Road Tips

Bar 209 - Bemidji, MN

On our first night in Bemidji during our summer vacation up there, we were trying to get the lay of the land in terms of restaurants.  It was a Monday night, so a few places were closed.  (We found that parts of Bemidji literally shut down from Monday thru Wednesday.)  We weren't all that hungry, but we figured we needed something.  Driving around the downtown area, we found a handful of bar and grills that were open, but one sort of stuck out from all the outdoor seating they had in the street in front of the place.  We decided to hit up Bar 209 for dinner that evening.  

Bar 209 sat at 209 NW Minnesota Ave. in downtown Bemidji for a number of years.  Two brothers - Derek and Brett Leach - had an early life taste of the restaurant business when they both worked at the old Union Station, an upscale restaurant housed in an old train depot that opened in 1976.  Derek was 13 when he worked in the kitchen washing dishes and doing prep work, and Brett was 11 or 12 when he started at Union Station busing tables.  

An opportunity arose for the brothers to buy an existing little burger joint - Bar 209 (located at 209 Minnesota Ave. NW in Bemidji) in 2011.  It wasn't long before they expanded the menu and realized that they needed more space.  In late 2014, the brothers agreed to purchase the American Legion building a half block north of Bar 209.  Membership in the legion had dwindled to about 50 members and the 7,000 square foot building was way too big for their needs.  The Leach brothers needed the space as the original Bar 209 was long, but too narrow to comfortably seat people in the place.

It turned out that the American Legion post was way too big for Bar 209's needs, as well.  The Leach brothers hired a design team out of the Twin Cities who suggested putting two restaurants in the building.  The brothers decided to go with a "day & night" concept for the restaurants.  A breakfast place on one side and the new and improved Bar 209 on the other side.  

Pictured at right - Derek and Brett Leach.  Photo courtesy Bemidji Pioneer.  

Work finally began on the building and by June of 2018 the new Bar 209 opened on the north side of the building, while Red Stu - a breakfast place named after the brothers' father - opened on the south end.  In addition to 209 Bar and Red Stu, the brothers also own the Cabin Coffee House & Cafe (we went there for coffee one day), and Turtle River Chophouse, a supper club that's located about 11 miles north and east of Bemidji.  (Look for an upcoming Road Tips post on Turtle River Chophouse.)  

We parked our car just down the street from 209 Bar and walked toward the front door at the corner of 3rd St. NW and Minnesota Ave. NW.  (see map)  As I said earlier, Minnesota Ave. was shut down for the block in front of Bar 209 for outdoor seating.  With COVID-19 restrictions on dining inside, 209 Bar set up a number of folding tables and chairs in the street.  My wife and I looked at the set up and decided against dining in the street.  But there were a lot of people seated outside.  We figured that because outside dining in Bemidji is limited because of the short season, people there probably didn't care if they were sitting in the middle of a street to have dinner.  

We went inside and were greeted by a hostess who took us to a booth along the wall.  In Minnesota, you had to have a mask on to go into establishments, but once you were seated in a restaurant, you could remove them.  We found that most people complied with the mask mandate that Minnesota's governor had decreed earlier in the summer, even though they may not have liked it.  

Bar 209 was very nice.  It featured a number of high top tables including a couple of community tables in the middle of the dining area.  The bar curved around in front of an open serving window looking into the kitchen.  Booths were on the north wall of the restaurant and high-top tables with banquette seating along the wall faced opposite the bar.  I would call the decor in the place as modern industrial.  

We had been given menus when were seated and our server for the evening asked us what we would like to drink.  They had a number of beers on tap including a handful from the Bemidji Brewing Company located just a couple blocks away.  I wanted to go to Bemidji Brewing at some point to try their beers, but I didn't want to try them before then.  I ended up getting a Bell's Two Hearted Ale.  My wife got a glass of 209 Bar's house red wine - a French blend.  

The menu at 209 Bar featured appetizers, salads, sandwiches and wraps.  Bar 209 is known locally for their good burgers and they had a number on the menu - all their beef is sourced locally from Stittsworth Meats in Bemidji.  The different burgers sounded good, but I had a burger for lunch earlier in the day and I wasn't all that hungry.  But they also had pizza on the menu with the dough made-from-scratch in the kitchen daily.  

And that's what we ended up getting. It was a 10" pizza with raised dough and we got our usual sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.  The crust was sort of chewy, but the chunks of sausage had that great fennel flavor, the pepperoni was spicy, and the mushrooms were earthy in flavor.  Actually, there was almost too much crust for the pizza as most of the toppings were center of the pizza.  But it was still all right, in our book.  And it turned out to be just enough for what we needed that night.  

My wife thought she had better get some greens in her, so she ordered up the house salad - a mix of spring greens and romaine lettuce, with sliced cucumbers and cherry tomatoes all topped with shredded cheddar cheese.  She got the balsamic vinaigrette dressing to go with the salad.  She said the greens were cool, fresh and crisp.  She just had a couple pieces of pizza, so the salad was a nice addition to her meal.  

I would have to say that our visit to 209 Bar was all right.  The menu is pretty basic and caters more to a bar crowd and families.  We thought the place was nice, had a laid-back vibe and was comfortable.  We just thought it was a little strange to be eating in the street in front of the place, so that's why we decided to eat inside on what was a beautiful Northern Minnesota evening.  The service was fine - our server was pleasant and efficient.  209 Bar isn't fine dining, and they don't pretend to be.  But it would be a good place for a casual meal in downtown Bemidji.  

 

Floyd's Burgers & Sliders @ Wake Brewing - Rock Island, IL

For some time, I've had philosophical issues with food trucks.  When the food truck craze first hit four or five years ago, there just seemed to be this aimless attitude that food truck owners - and even municipalities - had in regard to where they could do business.  When owners of established brick-and-mortar restaurants complained - and rightly so - to local municipalities about the seemingly arbitrary regulations governing food trucks, local governments and health departments knew they had to reign in what was turning into a quickly growing - and a very unorganized - kitchen economy.  Some food trucks eventually fell by the wayside when rules, regulations, and permits came into play helping to level out the playing field.  But others began to prosper when they discovered a whole new venue where they could set up - the fast growing microbrewery sector.  While I have had a somewhat cynical approach to food trucks over the years, when they team up with local breweries to provide food while you can enjoy a craft beer - well, I'm all for that.  And one of the food trucks that we've discovered at one of our local breweries is Floyd's Burgers & Sliders.  And we went to have a burger at Floyd's one recent evening over at Wake Brewing in Rock Island.  

Austin Mills was one of those who saw an opportunity in the growing business of food trucks and started renovating his parents' 1978 Winnebago in the spring of 2016.  His main job was working at a Jimmy John's and he wasn't in any hurry to turn the camper into a burger joint on wheels.  However, in the summer of that year, the city of Davenport announced that they would sponsor a trial program for food trucks to congregate on evenings once a week for the month of September in public lots in the downtown area.  (A lot of downtown restaurants were, understandably, upset with this - and, at the time, I sided with the restaurants on this issue.)  But the trial was more of an experiment by the city to find out what they needed to do to regulate and weed out the ones that wouldn't comply with rules and regulations.

