Only reason we came here was to see Sixteen Candles play. That is the one star for this place - hosting an amazing band. Â Other than that I would never venture into here otherwise and my last experience here means I will drive to Joe's or Cubby Bear to get my 80's music fix. Â AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!
Starving, thirsty. Â I ordered a root beer. Â The waitress, Ashley, brought around 2 rounds of beer before my root beer appeared. Â Strike one.
We ordered cheese fries and pizza. Â No plates, no napkins, no utensils(the cheese fries definitely required a fork) even when requested. Â Strike two.
We waited 20 minutes to get our check and another 20 minutes to receive it. Â We could of just walked out on the bill since it had been over ONE HOUR since Ashley checked in on us. Â I was told that the bartender(who is so pleasant and rolls her eyes at you like she is SOOOOOO busy-stop dancing in your fake podunk Uggs on the bar and get me my check!) has to run all the checks since the owners are too cheap to buy new registers. Â Strike three.
Having worked in the industry and at places that were slammed i.e. everyone is shoulder to shoulder in there, and was still able to provide excellent service to my customers this place gets ZERO STARS. Â 1. get new registers, 2. hire experienced wait staff, yes its more money but your losing money by putting in these trixies, 3. hire some bus boys that will actually bus. Â Staring at old chicken wings is never fun.
Even if your favorite band is playing AVOID THE LODGE at all costs. Â The drive to see them in Peoria will be more fun than the service here.
Where do I begin?
I see why they have a bad reputation.
We ordered beers and those were nice and cold. Â Good.
Service was sub par. Â
I was starving, so we ordered food. Â But we didn't eat it. Â Why you ask??
Oh gosh, three bugs crawled out of my food!!! Â At that point I asked the first waitress I saw to please send our waitress over.
She came after a very long wait. Â I told her about the bugs, crawling across my food. Â And requested that it be taken away and removed from the bill. Â She was only willing to give us a discount. Â EXCUSE ME??? Â I barely touched it, I ate literally one bite before I saw the bugs! Â And if you think that I'm eating anything else that came out of that kitchen...forget it.
So I asked to speak to a manager. Â She said something about him being too busy. Â (It was crowded, and as a server, I realize the manager has things to do. Â But if he is too busy to take the food off of a check when bugs crawl out of the plate, they need more managers or better management on staff.)
So I wandered around looking for ANYONE who would help me find the manager. Â And I did find him eventually. Once I found him, he was more than willing to remove the food I refused to eat. Â I showed him what I had eaten and was happy to pay for that portion of the meal. Â But told him I wanted nothing to do with the rest of it. He removed the items from our bill and apologized. Â But in my opinion the damage was done. Â
I do not plan on returning here. Â Especially to eat. Â Ewww.
Go for it, if crunchy fried ants and roaches sound appetizing to you.
Also, the bathrooms are disgusting!
Came here for a friends birthday party and to see ARRA play. Was a decent place but I really wouldn't go out of my way to make a trip here. They have a taco booth right inside the place that sells tacos right outside the kitchen. Thats like a drug dealer setting up shop right outside a methadone clinic, its unfair. However, I get why they are doing it ;-)
Review Source:This place gets a lot of crappy reviews, and I think some of them can be true some of the time. Â I have to say though, they really have cleaned this place up in the last few years. Â I recall d-bag bouncers, snotty bartenders, and crappy service being the standard here. Â I know this was long considered the #1 place in DuPage county to catch an STD or something....
I'm happy that the last 6 months I've been coming here the service is better, the specials are good, and the food is actually pretty good.
I avoid this place on Sundays... everything is half price, and the service definitely suffers. Â The fact that the clientele is also completely wasted is sometimes tolerable, although frequently obnoxious. Â I find weeknights are the best time to drop in for beers and food. Â When they aren't swamped the bartenders get your name and make sure your glass is always full. Â Woody in particular does a heck of a job, so props to him.
Food is pretty good. Â Granted, it's just pub food and mostly fried stuff, but it's seriously pretty decent. Â My date and I went in Saturday night late and had wings and quesadillas- I thought the wings in particular were good. Â It's pretty hard to F those two items up, but it's also hard to make them really good. Â Happily the cooks knew what they were doing. Â I'd definitely come back and have both again. Â I'd like to try the pizza sometime, too.
Summary- not really a "destination" place in Lisle, but if you live in Four Lakes or Lisle this is a good place to hang out. Â The patio is awesome and it's fun to watch the volleyball leagues. Â Nightly specials make it pretty affordable, too.
