The Peppermill Grill — Restaurant in Rockford

A shallow white bowl envelops a mound of reasonably golden brown onion rings. It's simple, but perhaps a bit bland. Generally speaking, presentation can afford to simple if the appearance of the rings themselves deliver. Unfortunately, these onion rings miss the mark.

The biggest offender by far is the excessive number of cracked, frayed, and pulverized onion rings mixed in with the complete ones. I suspect part of the problem is that the onions themselves are too thinly cut to maintain shape under frying and plating, or perhaps a lack of care and precision at any step in the process. They do, however, have a reasonably consistent coating of batter and a good color.

The thin cut onions come home to roost on my first bite. On more than a handful of rings, the onion taste was bitterly weak. Others, however, were packed with flavor, rife with the sweet greasy juices that only the onion can deliver. In the latter case, the rings delivered solidly, but the inconsistency was its downfall.

The batter was unlike any I have ever tasted. It didn't seem to be seasoned all that well, beyond a brush or two of grease, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else in the batter giving it a unique flavor. It may have been cornmeal, but it was certainly a non-standard addition, giving the batter, if not a "kick," at the very least a light, jovial slap on one's back to indicate its presence, in the manner of a long lost friend.

A massive plastic container of ranch accompanied the rings, far in excess of the consumption needs of even the most pale denizen of the Midwest, which may or may not be me. It was alright, nothing special, and mostly served to mask the lack of onion flavor in some of the weaker rings.

Coating on an onion ring, whether breading or some kind of batter, is a tricky beast. The batter on these onion rings was unlike any I have ever encountered, in both taste and texture. The coating itself was thin, but it had a fiendish strength despite the lack of thickness, maintaining shape even under pressure.

It reminded me of a shell on some mythical onion ring crustacean, with enough density to survive, but if you really pushed at it, it would collapse. The shell-like batter was also unusually sticky, a strong potential contributor to its cohesion. Unfortunately, the strength of the batter resulted in a good deal of slippage from the onions within.

The onions, unfortunately, did not match up to the mystique of the batter. As mentioned above, inconsistency ruled the day. They ran the gamut from mushy and juicy to a dried out husk.

The bowl of onion rings was pretty full and fairly filling, at a reasonable $2.95. The cracked rings, and the weak onions, make these onion rings slightly less of a...

I have been going to this place for years. Always enjoyed the service there. I would say the server that is there the most is one of the best servers I have ever seen. She is friendly and very fast. A lot of the time they are under staffed and she is running around like crazy but she is always nice to the people. BUT when the cook comes out to the service area to drop a F-bomb on the server and your 2 kids are setting there it crosses the line. When i talked to the server about it she was kind and said that was wrong. When i talked to the manager about it she said she cannot control 2 grown adults and walked away from me. Then proceeded to say to the cook that dropped the F-bomb and i qoute "Way to go now i am getting yelled at." Seems like there where better things she could have said to him like maybe, "stop dropping the F-bomb period!!" Looks like Jody's is my breakfast place of choice in...

Looking forward to people getting back to work and not living off the government. This place could be great again with the proper staff. The carpet was covered with trampled on food scraps - a push broom would help aesthetics but they would have to have the available staff to push it. I think this place could increase their profits by some light improvements to the exterior maintenance and perhaps brightening up the inside with some fun color. Light bulbs burned out, no music or ambiance. Servers basically wearing pajamas. I felt like I was eating at a church fish fry.

The food was pretty boring and sad. The tuna sandwich made me want to jump off the local bridge. Had to pick lettuce off our warm salad to make it somewhat enjoyable to eat. I think they were short on lettuce and just made up for it with triple croutons. This was the opposite experience from the...