When Austin Mills found out the city was going to do this pilot program for food trucks, he quickly dove into the complete renovation of the camper into a food truck.  He missed the first week of the program, but was open for the second week.  Mills served his first burger as Floyd's Burgers and Sliders on September 13, 2016.  Over the years, Mills has expanded his menu to include vegan burgers and some interesting sandwich options.  Floyd's Burgers & Sliders has built up a loyal following in the community and Mills regularly posts his schedule and specials on their Facebook page.  

My wife had been to one of the local breweries with a friend when Floyd's was serving burgers.  She told me about it and pointed out to me that Floyd's would be at Wake Brewing that Friday evening between 5 and 8 p.m. - they're normally at Wake on Friday evenings through the spring, summer and fall.  We decided to head over to Wake - a place that we have been to many times to have a beer.  

Wake Brewing has been around since November of 2017 and is owned by the brother team of Jason and Justen Parris.  Jason had been working at Rock Island Brewing Company (RIBCO) as the events and booking coordinator, while Justen was an engineer at the Exelon nuclear power plant near Cordova, IL.   I know of both brothers through mutual friends, and Justen used to come to pool parties at our neighbor's house in the past.  

The brothers were musicians who started playing together in various bands about 25 years ago.  They toured with a couple bands, playing mainly on the East Coast, and also backed various hip-hop artists long before groups like The Roots were doing that type of thing.  While on tour one time, the brothers walked into a bar/pizza place in Athens, GA and innocently asked for a pitcher of Guinness for them to share.  The girl behind the bar looked at them funny and said that they didn't have Guinness, that the bar only specialized in craft beers.  The young lady suggested a beer they should try - a Grant's Perfect Porter from the new defunct Yakima Brewing Company in Yakima, WA.  The brothers immediately loved the beer and started to find more craft brews on their tour up and down the East Coast.  

After getting off the road and getting back to the Quad Cities, Justen Parris started to fiddle around with making his own beer at home.  About a year later, Jason got involved with his brother's hobby and the two networked with other home-brewers in the area.  They decided that the Quad Cities needed another craft brewery - there were only 3 at the time - and opened Wake in the fall of 2017.   Today, there is something like 15 craft breweries within a 30-mile radius of the Quad Cities.  And for a beer aficionado like myself, that's a good thing.  

Wake Brewing is located where Illinois 92 splits just east of downtown Rock Island, across from the Quad City Botanical Center and the QCCA Expo Center.  (see map)  Parking is available on the side of the building that houses Wake, but that night with Floyd's make-shift camper/kitchen in the lot, the only parking available was behind Wake.  

My wife and I went in to get a beer and they always have a lively selection of music playing at Wake.  A diverse selection of artists such as Ben Howard and Hippo Campus were playing that evening on the microbrewery's modest sound system that also pipes music outside to their beer garden in front of the building.  My wife and I got a double dry-hopped pale ale that they had on tap, one of the many rotating styles of craft beer Wake features.  

The tap room at Wake is pretty small - it doesn't seat many more than probably 30 people, and now less than that with COVID-19 restrictions in place - so we ended up seated at one of the all-weather picnic tables outside.  There had been a threat of rain earlier in the day, but by the time the line of storms came to the Quad Cities it had pretty much squeezed out all the rain, save for a few sprinkles that fell on us at Wake.  The cool air behind the front that came through was a welcome relief from the hot and humid weather we had been having.  

The Floyd's food truck has a colorful mural on the back side, but has a minimalist logo on the side where the order window is.  The logo is similar to the artwork Gerald Scarfe did for Pink Floyd's epic album "The Wall" over 40 years ago.  I immediately caught the "Floyd's Burgers & Sliders" and the "Pink Floyd" connection with the logo.  

The menu is located on blackboards on the ground next to the food truck.   Austin Mills has come a long way over the past four years as his initial menu only featured two items.  He has six different variations of burgers on the menu - including a veggie burger - as well as five different types of sliders (four per order).  The "Rhythm and Bleu" burger features bleu cheese, bacon and a chili garlic sauce; the "I'm Yer Huckleberry" is topped with cheese, crispy onions, jalapeños, bacon and a barbecue sauce; and the "Dyin' for Hawaiian" sliders consist of ham, cheese, bacon, pineapple, and Thousand Island dressing on four slider buns.  Floyd's also has grilled sandwiches including the "Foghorn" consisting of a roasted chicken breast, cheese, bacon and barbecue sauce; the "Basket Case" that features ham, cheese, bacon, a fried egg, and their garlic/chili sauce; as well as a classic grilled reuben sandwich.  

On this particular visit, they also had a special that evening - the Birria burger.  It consisted of slow roasted birria beef - a staple in authentic Mexico cuisine - on top of two burger patties finished with chihuahua cheese, a honey/hibiscus sauce, and came with a side of chipotle sauce.  I paused for a moment as I looked that over and thought that sounded really good.  

As I was waiting in line to order, I heard a voice call my name from inside the Floyd's food truck.  It was an old acquaintance who I used to work with at outdoor concert events in downtown Davenport a number of years ago.  Actually, we had come across one another just a week before when my wife, her sister and I went out to Crust to have some pizza one evening.  We hadn't seen each other for a long time and here he was back in my life working for both Crust and helping out Austin Mills from time to time in the Floyd's food truck.  

I almost got the Birria burger, but for the first time eating at Floyd's I wanted to go with the regular ol' cheeseburger - the "Royale with Cheese".  My wife said she wanted the same thing.  I also got a small order of Floyd's hand-cut fries for us to share.  About 15 minutes later, I went over to the food truck and picked up our order from my long-lost friend.

The burgers and fries were served in small paper food boats and condiments (mustard, ketchup, mayo) were available in packets next to the napkins.  The American cheese was oozing out from under a soft egg bun on top of the two flat-grilled burger patties.  The taste of the burger was fantastic.  The beef had the crispy edge that you get from mashing down the meat and having it cook in its own juices.  My wife had already experienced a burger from Floyd's and she said, "I knew you'd like their burgers."  I did - a lot.  They were juicy, flavorful and had a great flat-grilled beef taste.  And the fries were also very good.  They had a bit of a seasoning on them that didn't overpower the taste.  They were crunchy on the outside, but had that great flaky potato consistency on the inside.  

We had a recent experience with Floyd's again.  My wife and I had taken a few days off to travel for vacation and we got home on a Sunday afternoon.  Not really wanting to go to the store and find food to make at home that night, my wife suggested we look up where Floyd's Burgers & Sliders would be that evening.  It turned out that they were at one of our other favorite breweries in the Quad Cities, Crawford Brew Works over in Bettendorf.  (see map)  Crawford has been around since May of 2018 and features a number of very good beers that we like including their "Kinda-Kolsch" German-style summer beer, and their "Get Off My Lawn" IPA.  

Floyd's had set up their food truck there and we went out to have some food and a couple beers.  This time, their special was a cherry-smoked beef brisket topped with Boetje's mustard, pickled cucumbers and onions, and fresh dill.  I really wanted to get a burger from Floyd's, but I had to pull the trigger on this sandwich.

The sandwich was served on grilled rye bread and featured thick chunks of brisket that had a hint of a smoky flavor to it.  The Boetje's mustard gave the sandwich a nice kick, but the pickled onions and cucumbers helped balance out the spiciness of the stone ground mustard.  The fresh dill was hardly noticeable with all the other taste sensations that were going on.

