Jim's is the kind of place I normally like--this heavy dark steakhouse with a weird seventies steakhouse decor and a frou-frou menu (also apparently straight out of the seventies, from what I can tell.) But it's just too dark--it's hard to tell what anything is (or even how clean it might be, for that matter.) The food is really not very good. I've been there three times, and each time it's been a disappointment. The first time I had a salad with my meal; it was really more of a bowl of dressing with a few lettuce fragments. My chicken (I know--why did I have chicken at a steakhouse?) was dry and overcooked, and the potato side was bland and unattractive. The second time, I went there for lunch and had the steak tips--that was OK, but the steak pieces were gristly and fatty. (The gravy was really really good, though.) The third time, I had the salmon and green beans...the salmon was incredibly overcooked--it was very dry and tough. The green beans were really overcooked--barely recognizable. All this aside, the ambience at Jim's is still a neat experience--it just seems like the sort of place where important people make momentous decisions while smoking fine cigars and sipping an expensive brandy. I just wish the food was better. I've talked to people who've lived in Bloomington longer than I have and they all rave about how the food used to be....if the food were better, Jim's would be a pretty cool dining out experience.
Pros: Neat decor, good wine, piano man
Cons: Dark, bad food
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