Fitz’s Spare Keys

Definitely my go to bar when I am in downtown elmhurst. All the bartenders and servers are all great and very knowledgeable with all the beer that they have. Fitz also has good daily specials!

Awful reception and management. We came in to celebrate St. Patty’s, only to be told that it was «first come first serve» in a place crawling with children beneath their parent’s inebriated feet. I feel really let down from the online advertising that this place was a fun, friendly joint when I couldn’t for the life of me get a menu or a notion that we could sit and enjoy some corned beef n’ cabbage plus libations. Our party ended up walking out and giving our business and generous tips to The Snuggery, right down the street.
I guess five year olds dressed as leprechauns pay better than we do.

They serve shots in a thimble & try to pass it off as a full shot. They also make terrible Irish coffees. The food is mostly soggy & greasy. The dueling piano guys are awesome. Very fun!

Good food and drink. Nacho appetizer on Friday was half price and huge! 4 $ pint microbrews. Families and millennials both seem to like it. With pool tables and bowling alleys, who wouldn’t?

Don’t expect to get what you ordered last time, never the same. Don’t expect prompt service, apparently severs don’t care about customers. So if you like bad service and bad food, go to Fitz’s Spare Keys.

Great food, great drink deals, and definitely worth your time if you are in the area.
They also frequently have live music!

Completely horrible/​unethical staff. There last night with a friend who ordered a drink and appetizer and paid CASH. At no point did she open a tab or even give a credit card to the waitress. After we left, the waitress told our remaining friends that the tab was unpaid and insisted that my friends pay for the food that was ALREADY PAID FOR. Feeling threatened (as if waitress was going to call police), my friends repaid the bill.
If there had been a tab, wouldn’t they have had a credit card? No, this was just a case of poor cash management by the waitress, who implicated that my friend skipped out on her bill. Will never go back there.

Not much to say. It’s a sports bar/​cool place to hang out in. There are multiple levels and multiple rooms. Lots of things happening. Great little place to hang after work with your peeps. We came here for a going away party for a coworker and had a decent time.
They do have ½ off appetizers for their happy hour on a Friday night but the drinks are really on par with Chicago prices. $$$ too bad they didn’t have nice drink deals cause then we’d really be in trouble!
Funny thing that I noticed is that you have to pay whenever you order food or drink upfront. Coming recently from European trip found this to be weird. I can’t remember what other bars do in the Chicagoland area. I know we pay for drinks up front but not typically for food. Oh well, no big deal. They’re probably fearful that you’re gonna eat and run.

Fun place for live music and drinks. Its also a bowling alley with 10 or so lanes plus bar.

An ok place to stop in and have a beer or drink.
They have bowling and pool also
Music on various occasions
Seems to be for the younger crowd, I am older lol

The place is huge!!! It’s a one stop shop lol. They have bowling, food, a bar and on weekends they have dueling pianos. They also have awesome specials throughout the week. If you’re in the area stop by and check it out.

In terms of food you can pretty much guess what you’re going to get. I prefer the food at the other Fitz a little better. Here the quality isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. I’ve had the pizza and nachos — not bad. My neighbor had the burger and rated it a 3.5 out of 5. The fries are pretty good. If you’re going out for a drink mid-​week this is a decent place to stop. On Wednesday nights all craft beers are half price (great deal). But, don’t go late if you want to have a conversation because they have a DJ cranking up the tunes.
As of this writing there are ninety-​six restaurants in Elmhurst. I plan on eating at, and reviewing, every one. Follow me on Unilocal

Years ago I used to attend here with the old ownership and it was much better then. The group I was with sat in a booth where the seats were put together with duct tape and the table was made stable with napkins. The food was horrible, the service was real bad. I asked for ketchup and it took 20 minutes to get some. They didn’t have 3 kinds of very common beers when the waitress said it was on special and the incinerator shots that were also on special were not made with the type of alcohol that the waitress said they were. She came back to tell us that they ran out of the fireball that they put in it and the $ 2 shots were now $ 3. Her response was poorly put that the menu had to be «updated». Needless to say I will not be returning there again.

A small group of friends got together last Saturday night January 17^th and met here about 7:30 for a few drinks, a little something to eat, bowl and listen to the dueling piano’s.
The conversation, food and drinks were fine. The bowling was a joke. We knew we were in trouble when the girl at the counter warned us that we might want to use house bowling balls so we wouldn’t ruin our own. She was right. There was no oil on the lanes and none of the five of us enjoyed it and only bowled one game. For that we paid $ 25 for one hour of hell. I am an above average bowler that has bowled 11 perfect games and bowled a whopping 120 and was the only person to break 100.
We finished bowling and met the rest of our group back in the lounge. The dueling piano players knew how to play the piano but sang every song with a monotone voice and no feeling. It took our group a long time to figure out what song the were even singing most of the time. Parking was tough and we finally found a spot in the parking garage on the top level.
I would go back there for the food and drinks that were reasonably priced but never again for the bowling or the dueling pianos, if it’s the same two guys there again

Nothing special about it but if you are in the area you should definitely stop by. Its a huge bar with pool tables, bowling and there is space in the back where bands play on certain nights.
They offer typical bar food, my favorite are the chicken quesadillas, yum!
You get a lot of regulars and it is a lot of fun if you go with a group. The drinks are good and the bartenders are nice.
Its always nice to sit at the bar and have the bartender remember what you always order.

