Potato Creek Johnny’s Saloon & Grill

Prices and environment are pretty solid, traditional of a biker bar. The food was okay, nothing to write home about but again not bad. The service was hands down some of the worst I’ve ever experienced. The waitress came over to our table 15 minutes after delivering half the Order to our table to ask how it was going only to realize she never brought half the order. I can tell you I won’t be coming back and given the restaurants in the Glenview elsewhere — go elsewhere. I would suggest meiers tavern on Waukegan, just a spit down the road or hackneys for this kind of environment and prices without the crappy service!

I would go here if you have nothing else to do, and want to smell like cigarettes for a week. The bar tenders are nice.

Cheap drinks and good karaōke, what else can you ask for in a dive? I can’t speak for their food but karaōke Thursday’s area good time here. My friends an I are regulars on Christmas Day, usually the only time we go during the year. Holiday crowd is a fun one.
In the summertime they have a sweet outdoor patio where people plays bags and drink and whatnot. Hidden gem of Glenview.

Local dive bar with cheap drinks, karaōke and a small stage for bands to play.

A hidden gem. literally. From Waukegan, you don’t even notice this is a bar. It looks like an old warehouse or something like that. The entrance to the bar is in the back. Randomly stepped into this place on a Saturday night. They had a live blues band! It was really cool. The drinks are cheap and I really like that the crowd was mixed with young and older folks. I hear the food is pretty good too (we didn’t have any). Definitely worth giving it a try it you haven’t been there. My ONLY complaint is that you have to walk passed a ton of smokers to get into the bar. That literally is enough to make me think twice about going back. I really don’t want to deal with that. I think they should move those people somewhere else. Those smokers are potentially ruining this place.

I love this place… as do my friends. We really enjoy the beer garden which has plenty of tables, pretty flowers and when the weather is nice they grill outside on a HUGE Weber grill… YUMMY! The menu is great for a dive type bar as the cook is great and obviously loves his job.

«Local hole in the wall» bar, staff was friendly & nice. I had no expectations, so they were met. Only had one drink and moved on to next local bar: Meir’s. Many locals held up the bar, mostly males.

Karaōke Tuesdays, good drinks and great people. One of the best places to be during the week.

great local hang out i would put it in the Dive category but a good dive we had a blast the bar tender was funny and good conversation, there was a pool table. outside smoking area was nice for the smokers in our group! the prices were super cheap and we drank for several hours and the bill was very reasonable!

Came here on a Monday evening for casual drinks with a friend. We’ve been trying different bars around Glenview, and we had heard about Potato Creek Johnny’s from someone at another bar so we thought we would try it out.
It actually took us a while to find this place because we assumed it would be visible from Waukegan. This definitely isn’t the case and our GPS actually told us we were there… when we obviously were not. You have to turn down Jefferson Avenue and you’ll find the parking lot around the back.
You walk in and the bar is right in the middle with plenty of seats surrounding it. A decent selection on tap so my friend and I ordered a couple beers.
I was also starving, so I asked if the kitchen was still open. It wasn’t. In fact, they said the kitchen wasn’t open at all on Mondays. So just a heads up if you’re thinking about getting some bar food on a Monday night. That said, the waitress did offer us a frozen pizza and I gladly took her up on the offer. $ 10 for a frozen pizza? Sure, why not.
The atmosphere is interesting. There are a lot of unique items on the wall so it’d be a fun place to play «I Spy» for those of you that are into that sort of thing (try to find the nipple mug!). The crowd is older, although we did see a few people in their 20s meander in. Toward the end of our night, as we were leaving, we did notice more «old» people coming in.
Overall, an interesting place with friendly service. They really try to get to know you by name over here. Try it out if you’re tired of the «North Shore» atmosphere at other places around Glenview.

This is the perfect neighborhood place. Always friendly, great drink prices and affordable and tasty food. The outdoor patio is a great place to unwind after work!

Ah, Thanksgiving weekend. One of the few times of the time of year when the whole gang’s back in town.
I came here after a school reunion and since I was the first to arrive (seems like that’s been happening a lot to me) I was sort of wandering around the place. When I first walked into this place, I felt like I was in the epitome of a biker bar: super dive-​y and an older crowd just having a good time listening to music.
I got some weird looks since I’m a petite Asian chick in a trenchcoat. Didn’t matter though, the staff and patrons were still incredibly nice. A guy who gave me a «look» earlier even offered me a seat at the bar when I was still waiting for my friends. What a cool guy. And a cool beard.
As my friends started trickling into the bar, the patron demographics shifted toward young 20somethings back home from jobs and schools. The other patrons never lost their cool.
The parking situation was a bit confusing since it was my first time there. Yes, it’s in that little parking lot on the south side of Jefferson.
I don’t know if it was the venue or the company, but I had a great time here.

Occasionally has live bands! Otherwise, just your average bar with some outdoor seating in the back nothing fancy. However they do have one heck of a strip steak sandwich and the cook knows how to cook! I have returned here several times!

