Barnwood (Gurnee)
1700 Nations DriveOur first evening at Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee, IL was great. The kids had a blast playing in the pools on going on the slides. Hell, they even got me to go down the slides a couple of times with them.
We were in the area for a figure skating competition at the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex just up the road from Thursday to Saturday. We had gotten to Great Wolf on Wednesday night because L had 7 AM practice in Pleasant Prairie and there was no way we were driving that early Wednesday AM to get her there.
We let the kids run around for a couple of hours while J and I just kind of hung out. It was kind of nice. This was the first time we didn’t really have to watch their every move. They’re old enough and tall enough that they can do things on their own. We’d just walk around occasionally to find them to make sure they weren’t getting in to trouble.
We headed back to the room around 6:00. J and I had discussed dinner options while we were sitting at the pool. Great Wolf has a couple of dinner options so that was in the discussion. We also looked at a few nearby Gurnee restaurants.
Eventually we decided the difference in price was only going to be about $10-$15 and the convenience of just staying at the lodge won out.
We chose to have dinner at Barnwood. This is Great Wolf Lodge’s kind of upscale dinner restaurant. It’s located in the main lobby right near the check-in desk. The restaurant doesn’t open until 5:00 so it’s a dinner only place. The space kind of melds into the surroundings as there really isn’t much of a wall seperating it from the lobby. It kind of has the feel of a hotel bar with some lodge like aesthetics.
The host station was right outside the entrance. We walked up and the lady standing just kind of looked up without saying anything. I asked if we could get a table for four. She grabbed three adult menus and one kids menu. J asked for a kids menu for L. The host gave us some shit about that. L is actually 12 years old but you’d never guess she was 12 if you saw her. We’ve never had a problem at any other restaurant though. No one has ever questioned it…but of course, Great Wolf Lodge, where they like to nickel and dime you on everything (did I mention how pissed off I was about having to pay for parking? Pretty sure I did in my previous blog…still pissed about it), questioned it with the hopes of having her pay for an adult meal that she wouldn’t eat very much of. Finally, after a dirty look, she just grabbed a second kids menu and showed us to a table.
The restaurant is set up like a typical pub. There’s a really nice, large bar area right in the center of the space. There are some pub tables in this area that look out over the water park through some large floor to ceiling windows.
We were taken to a table in the main dining room. There’s a really nice ambiance to the place. For a split second, it feels like your not in a water park hotel but actually in a nice upscale pub. The tables have silverware and cloth napkins already on the table when you sit down and the muted, earthy tones take you as far away from the water park vibes as you can get on this property.
The menu is pretty much a pub menu. They had some draft beers but they all ran $9 and I wasn’t really in a beer mood so I just got a Pepsi.
J was in an alcohol mood so she ordered the Coconut Lime Margarita. She at first asked if they came in half sizes and the waiter kind of struggled with a way of saying no while still trying to sell her on the pricey drink. J just relented and said ok. The drink is Sauza Hacienda Silver Tequila, Cointreau, cream of coconut, lime juice, and agave. It’s a $16 drink but it also comes in a souvenir cup shaped like a tin can. She said the drink was delicious and there was quite a bit of alcohol in it (I think she may have swapped tequila for vodka so there was a lot of vodka). The drink was actually too big for a dinner sitting but since it was in a souvenier cup, she was able to take it with us. She actually put it in the fridge in the hotel room and, even though it was watered down a bit, finished it the next night. So she got two nights of drinks out of her $16.
J and I both went with something similar for dinner. It was a curve ball for me. I didn’t order a burger.
My pick was the Nashville Hot Fried Chicken. This sandwich is a thick piece of Nashville hot fried chicken on a brioche bun with a tangy Carolina slaw and pickles. I was surprised at how hot this sandwich was. I like hot things so it wasn’t too much for me but I’m glad J didn’t order it. Each bite left a bit of a peppery twinge in the back of my throat. I got fries on the side and they were pretty solid skin on fries with a little bit of salt on them for seasoning. I was pretty happy with sidestepping the burger and going with the fried chicken for dinner.
J did almost the same thing but instead of Nashville Hot, she ordered the chicken southern fried style. The same is fundamentally the same but there’s not heat to it. She made the right choice. I know how she gets with spicy food and I can guarantee she enjoyed the southern fried chicken way more than she would have the Nashville Hot.
Since they let L order off the kids menu (again, she IS still 12), she ordered the Kid’s Mac n Cheese. The plate, shaped like the wolf print logo, comes filled with a creamy mac n cheese, fries, fruit, and ketchup. L devoured the mac n cheese. It used to be a problem for her if the restaurant mac n cheese wasn’t Kraft but she’s gotten a lot more adventurous and is really starting to like more scratch made mac n cheese. She almost licked that portion of her plate clean. She said she really liked it.
B’s pick was the Kid’s Chicken Tenders. His plate also came in the shape of the wolf print logo and was filled with fries, fruit, and ketchup. B eats his chicken with ranch so I asked right away when they set it down and I saw the ketchup instead. It didn’t really matter. B said he didn’t like the chicken tenders and only reluctantly ate one of them. He did eat the fruit though so it wasn’t a total waste. J and I ended up eating the rest of the chicken. It was pretty boring chicken tenders but it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t anything special. Probably a safe bet with most kids but B absolutely refuses to eat restaurant food for whatever reason.
Our bill for dinner was right around $85 and really, that’s not much more expensive than any similar restaurant.
Barnwood was a pretty solid meal and best of all, we didn’t have to go anywhere to get it. It was kind of nice just to put real clothes back on and walk upstairs. The food was all pretty good and I’d say on par with this kind of pub anywhere in Gurnee. It was our most expensive meal of the weekend but it would have been no matter where we went. It was the one meal we treated ourselves on and I have no regrets staying in and checking out what the lodge had to offer.
SW Michigan Dining 