Live, from Peoria, Illinois it’s Saturday Night Cheeseburger! Starring this week’s host, Blue and featuring the Ready For Prime Beef Player, Marty Wombacher. And now please welcome our host for this week, all the way from Main Street in beautiful downtown Peoria, Blue!
It's a rainy old night out here tonight. My original plan was to go to Go-T's which is a biker bar on Adams Street. Phil Luciano just reviewed the place and said they had a great cheeseburger. Well I just went there and it was packed with bikers and there wasn't a seat at the bar. The crowd didn't look like it would be too receptive to pictures, so I've decided to go down the road to a bar I saw when I had lunch last week with Stacy Peterson. And so here we go. Sometimes I have to improvise here at MBIP and tonight is one of those nights.
Here we are at the Irish Villa Pub. As I said, I saw this place last week when I had lunch with Stacy. It was closed that day, but a woman who works at the Insurance place next door told me it's open at odd times. I thought since it's just a little after 10PM on a Saturday night it would be open, but it looks like it's closed. Let's try the door.
Shit, it's closed. Some nights you just can't win. Time for more improvisation.
And we're back on the road in search of a bar and a cheeseburger on this rainy and somewhat lonely Saturday night.
I ended up on Main Street and saw the bar, Blue. I've been meaning to go here for awhile. The lights appear to be on, so hopefully this third bar will be the charm.
There's only one way to find out and that's by going through the door and seeing what's going on in here.
Wow, it's really cool in here and kind of laid back for a Saturday night. Perfect, let's go snag a seat at the bar and see if they have cheeseburgers in here.
James who co-owns the place with this wife, Jessica (who's been featured on MBIP on one of our shop hops) serves me up a beer and told me while they do offer food during the week, there was none available on this night. So I asked if I could bring something in and he said that was cool. And so I wandered outside...
And I walked over to Mr. G's next door, but their lights were out too. Some nights luck is a harsh mistress.
There's a gas station over across the street, maybe they've got a microwave cheeseburger in there. It's the only place open on the block, so it's kind of the only chance, Blue looks like a great bar and I'm not in the mood to go anywhere else.
Let's go in and see what they've got in here.
There's refrigerated cases in the back, let's go see if there's a cheeseburger in our future.
Wow, this is sad. The only sandwiches they have are chicken "XXL" and cheese sandwiches. Well, you know what? I'm tired of fucking around and I want a beer, so this is going to be the cheeseburger of the night. Who knows, maybe it'll end up being a tasty microwave sandwich.
Okay, we're back at the bar with James serving up the sandwich. It turns out the gas station didn't have a microwave to warm the sandwich up in but, we're back at the bar and let's try this sandwich that James prepared in the Blue microwave.
Let's try this Blue plate special out, Motherclucker!
Well, it's not horrible, but it's not great either.
Okay, after a couple more bites I've come to the conclusion that it really is horrible. No more gas station sandwiches for me. I asked James to take it away and we can have a little tour of Blue and check out the bar.
The back of the bar is all lit up with white and blue lights and is very festive looking.
The top of the bar is a cool mosaic design.
Hey now!
The taps were somewhat hidden behind some signage, but I managed to get a partial shot of them for the Spike-O-Meter tap rating of the week!
Here's Alex who was briefly seated next to me at the bar. It was his 21st birthday and I think he was on his 21st drink of the evening. Happy birthday, Alex! Hopefully your hangover is long gone by now!
I love that they have a real Rock-Ola jukebox in here and not one of those internet things.
Here's a shot from the back of the bar near the pool table.
There's lots of pictures on the wall opposite the bar, let's check some of them out.
This is an ad for the debut album from Queen, very cool!
I love this True Confessions magazine cover!
Zoom, it's Elton John on a framed vintage 1971 Rolling Stone cover.
A giant Mardi Gras mask hangs over the bar alongside various other decorations and knick-knacks.
Colorful lit up paper mache globes and boxes are strung from one end of the ceiling to the other.
Josh and Miles were enjoying drinks at a table at the front of the bar.
And here's the entire party at the table. I asked them for a name for their party and we came up with: "Untitled, A Party In Progress."
Meanwhile, back at the bar I notice a possible money-laundering scheme going on at Blue, but hey, I'll never tell! See you all tomorrow.
My Cheeseburger...
Wasn’t a cheeseburger at all. It was a shitty, gas station microwave sandwich, sold in a microwaveless gas station. So that's that!
Cheeseburger Rating
Zero Wimpy’s. I think I'm cutting gas station food out of my diet.
Blue
619 W. Main Street
Peoria
309-636-8719
Further Reading: Peoria Journal Star, Foursquare and PBR.
P.S.
I'm not sure if SquareSpace has resolved the problem with the comments going in to a "moderated" folder for me to okay, so if you comment and it doesn't go up right away, just be patient and it will be there when I "okay" it. Hopefully SquareSpace will correct this today.