Hoyt’s Chicago

I’d give this place 10 stars if I could! We stayed at the hotel for 3 days and visited this place every night. We had Amie all 3 nights and she was absolutely wonderful! She would have a drink ready for us within minutes of walking in and sitting down, she checked on us regularly, super nice, prompt service, and knowledgeable of the area. The food was excellent every time and all of the other staff were very friendly! Well definitely visit this place again when we’re in town! Highly recommended!

Food is just ok. Nice décor. Construction is modern and new. Service is good. If you want to try something new and relax environment, this is a good place to try.

Good beer and drink selection. Food is alright for being a hotel restaurant. We had the calamari for a starter and shrimp Mac n cheese for the entrée. Both were decent but nothing to write home about. The servers we super friendly though.

Delicious Ruben sandwich. Great service and nice bartender. Come in for the warm Spike Carmel Apple. It’ll warm you up on a cold wintery day.

We had a meeting here last week ¹⁄₂₂ thru ¹⁄₂₄. The service was great Ami the only bartender handled our large group very well! Ami had a great attitude and was professional. when we were over demanding she always smiled and took care of us. This lady is an asset to this hotel bar. I would highly recommend to my friends.

Came here to meet a friend for happy hour. The place is very nice. The staff were friendly. We were seated right away. The food menu didn’t have the most selection, but the food was good.
I ordered the Ribs and I enjoyed. My friend got the Chicago hotdogs and meatballs and She also enjoyed hers. Will come back again.

Great food and atmosphere. Happy hours prices are pretty good. The service was outstanding! The bisque great!

Terrible service. Never coming back. Bartenders don’t know how to take care of customers, ignored me or perhaps forgot to give me a menu when I sat on the bar. I ended only getting one beer and bolted myself out as soon as I finished my drink. Will not recommend to anyone.

This is the off-​lobby restaurant and bar of the Wyndham Grand Chicago Riverfront Hotel. An airy, modern room, dominated by the bar, with table seating looking like something of an afterthought. The front windows frame a postcard view of the Chicago river: Marina City, the AMA Building, Trump Tower, and Wrigley Building. Several flat-​screen TVs, all tuned to sports programming; background music. For a while, I was the only customer, at around 3:45 on a Wednesday afternoon.
Hoyt’s offers a well-​selected if not huge craft beer selection: 11 drafts, mostly local, and one draft cider; also 20 bottles and cans, about three-​fourths of them craft brews. Drafts are available in 12– or 16-​ounce pours. On this visit I had time to try only one item:
— Temperance Brewing Co., Evanston, IL
— Root Down Robust Porter, 5.2%.
Semi-​clear root beer color with red highlights; light tan head. Weak malt nose. Smoky roast malt taste. Surprisingly, the menu copy (from the quite detailed beer list) says this is brewed with chicory and licorice root, though I probably wouldn’t have picked them up in a blind tasting. To my taste, served too cold for the style, which may suppress these subtle flavors.
(Tried on previous visits, but tasting my tasting notes are not available: 5 Rabbit Yodo con Leche; Tighthead Scarlet Fire Red Ale.)
Excellent public transportation access: three blocks from Washington/​Wabash on the Loop «L» (Brown, Purple Express, Pink, Orange, and Green Lines); three blocks from Lake on the Red Line and State/​Lake on the Loop; a block from all bus lines on Michigan Avenue and State Street For pub crawlers, a block and a half from the Wabash Avenue Elephant and Castle location, and within a few blocks of Public House, Harry Caray’s, Howells and Hood, and Eataly

We had a private party at this place and it was pretty good. The food wasn’t crazy good but it was pretty good and overall the service they provided was
Overall the service was excellent, but the meals were fair. Given we had a group that is something that might be very different if you were here on your own, but for us the steak was just so so and the other dishes are okay but not great.

We stayed at the Wyndham at the beginning of September and had several meals at this restaurant. We were always met with great customer service however I feel like the prices are a bit high. The atmosphere when sitting outside is second to none!

