My wife and I visited Peoria for a concert for our 5 year wedding anniversary and first night away from our baby son. We made a reservation 2 weeks in advance for dinner at Jim's steakhouse and perhaps our expectations were too high. We arrived a few minutes early and told the host we had a reservation at 5. He proceeded to offer us our choice of seating--a booth at the bar, or a tiny table squeezed into a nook by some doors. We selected the table. We weren't sure he had heard us correctly since every other couple was seated at a normal sized table and the restaurant was pretty much empty. I got up and told the hostess about our reservation to make sure she knew we were there, and she seemed very confused as to why I was telling her.

Our waitress was endearing but incompetent. She couldn't remember our beer order and luckily double checked before bringing us white wine. We ordered the avocado bruschetta for an appetizer, and it was 90% blue cheese which my wife doesn't care for.

We each ordered the strip steak with baked potato and salad. I added scallops and mushrooms to my steak, and we were asked if we wanted garlic bread, which we said yes. We didn't realize it was an additional $6 as most steakhouses would provide complimentary bread for the table, but I digress.

The steaks: My wife ordered her steak cooked medium. Her steak contained a thick layer of char while the inside was rare. Several times she almost couldn't swallow because it was like eating bloody charcoal. Due to its extreme char, it was lacking in flavor and we had to ask for salt and pepper since the tiny table we were seated at did not have s&p.

My steak (rare, while ordered medium rare) wasn't as charred, but still wasn't salted well enough. Anyone who knows anything about steak knows how important that is! My scallops were good and arrived on a bed of rice pilaf which was unexpected.

The baked potatoes: I liked the herbed sour cream while my wife, a purist, would have preferred plain sour cream. Also not having salt during the first half of our severely affected the flavor of the baked potato.

The salads: Here again we see the blue cheese caked on in copious amounts (blue cheese dressing) while my wife's ranch salad was swimming in dressing.

To be honest, had this been a lower end restaurant or really anything but a "steakhouse" with steakhouse prices, I'd give this at least 3 stars for effort. As it is, we dropped $200 for a mediocre dinner and below average service. Our waitress asked every table but ours if they were celebrating anything. She asked us if we were out Christmas shopping. Just was a little disappointing since we had high expectations and don't get the chance to go out very often. We weren't impressed and will not be coming back.