Richard’s On Main

Ordered the tenderloin, chicken strips horseshoe and onion rings. Food was delivered in a decent amount of time and tasted pretty darn good. Everything was warm, but the onion rings. Not sure if they were served fresh. Service was good and friendly. Overall a pretty good experience

The 2 stars is for the service, which was very good. Can’t really give any stars for the food or décor. Very bland, cold feeling: poor (too bright for a cozy bar feeling) lighting. Downright ugly room! Had onion rings which were gooey and greasy, and salads with warm lettuce, way too sweet coconut shrimp. Bleh!

We had the steak sandwich and tuna steak dinner. The steak sandwich was very good although they forgot my onions and mushrooms. The tuna steak however tasted very fishy and not fresh I would not recommend it. However the service was very good! Not the greatest ambience in the dining area!

Got a carry out order here mid afternoon. Ordered the Tuna Caesar salad. Order was ready when I arrived. Total was $ 12. It was very good. I would have liked a little more salad itself for the price but it’s overall fine.

Dinner was bland last night, garlic white sauce pizza and taco pizza. Service was good, atmosphere was dated. We had dinner at 745 on Saturday and the place was not filled by any means. We may try again but probably not

OMG!!! Their rib-​eye steak sandwich!!! It is so good it makes you want to move to Peoria!

It was a dark and stormy night… well, it was. Hanging out in Peoria we decided to pop by Richard’s which does get an A+ on location.
Food: I ordered their mini-taco’s. Slightly overdone and could use a bit more filling, but very plentiful and great for sharing. Decent munchies.
Cider: Woodchuck and Angry Orchard are too ordinary. As a huge cider fan, I always enjoy places that have more variety of hard ciders. You guys should definitely look into Vandermill ciders.
Location, venue and ambiance make this place a great handout.

Trying not to think about this place… I ate WAYYYY too much. Sadly, I cannot recommend to anyone EVER having the Horseshoe sandwich for lunch. It is so good that I ended up eating the entire thing and it was a plate pile of food.
What is a horseshoe??? If you have to ask, you must be a tourist from out of state. A horseshoe is two slices of crispy Texas toast, covered with a meat of your choice (I chose Turkey slices), then all that is covered with crispy fries, then all of that is smothered with nacho cheese! Wahoo it is awesome.
The trick is to eat it as fast as you can so that you can get it in your stomach before it realizes you are full. Of course, the tradeoff is that you feel miserable and sleepy for 3 hours afterwards, but WHO CARES!!! It tasted so awesome.
The atmosphere here is very much a bar, but attracts lots of white-​collar worker from the nearby businesses during the lunch hour. The staff are very friendly and the service prompt. For such big portions, you can still plan a lunch here in under an hour.
Great menu with lots of sandwich choices. Excellent fries. Full bar.
I love this place. One of my favorite stops for lunch when I’m not worried about the 6 pounds I will gain from eating here.

We had a great meal at Richards. Prices abit higher than expected but not way off. Cajun Smothered Chicken Breast was excellent. We’ll be back.

I understand that the owner wants to sell the business and has probably checked out, but for this place to go downhill so fast in three years is disheartening. The booths are falling apart, wifi barely works, the food quality has plummeted and it is no longer as bustling with patrons as it once was. I realize that the downturn of business downtown has a lot to do with the lack of foot traffic, but that doesn’t excuse the extreme negative food shift. The last time we were there the fried mushrooms we got were inedible because they were just dripping with grease that quickly cooled and it destroyed our appetites for the entrees. For the first time since I’ve been going I am in no hurry to make a repeat visit, especially with other bar food options in the area. Peoria is becoming chain restaurant central with all the expansion of strip malls so to see this small business fall so far so rapidly.

The best horseshoes and burgers in the area. Large menu and large portions for the money.
Switched it to 4 stars because they stopped taking carryout orders over the phone. Pretty much my favorite place in town lost 90% of my business.

The greasiest meal I think I have ever attempted to eat. The «restaurant for sale» sign on the door should have been a red flag. Why the locals give this place 3 ½ stars is incomprehensible. The onion rings were literally dripping oil and the ranch dressing was watery with no flavor. I ordered Kurt’s BLT which was served on oily pad that was supposed to be Texas toast. The fries were so oily that it started pooling on the plate. I can only hope if this place sells the new owners will clean the deep fryers and change the menu and deliver Peoria from the grease laden legacy of inedibilty. The servers though were great.

I didn’t even want to give this place one star. I went in last night and not only were we were rudely told to box up our food because they were closing, one of the waitresses literally grabbed a glass out of my hand because they had just closed and they needed people to leave. Extremely rude. I have never in my life witnessed such awful behavior or service. The waitress took a drink out of my hand that was half full that was paid for. Not only should they not allow people to order food past a certain time, but they shouldn’t serve people more drinks right before telling them they need to leave because they are «closed.»

