Johnny Rockets

We are out shopping in the Bolingbrook area and both my wife and youngest daughter are hungry.  Where should we stop to eat?  Well we usually go to the Mongolian Grill, always a good choice, but we say let's try something different.  My wife doesn't want to try Ted Nugent's place, "he's a nut," she says.  So we say let's try Johnny Rockets.  We have seen their restaurants on the cruises we have been on in recent years but have never tried it out.

So my daughter starts by ordering the Grilled Cheese Sandwich for $5.59 with Provolone cheese and white bread.  This was a greasy and heavy sandwich that my daughter could only eat half of because it was making her stomach sick.  She also got a pop, Pepsi at $2.39 a glass and very bland and uninspiring French Fries.  My wife ordered the Frisco Bacon Melt for $8.99 that came with a pop for $2.39 and again some very bland fries.  Again the burger was heavy and greasy as my wife could only eat half so I had half of another sandwich to finish.  We also ordered an Original Burger at $5.49 for my son who was home studying.  Finally I ordered a Bowl of Chili at $4.19 with shredded American Cheese that seemed a tad bit on the old side and some Bacon, Chili Cheese Fries at $4.19 that were good but any fry without the runny cheese and bacon was again extremely bland.  My wife even commented and we all agreed it is so easy to make tasty, delicious fries I do not understand how they could still screw them up.

So overall our bill came to $39 dollars roughly.  The service was friendly and the please was clean.  Even though my wife did say the bathroom was extremely cold, like the vent for the heat was closed.  This was a tough rating as it could almost be an average three star rating and not quite a full two star rating.  So as I always say it was nice to try Johnny Rockets, but I don't think we will be heading back anytime.

Bad burgers, service is mediocre and the entire staff looks dirty and gross.  Sorry, dudes, but nice only goes so far. The staff stood near the kitchen talking about random stuff while my (badly tasting) burger sat up there.  I was not impressed and felt dirty when I walked out.  Never again.

This place is an interesting pick to dine-in if you're just looking for an intimate, entertaining venue with friends and some casual eats. The menu includes hamburger, melts, philly cheese steaks, onion rings and of course shakes. It's kind of like a trade up of Steak N' Shake.  

You can bring coins to put money into the juke machine and pick the song to go next in queue to play over the store's speakers. They have some good old 80s mix or so.  So overall, the atmosphere, decoration is very good.  Noise level-wise, maybe it was because of the music, but I remembered it being a little too loud to hold conversation so don't take your dates here to have a heart to heart.

Perhaps it was because my friends and I went later in the night but the night we went, they were quite understaffed and so the service wasn't as good as it good be.  One of my friend's order came out really late, like 20 minutes late after all of us had gotten our orders.  The cool thing here is that, and maybe this is just a one-off, but sometimes the staff broke out in a dance which was amusing.  

Food-wise, it's OK, nothing to rave about. It's your typical $7 burgers and greasy fries.  The shakes were good.  Overall, check out this place for an interesting time and some pick-it-yourself kind of music.  For now, I'm sticking to a 3 stars of this place for now until my next visit and I'll do a re-evaluation.