Round the Clock Restaurant

We’ve eaten here on the way from Chicago airports to Culver Academies several times, usually breakfast. Very quick, friendly service, great American breakfasts, very roomy, clean, and a good value.
Excellent stop-​off point.

They don’t profess to be a fine dining establishment, so I won’t hold them to such standards. That said, I think the food is pretty good! The breakfast selections are very good, and the very diverse lunch/​dinner menu is very satisfying — especially when you see how inexpensive it is.
Great neighborhood family fare.

Breakfast here is absolutely delicious I got myself a waffle combo plate that came with bacon, egg and hash browns. Staff was excellent caring to all our needs, as well as working like professionals. They was respectful and polite with a smile all with a positive attitude.

What a pleasant surprise! We had planned a Sunday breakfast in Michigan, but couldn’t get a seat for hours. We came across Round the Clock just in passing and had a great experience. Very professional staff, fresh and filling food, perfect location for a break from the highway.

Located just a couple minutes north of the Route 49 toll road interchange, this pleasant family restaurant is convenient to Illinoisans returning home from NW Indiana. The huge menu spotlights roadside diner classics and comfort foods. There’s page after page of breakfast, brunch and lunch items, but keep turning pages to reveal an extensive menu of dinner entrees and combination platters. Entrée prices include a choice of two items from a long list of side dishes (pasta entrees include one item).
We ordered chopped steak, country-​fried chicken breast, and «Thanksgiving Dinner.» Ordered medium, the chopped steak arrived closer to well done. The chicken received an enthusiastic thumbs-​up and the dryish white-​meat turkey was made OK by gravy (request gravy served on the side). The side dishes were very good. Our bellies were stuffed before we could finish the gigantic portions (senior and children’s portions are available). Take home half of your meal so you’ll have room to enjoy one of their desserts.
For cutting-​edge or trendy cuisine, look elsewhere, but our meal here was enjoyable and an excellent value. The wait staff was cheerful and attentive. The spacious country kitchen-​motif dining room is divided by partial walls into more intimate areas. There is a private party room. Extra points for gorgeous landscaping.

Excellent service, good prices, left with a smile after brunch. Enjoyed French toast and a generous portion of bacon.

Always great service. Friendly staff and delicious food, as always at any RTC that I’ve been to. Highly recommend if you’re looking on getting out but not wanting to spend an arm and a leg on meals.

You serve excellent good. Just wish you had specials like the «Round the Clock» in Highland on Rt. 41. There specials come with not only a veggie. A beverage and dessert. even their breakfast specials. You can’t beat it! Whenever we have to be in that area. We always plan to go there!

This is one of those restaurants I go to about once every couple months and don’t foresee ever writing it off the list. Nothing sensational just rock solid breakfast experience. There are sweet spots of time when you can slip in and out and only be one of a couple customers in there and then shortly after the parking lot is full. Nothing to rant or rave about but I am a fan.

My husband and I frequent this Round the Clock. Its always easy to get into (no wait) and the service is super quick. Can always get in and out for a quick meal. Food is alway great and restaurant is nice and clean. Staff is very friendly too! Highly recommend!

I have mixed feelings on this place. It’s very close to downtown Chesterton with several cute restaurants. I would normally go with an option over there. It’s also near a hospital I get stuck working at from time to time during strange hours. It’s one of my only chioces on days like that.
The service is really friendly and you can find something on the menu that you will like. Nothing is fantastic but it’s a huge menu and not horrible. There isn’t a whole lot to choose from over here.
If you need a quick meal or stopping to eat at an off hour this is my pick. If you have chioces head to one of the nicer spots in downtown Valpo or Chesterton.

BlahhhH! My dad had been here before and liked it…
If you’re going to eat here, set your expectations at like Denny’s level. You pay at the hostess stand on your way out, and as a result we stood at the hostess stand for a really long time waiting to be seated. The menu was big and they had all of the typical foods you’d expect… just not very good.

