Willie’s Grill & Icehouse

Willie’s is a family favorite. We always get great food and excellent service.

Most of the items are great, but the taco salad was disappointing. The lettuce was drowning in queso (cheese sauce). The entire salad was soggy. The Asian salad looked great but I made a bad decision and ordered the taco salad.

This place is the best! My 3 year old little sweetheart plays in the sand while we enjoy margaritas & appetizers.

Love it here! You order at the front, take your ticket and get your drink, and sit down. Your server then comes and gets the ticket at the table and puts it in for you. The system is so they have a smooth turnover rate, great idea! You also get your order double checked! Burgers are CAB, good atmosphere, polite servers. I come here frequently and have never had a bad experience. Bring your kids to the sandbox!

Generous portions of chicken tenders for one adult and surprisingly meaty and not covered in greasy breading! Yum! Plenty of staff so I was never ignored. Cool little patio area, for after the sunsets.

For a quick sit down huger nearby with other options on the menu for the non burger eaters, this is a solid eatery. I personally HATE standing in line to order any meal, but for the burger junkies in this burger and beans town, Willies stands out as a community favorite. They also Suport the local school with various programs. Kudos to Willies. If the onion rings are hot, they rival the ones I can make at home.

Wevve been multiple times and not a bad experience yet ! Crawdads were awesome! Ribs we’re melt in your mouth, fish tacos yum and willie burger can’t go wrong…,…can’t wait to try more!

The fried pickles are great.
Ranch is thinned down.
The Bbq burger is mediocre.
I like the outdoor eating area and how it’s decorating. It’s relaxing however I can see it getting crazy busy and not being so relaxing. Haha.
They take your order in the beginning and you seat yourself which is kind of odd to me but it worked out in our favor.
I’ll be back. Mainly for the fried pickles. Lol.

Good for young families. Bad for adults (without kids). Parents bring their kids here and let them run around freely and unsupervised. But, if that’s your sort of scene this place is for you. I was also troubled by the system. You walk in are instructed to order just to be given a ticket which you take to a table to give to your waiter. Seems strange to me. I wonder what function the front counter serves other than creating a bottle neck? I was also troubled by the smoker next to me. I thought smoking was illegal in San Antonio? The food was okay, but given the experience it was definitely not worth the trip or money. The fries had a nice seasoning. The crawfish boil lacked even potions of potatoes and corn and — even though we ordered it spicy — it didn’t have much flavor. I’m giving it two stars because the waiters were attentive.

This is the willies I primarily come to. The service is always excellent, and the staff is always very friendly. In particular Lee, one of the servers is always so friendly. Her customer service is wonderful. She genuinely enjoys what she does, and it shows. Being in the Customer Service realm of business myself, I can always spot the employees with real drive and ambition. If she isn’t working a section I might be seated at, she always makes time even when it’s busy to come say hello to me, and see how I’m doing. She always makes my visit worth it. As for Management, Holly is exceptional. I’ve seen her grow from a server to a manager in the short amount of time I’ve been coming to this willies. She certainly deserves it, she keeps everyone going, keeps things moving smoothly, makes things fun for everyone she works with. You can tell who is running the floor when she is there. She’s clear and concise, but has a very approachable demeanor. Your employees will and do respect her for that. Being a Manager myself, these are qualities you want in a manager. Without a «team» your leaders are nothing, there is no room for management to exist. Great Job! These people will be sorely missed should they pursue other ventures in life. They’ve both got a Very Bright Future ahead of them.

Great casual place to take the family, food very good TEXAS size servings: Burgers, BBQ, Seafood. Our server Jacob was fast and quick thinking we ordered the seafood sampler for wife and I. The wife said to Jacob” We are sharing it”. We expected extra plate Jacob split it without being told into 2 even portions and kept coming around to fill up our drinks. Place was very busy, they had NBA Allstar game on. I judge a place by how they handle a rush and keep the quality of the food and put us at easy during all the madness. Excellent Service, food atmosphere, and price.

This place is ALWAYS great, sandbox for the kids, live music some night, great staff, and the food is always consistently great. My only complaint is it has the smallest dining area I have ever seen at a Willies. Can’t really change that now, but it definitely effects my choice of where to dine if I am hungry and it happens to be a time when the place might be busy.