My wife got the "Royale with Cheese" burger again and it smelled so good as it came off the grill.  We just got the sandwich and burger this time - no fries.  So, after I finished my sandwich, I determined that the smell of burger was too overpowering for me.  I had to go get one.  I got it to go, but it turned out that my wife wasn't quite ready to leave Crawford Brew Works.  So I ate the burger while having another beer.  It was a great ending to what had been a great vacation for us.  

I'm starting to come over to the side of the food trucks - especially when they camp out at any one of the microbreweries we have in the Quad Cities.  But I'll put Floyd's "Royale with Cheese" up against any cheeseburger I've had in the area.  It was a great burger and I'm sure that we'll be looking up on their Facebook page to see where they're parked some future evening.

Tutto Bene - Bemidji, MN

During our trip to Northern Minnesota, we stayed in Bemidji and hunkered down there for a few days of rest and relaxation.  We also liked the area not only because it was laid back, but there were a number of different styles of restaurants to choose from.  (But, somewhat surprisingly, there wasn't an authentic Mexican restaurant that we found - only the usual national and regional fast food variety of Mexican food.)  One place that we found when we first got there that we wanted to try was an Italian restaurant that specialized in locally-grown ingredients in their dishes.  A few days later we made it over to Tutto Bene for dinner.  

The original owners of Tutto Bene (which roughly translates in English as "Everything is Good") started the restaurant in 1995.  They ran it for over 25 years before deciding to close the doors in the summer of 2012.  But it wasn't long after they closed their doors that a young lady who grew up in the area decided that she wanted to get back to her rural roots and talked her then-boyfriend/now-husband into joining her.  

Jerusa Ricke hailed from Bagley, MN, about 25 miles to the west of Bemidji.  Her grandfather started what is now Team Industries, an engineering and machining company that supplies parts and drive trains to automotive and recreational companies.  The third plant in the company was opened by her father in Bagley in 1992 when Jerusa was a child.  After graduating high school, Jerusa Ricke decided that she didn't want to be in the family business just yet - her father would eventually take over the reins of the entire company upon her grandfather's death - and she went off to go to culinary school.  After getting her degree, Ricke worked at a number of restaurants in and around the Twin Cities.  It was at one of the restaurants where she met Justin Frederick.  

Pictured right - Jerusa Ricke-Frederick and Justin Frederick 

Justin Frederick was also a culinary school graduate who eventually became the head chef at Le Meridien Chambers, an upscale boutique hotel in downtown Minneapolis.  About the time Frederick got the head chef gig at the hotel, Ricke became the head chef at Masa, a now-closed, high-end Mexican restaurant located about two blocks away Le Meridien Chambers.  Both were at their respective helms for 10 years and talked about owning their own restaurant at some point, but they didn't want to do it in the Twin Cities where the restaurant business is overly competitive.  Ricke had been wanting to get back to Northern Minnesota at some point to be closer to her family when the opportunity to buy Tutto Bene presented itself.   

The opportunity turned to be too good to pass up, so Ricke and Frederick took the plunge and took over the restaurant in August of 2012.  They were able to talk six co-workers from their respective restaurants in Minneapolis to come north to work for them.  They changed some things up, spruced the place up, and came up with a menu that used locally-raised ingredients, as well as fresh seafood flown in from the east coast, and authentic imported Italian oils and cheese.  Every item - except for the canned tomatoes they used in their marinara sauces - was made from scratch in their kitchen.  

Change in the terms of a more aggressive and innovative menu caused some of the locals who liked the more Americanized-Italian food at the original Tutto Bene to give pause to the new ownership and their ideas.  But a new group of locals and tourists became regulars at the restaurant giving Ricke and Frederick the success they sought.  And once the restaurant was up and running with regularity, Ricke and Frederick were married about four years ago.  

Tutto Bene is on the corner of Beltraimi Ave. and 3rd St. NW in downtown Bemidji.  (see map)  We were able to find parking across 3rd St. on Beltrami and walked over to the restaurant.  According to rules set forth by the State of Minnesota during the pandemic, technically all sit-down restaurants require a reservation to get seated.  Many of them, however, get around that by writing your name in the reservation book, making you wait a moment, then seating you.  This time with Tutto Bene, we decided to go ahead and make a reservation because we just didn't know if the place would be busy.  

We had our choice of sitting outside or inside.  They had a very nice outdoor patio that had a shady arbor next to the building.  That would have been fine, but we were told by the young man who greeted us at the stand just inside the front door that all the tables were taken in the alcove.  However, they did have other tables set up next to the sidewalk.  

Three or four restaurants that we encountered in downtown Bemidji had tables set up in what were basically parking spots on the street.  Barriers to keep cars from parking in those spots had been set up.  One restaurant had literally blockaded the street in front of the business to set up folding tables and chairs for outside dining.  Dining in the alcove would have been great.  Dining on the street?  Not so much.  We opted for inside dining.  

The dining room at Tutto Bene was a large room with tables spaced out for social distancing guidelines.  It was a nice night and people were more than willing to sit at tables in the temporary outside dining area (probably because the outdoor dining season is so short in Northern Minnesota), so we were the only people in the dining room all evening long.  It was actually kind of nice.  

Off to the right side when you come in is the bar area.  It was well-lit from natural light coming in the ornate windows and featured a small bar with a few tables along the walls.  There was a lively group of people in the bar when we got there having drinks and appetizers.  

The kitchen was off to the side of the dining room with the main open window looking out into a narrow room that was sort of used as an overflow/catch-all area on the way to the restrooms.  Tutto Bene cans a lot of produce that they use on their menus and the jars holding pickled vegetables lined the wall in the small area.  

Our server for the evening was a young lady by the name of Connie.  She greeted us standing six feet - or more - from the table with a mask over her mouth and nose.  She seemed pleasant enough and gave us a couple menus to look over.  She took our drink order and my wife said that she would like some wine with dinner, but for now she wanted a Tito's vodka and cranberry juice.  I thought wine would be good with dinner, but I wanted a beer to start out.  Tutto Bene - like many of the restaurants in the area that we visited - featured beers from the Bemidji Brewing Company.  I especially liked their India Pale Ale that we had tried on a visit there a couple days prior.  I got a pint of that beer as we looked over the menu.  

To say the menu at Tutto Bene was eclectic was putting it mildly.  They had a maple glazed pork belly bruschetta for a starter as well as Prince Edward Island oysters.  One of the dinner items was a ravioli stuffed with wild snow crab.  Another interesting item was a braised Kobe beef pot roast entree.  And for those who don't want to be as adventurous in their dining experience, Tutto Bene also featured a spaghetti and meatball dinner.  Only the pasta is made fresh in the kitchen, and the meatballs were locally-raised veal.  

After our drinks were served, Connie said she would give us a few minutes to figure out what we wanted for dinner.  As we continued to look over he menu, a young man brought out an antipasto board that featured a couple slices of thin-sliced parmesan cheese bread, toasted almonds, pickled carrots and sliced salami.  The pickled carrots were especially tasty.  My wife and I have been experimenting with pickling jalapeños this summer and they've come out very well.  Pickling carrots peaked our curiosity in doing our own at home.  

