Live, from Peoria, Illinois, it’s Saturday Night Cheeseburger starring this week’s host, The Locker Room Bar & Grill and featuring The Ready For Prime Beef Player, Marty Wombacher. And now, please welcome this week’s host, from beautiful downtown Peoria, The Locker Room Bar & Grill!
I last went to the Burger Barge when I was in Peoria doing my 365 Bar Crawl and today I realized that was over three years ago! I think I'm overdue for a return visit and what better night to do that than on Saturday Night Cheeseburger? The Burger Barge is over in East Peoria, and I can't really remember how to get there, so I've plugged the address into my trusty GPS machine and it's telling me to go straight down Washington Street and so it's off we go on a rainy Saturday night.
Here we are in East Peoria, but the GPS took me a weird way to get here and we've kind of gone around in circles, but it assures me we're just 0.3 miles from our destination.
So we're parked on a dead end street facing a construction sign and my trusty GPS has just announced we've reached our destination. Motherfucker! Hate the GPS! Let me try and punch in the address again and see what happens.
The fucking thing says it can't calculate the route. Fuck! HATE THE GPS!
Okay, time to improvise. I can't waste any more time looking for the Burger Barge, it's around 10:30 at night and most kitchens are closed. However I think I know of one that still might be open...
Last April I had lunch with my friend Paul Berres here at the Locker Room and I remember them telling me that the kitchen here stays open late.
Let's go in and see if there's a cheeseburger in our future!
Looks like our luck might be changing, there's a seat right there at the corner of the bar. Let's go snag it and see if the kitchen is still open.
There's a familiar face! We met Kramer (on the left) when we had lunch last time with Paul in here. He joins forces with fellow bartender, Cody to serve me up a 16 ounce can of Budweiser. And yes, Virginia, the kitchen is still open. Huzzah!
While Kramer punches my order in, let's take a look around here again.
This is the view from where I sit, as you can see, it's a long bar.
Bare bulbs and a single fan hang over the bar.
A highly polished shuffleboard table stands near the wall opposite the bar.
This guy's getting all Lee Harvey Oswald on the Big Buck machine.
Here's Jake and Patrick yukking it up for the MBIP camera. Patrick told me he follows the MBIP facebook page and is familiar with the blog. Always love to hear that!
A shot from the back of the bar. It's funny how different the place looks at night time.
Meanwhile, back at the bar, the napkin dispenser has been brought out. That can only mean one thing...
It's cheeseburger time! Cody serves up this week's meal. Let's take a closer look...
You can build your own burger here from a list of ingredients on the menu. I got the Angus beef patty topped with cheddar and pepperjack cheese, bacon, A-1 Sauce, deli mustard and I chose the pretzel bun for it to be housed in. I also got the homemade chips. It looks really good, so let's dive in...
That's a great burger, very delicious! And the chips were crispy and tasty too. It was a long and winding trip tonight, but in the end it all worked out. It always does.
While I was eating, I noticed this DJ setting up in the front room, opposite the bar.
His name is Adam Porter and his DJ handle is TransPorter. You can check him out on his SoundCloud page here.
Wow, check out his DJ rig! I remember when DJ's just had two turntables and a microphone! Okay, the music is getting loud, my tinnitus is starting to howl, so it's time for me to...
Exit, stage left. See you all tomorrow.
My Cheeseburger
At The Locker Room Bar & Grill, you can make your own style of burger. You have a wide variety of choices for toppings, buns and sauces. The burger I built was made with an Angus beef patty, topped with cheddar, pepperjack cheese and bacon. I chose A-1 and deli mustard for my sauces. I picked the pretzel bun to house it in. All in all it was a very tasty burger, love their pretzel bun, but the only disappointment was the bacon. It was kind of rubbery and didn’t have much taste. It didn’t ruin the burger, but it didn’t add to it either. If I had to do it all over again, I’d just leave it off.
You can also create your own salad here and they feature four styles of wraps including: a buffalo chicken wrap, a chicken caesar wrap and an Oriental wrap which consists of your choice of meat, spinach, almonds,edamame, crispy noodles,pineapple, mandarin oranges, mozzarella, carrots, sweet chili Thai and Asian dressing.
Cheeseburger Rating
Two and a half Wimpy’s, it’s a solid burger, but they need to improve the bacon to take it over the top.
Locker Room Bar & Grill
112 SW Jefferson Avenue
Peoria
309-713-3334
Further reading: You Gotta Eat, Twitter and PJ Star.
Bonus Photos Of The Jaws Jewels!
After three attempts, the Jaws Jewels magnets finally arrived at my house! Here’s some photos of the package and the magnets.
Okay, this time Jaws mailed them in a bubble envelope to keep the magnet police at bay and it worked, it made it to MBIP Headquarters intact!
And here they are, The Jaws Jewels featuring SubGenius Bob and Jaws himself, too cool! Time to put these on my fridge...
I put them around my guitar magnets and they look great! Thanks, Jaws! I'll think of you every time I open the door to get a beer! And speaking of Jaws, he has a new item for sale on his Printfection page, it’s a “Quit Squawkin’” t-shirt and here’s a shot of Jaws modeling it. Ha! I need to order one today and so do you. Here’s where you can do that and get your very own Jaws t-shirt! And quit your squawkin’!