This bar/​saloon is full of good ol’ boys, taxidermy, and some serious fried chicken.
My friend and I came here for the Thursday night fried chicken special (shout out to David R. for the intel) and we couldn’t have looked more out of place if we tried. We both love fried chicken so we’ve been known to venture out of our comfort zone and Potato Creek Johnny’s certainly was one of the more colorful establishments we’ve tried.
They serve their drinks in those plastic-​coated to-​go cups so right away we knew this was a no-​frills joint. We’re okay with that. It’s nice every now and then to kick back, not sip on an overpriced cocktail, and just enjoy some down-​home cooking in a laid-​back atmosphere.
The fried chicken special is only $ 7.50 for half a fried chicken ($ 5.50 for two pieces) with sides and you get a sh*t ton of food. Four pieces of chicken, cole slaw, french bread, fries or tater tots, steamed broccoli and a couple slices of canned peach (wtf?) that reminded me of the diet plate my mom would get at restaurants in the 70s.
The broccoli looked so hopelessly out of place on this most unhealthy plate of greasy goodness that it kind of made me chuckle. The cole slaw looked to be of food-​service, mass-​produced quality and I wasn’t about to waste stomach real estate on it. I had some fries, which were tasty, but mostly I concentrated on the chicken. It was perfectly crispy, cooked properly, and was juicy and flavorful. Was it the best fried chicken I’ve ever had? Absolutely not, but for $ 7.50, it was certainly more than good enough.
I think our entire bill was just over $ 20, even with the tip. No doubt that will go down in the record books as one of our cheapest nights out ever.
It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area. Hell, for $ 7.50, it’s worth checking out even if you’re not.

Went back for the fish fry today for lunch. Not real busy so it was very quiet. Very good value, although the fish was a little salty. Good Mac-​n-​Cheese side, bread, tater tots, and corn. With a couple of beers, cost less than a Wicker Park breakfast. Hipsterless, worker bee clientele. Good, quick service, same «mature» server as last summer. Kind of a small town, throwback feel to the place. Look forward to outdoor patio soon.

used to be decent. Went down hill strictly due to the new patrons.

About as un-​Mexican as you can get on Cinco de Mayo, but it did the trick. We knew authentic places and even Mexican-​ish places would be packed that day, so we asked ourselves: What’s close? What’s reasonably priced? What has food? –Potato Creek Johnny’s.
We sat at the dining tables and ordered up carnitas tacos and tater tots (you know, to be authentic) from the food station. It took a loooooong time, but it seemed that only one guy was working the kitchen and he was super friendly and fast when we finally flagged him down. And the food wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it did hit the spot. The tortilla didn’t really stand up to the taco test and started to tear apart, but the pork had a subtle flavor and the housemade guacamole and sour cream with chipotle complemented it.
After dinner we got to drinking. I went with the French Margarita, a new specialty drink that the bartender wasn’t aware of but had no problem creating since the recipe is on their promotional signs. It was $ 7, but it was strong. I drank three of them over the course of the night, plus a little beer from the mini-​pitchers my friend ordered and a tequila shot some friendly, albeit ghetto-​fabulous-​wannabe-​frat, boys bought us. Dudes were drunk and a little obnoxious but not out of control and the bartender and staff dealt with them well, telling them to calm down and reassuring other patrons that they weren’t two random dudes fighting each other but actually brothers having a slap-​fest.
Our other friends left around 9pm, which was a shame because it was karaōke night. There are signs around the bar saying karaōke is on Tuesdays, so I’m not sure if they do Thursdays now or if it was just for Cinco de Mayo. Supposedly it starts at 9:30pm, but the KJ wasn’t there on time and we got a sinking feeling. He showed up maybe 10 minutes later and got his act together in 12 minutes. It was ridiculously fast and we double-​checked our watches to see how long it took. KJ don’t play around. Extreme Karaōke, indeed!

This is a great bar. I love this place, no pretenses just good beer and great people. They took my beloved pinball machines away, but I will forgive them because they are so darn nice!

There are several remarkable things about this hidden gem of the north suburbs.
First, of course, is the name. The day of my first visit, I couldn’t remember the title of our gathering site. «Uncle Pappy’s Shrimp Shack?» I asked my coworker. «The High Noon Saloon?» «No, Potato Creek Johnny’s!» Ah, I knew that it had some kind of western ring. Really, a name like Potato Creek Johnny’s already puts you way ahead of the pack.
Second, you will never find this place by conventional navigation, either manual or electronic. It is nowhere near Waukegan Road. It is half a block down Jefferson, which is the first left turn past the Chestnut stoplight whilst driving northbound on Waukegan. The same coworker described to me in detail how to get there, and I still couldn’t find the place. The structure itself is hidden behind another block of buildings, there is no sign, and the façade faces away from your direction of travel (i.e. west on Jefferson).
Third, this joint has oodles of character. The interior lives up to the name: a two-​story, mezzanined main room; big-​game taxidermy; those red-​and-​white picnic tablecloths… basically an Old West saloon dragged liberally through a bed of post-​spaghetti nostalgia/​kitsch, with a sprinkling of ubiquitous American comfy-​bar touches. It’s pretty neat, to tell you the truth. Unique and interesting, if nothing else, but I happen to like it. It’s fun. It looked great at Christmastime, too.
Also worthy of note is the regular evening waitress, who moves really slow and always looks stoned, but is actually a very effective server.
Finally, and most recommendably, is the Thursday night fried chicken special. For a meager $ 7.95 you will receive: half of a large chicken, your choice of various fried potatoes, three big chunks of steamed broccoli, a slice of french bread, a little tub of butter, a two-​ounce cuppette of cole slaw, and two quarters of canned peach. It’s so much food that it can’t fit onto the already-​oversized dinner plate: they have to bring the potatoes on a second plate – a regular-​sized dinner plate.
I eat everything on the plates, but it’s all window dressing for the excellent, excellent chicken. They cook it just right – with very juicy interiors and the perfect color and crispness outside. The batter is slightly over-​salted and under-​seasoned, the only thing that knocks them from a solid A to an A-​. Truly, this is some of the best fried chicken that I’ve ever had. For only eight bucks!

PCJ’s is a great low key bar. The drinks are price right and are made strong. The atmosphere is laid back with regulars always in attendance. The outdoor patio is a big plus in the summer, especially for our dog who gets treats which are readily kept on hand by the PCJ staff and his own water bowl.