We started out by getting the grilled octopus.  The octopus is caught wild off the Spain coast and flown in on a regular basis to Tutto Bene.  The octopus was lightly grilled and served with risotto cakes, marinated Italian tomatoes, and it all sat on a bed of an almond/basil pesto sauce.  It was outstanding.  

They also had a focaccia bread antipasti on the menu.  We thought it would go well with our dinners.  It featured house-made focaccia topped with caramelized onions, olives, rosemary, sea salt and then sprinkled with fresh parmesan cheese.  The focaccia was very good. 

We got into Tutto Bene around 7 p.m. - about 10 minutes before, actually - and we knew that they closed at 8 p.m.  There were a few people outside, but we didn't figure that it was too taxing on the kitchen.  We sort of sat around for a few moments enjoying our antipasto before we ended up ordering dinner.  But it seemed like dinner was taking a long time to get to the table.  It was well after 8 p.m. when Connie came to our table and said, "Well, I have some good news and some bad news.  The bad news is that someone accidentally took your plate and served it to someone else," she said as she was looking at my wife.  "Since we make everything in-house from scratch, we have to make up your plate again."  The good news?  Oh, we were going to get free dessert.  You know, if we weren't on vacation and so laid back, I would have pitched a fit.  But it didn't matter to us.  We had our wine now and we were enjoying it.  

It was about twenty till nine - we had been there for an hour and forty five minutes - when our food showed up at the table.  A young guy who was serving outside brought my wife's plate to her.  "I have to apologize," he said as he placed her plate in front of her.  "I was probably the one that caused your meal to be late."  We told him that it was not a big deal.  It was kind of nice having the dining room all to ourselves that evening.

For my dinner, it came down to just one thing that I saw when I first glanced at the menu - the wild boar and cavatelli.  It featured a wild boar ragu sauce with chopped grilled boar sausage mixed in.  It was topped with whipped ricotta cheese and finished with grated scallions and parmesan.  The taste was something that I wasn't expecting.  It was much more earthy in taste with not much of an Italian marinara flavor.  But it was very good - outstanding, to be exact.  The more I got into the dish, the more I liked it.  

My wife was looking at a couple of their chicken dishes - a gnocchi and roasted chicken entree with charred green beans and sweet corn in a parmesan fondue sauce; and the chicken piccata.  She ended up taking the latter.  It was a grilled Amish-raised chicken breast topped with lemon capers and parsley.  It sat on a bed of risotto cakes - similar to what we had with the grilled octopus - and also came with grilled organic baby carrots and green beans.  

My wife remarked that it didn't come with any pasta.  She said that she really needed some pasta to go along with the meal.  We hailed Connie over and my wife explained that he just needed some carbs to go along with the meal.  "I know, I'm funny about that," she said.  "But I like pasta with my chicken piccata."  Connie said that would be no problem.  She'd get some out as soon as she could.  It wasn't more than about 10 minutes later that a steaming plate of pasta topped with butter showed up.  I tried some of the pasta and it was just as good as the cavatelli.  You could really tell that it was made in-house.  

We ended up getting some tiramisu to go - we didn't even eat it until the following night because we were so full from the dinner and everything else that went with it.  It was a nice gesture, but I would have probably gone for more - like an after dinner scotch.  But their bartender had left and it was coming up to 9 p.m. and we didn't want to stick around any longer.  We actually ended up going somewhere closer to our hotel for a nightcap. 

Other than my wife's chicken piccata getting taken to another table causing a lengthy delay in getting our meals, I'd have to say the experience we had at Tutto Bene was satisfying.  The menu was very interesting and I very much enjoyed my cavatelli in a wild boar ragu.  Once my wife got a side of pasta to go along with her chicken piccata, she was much more happy with her meal.  The grilled octopus was outstanding, as was the focaccia bread we ordered that was supposed to go along with our meal, but we had to eat it early on.  Connie was our main server, but it turned out to be a team effort in taking care of us that evening.  Each person we dealt with was pleasant and accommodating.  In the long run, even with the wait on our food, we felt Tutto Bene was worth having a meal there.  

Ernie's on Gull - Brainerd, MN

On our recent trip to Northern Minnesota, we were driving through Brainerd as I was trying to remember some of the town from trips my family would take to Lake of the Woods when I was a young boy.  Unfortunately, I didn't remember much of anything while driving through Brainerd.  It was getting close to lunch time and my wife has to have three-squares a day.  Knowing this and figuring that there were restaurants in the immediate area, I started to calculate where we may stop.  While driving through Baxter, the "twin" city to Brainerd, we saw a billboard touting a restaurant on Gull Lake.  I punched the name into the GPS and it came up right away - Ernie's on Gull.  We're always up for lakeside dining, so we decided to head there for lunch.  

The spot where Ernie's stands has been there since 1917 when a Finnish immigrant by the name of Ernie Ritari opened a small fishing resort on what was known as Squaw Point on Gull Lake - the largest of the 7 Gull Lakes in Minnesota.  Ernie's wife Edna worked in the bar and was the housekeeper for the small cabins that were part of the resort.  Ernie - who was a carpenter by trade - had left Finland in the late 1800's as a small child with his parents and siblings.  But he harbored a deep resentment for the Russians who were casting a pall of influence over relatives still living in Finland after the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917.  His disdain for the Russians ran so deep that he never allowed vodka to be on the grounds of his resort.  

Ernie and Edna ran the resort for a number of years before retiring in the 1960's.  From there, the resort changed hands when Ron Niemann bought the place and called it Ron's on Squaw Point.  When he shut down the resort and kept the bar, restaurant and marina, he changed the name to Ron's Steak House.  Ron Niemann eventually sold out to a person who renamed the place The Butcher Block.  But by the turn of the 21st century, the Butcher Block was no more.

A group of private investors came in to resurrect the bar/restaurant/marina and called it Ernie's on Gull as a nod to original owner Ernie Ritari.  That group ran the place for 11 years before two brothers and a friend came into the picture who were interested in buying Ernie's.  

The brothers - Chris and Mike Foy - had grown up in Brainerd and were high school football stars in the late 1990's/early 2000's.  Like many people who had lived in the area, they frequented Ron's Steak House with their parents and younger brother while growing up.  The opportunity to buy Ernie's on Gull came about and with a friend, Zac Swarthout, the group purchased the restaurant/bar/marina in August of 2011.  The Foy brothers eventually bought out Swarthout's interest in the place in January of 2015 and they continue to run Ernie's on Gull to this day.   In addition to Ernie's, the Foy's also run the Main Street Ale House in nearby Nisswa.  They opened that upscale bar and grill in the spring of 2018.

Ernie's on Gull is definitely off the beaten path and without a GPS we probably would have had a little trouble finding the place.  It's located in an area that the locals call East Gull Lake.  We pulled into the parking lot a little after noon on an unseasonably cool day in north central Minnesota.  (see map)  

We found what turned out to be a nice northwoods supper club with dark pine paneling on the outside of the building.  There was a patio that faced the lake and it was filling up fast with noontime diners.  Off to the side of Ernie's was another building that housed the On Point Burger Company, a pseudo-burger shack which opened earlier this spring that offered counter ordering for boaters coming off the lake.  It was closed the day we were there and I'm guessing that it's only opened on weekends and holidays.  