I agree with Andrew T's review. Â This place is o'kay but not amazing. Â Then again I dont think many bar/grill type places have ever amazed me. Â The waitresses are as nice as can be for being as busy as they are and I cannot imagine the awful tips they receive on Sundays when food/drink are 50% off. Â There are a couple jackass bartenders, but doesnt every establishment have one or two of those? Tip well people! Â The cover bands they have are actually tolerable and the food is pretty damn good for being a bar/grill type of place. Â We love the chicken fries!
I celebrated my 30th birthday here over the winter and the manager was extremely accomodating and it was a good time. I can honestly say everyone in my party had a good time. Â Thats a rarity!
My only suggestions is to by new patio chairs and tables!
Been here a few times for a few cover bands. In all honesty this place is not amazing, nor is it terrible. It is your pretty run-of-the-mill bar, and you harbor that terrifying "I hope I do not run into anyone from high school" feeling when you hang out here. I have not had any terrible experiences, but none of them are exceptionally memorable either. This place seems to attract plenty of douchebags.
Review Source:It started out ok on a friday night- until the sound guys for the band screamed "TWO TWO TWO" and "YIP YIP YIP!" into the mike for over 2 HOURS. No I'm not kidding- 2 hours straight.
People were shouting back at him - swear words, etc- it was a really sucky time.
2 F'n hours.
Other important things to know:
The largest thin pizza will not fill up 3 people even after several beers. We ordered the cheese sticks cause we were still hungry and they were awful.
DON'T order the beers on the shelf under the TV over the bar. They only have limited amounts of this beer. What they have is getting close to being too old to drink. My weiss beer was close to being nasty.
Guard your beer! The only employee hustling was an over zealous bus boy. He bolted across the room to remove things from our table at least 5 times a hour and often asked us if we were done with half full beers.
Maybe he was planning on finishing them for us in the kitchen?
douchebag central at night, half price sundays really means half-ass serviice... oh i mean no service. I could only hope that the earth opens up and swallows this place whole. I lived in four lakes for about 2 years, and would avoid The Lodge like the plague!
My favorite experience that was so fricking surreal that i had to pinch myself to know I was awake was this: It was a kind of crappy, overcast, summer evening and probably around 6-7pm. we walked up and over the hill (my gf at the time and I) to meet a friend for a bite to eat since he was in the area.
We get to the door, and theres some short stocky 'bouncer' (its still light out... and we are in the SUBURBS! Not to mention I was alteast a foot taller than this guy). He obviously thinks he is VERY important, and walks up and starts checking ID's. "Need to see some ID's, Brah"... ok. "Need to take it out of your wallet, Brah" for gods sake ive got gray hair showing... whatever. "No hats tonight, Brah'. No hats? This is the STD capital of the world and theres about 5 people inside. its a crappy sports bar in Lisle. really? I ask if I can just put it in my pocket. "gotta leave it in your car, brah". We walked, I explain. I ask If I can just throw it on the coat rack or something. He gave me another arrogant douchy response and I walk outside, hang it on a nail, and come back in to try go in.
"five dolla cova tonight, its lady's night, brah".
I explain that we're just going to grab dinner, it will still be light out by the time we leave, and the place is EMPTY. Â What a joke. So I motion to the lady friend with the frantic "lets get the hell out of here" hand gesture and walk back to the car and drove to BWW instead. All I wanted was a beer and dinner!
I spent 20dollars at this place. The next morning I checked my statement and I was charged for 50dollars. I called up to just see what the problem was considering I have never been here before so being a normal person I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting screwed over and as I was speaking the gm pasquale rudely interrupted me with a "yea yea and I'm sure you were charged 50dollars extra well ya don't need to......and I stopped right there. I was SO turned off with the conversation! If u even want to consider it a conversation. It was me attempting to explain my situation and him talking over me in a RUDE IGNORANT NO CLASS MANNER! What kind of customer service are you representing to your staff if you are the GM. and that's how you talk to your customers? I'm sorry but I cannot give my business to a restaurant/bar knowing my money is going to people that sound uneducated. He actually was very capable at bringing the "mean" in me. I will never go back here. Ever! Ever! Ever! He kinda hurt my feelings! Pasquale sounds like he deserves to be a busboy and not the GM. Â Learn from this.
P.s. I asked him for the next highest manager and he refused to give me any info. I will be talking to everyone I know about this place. I don't recommend ever going to a place that takes out extra money and then reimburses you a couple days later. SO weird.
