Dunlays on the Square

Ratings Guide:
Half handshake, half chest-bump hug – 5 stars
Chest bump – 4 stars
Fist bump – 3 stars
High five – 2 stars
Handshake – 1 star
Fone and fone – 0 stars
Manly ass slap – ½ star


Restaurant: Dunlays on the Square
Location: 3137 W. Logan


Don’t go to Dunlays for lunch or brunch or anytime before dinner if you haven’t eaten breakfast. I tried that genius idea, and I ended up consuming roughly 1 million calories because of my extreme hunger. What’s the problem, you ask? Well, usually there wouldn’t be one, as consuming 1 million calories per sitting is pretty much common practice for me. The reason it’s a bad idea to do it at Dunlays is that you end up consuming 1 million calories of food that is unsatisfying to the taste buds.

And it’s not as if the food is bad, it’s just that the food is OK, so when you’re done stuffing your face to try and get rid of your hunger pains, you sit back in your chair, unbutton your jeans and realize you’re full, but not really satisfied. And that’s not a good feeling. You start thinking about what you could have eaten. Where you could have gone to over indulge. And it’s kind of depressing. Luckily this lasts for about 30 seconds, and then you get a fresh beer and start thinking about where to go for dinner.

I went to Dunlays on the Square (there is a Dunlays on Clark in Lincoln Park) for brunch on a Saturday. We got there at about 12:15, sat down, and didn’t have a waitress take our drink order (or more importantly, take my drink order) until about 12:30. Then, about 3 days later when she returned with our drinks, we had to tackle her just to get an appetizer order in. We went with the Spinach Dip and the Beer Cheese. Both were really good. How good, you ask? Well, let me tell you. We quickly ran out of chips for the dips. Now, normally I’ll flag down the waitress, ask for some extra chips, and finish the dips, but since our waitress couldn’t be found by David Caruso and the rest of his CSI squad, I took matters into my own hands. And that’s to say I picked up my fork and finished off the dips that way. There is nothing more pathetic than a hung-over, starving guy forking cheese dips into his mouth.

Sometime before the sun went down we were allowed to place our food orders. The waitress apparently got bored ignoring us and came over to see what we wanted. She talked me into the French toast (I know, real difficult). The following Tuesday when it came out, I devoured the four pieces. And I mean devoured. I actually finished the entire plate before one of the other people at the table took a bite of their burger. No joke. And then when that left me feeling more unsatisfied than Teddy KGD, I finished off half of one of the burgers someone else wasn’t going to finish. Now, if your playing along at home, I finished a plate of French toast AND half a burger (and some fries) before ANYONE at the table finished their food. And then I sat there wondering what else I could eat. I also was trying to decide if we needed to issue an Amber Alert for our waitress.

Here’s the bottom line – Dunlays has fine bar food. If you live in or anywhere near Logan Square and you’re looking for someplace where you can get some bar food and watch some sports, then sure, stop by here. Are there better places? Yeah. Are there worse places? Yeah. But do any of these places offer you the chance to see a guy eat his weight in cheese dips using his fork? No.

And I know that I’m giving the waitress a lot of crap, and in her defense I think she was actually the only waitress working a full bar, but it really was bad service.

All that being said, Dunlays is your typical neighborhood bar with bar food, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

High five with a manly ass slap.


UPDATE: OK, I've now been here a ton of times and the ratings have gone way up. The burgers are good, the salads are good, teh apps are great, and the skillet cookie dessert is maybe my favorite dessert in the city (and gets an HJ). New rating - Chest bump.


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