The view from the outdoor patio was very nice with the lake spread out to the north. The only problem was that it was in the mid-60's, my wife and I were in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, and the wind was whipping across the lake from the north.  Outside dining may have been popular with people who were wearing jeans and light jackets, but we were going to be eating inside. Had it been about 10 degrees warmer and with less wind, we would have definitely wanted to sit on the patio to have lunch.

Inside Ernie's, we found an open area that had a small bar off to the corner.  Pine wood accents were prominent throughout what was more of a lounge area with a few high-top tables.  A young lady greeted us and asked if we wanted inside or outside dining.   We told her that we thought we'd like to sit inside.

She took us to another room off the lounge area that turned out to be a more spacious room with low ceilings.  We took a booth by the window that looked out over the lake.  Now, I have to say that not only was it cool outside, it was cool inside.  They had the air conditioner cranked like no other for such a cool day outside.  My wife had to go back out and get a sweater out of the car because she was freezing.  I can tolerate some coldness, but even I thought it was sort of cold in there.  

We were given a couple menus and it wasn't long before our server Lauren showed up to take drink orders.  They had Kona Big Wave on tap and, of course, I signed up for one of those.  My wife ordered up a Summit Extra Pale Ale.  She ran off to get our beers while we took a look at the menu.  

It wasn't a long menu at Ernie's on Gull, which sort of made me feel better.  Too many times a restaurant tries to do so many things that the food is all right, but generally not good.  The bulk of the menu you could get all day long.  They had a handful of entrees - such as a peppercorn-encrusted ribeye, an almond-crusted walleye, and shrimp & sausage gumbo - that were only available after 5 p.m.  Actually, the shrimp & sausage gumbo sounded pretty good to me, given how cold it was in the dining room.  

For the most part, they had burgers, sandwiches, salads, and a choice of short rib, shrimp or smoked pork tacos.  Crab cakes, seared ahi tuna, Korean-beef nachos, and roasted Brussels sprouts were part of a pretty interesting mix of appetizers.  And Ernie's also offered their "seafood buckets" that could be shared for appetizers or as a meal.  Peel-'n-eat shrimp, fried calamari, Prince Edward Island mussels, and fried shrimp were the choices for the seafood buckets.  

Since the gumbo wasn't a possibility for lunch, I focused on the sandwich selection that included a reuben, a pastrami on rye with muenster cheese, a smoked pork Cuban sandwich, and a gyro that featured prime rib in a pita wrap.  The burgers all sounded pretty good too as they got their beef from local purveyors.  But there was something on the special board as we walked in that caught my eye that I wanted to try before having a sandwich.

They had a wild mushroom and beef soup the day we were there.  That just sounded good to me, especially for how cold it was in the restaurant.  It featured large chunks of wild mushrooms with tender small cubes of beef mixed into a creamy broth.  It was very rich and hearty, and it helped warm me up a bit.  

My wife followed suit as she saw that they had a lobster bisque on the menu.  She was planning on eating light and thought she would get the full bowl of the bisque.  The lobster bisque was very rich and about halfway through my wife was regretting her choice of getting a bowl rather than a cup.  She offered me a few bites to help her out and it was very good.  Actually, I didn't know what I liked better - my wild mushroom and beef soup, or the lobster bisque.  Both were a great start to our lunch. 

My wife ended up the small Caesar salad with some grilled chicken.  When Lauren brought the salad plate to the table, my wife exclaimed, "Oh, my gosh!  I'm glad I got the small Caesar salad!"  It was a pretty sizable plate filled with chopped romaine lettuce, red onions, cherry tomatoes and croutons.  A thin grilled chicken breast came on the side.  She was almost so full from the lobster bisque that she said she would do her best to eat it.  She must have liked it as she made a sizable dent in the salad and grilled chicken.

I hemmed and hawed about getting a sandwich or a burger - I almost pulled the trigger on the pastrami on rye - but I ordered the truffle mushroom and Swiss cheese burger.  I also got some bacon to go on the burger, as well.  It featured the same wild mushrooms as I had in my wild mushroom soup along with a truffle and thyme aioli.  Kettle chips normally come with the burgers and sandwiches, but I upgraded to sea salt fries for a buck and a half more.  

My burger was good, above average in taste and quality, but not outstanding.  The wild mushrooms had a nice earthy taste and everything that was on it - Swiss cheese, bacon and the aioli sauce - worked very well together.  I was asked if I would like it "pink or no pink" and I asked for it pink.  I'm a little leery when restaurants do that because my idea of pink sometimes doesn't jibe with the cooks.  But this burger was cooked perfectly with a pink middle, but not too rare where it was too loose.  It was a multi-napkin burger, the kind I like.  

For taking a chance on a place that we saw an advertisement for on a roadside billboard, I'd have to say that Ernie's on Gull turned out all right.  It was a nice place - albeit too cold for how we were dressed in normal summer attire - right on a lake with great views.  My burger and the wild mushroom and beef soup I had were both good - I liked the soup a little more than the burger, though.  My wife was more than happy with her rich and filling lobster bisque along with her Caesar and grilled chicken salad that she couldn't finish.  Ernie's was a nice place with a northwoods vibe.  And the service we had was friendly and prompt.  It's easy to see why it has been a popular spot with locals and vacationers for years and years.  

Minnesota Vacation - 2020

With pent-up frustration from being stuck at home for the last five-plus months, my wife and I threw caution to the wind and decided to take some time off recently and head out on a weeklong vacation.  We headed up north to Minnesota - not quite mirroring our trip to Minnesota from last year - but heading further north to the Bemidji area, approximately 100 miles south of the Canadian border.  I remember being in Bemidji and the surrounding area when I was young and it was sort of fun to try and remember some of the things we saw on this trip.  

For our time away, I wanted to find some place where we could stay in relative comfort, but be on a lake.  I've gone long past the urge to pitch a tent somewhere and I like to say that my idea of camping is leaving the window open at the hotel at night.  Since I'm a Lifetime Hilton Honors Diamond Member and have a boatload of points - even though I haven't traveled since March - I did a Google search for "Hilton properties on a lake."  It took me to a web site that listed about five or six Hilton hotel properties on lakes around the U.S.  The first one listed was the Bemidji Doubletree Hotel.  I was sort of intrigued as it had been years since I had been in Bemidji.  We spent a few days last summer at a Hampton Inn in Spicer, MN, but Spicer and the surrounding area didn't offer much in terms of food choices.  And since we like to try different restaurants out when we go on trips, I sort of figured that Bemidji - being much larger than Spicer - would probably have ample choices of places to eat in and around the area.

We had missed a chance to head to California for our 25th wedding anniversary earlier this year, so we were understandably disappointed when the pandemic pretty much took away those plans.  But we figured that if we drove to some place that wasn't a big population center and could sort of watch out for ourselves if big crowds developed, we would be fine.  The Bemidji area sounded like the perfect spot for us.    

