Live from Peoria, Illinois, it’s Saturday Night starring this week’s hosts, Kelleher’s, New Amsterdam and Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern and special guest stars, Cassie and Tim and featuring The Ready For Prime Beef Player, Marty Wombacher. And now, please welcome from Peoria’s Riverfront, this week’s triple threat of hosts, Kelleher’s, New Amsterdam and Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern!
We’ve got a ride tonight and our two special guest stars for the evening are inside, it’s Cassie and Tim, who we last saw here on the blog when we did our First Annual MBIP Holiday Beanless Chili Tour back in November of last year...wow, I can’t believe it’s been that long! Anyway, the plan for tonight is to have a four-course meal on the riverfront, since this post is going up on the 4th of July! And so here we go on this four-course adventure! The first stop is Kelleher’s for the...
First Course: Appetizer @ Kelleher’s
As you can see, there’s people taking advantage of this mild July weather and enjoying dinner and drinks outside on the front sidewalks, but we decided to eat our appetizer inside. We were told to go inside and seat ourselves by the two pretty hostesses at the hostess station, Savannah and Kerra! Once inside we saw a familiar face behind the bar, our friend, Jamie Jo, who was busy pouring drinks, but she took time to flash a great smile for the MBIP camera! Great to see her! We decided to bypass the bar seats and head down for a table just beyond the bar...
And here we are being served drinks by our friendly and pretty waitress, Vanessa.
Here’s the view of Kelleher’s from where we’re seated. There’s a nice crowd in here on this holiday weekend!
Devin stopped by our table and told me he’s a regular MBIP reader, which you all know by now I love to hear! It was his birthday Saturday night, so happy birthday to Devin, great to meet you and I love the Lemmy t-shirt!
And here’s the first course of the evening, we ordered the Beef Bites off of Kelleher’s appetizer menu. This appetizer dish is Guinness Beef (you can also get corned beef) covered in melted Swiss cheese and it’s sitting on wedges of toasted rye bread. This appetizer could be a meal unto itself, so it’s lucky that we split it three ways. The beef was really tasty and tender and the Swiss cheese and rye bread mixed very well into this flavorful mix and it was a wonderful way to start off this four-course meal!
And now it’s back to Water Street to head to the next destination...
Second Course @ New Amsterdam
We hoofed it down to the other end of Water Street to have our second course at one of my favorite Riverfront restaurants, New Amsterdam. As we walked through the beer garden I ran into my friend, Lindsay and here she is surrounded by three of her friends in the middle picture, from left: Courtney, Nicole, Lindsay and Marissa. Great to see Lindsay and meet her friends! And now it’s inside New Amsterdam for the second course of the evening!
Once again we walked past the bar and settled into a booth located opposite from the bar. As we sat down, Todd, who owns the bar came over and posed for a picture with Cassie at our booth. Great to see Todd again, it’s always a pleasure!
Lynette was our waitress for our stay at New Amsterdam and she was fun and bubbly! Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday evenings, New Amsterdam features the musical stylings of legendary local musician, Greg Williams! There’s no cover for this entertainment and Greg’s one of the best musicians in the area and beyond and it’s worth a trip here just to see him, of course the great food and drink here are great bonus items once you’re inside!
And speaking of great food, here’s our second course...okay we cheated a little and actually got two courses here, but don’t tell anybody! We all agreed that New Amsterdam had the best chili in our holiday beanless chili tour, so we had to sample that again and then for our official second course we got a flatbread pizza from the “Lords Of The Flatbread" menu selections on the menu. We got The Dutch Flat which is Chipotle Mayo, Turkey, Ham, Avocado, Bacon, with melted Mozzarella and Cheddar Cheese. This was really a brilliant mix of flavors and the two cheeses and Chipotle Mayo really took it over the top. And the flatbread crust was thin and crunchy and this was really delicious. And the chili was so great too, it’s got equal parts sweet and spice and it’s got big chunks of savory beef and melted cheese on top, it’s so tasty and good...but don’t tell anyone we got it! This is just supposed to be a four-course meal!
Third Course @ Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern
Okay, time to head back down Water Street for the thirds course of the evening at another one of my favorite restaurants, Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern. This is a fun way to spend an evening because you can park your car and just walk to the different destinations here on Water Street!
And here we are inside of Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern. The evening is flying by and we didn’t realize it was close to closing time, but they said we made it just in time to order our Third Course for the evening! We were greeted by this fun quartet at the hostess station, from left: Kathe, Lauren, Annie and Ali. Annie gets the best shirt of the evening award, I love that! Now if only we had an award! Well, I’ll get something to present to her on the next trip here, it’ll be a good excuse to come back here!
We got a table in the corner to sit at and the menu is located on the chalkboard wall just down at the other end and we chose our Third Course, which is the main course of the evening, so we chose two items to split for this course...
And here’s Lauren with the Third Course, talk about great service and it’s service with such a pretty smile, you gotta love that!
Here’s our plate with our Third Course meal on it. We got the Rib Tips with a side of the Warm Bacon Potato Salad and it looks fabulous! And it tastes even better! The Rib Tips were fall off the bone tender and so savory and delicious! The sauce was great too, the Rib Tips are hand-trimmed from the St. Louis Cut Ribs and are some of the tastiest I’ve ever had. I’ve had the Warm Bacon Potato Salad and it’s one of my favorite things in the world and it didn’t disappoint on this trip! This was a wonderful Third Course, but we were left with a bit of a dilemma about our Fourth and final course of the evening, which was going to be our dessert. The plan was to go the the Riverfront Emack & Bolio’s for some of their amazing ice cream, but we realized it was way too late for that as this evening just flew by. We were trying to figure out what to do, when all of a sudden...
Lauren had a dessert idea for us! She suggested their homemade Bacon Pecan Pie and that sounded really intriguing, so now it’s time for...
The Fourth Course: Dessert @ Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern
I have to tell you, I’m not really a big pie eater and I don’t really care for pecan pie, but Bacon Pecan Pie sounded like something I had to try and Cassie and Tim agreed, so we took Lauren’s suggestion and ordered it and it came to the table warm and after one bite we all agreed on one thing, as good as all the food was, this pie was the hit of the evening! The sweetness of the pecan filling is balanced out by the smoky bacon bits and we found out that one of the secret ingredients of the pie is orange zest and it added a nice citrus flavor to the mix. This was so good! You have to try this, it’s so delicious and a wonderful way to finish off this fantastic Four-Course Riverfront dinner! Thanks to everyone at Kelleher’s, New Amsterdam and Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern for some wonderful samplings of food! And Thanks to Cassie and Tim for joining me on this holiday feast, great to see them and hang out with them again! Happy 4th of July, everyone and we’ll see you all tomorrow!
This was such an amazing combination of food for one evening! If you’re up for a fun evening on Peoria’s Riverfront, I suggest you take the same four-course tour, as I wrote above, all the food was amazing, but the top prize for the night has to go to Blue Duck Barbecue’s Bacon Pecan Pie, that was so delicious and I’m definitely going to have to go back for more!
SN Rating
Four Galloping Gourmets—Four Galloping Gourmets for a stupendous Four-Courese Meal on Peoria’s Riverfront!
Related Post: Saturday Night @ The First Annual MBIP Holiday Beanless Chili Tour.