I had heard about this place for like a million years and finally got to grace them with my presence when they decided to host Too White Crew....only my favorite cover band...EVER!!! Â
We got there right around 10 for a 10 o'clock show, but it didn't start for another 30 minutes so I had plenty of time to make my way to the stage to be front and center!! =] Â The special for the band was 16 oz. Colt 45 for $3...so duh...of course, that's what we drank! Â The service was a little slow but that's to be expected on a band night. Â I would probably go back and check this place out again when it's not a band night to see what the feel is when people aren't dancing and seeing along to Regulator!! Â HA!
The lodge has received a bad reputation over the years, but I think that if you go at the right times, the lodge is awesome! Their food is good and the servers are attentive. They have great pizza and chopped salads. They run a lot of good promotions there, such as half price food and drinks during certain hours on Sunday and Mondays.
I am not big into the night-life scene at the lodge. I've only been a couple times and it's your typical crowded bar with blasting music and creepy guys. I recommend going before it gets too crowded and avoid game days.
PS. I love their beer garden.
I am rating this for their pizza mostly. Â Love their thin crust pizza. very good! Â World class! Get the larger size starting at @12 inches, as those are hand-stretched or tossed, where the personal size(8inch?) is not hand tossed-stretched crust(probably a frozen pizza disc). Â
I like their mini burgers, when they aren't microwaved to death(hot and chewy, sometimes burnt!)
Onion rings were big and hot.
I didn't care for the rueben(have to go to Manny's for that!), or the shrimp bites, or the chopped salad.
go on half price sunday or wednesday!
After ALL these years of going there and living across the street how did I forget to Yelp??
What can I say except I have had some good memories there. Seen some GOOD local bands play as well. I guess in a way you can call it a "dive" bar but maybe a step higher? It is a big bar with LOTS of our door seating but you have to deal with the smokers. Bags out back to play.
The service though can be hit or miss. I had a bad experience maybe a week ago. I swear our waitress was drunk! I won't even get into that mess of a night.
However, if you want to save some $$ then go on a Sunday. It is half price on ALL booze & food! :) Good mini burgers. I heard they have a good brunch buffet but I am not sure if they still do that.
CHEERS!
I will only go if I'm being forced. And yes, there is a rare situation that I am. We used to go on Sunday's because the food was half priced and it really wasn't bad.
But we would leave as soon as we were done eating and keep drinking at Maple Pub. The waitresses were just so dumb it was annoying. We figured there must have been some kind of maximum IQ to work there. They just made the whole place worse.
We were there recently for one of the things I'm forced to go to (band) and it was okay. There are still dumb people working, there is still a strange crowd, mixed drinks were still insanely weak, but I made it through......thank god it was a weekday!
Oh, and the stage area is okay, but the sound that night was awful!
Have not been here in years. Â And I've never gotten food. Â
But it's a decent place to watch a band. Â Your typical dive that doesn't want to believe it's a dive.
Beers are decently priced. Â Service is usually ok, but highly dependent on your server, as usual. Â
It can get rowdy.
Just went last week before Thanksgiving to see Hairbanger's Ball. Â The music was loud, vocals were soft, and it was hard to hear but it's not far off from what I expected.
Meh.
The Lodge is an ok kinda place. Â The service can be good or super-slow depending on the waiter or waitress. Â The food is American-style and is pretty good, too. Â Everything is pretty good, pretty fine, pretty ok.
It's a nice place to people watch. Â Generally, you've got 3 major groups that populate this bar. Â There're those crazy, wacky 20 year-olds who just got their first place in Four Lakes Village. Â Woo, man! Â Drink up!! There's your recent divorce(e)s who just moved into a condo after losing the house. Â You can usually spot them by their get-up (women = short skirts, stilettos, big bleached blond hair; men = baseball cap hiding receding hairline, sitting at the bar). Â And there's the people that come there for a reason (they just finished skiing at the ski hill, they were outside playing volleyball, or there's a band playing that night). Â I'll let you try to figure out where I am in this group.
This kinda leads into my next tangent: why you could end up at the Lodge. Â
There are bands playing there regularly. Â The shows are well-done usually, but the sound seems a little off. Â Music is too loud and drowns out the singing. Â And, if you happen to be sitting anywhere else in the bar than the show room, you'll still feel like you're sitting right next to the band. Â There's no way to talk inside.
There's outdoor volleyball in summer, and skiing right outside in winter. Â So, this place is used as the refreshment stand or the (snooty tone) ski chalet in winter. Â
There's a very nice beer garden that is actually the main reason I ever go to the Lodge. Â Sitting outside on the patio in summer makes drinking there so much nicer. Â Pretty lights, festive atmosphere, and quicker service make this the place to be. Â
Good place to hang out, especially in summer.