In my years of being a Hilton Honors member, I've found that most Doubletree hotels that I've found are usually older hotels that were sort of run-down.  It was like Hilton took over what were at one time some very nice properties that had grown tired over the years and slapped the Doubletree name on the front.  But that was very far from the truth with this particular hotel.  It had been completed in 2014 and featured six floors of very nice rooms.  It was connected with the Bemidji Hampton Inn & Suites and both hotels shared a Green Mill bar and restaurant.  (see map)  My wife and I went into the Green Mill one night to get a drink and the smell of the old grease from the fryers almost made my wife gag.  It was pretty bad.  We decided to take our drinks back up to our room instead of hanging at the bar.  

The hotels were built on the grounds of the original Crookston Lumber Mill which was built in the early 1900's by Eastern investors hoping to cash in on what was a large amount of ample timber in forests in the surrounding area.  At one point in time, over 2000 men worked at what was the nation's second largest lumber mill which ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week processing wood that would be shipped all over the U.S.  However, a massive fire in 1924 destroyed the sawmill and over 24,000,000 board feet of white pine timber valued at $750,000 (or $11.3 million dollars in today's money).  By that time, however, most of the north woods of Minnesota had been cut out and the mill's owners decided not to rebuild and moved on to more timberland in the Pacific Northwest.  

When I was six years old, I was traveling with my family to Lake of the Woods in extreme southwestern Ontario where my late-great uncle had a lodge that became sort of a favorite family destination when I was growing up.  (The lodge - Reel 'Em Inn - is still there.  My family sold it in the early 70's and it has changed hands a few times over the years.  Click here to go to their web site.)  On this trip, we stopped for the night in Bemidji and stayed at a motel.  That motel is long gone but my wife and I deduced over dinner one evening that it had to be the old Edgewater Hotel where we stayed.  Well, it turns out from talking with a couple locals that the Hampton Inn and Doubletree sit on the site of the former Edgewater Hotel that was torn down in 2002.  I was sort of amazed when I realized that I was literally staying at the same location when I was six years old - only in a different hotel.  

The Doubletree had rooms that faced Lake Bemidji and we got a room on the top floor with a balcony.  The views were excellent.  The first day we were there, the wind was coming directly off the lake and we kept the sliding glass door open that night to sleep with the cool breeze and to hear the loons on the lake.  Actually, I think I only heard one loon the whole time we were there.  The hotel had beach facilities and you could rent paddle boats and kayaks to take out onto the lake.  

Another great thing about the Bemidji area are the number of bike paths in the area.  The terrain is pretty flat and there are miles and miles of bike paths around the lake that includes the Paul Bunyan Bike Trail, a 106 mile trail that goes from Bemidji down to Brainerd, MN.  The hotel also had bikes for rent and we thought about renting a couple bikes one day - until we inspected them.  They were a little tired and tattered, and we didn't want to be 10 miles away from the hotel and have a bike break down. 

The hotels had dock facilities, as well, with benches on the docks.  It was nice to head down to the docks - dodging the spider webs that would magically show up overnight after being knocked down by hotel personnel each day - and hang out looking at the clear waters of Lake Bemidji.  We also found a nice little park near the campus of Bemidji State University where we could sit in Adirondack chairs to read and look out over the lake.  

Also along the lake front in Bemidji are the world famous statues of Paul Bunyan and his faithful companion Babe, the Blue Ox.  Paul Bunyan is a mythical hero who was concocted in northwoods logging camps over 125 years ago.  Tales spun about Paul's larger than life frame and persona gave loggers something to laugh and dream about in even the most adverse conditions.  In the early 1900's, Paul Bunyan's heroic stories were first published in books and newspapers in the northern United States and Canada. By the 1920's and into the 1930's, Paul Bunyan became a large part of American folklore, a beloved figure who worked the northern timber with the help of Babe, an oxen who - according to one of many story-tellers who added to the Paul Bunyan mystique - had been rescued from an ice drift by Paul, but not until it had turned blue.  The city of Bemidji, hoping to drive tourists to the area, built the statues of Paul and Babe in 1937 in conjunction with a carnival the city put on.  In 1988, the statues were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  But by the turn of the century, the statues had deteriorated due to wear and tear.  In 2006 the local Rotary club raised just over $50,000 dollars to go along with a $68,000 federal grant to refurbish the statues of Paul and Babe.  They looked pretty good to me when we were there.

Now, when I was six years old and I first saw the Paul and Babe statues, I thought they were the biggest things in the world.  When I got back there so many years later, when I first saw them I said to my wife, "OK, where's the bigger statues?"  I mean, these weren't all that small - Paul stands 28 feet high - but I just remember as a little kid that these things were towering!  Of course, the trees weren't behind the statues all those years ago, so the perspective may have been skewed.  But still, I was sort of taken aback at how small they looked to me after all these years.  (Well, as a little kid, I always thought the house I grew up in was huge - 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, living room, den.  But now when I walk into the place - my sister lives in the old farmhouse now - I marvel at how small it is to me and wonder just how in the hell 8 people ever lived in a house so damned small.)

At one point in time, Kodak proclaimed that Paul and Babe were the second most photographed statues in the United States - only behind Mount Rushmore.  Now, I find this rather incredulous on a number of levels.  First of all, I may have stretched my description of the statues as being "world famous".  Secondly, I think of Mount Rushmore as more of a sculpture than a statue.  (But, I guess all statues are really sculptures.)  And I think that Kodak conveniently forgot about the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial when they did their surveys of most photographed statues.  I can't believe that people at one time took more pictures of the statues of Paul and Babe in little Bemidji, MN than pictures were taken of the Statue of Liberty.  

With the pandemic, we were wondering what the rules were for restaurants and public buildings before we left.  I called the hotel and was told that masks were mandatory in public places, stores and restaurants.  You could take your mask off once you were seated in a restaurant, but if you got up to, say, use the restroom, you had to have your mask on.  Actually, we didn't find it too intrusive and it really became force of habit for us to just take our masks anywhere and put them on before we went in a building.

However, if you know anything about northern Minnesota, you'll know that most residents up there don't like to be told what to do by the government.  When Governor Tim Walz declared in late June of this year that masks were required in buildings and restaurants, not a lot of people north of St. Cloud were happy about that.  In fact, a local group started a campaign against Walz and his ideas about masking up.  We were driving down the highway one day and came upon a billboard showing the feelings of many people in the area when it came to the governor's edict on mask.  The group sponsoring the billboards called themselves the "Rocks and Cows of the North" because Governor Walz disparaged the region during his campaign saying that they only thing in northern Minnesota were rocks and cows.  The billboard pretty summed up the feelings of many people in the area.  But for the most part, we found the vast majority - probably 98 percent of the people we encountered - were wearing masks.  One restaurant owner told us, "At first people bitched about it, but after a couple weeks a lot of those people just decided to quit belly-aching and wear a mask."  (Photo of billboard courtesy KVRR-TV in Fargo, ND.)  

A couple things sort of got me wondering about Bemidji while we were there.  First off, I was amazed at the number of chiropractors in the area.  After getting back to the hotel one day, I did a quick Google search for chiropractors in the immediate Bemidji area and there were over 20 clinics listed.  Now, we come from the birthplace of chiropractic medicine and we have a lot of chiropractors in the Quad Cities.  But for a city the size of Bemidji (about 15,500 people) we figured that there was 1 chiropractor for 675 residents.  

