Mad River Bar & Grille Chicago New Years

Good morning,

I am not in any way a restaurant critic, so my views are just from a customers point of view, not a professional food journalist.  I do believe though what I have to say, needs to be said, for Mad River really "Dropped the Ball" on New Years. 

A little background on the situation.  Mad River Bar and Grille is located in Chicago, IL on Sheffield Ave.  My girlfriend and I came up for New Years (From Kokomo, IN) and visited a fraternity brother of mine.  He booked the tickets for the New Years Eve Party.

This is what Mad River promised their customers for a ticket:
$90 New Years Eve Ticket

• All you can Drink (top Shelf)
• Elegant Dinner Buffet from 9pm - 2am
• hor dourves
• Champagne Toast at Midnight
• Coat Check $3

Click to enlarge

Some of you are asking why would I pay $90 for a New Years Eve event.  Well, one can justify if what they are promising is what you are getting.  The drinks, if I went to a regular bar in Chicago are about $5 a drink, so lets say I drink 8 drinks the whole night; that would equal $40.  If I go to a restaurant and order food, guarantee another $20-30 just on food; lets go in the middle, $25.  Then the hor dourves and Champagne toast, lets say $10.  We are up to $75 out of the $90.  Ok, I guess I can pay $15 for the entertainment of being around people and having a great DJ performing.

Now what did I receive for my ticket?  We got their about 9:30ish and Mad River had a line going about half a block.  It took us about 30 min to get in, ok not bad but not good.  Then when we get in, we looked for the coat check, which was upstairs.  When we got there, they said that they were "full", couldn't take anymore coats.  WHAT?!?!  How do you have a coat check and not know what your capacity is or know that about everyone that is coming is bringing a coat to check, because we are in Chicago and it gets cold up there.  So we had to hold onto our coats for about 20-30 min until we tried again where they magically had room to take our coats for $3.

Now where was the elegant buffet?  So we went off looking for this buffet.  It didn't even exist.  They had a, uno, one; folding table with two platters of hor dourves!!  That was their version of the elegant buffet and hor dourves coming in ONE!  Lets just say, thoroughly disappointed.  Oh yea, and that table was folded up by 11 pm, even when their website said that food would be available until 2 am.

So here comes mid-night.  Where was the champagne toast at?  It didn't exist, we didn't get one!  Oh yea, and the DJ was off the countdown because my cell phone already said 12:00 about a min before he started the 10 second countdown.

Now did anything happen good that night at Mad River?  The bartenders were nice and courteous for a night when they are extremely busy.  The drinks were good, in my opinion.  The DJ played good music. 

So did we have a fun time?  Yes, because we are not going to let these things ruin a night, but will I ever go back to Mad River, NO.  That is just my opinion of a customer, not a professional food journalist. 

Thanks for reading and hopefully Mad River sees this, and adjusts their advertising to what they actually deliver in product/service.

Mark