Excellent Eats in Lake County: The Shanty

By: Jonathan Jones 02/24/2015

If you’re from Lake County and haven’t heard of The Shanty, you probably have lived under a rock. The Wadsworth establishment on Route 41 is a cozy, quaint and rural-esque restaurant that is renowned for their seafood and steaks. It feels as though you’re with the family eating dinner out in this friendly environment.

The building The Shanty is in has been erected for a century. In 2010, local Lake County residents and businesses assisted the Wadsworth restaurant from refurbished barnwood. The Shanty continues to evolve their menu to keep the fan favorite dishes, but adding new flavor periodically to their rapport.

This has catapulted the business into recognition from not only the state of Illinois, but nationwide exposure. In late 2014, The Shanty received a Delicious Destination award from the Illinois Tourism office.

Also in 2014, The Shanty was featured on Food Network’s, “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” with Guy Fieri.

In this episode, the Shanty owned by the Kallanis family displayed Dmitri (Kallianis) doing what he does best: Cook. He created the restaurant’s signature dishes in which Fieri was astounded by.

Kallanis’ two dishes included the Whiskey Shrimp, which is four fresh jumbo shrimp flamed in their signature Jack Daniels cream sauce and served over garlic toast with sautéed vegetables. This cuisine forced Fieri to comment that ‘The Shrimp is killer,’ and ‘Now that’s a sauce.’

The second dish prepared for national television was the Conch Filet Steak. This meal includes an eight-ounce filet mignon rubbed in Cajun spices and flamed with fresh conch meat, cilantro, tomato and red onion.

This had Fieri say, “The Conch Filet Steak is just about perfect. And the Conch is nice and tender, your marinating process and cooking process really makes it tender. That is a beautiful looking filet.”

There are plenty of other splendid eats from The Shanty like the Rum Soaked Pork Chops (Porterhouse-Cut), Alligator Tail (If you dare), Lemon-Wine Mussels, Tequila & Orange Grilled Salmon, Old World Chicken Spiedini and much, much more.

Did we mention they set the ambiance by playing live music over the weekend?

So make your way to Wadsworth to the legendary Shanty and find out what everyone is talking about in Lake County, the state of Illinois and even further outside of the state lines.