twice to get since he kept bringing us the wrong one. I wont be back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Love that I could take my favorite little dog to lunch, but the ceasar salad was pretty pathetic - a plate of lettuce, cheese-flavored croutons that you can buy for $1 / box at Dominicks and a packet of Newman's dressing plopped right on top. The bloody mary's were decent, but a little pricey. My waitress was WAY too good for this place which seems to cater to tourists and too-young-to-know-better "professionals".

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Not even a beautiful Summer day, coupled with a wonderful view of the city could entice me to ever dine at this spot again. Being close to our job, both my work buddy and I decided to treat ourselves to an "alfresco" lunch. Big mistake going here. We sat there for a full 15 minutes before being approached by our waiter. Even though he was a pleasant young man, he was clearly was new and had no knowledge of what was available on the menu, or what was going on. We noticed that a good deal of the waiters, waitresses, greeters though young and energetic, were very disorganized (we guessed this by the number of pissed off looking patrons who kept looking at their watches, wondering where their food was; which was puzzling, seeing that it was really not busy at all). Both my girlfriend and I ordered bugers (she wanted hers medium, I wanted mine well done), which took almost a half an hour to arrive. Let's just say, both came back charred and "chewy" beyond belief, accompanied by luke warm fries. Oh, and I should mention, all drinks from what I could see are not only over priced, but, are served in medium sized paper cups. The sum total of our lunch (two burgers, fries, cups of water) came to almost $30 (with tip). After completing and paying for our meal lackluster meal, I decided to speak with the manager. He was extremely apologetic (and also flustered and harried looking); he stated that he had a few people call off and if we came back, lunch was on him. No offense, but, NEVER will I subject myself to this type of mediocre service again. My buddy and I have both vowed our next alfresco excursion near our job will be at either "the Emerald Loop" or "McCormick and Schmicks" (both are right across the street from Obriens). At least at these spots you definitely get what you pay for.

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I went here a couple weeks ago with my friend after wandering around trying to find a place to eat. We followed the signs and eventually found this place. It's nothing spectacular to look at, but the river view is was really makes it here. I had the burger and it was amazing. I watched them grill it over towards the back of the area, so it was very fresh. The service was alright. There weren't too many people there and you could tell that they didn't really want any more guests coming (they started removing furniture and it was still early in the evening). But it was one of the best burgers I've had in the city.

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Food was great and the view was amazing. Our waiter was personable and made our meal.

Such a fun concept!

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