Good food, good service what more can you ask for!
My boyfriend and I stopped in for happy hour here. Stray away from the cocktail on the happy hour menu because it’s…bad but the food for happy hour is amazing!!! We had the flat bread pizza, calamari and the wings. They. We’re. Amazing!!!
There is one bar tender that brings a blender and can make an amazing blended margarita but it’s only when they bring their own blender… Why not just buy a blender for the bar?
Both times we came we sat outside. There’s just something about that downtown Chicago atmosphere that I love!
I wish I could remember our servers name because he was great!

Great little spot with great views of the Trump tower. Had an appetizer of the hummus. Huge plate, couldn’t finish.
Great bartender, Dawn L gave some nice recommendations and had a very good beer knowledge.

First off– the atmosphere here is bar not restaurant. Low lights and loud people.
Waiter was a nice guy but service was slow initially (took FOREVER to get a menu then another forever to get a glass of wine) then rushed at end (brought check while still eating and didn’t ask if I wanted dessert). Food sucked. Had chicken sandwich with avocado. Bread was burned on one side and chicken portion small and flavorless. The whole thing was really dry. The fries were ok but I like the fries at McDonald’s or Wendy’s better. It was not so bad that I couldn’t eat it — just not good. With all the amazing places to eat in Chicago, skip this place. Probably a good drinking spot though.

They must’ve caught and prepared the calamari while we waited, because it is sooo good and sooo fresh, but it took a while to arrive. Like 15 – 20 min.
Enjoyed an amazing Tequila barrel aged cider while waiting.

Excellent food & drinks. My favorite drink was the dutch carmel coctail, When I had it in the afternoon, it was made correctly… and very very yummy. I came back for dinner, and had salmon stuffed with crab… really great! But the bartender made the drink another way (his take, not their correct recipe) and no where as good.
The pork belly appetizer was really really wonderful. Calamari was good… but not great.

So far, I think my waiter is on serious drugs, or just super, super weird. Service has been super slow. He said he would be back in 2 minutes and it took him 10, then another 10 minutes to get our bottle of wine. Our first appetizer choice was sold out and didn’t find that out for 20 min after we placed our order, so we got calamari instead which was average. Not good. Not bad. Wouldn’t order it again.
The mac and cheese with prosciutto would have been good if it was served hot and fresh. I feel like it sat under a heat lamp for a good 5 – 7 minutes before getting to us. My boyfriends steak was ordered medium rare and came out medium, medium plus. I ordered the lamb burger because of the reviews and I have to say I was super disappointed. It’s too salty or very over seasoned. It was almost hard to swallow. My boyfriend made a comment that he thinks that the food is being made on time, but it’s not being brought out on time.
We had the monkey bread for dessert and that was the best part of the meal, it was yummy, but I definitely will not be back to eat mediocre food just to have a good dessert.

Great lamb burger! Did I say great? The food is very well prepared and served with flare and class.
The staff is friendly and courteous.
I will be back!