The average review for this place is 4 stars. Wtf? Peoria people need to get out of town more. The food was bad. Service bad. The bathrooms, bad.
Ordered chicken. Very dry.
Ordered Salmon sandwich. Very dry.
No refills on water. Not asked if I wanted another beer.
They bring you little cups of ketchup. Apparently they can’t afford to put a damn bottle on the table.
The bathroom looked like it had not been cleaned in months. There was a black film on the sinks and around the trim. The toilet was missing the tank lid and there was a plank of wood on top of it.
So if you want bad food, poor service, parched pallet, and no cell service. well this is your type of 4-​star restaurant then.

I haven’t ate here in years… okay…let me be honest… I have never ate here sober until last Saturday. I ordered a tenderloin horseshoe. MAYBE I’m a tenderloin snob, but, this tenderloin was awful. Don’t order it alone… dont order it with a gallon of cheese on it… dont order it with 24k gold chips on it… just pick another menu item. It reminded me of the frozen pre breaded one at say a gas station. The horseshoe was decent, but I would get the hamburger next time. My boyfriend got the filet and it was good, nothing to brag about but decent. He got the twice baked potatoe with it which was a bit hard. The waitress was super, she couldn’t have been any nicer or provided better service. So I leave you with this, if you want to eat and you’re downtown go ahead and stop in… but I do recommend having a few drinks before you do.

Decent tap beer selection. My meal was mediocre … even for bar food … but the rest of the bar patrons seemed to enjoy theirs. Major points lost for the horrific décor and harsh lighting. Also, being underground there was zero cell signal terrible for business people.
Staff was nice but one was lit.

Richard’s has been around for so long. I mean really, they have a phone jack at every booth so you can get online (and those were put in during the renovation so you know it’s been around for a while). Which is actually really progressive for the era when dial-​up was still the only way to do that. But seriously — someone please go see if you can still dial in.
In addition to that they’ve got decent bar food, pool tables and usually good service. Granted the place could use a little love: upholstery is shabby, décor is dated (see above phone jack monologue), and the overall feel is a bit dingy (it is in a basement after all) but it’s one of the few decent bars in downtown Peoria.
They also have a food challenge involving several pounds of meat, bread and French fries topped with two pounds of zesty cheese sauce so… there’s that.

I heard this was a good place to eat from the hotel I was staying at. So the waitress was good, rough around the edges but good. The environment was charming and looked like a place I would stay and drink with some friends.
Saying all that. I ordered Ahi Tuna steak with a side salad. The salad was alright except for it barely being sliced in any manner. Just a sign of a lazy cook. My $ 18.99 Ahi steak was well over cooked. The menu states medium rare, as all Ahi steaks should be cooked. This was not that. You could tell the cook treated this expensive piece of fish like a New York strip. Just cook on high. What a shame to ruin a great piece of fish. I’m sure they can cook their steaks wonderfully, but just don’t order the Ahi Tuna.

Richard’s is a downtown pub that has a dozen or so beers on draft. I ordered a house Cabernet for $ 5 and was pleased that it seemed fresh.
The place has a nice Rathskeller atmosphere, because you walk down a short flight of stairs to enter, and due to the exposed brick interior.
We visited years ago and they had Framboise on draft, but now I noticed that they serve it by the bottle.
I’m a fan of homemade pizza, so we decided on a BBQ version which touts a homemade crust.
The pizza was OK, but the crust had a chalky maybe almost unrisen flavor to it, and the BBQ sauce was virtually undetectable. For the price, which I think was about $ 14, it wasn’t great.
Bar service was decent, however we were never asked how our pizza was.
This isn’t a place for a quiet meal generally. If people are in there, sound carries and at times can be a boisterous place. There are some games and pool tables, and it’s a nice place to stop in after a show for a drink or a bite, and they’re open late.

This is a really cool place to visit, because it’s in true «public house» fashion, as it’s located beneath the buildings visible from the street. You walk in down a set of stairs that makes you feel like you’re getting on a subway. Once inside, the food is pretty good (the burger was great), but I think the cheese fries are not quite as good as advertised. Our waitress asked if I wanted cheese sauce for my fries, which turned out to be the equivalent of concession nacho cheese in a little plastic container. Oh, and they charge you more for that, which I wish I had known beforehand. The only other detractor was the sense I got that they were riding the line between public house and dive bar. The breathalyzer machine by the entrance (not sure if that’s something that’s required or what) is almost comically bad. Not sure that’s the vibe I’d want to give off as people come in. But again, there could be some other reason for it that I’m not aware of, as I’m not from Peoria.
In all, I did really like this place, and was very impressed by the beer selection. The burger was great, and the service was impressively quick, given that we could see just one woman handling all of the tables on a Saturday afternoon. Cool place for sure, and if I’m ever back in Peoria, I’ll come again.