Faith and Food Blog

Overview:

Have you ever driven down University St in Peoria and as you drive past the Walmart you think to yourself “Where are all of the hanging lights coming from?” Trust me, this has happened to me far too many times. The hanging lights belong to Troy Ummel’s Connected, a romantic, intimate locale preparing select Italian & American entrees along with creative cocktails. This restaurant is under the classification of “fine dining”, so if after reading this you want to come here, keep this in mind.

As you walk into through the large, wooden doors, you are immediately greeted by a fountain that leads into a mini stream of water, in which you walk on a bridge over the water to get to the rest of the restaurant. They offer seating in both the front entrance area and then in the main dining area as well. After checking in with the host/hostess, you are seated right to your table and the waiter/waitress comes right away to ask for your drink. You are then handed the alcoholic drink menu, as well as given a chance to try some fresh bread with some of their in-house dip. The menu then arrives with a chance to order your meal and then the dessert menu follows after.

For it being fine dining and for Google saying that it costs between $50-$100, the price was not as bad as I thought, especially for the glasses of wine. It is still more expensive than if you were to go to Chili’s for two people, but the pricing was fairly moderate given the description of the place. They offer a wide selection of foods, ranging from salads to many different kinds of steak and also some pasta dishes. Their wine and cocktail selection, however, is even longer than the food menu. They offer many different kinds of red wines, white wines, and roses that vary from sweet to smooth to dry.

After finishing your meal, the staff will give you the bill at the table like a typical sit-down restaurant and will offer complementary items before leaving.

My Experience:

My girlfriend and I decided to come here to celebrate our one-year anniversary, and so we knew we both had to dress to impress. When walking in, we were baffled at how fancy the place was. We both agreed afterwards that this was the nicest place we have ever eaten at. I made reservations, so as soon as we got there we were escorted to our table. As soon as we sat down, our waitress was at our table to ask what we wanted to drink and then she handed us our alcoholic drink menus of both wine and cocktails. However, shortly after a different waitress came to help our table and they both went back and forth the entire night, so it was something I found a little strange.

We both decided to order a glass of wine for a fairly reasonable price. I ordered a J. Lohr Merlot 2020 – Monterey, CA, which is a type of red wine from California and the other type of wine that was ordered is forgotten by me, but it was a sweeter red wine. We ended up switching the drinks that we ordered with one another because we each liked the taste of the other’s more. We also received complementary fresh bread with a sort of garlic and cauliflower dip and it was DELICIOUS! I wish I knew the recipe for it because I would make it at home if I could. It wasn’t super filling either, so I was able to eat a good amount of it without getting full.

For the entrees, I decided to order ‘RIGATONI ALLA ZOZZONA’, which is rigatoni served in a light cream sauce with shredded sweet Italian sausage and I ordered a side Caesar salad. The Caesar salad was actually also really good, the dressing wasn’t a thick Caesar dressing like most places have, it was more oily than that and I preferred it more than the thicker, creamier one. My girlfriend ordered ‘MELANZANE PARMIGIANA’, which is eggplant napoleon seasoned with four types of cheese, fine herbs and light tomato sauce.

The parmigiana was very good, it did seem like it was missing some sort of pasta to go with it though. It was good though, but it was VERY cheesy, to the point where neither of us could tell if the next bite actually had an eggplant or not or if it was just cheese. The taste of it was good though, and the tomato sauce was seasoned very well. The rigatoni though was gone in like 5 minutes, it was DELICIOUS, and the portion size was big enough to fill me up, but not too big where I felt like I couldn’t walk after eating. The sausage was probably the best part of it for me, as it was cut up inside of the sauce, as well as inside of the noodles. If I ever come back here again, I think I would order the rigatoni again, it was that good.

Towards the beginning of the night, one of the waitresses asked if we were there for any special occasion, which we told her we were there for our one year anniversary. After sitting around for a bit after eating, our waitress walks over with a cannoli in her hand and a sparkler sticking out of it and on the plate it read “Happy Anniversary” drizzled in caramel sauce. It was such a special moment, and I appreciated her doing it for us. If you ever go there, her name was Karen that did this for us. Speaking of which, I want to give shoutout to the entire place for offering great service to us. They were really on top of everything in making sure that we were taken care of us and the other tables and went out of their way to make the night special for us. One thing I forgot to mention is that before you leave, they always bring any of the women a rose to take home with them.

This is definitely a place I would recommend for fancy night out. The food was good, the service was good, and the ambiance blew me away.

Overall Rating: 9/10