Rizzi's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Peoria

This was a very nice, relaxed environment for a languid lovely meal. The food was excellent and the portions were larger than typical for finer dining. Both my date and I were able to take home enough for lunch, and I very rarely fail to clean my plate.

It is a very intimate dining room with bar. It's got a nice vibe and lighting. Although the quarters are close it makes a lovely buzz. It was also a night for a formal event somewhere, and it was nice to be in a place so many folks chose to celebrate a special event. We saw a number of splendid young couples.

I really enjoyed my appetizer, the mussels which were served with a rather zesty red sauce and they were plentiful! My cojmpanion had the capreze salad which was beautifully presented and had a fabulous balsamic reduction. Very nice.

My dinner salad let me down a bit. It was mostly iceberg with a cherry tomato and some black olive slices. It was fresh iceberg but it just didn't really match the vibe and quality of the rest of the meal.

We had the Veal Sorrentino and the Pesto Crusted Salmon with the house pasta. The sauce for the salmon was excellent as was the pasta. Big, wide, ribbony noodles--I will taste that again! Both the fish and veal were nicely cooked and the plates were lovely to look at.

There were a couple of things the detracted from the overall meal. Our server was not educated on the wine list. We had already googled a bit and wanted to pair something with our meal. She was an excellent upseller and server and throughout the experience highlighted specials, but in this sort of restaurant it would have been more appropriate if she had some suggestions of wines to pair to food. I kind of wish we had reached out to the bartender.

We did have a nice bottle of white though and it went down well enough.

They have a lovely restroom. Pristine, flowers, ambiance. They also have the thinnest paper towels in the whole world. I'm all fancy with my cloth napkin in the dining room, but once you face that paper towel dispenser you feel like you might be at McDonalds for a second. It seems silly, but it broke the third wall.

We shared tiramisu for dessert. It was the best tiramisu I have ever had. It was perfect in everyway, the texture was fabulous and we were polite about it but we definitely scrapped for the last bite in ways.

Thank you all so much for your hospitality and hard work. Eating with you is a...

I would normally give 5 out of 5 stars for everything. I ate at Rizzi's last Saturday (1/27/24) and was disappointed for the first time. I have eaten here many times and love the place, the food, the atmosphere. It's great. I usually order the Osso Bucco because it is literally the best........falls off the bone and melts in your mouth. I had been craving it for over 6 months and finally went to have what I had been craving. This time the Osso Bucco was not falling off the bone. A knife and fork were both needed to eat it. Usually a fork will suffice. In hind sight I should have sent it back. My fault. The risotto was delicious. I did mention it to my waitress afterwards. Apparently she didn't mention it to any manager as I was surprised that no one came by to offer an apology. She didn't seem fazed by it. In fact she was incredibly overtaxed that evening with her tables. I've done the work and can certainly understand this, but anytime I had any negative feedback about anything, I would run it by a manager or owner to allow them to do some micromanaging of the problem. I will definitely go back. I'm going to guess this was a one-time thing and that the dish just hadn't been cooked slowly to get it to that melt in your mouth stage. Again, it was my fault for not sending it back or asking for another option. It's a shame when you consider the cost of the dish.....again, which I'm not complaining about. It's worth every penny when it's done right.

Amended review:

As you can see below, Bekim (one of the owners) reached out to me and invited me up to the restaurant to enjoy the Osso Bucco on him. I went up on Saturday night (after Valentines Wednesday) and it was already packed by 5-ish. I touched base with Bekim and went to the bar for a drink. When a chair opened up I grabbed it and decided to just eat at the bar. Alex, the bartender, made me feel special and gave me plenty of attention (although she was this way with all the guests). The Osso Bucco was delicious and cooked very well. I had a couple glasses of the featured wine and enjoyed them immensely. As I said in my original review, I would never think of not coming back to this establishment as it's always been a hit except for that one time. I commend Bekim for inviting me up to make sure I came away with a more positive experience and it definitely lived up to that. Thanks Bekim for a...

I’m sorry to go against the grain, but my wife and I were not fans after eating here with our 4 year old. While the dining room was very small, it was decorated nicely and everything appeared to be clean and well kept. However, this is where the good in my review stops. We were promptly seated and greeted by our waitress and after finding out they only have RC products to drink, we gave our drink orders. After our drinks arrived we placed our orders. My daughter get the children’s chicken strips, my wife the alfredo plus chicken (which is $4 extra), and I got the lasagna with a salad. During most of our dining experience my wife and I noticed that the dining room still had several open tables and was not overly busy. It took 20 minutes to get the salad that I ordered and 21 minutes to get our hot food. I’m not sure why it took 20 minutes to build a small salad and get it delivered to our table only to be followed immediately by the food I would expect to take much longer to prep than the salad. After the food was delivered my wife and I examined what we got in anticipation from the highly rating reviews of the restaurant only to feel let down. That $4 extra for the chicken to be added to the alfredo gained my wife 5 bites of chicken (not a whole chicken breast), definitely not enough chicken to justify the extra $4. We then went to cut our daughters chicken fingers for her to find that the $8 kids meal is literally just 4-5 chicken fingers. There were no sides included in her meal at all. Again, disappointing for the $8. We started to eat and felt that while the food was hot, it was a little bland and disappointing for our taste. To get a refill was challenging and a time investment. Our waitress seemed more interested in tending to tables of older aged customers and/or tables that ordered alcohol. Though the wait staff was friendly ours anyway seemed more on the slower side. We both walked out, after paying our bill, feeling disappointed and we will not return. I have no problem eating at a nice place and paying the prices that we paid for our dinner as long as I feel the wait staff are good and the food is great. Unfortunately, we did not find that here in our first...