Live from Peoria, Illinois, it’s Saturday Night starring this week’s host, Po-Boys on Frostwood with special guest stars, Ben and Haley and featuring The Ready For Prime Beef Player, Marty Wombacher. And now please welcome this week’s host, Po-Boys on Frostwood!
This is the strip of buildings on Frostwood that houses, PoBoys, let’s get a little closer to the action, shall we?
That’s better, here we are outside of Po-Boys. The sign in the outer foyer says it’s, “Not for boring people.” I’m just going to go in and pretend like I don’t have a habit of watching water boil and hopefully no one will be the wiser and I won’t get thrown out of this joint!
Okay, we’re in! That’s the bar over to the left, but we’re meeting a couple in here and I think I see them in the dining room opposite the bar and there they are: Haley and Ben! Ben got hold of me on facecrack a little over a month ago and suggested doing a vegetarian tour here on MBIP, here’s the messages we traded back and forth:
And so we made plans and now here we are! See how easy it is to work out things here on MBIP! Ben and Haley told me they started eating vegetarian at the beginning of this year after seeing friends getting into a meatless lifestyle. They said that some factors in deciding to go veggie included putting less money into corporate farms when eating out, decrease the cost of some meals (as meat is typically the most costly ingredient), prevent some possibility of disease (as red meat has been directly proven to increase the possibility of many diseases and cancers), as well as and most importantly to help decrease greenhouse gas emissions, deforesting and earthly water consumption. That sounded good to me and so I’ve decided that once a month we’d go veggie here on our Saturday Night meals for a year and Ben and Haley have agreed to join me on these monthly meatless outings! Ben is a producer, musician and DJ and you can check out his work and upcoming gigs by clicking on these links: facecrack page, website and Soundcloud page. Haley is an RN at St. Francis and is currently working in the Emergency Room and as you can imagine, that’s a job that’s challenging and different every day! It’s great to meet both of them and this is one of the reasons I love doing MBIP, meeting fun and interesting people!
Our pretty and friendly server for the evening is Alison. In addition to being a great waitress, Alison told us she’s a culinary student at I.C.C. so she may be cooking some of the appetizers and entrees here soon as well as serving them up! She took our order—I let Ben and Haley choose the vegetarian dinner and now it’s time to take a quick look around in here while it’s being prepared.
In addition to tables for two to four, there’s also communal tables in the dining room for larger parties. And opposite the dining room is a full and colorful bar that’s lit up with bulbs hanging overhead and New Orleans beads hanging from them. As you can see, they have nice selection of beers on tap here and there’s tables located on the wall opposite the bar for those that want to dine close by the watering hole in here!
Po-Boy’s menu is New Orlean’s style food and the decor in the restaurant and bar matches the theme of the cuisine in here. New Orleans photos, art, sculptures, beads and colorful masks really liven up the restaurant and add to the fun and lively atmosphere in here.
Meanwhile, back at our table, I’ve got a feeling it’s about dinner time, so time to sit back down with Ben and Haley.
Looks like I was right, because our appetizers have just been delivered to the table! We got an order of the homemade potato chips and fried green tomatoes. Both of these were delicious appetizers, so far I like being a vegetarian!
For the main course Ben and Haley chose the vegetarian jambalaya and here’s James serving up our bowl, which was more than enough for the three of us to split. You can read more about it in the review below, but it was so delicious and it had a genuine New Orleans spicy kick to it. Very tasty and satisfying!
Here’s a shot of Haley and Ben enjoying dinner in spite of me bugging them with the MBIP Camera. Hey, they’ve got to learn to put up with this if they plan on doing another vegetarian episode with me!
We were pretty full after dinner, but Alison surprised us by ordering us up an order of a real New Orleans style dessert, Beignets, covered in powdered sugar, delivered up by Robert! These were so delicious! They’re deep-fried fritters that are lighter than air as you bite in to them. I could eat a whole bowl of them! A perfect end to a great meal!
And as you can see from the almost empty plates, we thoroughly enjoyed this vegetarian dinner!
Cheers, from the three of us at Po-Boys on Frostwood! Thanks to everyone at Po-Boys for a great meal and friendly hospitality and to Ben and Haley for joining me and ordering the first vegetarian meal of this year-long monthly vegetarian dining tour! I’m looking forward to seeing where they pick for next month’s meatless meal already! We’ll see you all tomorrow!
I let Ben and Haley order the first of our monthly meatless meals here at MBIP and they did a great job of picking out some tasty vegetarian dishes. We started out with a dueling appetizer of homemade potato chips and fried green tomatoes. The chips were crispy and had just the right amount of salt and were a great way to start off dinner. I’m not a big eater of tomatoes, so I was a little reluctant to try the fried green tomatoes, but they were a delicious appetizer. They were lightly breaded on the outside and that added a nice crunch to the cooked tomato inside. The sauce that they served with them complimented the dish well, it added a little bit of spice and rounded out the appetizer nicely.
For the main course, Ben and Haley chose the vegetarian jambalaya and it was really tasty. It’s served with white rice as a base and the jambalaya was a thick stew of different peppers, onions and other vegetables in a savory gravy that had a decent amount of kick to it. It definitely had a New Orleans flavor going on and the bread served with it was bakery fresh and this was really a hearty and filling main course.
For dessert, our waitress Alsion treated us to a plate of Beignets which are donut-like deep fried fritters served in a mountain of powdered sugar. These were so sweet and delicious! And the fritters were crispy on the outside and light and flaky inside, a perfect end to a very tasty dinner at Po-Boys!
SN Rating
Three and a quarter Galloping Gourmets—This was a wonderful start to our monthly vegetarian meals, I really didn’t miss the meat at all in this dinner and that’s a real important element in vegetarian dining! However, If you want to have a little meat with your meal, there’s plenty of those options here as well, check out the menu at Po-Boy’s by clicking here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have a plate of bacon!
Po-Boy’s On Frostwood
6736 N. Frostwood Pkwy
Peoria
309-839-2179
facecrack page
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