Harold’s Chicken Shack Evanston

I don’t like giving new local restaurants bad reviews. Last week I ordered a dozen chicken wings. No french fries included. $ 20. I wouldn’t mind paying that much if the food would have met my expectations. This is not the same Harold that was on Clark and went out of business. This tasted like frozen chicken. How can you charge that kind of money in this community? I can go to Tastee Sub a block over and get a dozen wings twice the size for half the price. And they throw in a liter of pop too.

Ordered delivery via Grubhub. They gave me a 2h estimate on delivery, which is pretty astounding given all they’re doing is putting deep-​fried chicken in a bucket and shipping it, but okay, at least they’re upfront about it.
2h30m comes and goes with no sign of the food. Grubhub support can’t get in touch with them.
I have no idea how a restaurant manages to fail at delivering a bucket of chicken so spectacularly. It’s absolutely shameful. Don’t bother giving these guys your business.

It is disgusting how long it takes to get your food. I placed an order through eat24 2 Hours ago and I STILL haven’t gotten my food. I’ve eaten Harold’s for most of my life and it has never taken this long before! I’m not ordering from this place again.
Update: I didn’t get my food until 11:45 pm and I ordered at 7:30 pm!

The food is fabulous. The service and phone system are terrible.
Obviously, they are in a start-​up mode. But the taking of the phone off the hook so that one gets a busy signal … and the fact that they rely on an answering machine when it is not a busy signal … suggests that management is counting on a clientele with unparalleled patience and tolerance.
Cap it off with guesstimates of when to pick up food or wait for an hour … and it becomes a journey, not a meal experience.

This is an update based on the recent experience with placing a delivery order which was kinda ridiculous. Online ordering is my usual go to and this situation reminded me of why.
To start it took me about 10 mins to actually get through to place the order between redials because of busy signals and being put on hold when I did finally get through.
The person who took my order was polite and friendly. Told me 35 mins-​1h. Okay, great!
35 mins comes and goes. 1h comes and goes. Here we are on 1h 20mins. I call for a status: «The orders went out and it’ll be about 10 mins.» Okay… 10 mins comes and goes. 10 more mins comes and goes. (seeing the pattern here?) So now here we are butting up against 2 hours and nothing. So I start the calling. When I get through and ask for an update, they ask for my name to check; they don’t have an order under that name… Asked to recall my order, they don’t see it. Asked for my address, they don’t see it. Well, you told me my order was on it’s way 20 mins ago, now you can’t find my order and you charged my card? Someone needs to tell me something or I need a refund. I was told to hold on, they put the phone down and I hear them trying to figure out what to do as well as calling out orders and taking orders while I’m on ‘hold’. While I’m ‘holding’, I get a call from the delivery driver who is at my door with my food. They had my name wrong on the order…
I placed my order at 5:50 and got my food at 7:45. They’re 5 mins away by car. Even with cooking time it shouldn’t take that long. I could have ordered, walked up there, walked back and eaten in less time.
I REALLY hope they are just going through growing pains and they tighten up. I really love the food and the service is good they just need to work on time, seriously!

I wish I could rate it lower but after «6 minutes» that is actually a half hour I haven’t even seen my chicken yet. The girl behind the register is incompetent and has no idea what she’s doing that the cooks have to come and check the orders for her.