Johnny's Italian Steakhouse — Restaurant in East Peoria

Big fail, had made reservations for a group of ten for a bachelor party dinner well in advance, upon arriving they ushered us to a waiting foyer saying they wanted to wait for more to arrive. Who does that? Very odd. For nearly twenty minutes we stood around and stared at each other wishing we could order drinks even as our group got to a good size. Then the manager popped in. She acted off aggressively curious to make sure our actual size was ten or twelve, we weren't sure if one or two more could show. Again, what? This shouldn't be an issue given a very large restaurant. We finally got moved to the actual table we had reserved. This was so unusual: I've been to a good selection of extremely posh spots, Fleming's, Ocean Prime, Weber Grill, and put up with attitude and awkward miscommunication all at worst the usual corporate nonsense not making things clear. Yet this was well out of sorts for any classy establishment. Making reservations is all about efficiency and avoiding waits but we ended up like we had just turned up with ten guys hoping to get seated. So backwards. I'd overlook this at Chili's or Texas Roadhouse; cannot when the menu is three times the prices. Nearly thirty minutes after arrival for our reserved table, finally ordering drinks, appetizers seemed silly somehow. We enjoyed the nicely sized house bread. Oddly there was only oil for dipping, no butters or sauces, another weird form below expectations. We all enjoyed the menu well enough. Plenty to treat, steaks, big salads, some seafood, smattering of rich well described entrees, pasta filled a good section, beef Wellington, and more! If only we had been setup right away instead of sitting down a half hour late. A couple did beers and cocktails, small draft list, huge martini and succulent ingredients could have made up for me if there was no after party. Sampled two of the cocktails, Luck be the Lady and the Citrus Basil Martini, very sweet and easy to drink! The food eventually showed itself, steaks disappeared very quick, loaded plates showing off sized portions, well made grub goes down easy. I sampled a slice and enjoyed solid deep much needed protein. Nothing excessively amazing like Fleming's Prime Steakhouse, or even a best filet I've had from Outback, but a winner for Peoria's protein scene. The meal finished up. Again I noticed we were now many minutes late to the after party due to the initial stalling and waiter delaying checks. I really don't get this place, gorgeous atmosphere, straight forward good standard menu presentation, plenty of quality touches to do everything right without even trying, alas a drawn out boring awkward experience with my salad tasty but way too small, salad toast was brittle, near impossible to eat. Then I sampled a buddy's crab stuffed shrimp. He couldn't get thru more than one, looked and smelled like it was going bad, but in my exuberance to try new things I scarffed down to anyway. That became the final straw around 6 hours later. I awoke with the full pains of food poisoning which for polite Yelpers sparing the details. Johnny's was a hard slap in the face as well...

I was never more disappointed in a restaurant in my life. We are a school who works with special needs students. We contacted Johnny's around or over a month ago and they agreed to having us dine there; they knew our numbers coming in. They had a chance to be prepared. Most of our students have never been to fine dining, this was to be an experience for them. Nothing went as planned or desired. It was suppose to be a choice of a steak dinner or spaghetti for our students and staff gets to choose their own meal. Staff wasn't allowed to choose their own meal, no choice of potato, which was suppose to be an option and we weren't allowed to get appetizers because it would take their cooks to long to prepare for a group our size. Even though they knew we were coming they did not have enough staff to cover us and the main dining room. One of the waitresses was very rude, the one who seemed to be in charge. She never smiled, you could tell she didn't want us to be there, and very short spoken. Staff took our drink orders and then we didn't see them again for quite some time. They came back and took our orders, and then had the nerve to tell us if we asked for our steaks to be prepared any way other than medium it well take our orders longer to be prepared and she was frowning on that. After that we didn't see them for at least 20 minutes before they came back to see about refills, and that was only for a small portion of our group, then the rest of us had to wait for more. They brought bread for us to eat before meals, and we were seated 6 or more at a table and were given 5 pieces of bread per basket. Our group was there at 11:00 for opening and we received our meals at 12:30 and had to be back on our bus heading back to our school, which was a hour drive away, at 1:00; rushing our students through a fine dining experience. We wanted our students to experience something special, and it was terrible. I would rate the food average, nothing really stood out; except an exceedingly long wait, and being made to feel we...

I made reservations over a week ahead of time and at that time was asked what the occasion was for our visit. I told the woman to whom I was speaking that it was our wedding anniversary. She asked which one and I told her. On the day of our anniversary, we entered the restaurant and there was no host/hostess at the entry. After several minutes we flagged down a woman walking through and were told that there was "only one waiter". Finally, someone came by and check our reservation and seated us near the back of the restaurant. At this point the restaurant was about one fourth occupied, most of the booths and tables were empty. Soon after we were seated a family with two young children, one of the children a baby a few months old) were seated across from our booth. Again...there were many empty tables and booths in our section. We didn't understand why this group was seated right next to us when there were several similar tables available to seat this family. Fortunately, the children were well behaved, but seating groups so close to each other with so many other seating options seemed odd. We were served by two waitresses ("only one waiter" LOL), one was in training. The meals and drinks we ordered were good, but not great. The service was good, but bare minimum attention was paid to us (long wait times to check to see how we were doing, e.g.) Nothing was mentioned about our special occasion. Overall, with no one at the entry to seat us, having to get the attention of someone walking by while we were certain that the bartender noticed us and did nothing, and having no mention of our special occasion (why did they even ask???), we felt like our patronizing of this restaurant was neither wanted nor appreciated. As a note, we had celebrated our anniversary at this same restaurant last year and at that time the waiter made us feel special and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This time, not at all. In retrospect, not surprised then that the restaurant was less than half occupied. We won't...