My friends and I had bought a Groupon for Fitz’s Spare Keys, for an hour of bowling, shoes, pizza and a pitcher of pop.
I checked the groupon’s facts, as well as Fitz’s website to make sure that there were no exclusion dates, and found none.
My group and I went to Fitz’s at 7pm on a Friday night. We waited awhile for the hostess to arrive, and when she finally did, we showed her our Groupon. She then stated that they do not accept Groupons on Fridays or Saturdays after 6pm. No apology for the inconvenience, no listening to my concerns, nothing. She just turned to the next people in line. I was not only angry about the fact that there were exclusion times, and that it wasn’t posted anywhere on either website, but also at the crappy service upon arrival.
My group decided that since we were there already, we would bowl anyways. The hostess gave us our shoes and a lane, and told us to pay after we were done.
We went over to the bowling lanes, and I was shocked to find out that there were only 6 lanes available. There also wasn’t any automatic scoring, and they didn’t even give us a scorecard upon arrival, we had to go up and ask for one. There was barely any seating by the lanes, and half of my group had to stand. The lanes were so close together, that I started to feel claustrophobic. There were children surrounding my group on both sides, and they were running around, and spinning. I was afraid I would hurt one of them if I tried to bowl. No staff stopped them, or explained to parents that it was a safety issue. This was very annoying, and made our hour of bowling really turn into much less time since we had to wait often. The reset buttons were so close together, that the group next to us kept accidentally hitting our reset button in the middle of a turn. This really started to frustrate me. There was an area on each lane that was supposed to light up to tell you how many pins were knocked over (since it was self scoring), but our lane didn’t work and we had to guess the amount of pins.
We went over to the bar, explained that we were bowling on lane 3, and asked for a menu. They gave us a menu, and we waited quite a long time for someone to take our order. Finally the bartender came back and stated that if we were bowling, we had to wait for a server to come up to us over by the lanes.
We went back to the lanes, and waited and waited and waited for a server to come to us. Friday’s were half priced appetizers before a certain time, so it really seemed like they were trying to wait until after that time was up, so they could charge full price. Finally, a server came over to us and took our order. We ordered a cheese pizza, a few appetizers and a glass of ice water. I assumed she would bring the ice water over right away, but she never showed up. I ended up having to go to the bar to get a glass of water. Finally, after waiting for quite some time, the food arrived and THEN she gave me an ice water. There was no room by the lanes to eat, so we had to put our food on a table pretty far away from the lanes, and go back and forth when it was our turn to bowl. The food wasn’t spectacular, and I was pretty disappointed.
The server then came with our bill (without even making sure that we were done ordering) and when we looked at it, we noticed that they didn’t even give us the half off appetizers discount. We complained and the staff member said, «we only do that on Fridays.» We then had to explain to her that it was indeed, Friday. They fixed the bill, but it didn’t really make me feel better at all.
I will never be returning to this «bowling alley» and I even asked Groupon to refund me, since the business wouldn’t accept the Groupon.
My suggestion: don’t come here.

I came here a few weeks ago with 2 of my friends. We had never been here before and if we had known what we were in for, we probably wouldn’t have eaten here. The hosts seemed shocked when we asked for a table for 3 to eat dinner. Service was shoddy at best; they clearly are more used to a bar crowd. Most of the food is fried and some of it seemed questionable. Our waitress seemed annoyed by us. They were also playing some extremely loud, graphic rap music during dinner. It was very strange. I don’t even remember what we ate, but I know for sure I will not be back.

Still great service and hard work. I am not the target demographic being 40 and not pretty but these folks still do right from top to bottom. As «cool» as they are they still keep magnificent specials and wonderful service. I actually had one of the best/​funnest nights in my history of Elmhurst last week at the lanes. This is easily a destination bar in Elmhurst!

If you are not in college or an Elmhurst Trixie or Chad, don’t bother with this place for dining. Horribly expensive, food not worth it ($ 40 for a pulled pork sandwich, a buffalo chicken wrap served with soggy fries, and 2 draft beers). The place is NOT kept up. It’s run down and falling apart. Tape on the booth seats, wood finishings scratched up, wobbly tables. The pool tables are in shameful shape and filthy. Lots of other places to go in Elmhurst that are cleaner and better managed. Used to be a lot nicer when it was the former owners 10 years ago.

I popped in for a quick drink with Laura N. & Phill C. prior to an event last night.
Thursday a glass of house wine is $ 3 — your choice of red or white. I went for white and it ended up being Pinot. A-​OK for me! They have daily specials on various types of drinks and I stuck to that last night as not having prices on the drink menu always kind of weirds me out.
I don’t know if they have no A/​C but it definitely wasn’t on yesterday. They did have some fans in the bar but I could imagine it getting insanely hot & stuffy if bowling or dancing inside as it was a bit too warm while we were there. Eek!
$ 10 minimum on credit cards.
Fitz’s Spare Keys has a ton more to offer than what i experienced in terms of the old school bowling and everything else Cristie B. mentions in her review — so I’ll def be back.