Short version:
Good — Clean place; friendly staff, Spectacular service (thanks, Diane!); great chicken lemon rice soup, coffee, seared chicken breast and chicken fingers; good value.
Bad — Awful, lifeless «vegetable of the day», broken hollandaise sauce.
Long version:
My teenage daughter and I were in town for a couple days at the Dunes, and decided to stop at Round the Clock for our evening meal.
First impression was that this was a very clean, nicely decorated space (bathrooms too). Not sure how long this location has been open of if it has recently been redecorated, but it looked great aesthetically. We were there around 5:00 pm on a Wednesday, and it looked like the place was at about 25% capacity. There were TV’s mounted in the corners, and they were on but muted.
Diane was our server, and was outstanding! As soon as we sat down, she stopped by to let us know that she would be right back for our drink orders as soon as she finished taking care of one of her other customers. This was a pattern with her, always making sure to stop by and make sure that we knew that she hadn’t forgotten about us. Additionally, another waitress (whose name I did not get) would also ask how things were going if she happened to be passing by. After my daughter and received our coffee and pink lemonade, we never saw the bottoms of the cups again, though we never had to ask for refills.
The menus were colorful, vibrant, and had a nice selection of regular offerings as well as about 8 or 9 specials from which to choose — I always get nervous when a restaurant tries to offer so many things that it fails to d any of them well. I overheard our waitress tell another customer that the menus had recently been updated; not sure what they were like before, but they work nicely now.
We both had the chicken lemon rice soup, and it was very tasty — creamy and thick (I will say that I like my cream soups to be very thick, so if you like runny soup this may not be for you), and with the right hint of lemon. I would like to have seen a bit more chicken, but it was good overall.
My daughter ordered the chicken finger plate, and was quite happy with it. The batter on the strips was a very light batter with a nice season to it, and we were both impressed with the actual amount of chicken vs. batter that there was to eat (she had to box up the last one). If you like thin strips of chicken with ¾″ of crust, these are not for you. The fries were nicely cooked, though likely frozen. — some might give points off here, but as long as the end product is good (and not advertised as «fresh cut», I don’t mind a short cut here or there).
I ordered the «Dynamic Chicken» from the daily specials — pan seared chicken breast smothered in seafood stuffing, mozzarella cheese and hollandaise sauce (no, I’m not sure what the hell I was thinking, either), with rice and vegetable of the day as my sides. The chicken was served exactly as described, and I realized that it really wasn’t a great combination after all. The chicken breast itself was very well cooked with a nice sear on it, but I could only handle a small amount of the toppings. The seafood stuffing was tasty enough, and looked like it was made on site. Unfortunately, the hollandaise sauce had broken down into a bit of an oily mess, but at least there was not a disproportionate amount of it for me to avoid. The rice was not out of this world, but it was not bad either; I’d give it a C+. The vegetables… oh dear, the vegetables… they were the big reason why I did not go all the way to five stars here — canned and boiled well past any sane limits, flavorless and with the consistency of baby food. Avoid these abominations at all costs and get a salad instead.
The only other thing I could mention that might possible bother someone was that there seemed to be quite a bit of noise coming from the kitchen… we were seated about three booths from the entrance to the back of house, and it sounded like there was a lot of jocularity going on back there. We heard nothing offensive of derogatory, so we did not mind.
Terrible veggies aside, I would definitely recommend Round the Clock.

Visiting the Indiana Dunes for the first time, we (2 adults and a child) went looking for some relatively inexpensive vittles. The vittles needed to be palatable– and here is where the Round the Clock Restaurant failed. We ordered a fried appetizer (the boy’s fault), it contained onion rings (liked by the kid), mozzarella sticks (liked by the grown ups), fried mushrooms (liked by no one), and chicken strips (liked by no one). Most of the dish went uneaten. For the meals, the kid ordered the child’s spaghetti. She loved it. I ordered the gyro plate with soup as my side. The tomato basil soup was worse than campbell’s out of a can. The crackers with it were stale (despite being packaged!). The gyro meat was tough and dry. The crispy, warm pita was the one bright spot– even the veggies were lackluster and the tzatziki sauce was virtually flavorless. More than half of my plate went uneaten as well. The boy ordered breakfast (smart man), which was okay but nothing to write home about.
The food arrived quickly, too quickly, was not fresh and hot, and could not have been more bland, dry, and otherwise unedible.
All in all, we would have been better off ordering breakfast (maybe!) or just simply avoiding this pace. Even our waitress was not happy to be there!

Awesome dinner! Excellent specials, great service, comfortable and fast. Great stop on the drive between Chicago and Michigan.

The burgers here are really good and the service is friendly and prompt. I would definitely go here again, were I going to be in the area.

My FAVORITE place for breakfast! Love the food, HUGE portions, and the staff is very attentive. Also, the place is pretty damn clean. Lately they’ve been switching up their breakfast specials with some pretty innovative stuff like Breakfast Quesadillas and Waffle Parfaits… really good stuff. Highly recommend!

Regular breakfast customer. Servers are friendly and attentive. Prices are very reasonable and breakfast specials are good!

Standard fair. Been there many times, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Cheap and dependable.