Secondly, we kept seeing little signs and phrases around town that called Bemidji the "1st City".  Well, I knew from junior high history classes that Bemidji couldn't have been the first city founded in Minnesota.  I was sort of dumbfounded as to why they called themselves the "1st City" until I saw a sign one day that signified Bemidji as the "first city on the Mississippi River."  The source of the Mississippi is Lake Itasca, about 30 miles south and west of Bemidji as the crow flies.  And it is, indeed, the first city on the Mississippi as the river feeds Lake Bemidji from the south before it continues on from the east side of the lake.  

Now, being a lifelong geography geek who is enamored with borders, beginnings and ends, I had to go to the source of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca.  Well, and the fact that I've lived in a city along the Mississippi River for the past 29 years.  It was a quick 35 minute drive from our hotel in Bemidji to the Mary Gibbs Mississippi Headwaters Center near the north entrance to Lake Itasca State Park.  

After paying a $7.00 daily fee to use the park, we pulled into the parking lot at the center and took a path down to a viewing area of the source of the Mississippi.  It was basically like what I had seen in pictures over the years.  There was the wooden sign declaring this spot to be the source of the Mississippi River stood on one side of a rock barrier that you could walk across - and many people were.  (For a live web cam of the headwaters of the Mississippi River, you can click here.)  

The water was clean and clear, a marked difference from the muddy waters we have flowing past us on the Mississippi back home.  The start of the Mississippi was nothing more than a babbling brook slowly making its way from Lake Itasca.

There was a nice wooden walkway that we took along the first few yards of the river's edge.  Down a ways from the source, the small river took a sharp turn toward the east and a small bridge crossed the stream - the first of many bridges to cross the Mississippi on its way to the Gulf of Mexico over 2500 miles downstream.    

Lake Itasca is one of the more popular state parks in Minnesota.  It was established in 1891 making it the oldest state park in Minnesota.  Lake Itasca State Park sits on over 32,000 total acres and there are more than 100 lakes within its boundaries.  The main Lake Itasca has a nice scenic drive around it with some places where you can stop and take paths to get some scenic view and take in nature.  It was worth the $7 bucks we spent.  

Another spot that I remember from my family travels as a youth was the town of Blackduck, about 25 miles northeast of Bemidji.  I only remember Blackduck from the large black duck statue that they had at one of the intersections that went through town.  ("Go straight at the black duck in Blackduck" was one of our favorite sayings on the way to Baudette, MN where we would cross the border.)   Well, my wife's father had mentioned something about Blackduck when we told him where we were going and he said, "You know, we were up there about 15 years ago and we went into a gift shop.  They had a little black duck statue that was like the big statue they had in town and I wish I would have gotten it."  

Well, hell, we had driven 600 miles from the Quad Cities to Bemidji.  What's another 25 miles to get a black duck for my father-in-law?  

Blackduck is like many Minnesota towns that are on the way to the Canadian border from the Twin Cities.  When we would go to Canada years and years ago, it was mostly two-lane roadways that went through places like Little Falls, Brainerd, Walker, Cass Lake, Bemidji and Blackduck.  However, since the last time I made the two-lane highway trek with my late father, my brother, and my late brother-in-law to the lodge on Lake of the Woods a number of years ago, those two-lane roads have been replaced by four-lane highways that by-pass many of the towns.  And the things that you used to see along the way - like the Paul Bunyan and Babe statues - well, you don't see them any longer unless you go into town.  And that's what happened with the black duck statue at Blackduck.  

The original black duck statue in Blackduck sat at a small park in the center of town.  That park is now the site of a funeral home.  The duck was moved next to the Blackduck fire department a number of years ago.  This duck was crafted from concrete in 1942 and is actually the second large black duck statue the town had.  The first one, we were told, looked pretty bad and was destroyed.  

The "new" black duck statue is in a park on the west side of town along Highway 71.  This one is made from fiberglass and is a more realistic depiction of a duck compared to the decoy-like figure the old black duck statue portrays.  We were told that locals still bicker about the two ducks as there is an "old duck" camp and a "new duck" camp.  

We did find a small gift shop in Blackduck and we did find a small black duck statuette that I bought for my father-in-law.  The owner filled us in on the history of the ducks, the "new duck" vs. "old duck" factions and the number one question he gets from people, "OK, so where's the BIG black duck?"  I, too, thought the original black duck next to the fire station was sort of puny in size from what I remember.  But that was also a long time ago and I thought the Paul Bunyan statue was relatively small from what I remember it being.  "For some reason people think that when we put up the new duck out by the highway, we got rid of the old duck and put up a half-scale size statue of it by the firehouse," he told us.  "But, nope.  That's the original black duck."  My wife and I are firmly on Team "Old Duck".  

Another thing Bemidji is famous for is being the proclaimed "Curling Capital of the United States."  They take curling very seriously in Bemidji and a number of local curlers have represented the country in various Winter Olympics over the years.  Now, I love curling - how can you not love a sport that basically encourages you to drink as you play?  

Well, they have a curling club in Bemidji - the Bemidji Curling Club which is located on the west side of the city.  (see map)  And, dammit, I wanted a Bemidji Curling Club t-shirt.  We drove out there one afternoon and found the place was locked up tighter than a drum.  My wife tried calling the number they had listed on their web site and it was disconnected.  I had already picked up a Bemidji State Hockey t-shirt from one of the shops in downtown Bemidji, so I was hellbent on getting a Bemidji Curling Club shirt.  But there were none to be found.  We talked with a number of people who really didn't know why it was shut down.  "Summertime, I think," said one young lady at the t-shirt shop where I bought the Bemidji State Hockey shirt.  "Nobody wants to be indoors in the summer," another guy told us.  "I thought their office was open, but if you got a disconnection message when you called, then who knows," a lady working at a restaurant told us.  We decided that we'd contact them after we got back home.  I'd LOVE a Bemidji Curling Club t-shirt.

One of the more whimsical moments in our travels to Minnesota was at our hotel in St. Cloud, MN where we stopped for the night on our way up to Bemidji.  (It's a nine hour journey from home to Bemidji and my wife can't handle being in a car much more than six hours at a time.)  When we pulled into the hotel, the Planters Nutmobile was in the parking lot.  And it was still there when we were getting ready to leave the next morning.  We just had one of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobiles in the Quad Cities for about a week and it was sort of funny to see the Weinermobile and the Nutmobile in the space of five days.  

Speaking of St. Cloud, my wife wanted to head back to the Munsinger Gardens that we had visited last year on our vacation to Minnesota.  We especially wanted to see the Clemons Rose Garden as the rose bushes had been hit hard during the previous winter last year and they were in the process of replanting a number of bushes in the garden area.  The rose garden was much nicer this year and we got a few ideas for possible varieties of roses to plant in our rose garden back home. It was a great morning stroll at the start of a cool Minnesota day.  Everything was so lush and green - not only at the Munsinger Gardens, but throughout our trip to Northern Minnesota.  They had definitely gotten a lot more rain this summer up there than what we have had in Iowa which now has abnormally dry to extremely dry drought conditions across the state.  

