Eagans is a nice restaurant on Water Street in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Eagan's is not a great place to eat.

I went to Eagan's with my girlfriend before a show at Uihlein Hall, and I was not impressed. To start off with, once you walk in the door, there is no one to greet you. We went in the front door, and could not find the hostess station. It did not take us too long to locate it, but it was still disconcerting. Once we did spy it we had to snake through the bar to get there. Luckily it was not too crowded, but it was not empty either.

Once we finally made it to the hostess station, the hostess did a nice job of finding us a table. The place was crowded, so with no reservations, I was a little concerned. However, just as she grabbed menus and was about to show us our table, the phone rang, and she answered it. We were literally taking our first step to the table and had to go back. To make things worse, she was not just fielding a quick call for a reservation, but the caller seemed to be playing 20 questions. We could hear, "We are open till 1:00 am on New Years. ...Yes, we open at 7." The hostess can't do much about the content of the calls, but Eagan's needs someone to answer the phone, or route calls to the bar.

The dining room was over crowded with tables, so again we had to snake our way to the back, bouncing off chairs and kids. To Eagan's credit, we did get a nice table, in the back, and with some quiet, but unfortunately we were sitting down with doubts about Eagan's in our mind.

Our waitress was nice, and very timely, she hooked us up with water, bread, took our drink orders, and gave us menus. Unfortunately the menu is not very good. There are only 9 entree's on the menu, and there is really no theme to speak of. The entree's range from Seafood Stew to Ahi-Tuna, with Grilled Meatloaf and a half a chicken thrown in at random, I guess to give Dad something to eat.

Shame on me, I ordered the Ahi-Tuna in what I was not sure was a seafood restaurant. It was not good. It came in a soy-rice-wine sauce with sauteed vegetables, but the sauce was very blah, and the vegetables were very small and skinny. My girlfriend got the special: baked, encrusted salmon. It was not cooked well, and was not flavorful to boot. Part of the food failing can be laid on us for ordering fish in a non-seafood restaurant, but 6 out of 9 of the entrees were seafood, so we thought it might be ok. It wasn't. The food wasn't bad, just un-inspired, and with the prices pushing first tier, it should have been better.

Again, to Eagan's credit, our waitress was very nice, and very good, it was just the rest of the Eagan's experience that failed. I didn't start this site to trash places, but when a restaurant doesn't deliver, I need to write that as well.

I give Eagan's 2 out of 5 stars.

Eagan's
1030 N Water Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202
2 of 5 stars