Brothers Inn - Savanna

Good, wholesome food. Huge portions for the small amount of money. Midwest-friendly service. Open late enough (9pm) to beat the heat. The waitress acted like we were a bit wacky for asking if they had beer. But hey, you don't know unless you ask, right? Well worth the drive out from Savanna or Mount Carroll ... especially considering the alternatives.

The food was totally decent, and the service was very nice. My sister and I were visiting nearby state parks and we had her baby with us, so we needed someplace family friendly and with decent food. We were in town for 2 nights, the first night I got the patty melt and she got the baked walleye. Both were very good! The second night we both got the fried chicken and it was great. They also have amazing pie!! They don't make it there, they get it from a bakery in Chicago, it was wonderful. Brothers Inn is not the type of place we usually eat at, but it was very good and family friendly! It was very busy both nights so the locals seem to like it a lot too.

Any restaurant experience is greatly influenced by one 's expectations, and it helps if one 's expectations are reasonable in the first place. In other words, in addition to the quality of the food, the atmosphere and the value, we ought to evaluate a restaurant in light of the market it intends to serve and how it lives up to the manner in which it represents itself to the public. In addition, we should be fair in dealing with the staff and management. Brothers Family Inn in Savanna, IL is well deserving of a five-star rating because it meets or exceeds every reasonable expectation for its class and market. I can 't help but suspect that another reviewer here, who gave a very negative picture of this establishment, may have had unrealistic expectations, and from the text of the review it is also clear that the staff and management were not even given a chance to address the reviewer 's concerns. This is unfortunate. If you 're familiar with this part of Illinois, you know that it is a rather sparsely populated area where agriculture is the dominant economic engine, partially supplemented by tourism attracted by the Mississippi River and the often breathtaking natural beauty of the landscape. The folks who live around here may not be urban social sophisticates, but they are as smart as anyone else and they know a good meal when they find it. Brothers is a small, family-owned and operated business which seeks to provide simple but very well-prepared and high quality food at reasonable family prices. In our experience (and according to my family members who live in this area year-round , Brothers achieves this goal consistently, and often excels. The menu has good variety, there are daily and senior citizen specials, and their Sunday brunch buffet, at about $10, is as good as you will get anywhere else for twice that price or more. The dining area is simply appointed, clean, well-lit and roomy. It is always busy, as far as I 've seen. My wife and I have had three very good meals here in the past two and a half weeks. She has ordered their Queen Size (12 oz prime rib the last two times and it was excellent. In addition to a very good basic broasted chicken dinner, I have had two different salmon dishes, both of which were perfectly prepared. Anyone with kitchen experience knows how difficult it is to prepare salmon just right; at Brothers, they have the secret. I must say I have never had a better tasting or more perfectly grilled or baked/broiled salmon dish anywhere, and that includes some very expensive and highly-touted restaurants in cities such as Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco and Palm Springs, where I paid a lot more than the $15 Brothers charges. The previous critical reviewer accused Brothers of serving frozen vegetables. This is possible, but most of their vegetables are fresh, and in season they are locally grown. It should be noted as well that vegetables are served with every entree and included in the price. The vegies I have had with my meals have always been fresh and very good. The critical reviewer also panned the salad bar as ghastly but admitted she did not even try it. Well, it 's true their salad bar is not very big. But it does have fresh lettuce and salad vegetables, a very good cole slaw made on the premises, a tasty kidney bean salad and a macaroni salad, also made on location, plus croutons, bacos , and a couple of other basic items. It also features fresh melon chunks (honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon when available, and they are always at a perfect stage of ripeness, soft and sweet without being mushy. All of this allows a person to build a tasty and nutritious salad, which after all is supposed to be the purpose of a salad bar. Right? I suppose the part of the previous negative review that I found most unfair was the author 's admission that she and her boyfriend didn 't bother bringing their complaint about their meal to the attention of the staff or management. She simply presumed that they would be ignored. Maybe that 's how restaurants treat their customers where she comes from, but it is not how Brothers operates (nor any other restaurant in this area, in my experience. Every staffer at Brothers wears a t-shirt that says on the back If you like our food, tell others. If you don 't, tell us. I can assure you, they mean it! The owners of this place (and its sister restaurant 16 miles to the east are dedicated to excellent customer service in addition to the quality of the meals they serve. I have seen this in person as well as heard it from my friends and family. In short, at Brothers you will get a tasty, well-prepared meal served by friendly wait staff in a clean, family atmosphere at a very reasonable price. You will not leave hungry and you will probably be carrying a box or two back home with you. For a small-town family oriented American style restaurant, Brothers is as good as it gets.

Char broiled cod was slightly overcooked but otherwise ok. The frozen vegetables that were served alongside the fish were not only void of color but very salty for some reason. The salad bar was the most ghastly I've ever laid eyes on and I passed despite it being included in the price. My boyfriend has never met a pile of hashbrowns he hated until he had them here. Perhaps the grease was rancid; they were undercooked and tasted so awful that he couldn't eat them. We didn't tell the waitstaff or manager any of this they wouldn't have believed our opinion, or cared, because restaurants never do, despite what the back of their tshirts say. You just go home and swear to never eat there again. This is a very small town so eating choices are few. This restaurant needs to improve its quality if it wants to survive in an otherwise dying town. The warm season boaters and bikers are the only people keeping the businesses alive. The one area restaurant that DID have good food was Poopy's mega biker bar.