This is my favorite bar in the world and I am fairly well traveled and have lived in 4 countries. Over the course of a week it will cater too an extremely wide array of characters because it is part of a condo community. So you get retirees who who have down sized their lives, divorcees who are now on a budget and living in a smaller home, college kids, and newly arrived young professional to Illinois who just want a small temporary place to live.
The Lodge is like a chameleon sometimes it has ski chalet vibe going because of the nearby ski hill, then in the summer it has a pool party atmosphere because of the adjacent pool. It also has one of the best beer garden /patio/terraces in North America featuring a canopy of trees with a view of the lake and no noisy smelly traffic.
If you don't like the lodge on your first visit just wait till your next visit. I've seen Punk Bands, Indi rock bands, pole dancing, mechanical bull riding , Country and western, Hair bands.....you name it. You never know what your going to walk into which is part of the mystique to me. The food is really good too, great nachos loaded with tons of stuff and an incredible appetizer made from deep fried Mac-n-cheese.
Not being from the Midwest I found it refreshing how the patrons keep it real and are not ashamed of their corn fed heritage like so many other Chicago bars where everyone desperately is trying to act to hip and urban even though they were raised in the middle of a cornfield.
I may be the only person reviewing this place as a restaurant rather than a bar. Friends and I came here on the 4th of July to be near the Eyes to the Skies fest (though we ended up watching the fireworks from the top of the "ski slope" around back).
The place is tucked way back from the road in the 4 Lakes condo complex. "The Lodge" is aptly named; it looks like Paul Bunyan should be drinking there, with the wood beams and rustic look. This mountain-man vibe clashed with both the preppy-looking patrons and the heavily-tattooed staff. Early '90s music dominated the whole time we were there, which was most likely the last time our sticky table was properly washed too. Bathrooms were dorm-like and industrial, but cleaner than the table.
The food was nothing to write home about. One friend and I had the blue cheese-bacon-and-chicken sandwich, which we both deemed overly salty, and accompanying fries were Ore Ida-esque. Her husband got a muffaletta, which satisfied him.
Our waitress was perfunctory and at the end kept swinging by every few minutes asking if we needed anything else, as if she were trying to free up the table for another party (never mind that the place was more than half empty).
The place's draw is definitely not the food; as others have said, it must be about the hook-ups, or if you live at 4 Lakes it's the de facto corner bar. I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to return.
Usually good people watching can make up for the lack of ambiance and overall personality. No. Not here. It was so painful.
I can appreciate having a bar & grill amidst the Four Lakes population, I think its a nice amenity, but the place is just crazy.
I suppose its fun if you live there and have a crew of peeps but I accompanied a friend last night and I just couldn't believe it. I was suprised by some of the uber-trashy-trying-to-be-trendy gaggle of early twenty-somethings.
And to make matters worse, to rub it in, my friend got me a fish bowl. Icing on the cake. Thanks man!
I am being 100% serious when I say this: The Lodge in the Four Lakes complex was given some sort of rating regarding highest STD transfers. Â Now that might make you excited to visit said bar, but not me. Â Drinks were okay priced but the bartenders acted like jagoffs. Â
It is like a combo college bar/townie dive and it doesn't mesh well. Â I saw my friend's slutty college roomate there wearing a shirt that said "Let's Makeout." Â No, no let's not I don't want to add to the growing rate of STDs in Four Lakes. Â And the cover was $8.
It is also a White Sox bar. Â ENOUGH SAID.
this place is pretty bizarre....it's a bunch of apartment dwelling losers that think they are hip and happening because they have a hill full of fake snow next door. Â typical place full of eurotrash guys and muscleheads......throw in a few garden variety middle aged losers for good measure.
if you feel like doing some pretty fun drunk people watching some night, stop by, it's better than the airport.
This bar, which is smack in  the middle of hundreds of condos, is apparently a sort of ski lodge which moonlights as a sportsbar/wannabe club.  it is very weird ... you drive into the Four Lakes ski area and all of a sudden there is this pseudo dance club there.  don't get me wrong it was VERY happening on the Sunday before Labor Day, but there was something odd about girls dancing on a box, in a room which also featured stuffed deer heads on the wall. Â
I could give this a more comprehensive review but they called last call five minutes after we got here. Â if you live in the SW suburbs (which I don't) this is apparently a hot, young place. Â who would'a thunk.
HOT Bartenders & a total meat market ...but decent bands on Saturday night's, really make this a fun night out. Thursday night's they have the Chicago Dueling Piano's. Need to check out their website for everything going on at this resort. <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelodgeatfourlakes.com&s=c2b7fd58386c904ebec3dcb8e798c5e6b5f9541e8f77a52f513ea67cf3221a2c" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.thelodgeatfou…</a>
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