Huddle House

The food and service have been outstanding. They bring bread out to you that has been cooked in a flowerpot. It’s a hidden gem in a small town

Great tasty food, our waiter was nice. We went around 7 and there wasn’t to many people.

If you’ve never been to a Huddle House before I would compare it to Waffle House, except the waffles at huddle house are A LOT better, and the menu is a lot bigger. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what Huddle House is like. I always have a good experience going :)

I grew up in Milwaukee, WI and now live in Lake County, IL so I had never been to a Huddle House. I arrived in Vandalia this week for a work trip and was excited to see that next to the hotel we usually stay at, they now have a couple of new restaurants, this being one of them. Obviously we had to try it.
Environment:
Going in, the first thing that came to my mind was «Denny’s», that’s what it reminded me of, so right away I figured I should lower my expectations of the place. It wasn’t as big as your typical Denny’s and the kitchen is right in the center, but it’s certainly not too small either. Inside there are plenty of tables which is always good for a big guy like myself. The décor was simple and the place seemed fairly clean.
Service:
During our meal we pretty much had 2 waitresses, not sure why, the place was fairly empty and our party was only 4 people. One of the waitresses was fairly nice, the other one not so much. They kept putting WAY too much ice on my soda so I kept drinking it all, sadly I also had to keep asking for refills. At one point I had 2 cups full of ice and one new one, the lady tells me that if I stack the other two she can take them, then she goes away. I’m left thinking «Seriously?» Not that I mind stacking them, obviously that’s simple enough, I just found it weird that she’d need me to stack the 2 cups so she can actually take them.
Food:
So far I wasn’t having a very good experience from this place but I was hoping that the food would make up for the not so great service. I ordered a Chicken Club Sandwich and a cup of their «5 Star» Chili. Eventually one of our waitresses came over to inform me that they ran out of Chili. It was Monday at 12:30PM, I’m not sure how you advertise having 5 Star Chili and then run out of it by 12:30PM. I decided to substitute my Chili with some Mozzarella sticks.
Finally my food gets there, the Chicken Club and the Mozzarella sticks. They ask me if I want marinara sauce for the sticks, I did. They bring me some packet of Heinz Marinara sauce. What kind of place serves something like Mozzarella sticks and doesn’t bother making their own Marinara? That’s the easiest thing to make! Not that it would matter much, the Mozzarella sticks were kind of nasty, probably store bought, frozen and then deep fried. There was just absolutely nothing special about them.
As for the Chicken Club, well, I don’t like lettuce on my food, but even I was thinking «wow, what a sad piece of lettuce they threw on there». There was just this tiny piece of lettuce and a single slice of Tomato. The bun was horrible, it was soggy already and things just got worse as I ate it. For Mayonnaise once again I got a packet of mayo in case I wanted Mayo. The actual chicken tasted decent but certainly not anything special.
One of the people that were with me had a salad, that person did not enjoy the salad at all, someone else commented that we weren’t south enough because the sweet tea was not very good. I really wanted to like this place, a 24 hour place next to the hotel I stay at when I’m there, that’s great, but sadly I didn’t care for it. I would give it a 1 star but I would certainly eat here again, I’d rather not but I wouldn’t be completely against it.