Come here often because of the sandbox and the decent food for reasonable price. However the last 3 times my husband and I have gotten sick after we have eaten here. My sister and her family and my mom have also gotten sick after eating here. I know they have new management and the cleanliness standards might have changed. I am going to give it one more try but if I worship the thrown afterwards I am done with this place.

Love the food and atmosphere! Highly recommend for adult and also family. The chicken tenders with parmesan topping is great

Puke poor grease pit. I tried to like this place but can’t. You may be fooled by all the fat people lounging around on the patio shoving fried food down their gullets. But this place is not good. The service is probably the best thing going for this dive. Most of the food is fried garbage from a deep freezer. The queso is like gelatinous orange goop from a bad science experiment. The burgers are greasy slimy chess pools. During crawfish season, they serve buckets of mud bugs to the public. If you want to see a feeding frenzy with some of the worst scum and trash in Texas, go for dinner. Its a bizarro world of trailer people, senior citizens, kids screaming, and drunk idiots. By far one of the most over rated burger joints in town. Its

I came here for an end of the school year lunch with some co-​workers last month. We sat on the patio and all of our food came out in a timely fashion. I ordered a garden salad and a bowl of gumbo. The salad was a very big portion and easily could have been split between two people. The gumbo was a little too peppery for my taste and had big chunks of okra. Other people in my group ordered burgers and said they were very good. I’m willing to try Willie’s again and next time I’ll definitely order a burger!

A word of advice: DON’T GET THE NACHOS! $ 8 for some chips and fake cheese with ground beef piled on top doesn’t constitute nachos (RIPOFF!).
For living in a city so heavily influenced by texmex I’m surprised at how crappy the nachos are at some of the places I’ve been. I’ve had better nachos in Utah. One thing this place does right is the buffalo chicken strips… MmmMMM! I just got to taste them, but they were much better than the nachos and became my goto dish next time I end up at a Willie’s. My guess is people like this place for the atmosphere, it seems like it’s good for small gatherings and even has a sandbox for kids to play in. Would I go out of my way to come here, probably not… but if this is where people want to meet, I know to avoid the nachos and snag an order of buffalo tenders instead.

I live down the street and we eat here once a week. Excellent grilled Salmon, CFS, burgers fried shrimp and chicken.
The only thing that was ever below avg was the ribs.
Service is usually very good.
We like it.

I was recommended to go to Willie’s by a friend, I’ve passed by this Willie’s and the one on 1604 many times but never felt like going in, but I’m glad I tried it.
The set-​up is kind of strange. When you walk in, there is a large menu board and you have to stand there and let the hostess know what you want to eat, then she gives you your ticket and tells you to sit down. When you sit down, the waitress picks up your ticket and verifies that everything on the ticket is correct and she puts in the order on her side. I can see how it might expedite things by having the hostess taking the order, but I kind of felt rushed since there was a line building behind us and we had never been there before. My friend recommended the shrimp, so I got that. My dad got the fish tacos and my mom got wings.
We decided to sit inside since it was quite hot outside and the waitress helping us was really nice. This place is really nifty, I would totally recommend coming here just for the unique-​ness. There’s really nothing like it. Our food was FAST. Probably out about 8 – 10 minutes after we ordered it, which you can’t argue about. All the food was piping hot and fresh. Overall, the food was good. I really liked their fries. And the shrimp was juicy and delicious!
We went outside after we finished eating and they had a really nice play area for the kids, it was a GIANT sandbox. The funny part was the slogan «if you think you’re too big, than you are» lol! Love it. It’s a great place for parents to come and just have their kiddos play in the sandbox and it’s gated in so they can’t escape, can’t argue ;)
Willie’s is great, I didn’t really like the set-​up but overall, it was a great kid-​friendly restaurant :)

So this is the second Willie’s Grill & Icehouse I have visited in less than a week. Instead of the burger, I ordered the chicken fried steak ($ 9.95) this time (since someone else was payin!).
So the food was pretty good but I must admit I have had better, more flavorful CFS.
I’m giving this location 3 stars instead of the two that I gave the other location on 1604. Food quality and service were equal, but this location has a really nice deck and a giant sandbox for the kids — I thought that was worth one star at least. :)