Grill Island Opens On Route 59: Loaded Cheese Fries Galore

JOLIET, IL — Hot dog mustard cheese fries. Shawarma cheese fries with Tahini. Gyros loaded fries with tzatziki.

A new fast-food restaurant along Joliet's portion of Route 59 between Shorewood and Plainfield hopes to be your go-to restaurant for loaded cheese fries. Grill Island Restaurant opened last weekend at 1522 Route 59. It's in the same Joliet Commons plaza as the Starbucks and the Lou Malnati's Pizzeria.

Grill Island is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. It's delivers via DoorDash and Grubhub.

The menu has nine sandwich selections including an Italian beef combo, Italian sausage, Shawarma and gyros. There are 10 different options for loaded cheese fries, four salads and three soups.

Ibrahim Younan, Grill Island's manager, told Joliet Patch that his new Joliet restaurants wants to be known for its loaded fries, homemade desserts and its Brazilian lemonade.

"I think the loaded fries make us different," he said. "There is not a lot of market for loaded fries, especially the way we do it. Anything we have, we can do it with loaded fries."

The homemade desserts at Grill Island include strawberry cheesecake and plain cheesecake. There is also a plain rice pudding and a rice pudding with coconut and raisins.

"These are all homemade," remarked Ledya Bakloug, the assistant manager.

The owners of Grill Island say they also are proud of their Philly steak sandwich, saying "they are very proud of the quality of the Philly steak sandwiches."

The restaurant managers decided to open their first Grill Island in Joliet because of the high volume of traffic along the Route 59 corridor.

Prior to the opening of the Grill Island, the restaurant had been vacant for more than a year. It had been a Firehouse Subs.

"It's a big store. We have a lot of space,"the assistant manager said.

The ownership team for Grill Island also wanted to get the word out that they are still hiring for several positions at their new restaurant, particularly for chefs and cooks.

"We really want to have the loaded cheese fries get really popular so we can open more locations in the future," said Bakloug, the assistant manager.