My friend and I came here to use a Groupon and it was an overall ok experience. I asked her if she would come back and both of us said that we wouldn’t, although we definitely did not regret trying it out. The deal was an incredible amount of food: an app, a board, two entrees, a dessert, and a bottle of wine.
The ambiance is clean, but confused– it definitely has a bit of identity crisis. It’s mostly a casual bar, surrounded by fine dining seating– so is it a bar or a fine dining restaurant? The décor, prices and food selections are trying to be fine dining, but the service we had told us it was really just a bar. And a hotel bar at that– a few solitary diners and drinkers sitting around, clearly on business just for a night or two.
It took a while for us to be waited on, but my friend and I had some catching up to do so it wasn’t the worst thing. When the waiter finally came, we gave him our entire order, because we were more than ready. The bottle of wine came out, he opened it, said it needed to rest for 30 seconds, and left. Odd. He came back, more than 30 seconds later, and poured us both tastes, then filled our glasses after I said it was fine. The wine was fine. Nothing special, but it was the only pinot noir on the limited list he gave us, and I usually always go for the pinot noir. He only came back to refill our glasses once, but we’re big girls and can pour for ourselves.
Our chosen appetizer was the short rib stuffed peppers. Decent, nothing special. The meat was tender, but the flavor was on the bland side. I liked the bread that it came with to dip into the sauce, but the app needed a serving spoon so that we could actually remove the peppers, with the sauce. The mixed board is massive, and made for two, as there are two of everything, which is nice (except for two of the meats which come in 1 and 3), and some sauces and a blob of some sort of chutney. Nothing was explained to us as it was placed, so we had to test out the sauces on our own. One was clearly a mustard, one was a jam, and the blob was a fruit chutney and had cinnamon in it, but we couldn’t tell what fruit it was. Our palates suck. The cheese and meat selection, and basket of bread and crackers was fun to eat and enjoyable, but nothing blew my mind.
The cheese board arrived before we finished our app. Our entrees arrived before we finished our boards. I realize that we ordered everything at once, but the kitchen needs to space these things out better. Give us a chance to enjoy what is in front of us and have a breather before we start stuffing our faces again.
My friend loved her lamb burger. It was huge, with onion rings and a basket of fries and looked crave-​worthy for sure. My entrée was the blue crab stuffed salmon, sitting on a bed of spaetzle. Did I hate it? No. Did I love it? No. What did I think? I don’t remember. I remember eating it and getting full, and I ate more than one of the two salmon cakes sitting in front of me and dug into the creamy spaetzle here and there, but honestly, it was kind of bland. Good hearty eating, but not omigod I can’t stop eating this kind of eating. I ate it, chatted with my friend, who was thoroughly enjoying her burger, and realized that I finished one salmon round, and moved on to the next one, and then after a few bites of it, put my fork down, realizing that I was full and really just didn’t want anymore. I also didn’t want the rest of my meal boxed up, but my friend did. The server gave her a box to put her food in, which she did, and it was fine, but that act certainly didn’t match the attempted ambiance.
The dessert menu was given to us while we were still enjoying our entrees. Because a dessert was part of our deal, we were going to be ordering one anyway, but if it hadn’t been, it would have been hard to digest the thought of dessert while we were still digesting our entrees. Our tummies needed to breathe! And with all that food, we probably wouldn’t have ordered dessert, but since we *had* to, we did. We chose the warm monkey bread and it was warm with crispy sticky outsides and chewy insides. The sauces it came with were explained to us this time– pistachio caramel (YUM!), jam, and cream. This was by far my favorite part of the meal, and as full as I was, I happily and easily finished my half.
If you’re staying at this hotel and don’t have time to explore, sure, give it a go, especially because the loop shuts down pretty early. But if you have the time and energy, and there isn’t a polar vortex outside, walk yourself north across the river, and try something more memorable.

Chicago gehört eigentlich nicht zu unseren Reisezielen. Leider sind wir heute gezwungen in Chicago zu übernachten da 660 Flüge heute gestrichen waren, u.a. unser Flug. Also… nach 16 Stunden Reise schlendern wir heute Abend durch Chicago Downtown. Zum Abendessen waren wir zufälligerweise in Hoyt’s gelandet. Zu Anfang haben wir keine so große Hoffnung gemacht, aber was wir soeben gegesen haben (Short ribs & roasted amish chicken) waren echt tolle Überraschung. Super Bedienung, gutes Essen, super Empfehlung für das Bir. Weiter so!

So… I owe my fantastic trip to Amie, Adam and Mike at Hoyt’s. I was only there for 3 days but came in to get info and recommendations every morning at breakfast and came in every evening after the day to share my fun finds and thank them for the recommendations. Amie went as far as to write down all the spots I should hit and Adam sent us to the Laugh factory where he bartends also and we had a blast. They were amazing and definitely made the experience what it was. We hit up tons of bars, restaurants, steakhouses, etc, etc, and never got friendlier service. When you pay $ 250 for a meal at one of the top steakhouses in Chicago you’d think their service would compete but no dice.
Hoyt’s — let them know how awesome they are. I’m making Chicago a 1x-​2x a year affair from now on and I want to see their faces.