The weather the week we were there, for the most part, was beautiful.  As I said, it was a little cool when we got to Bemidji, but it turned out to be perfect weather for the vast majority of time we spent there.  Only one day did it rain - one morning we heard thunder off in the distance around 5 a.m.  It started to rain pretty well after that and when we got out of bed around 8 a.m., it was still raining off and on.  But by the time we went to get coffee at one of the coffee shops around 10:00 a.m., the rain had stopped.  By 11:00 a.m, the sun had come out and by noon, you couldn't tell that it had even rained, save for a few puddles here and there.  Highs each day were in the low to mid 80's - with the exception of the first day when it made it to only 72 degrees.  And the day we left, we woke up to heavy fog over the lake and low clouds.  My wife remarked that it's much easier to leave a vacation destination when the weather is crappy versus when it's still beautiful out.  

It was a great vacation, to say the least.  It was very nice to get away for a short while and we contemplated staying a day or two longer before we decided to start heading back home.  And we did what you're supposed to do on a vacation - we read books along the lake, we took walks on the bike path around the lake, we napped in the afternoon, we drank some good craft beers, we slept in in the mornings, we ate at some good to very good places - although we did miss going to Red Stu Breakfast Bar, Fozzie's Smokin' Barbecue and a little gourmet hot dog stand called Lucky Dogs (my wife vetoed that one, but next time, yes) - we explored the surrounding areas, we hung out on our hotel room deck admiring the lake, and we did what you're supposed to do on a vacation - just relax.  With all that has been going on with the world over the past few months, it was certainly good to just relax for a few days with little to no worries.   

A Look Back at 10 North Main - Minot, ND

As the pandemic continues, my travel schedule has been curtailed with only cautious optimism that I'll be able to start to get back out to see accounts starting sometime in September.  Of course, that means that I haven't been able to get out and visit new restaurants except for around my immediate home area.  Since last spring, I've been posting some of the more memorable restaurants that I've visited over the years.

Today's look back is a tale of a famous Hollywood actor - a "local-boy-does-good' kind of story - who brought big city dining to a small town where some of the citizens really didn't appreciate the fact that a great restaurant like this is in their backyard.  It was a good 12 year run for this place before it closed its doors in early 2017.  However, three locals who DID see the value in having a restaurant like this in the small city did re-open the doors to the restaurant in the fall of 2017.  Here is my blog post from nearly 10 years ago on my visit to 10 North Main in Minot, ND.

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I had set up a morning appointment with a dealer in Minot, ND and arrived the evening before.  I stayed at a Fairfield Inn on the outskirts of the town and the choices for restaurants in the immediate area were limited to chains, such as Buffalo Wings and Rings - a knock-off of Buffalo Wild Wings; and Paradiso - a North Dakota five-location chain of Mexican restaurants.  I asked the young lady at the front desk of the Fairfield Inn where I could get a really good meal in town.  She didn't hesitate and replied, "Oh, you'll want to go to 10 North Main.  It's downtown and it's very good.  It's, by far, the best restaurant for miles around."  She gave me quick directions and I took off toward downtown Minot. 

Even beyond the restaurants around the hotel, there's not much to choose from in Minot.  And that's probably why four guys who grew up in Minot chose to open a fine dining establishment in town.  Friends Chad Schmidt, Jon Peterson, Josh Duhamel and Lance Behm opened the restaurant in January of 2005.  Schmidt is the managing partner of the restaurant while Peterson is the chef.  Behm is a local Minot dentist and Duhamel, well, he's a somewhat famous Hollywood actor.

Josh Duhamel (pronounced Duh-MEL) grew up in Minot and has starred in the movie "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!" (he played Tad Hamilton), as well as in both of the Transformers movies (a third Transformers movie is coming out next year).  For four seasons, Duhamel was also seen on the television drama "Las Vegas".  But he's possibly most famous as being the husband of Stacy Ferguson, a.k.a. "Fergie" who fronted the group "The Black Eyed Peas".  I understand that Duhamel and Fergie make it back to Minot from time to time (I believe his parents - his father was an advertising salesman and his mother was a teacher - still live in town) and dine at 10 North Main when in town.  As one of my dealers in North Dakota told me, "I can't believe a guy from North Dakota married Fergie!"

"Good Food and Nice Drinks" is the motto for 10 North Main.  It's situated in a building - at 10 North Main, naturally - just across from the Soo Line Train and Transportation Museum in downtown Minot (see map).  The exterior of the building is a mixture of brick, stained glass windows on the first level and large tinted windows that light up the second level of the restaurants. 

It was just after 8 p.m. on a warm North Dakota evening when I stopped into 10 North Main.  Two 20-something girls were at the hostess stand and I remarked to them, "I understand this is the best restaurant in Minot."

They sort of looked at one of another and one of the girls said, "Well, yeah, I guess so."  It was not quite the ringing endorsement I expected to hear after my statement.  One of the girls took me to a two-seat table along a short wall and dropped off a menu.  My waitress for the evening, Anna - a cherub-faced young lady with pig tails in her hair - came by to greet me.  If someone were to say, "Show me a typical, wholesome North Dakota girl", Anna would be the one.  I told her that I would probably have some wine with dinner, but for the time being I really needed a Bud Light.  Well, actually, I needed two.  It had been a long drive out to Minot from Grand Forks.     

The interior of the restaurant was warm and inviting giving it a very laid back feel to the place.  The dining room was segmented into three areas - I sat in the middle area - and there was a small bar area in the front corner of the restaurant with one of the stained glass windows helping provide light to the bar.  I'm not good at describing furnishings, but the place sort of had a contemporary antique look to it - if there is such a thing. 

The menu at 10 North Main was an interesting mix of beef, pasta dishes, smoked entrees including smoked duck and smoked pheasant, and a handful of both seafood and fresh water fish entrees to choose from.  I was hoping the food would be as good as the menu was making it sound. 

Anna came back and told me that they were out of prime rib for the evening - that was fine, I wasn't going to do prime rib - and she told me of a couple specials that I immediately lost interest in.  I told her that I needed a little time to look through the menu and she went to wait on other people.  I was looking at a couple three items on the menu.  First on my list of interest was the bison New York strip - a 12 oz. lean piece of North Dakota-raised bison, seasoned and grilled over white oak wood.  But I'd had a steak the night before at The Toasted Frog in Grand Forks and I wasn't certain I wanted steak two nights in a row. 

I was also looking at getting a half rack of the smoked baby-back ribs at 10 North Main.  The menu said they topped the ribs with a homemade "sweet and snarky" barbecue sauce.  I was tempted to find out what sweet and snarky tasted like.  Lastly, I thought briefly about getting the Chilean sea bass - a sauteed sea bass filet served with asparagus.  But thinking that it's a long way from Chile to Minot, ND,  I decided to stay local.  

Anna came back and I told her that I wanted to start out with 10 North Main's caprese salad, then I had to quickly decide between the bison strip steak or the ribs.  If it's cooked right, bison steaks are pretty damn good.  I was hoping that would be the case and I ordered the bison steak - rare.  A side of garlic-mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley also came with the steak. 

I asked Anna to leave the wine list as I was probably going to get a glass of wine or two with my meal.  The wine list was surprising featuring dozens of very good wines at somewhat reasonable prices.  Also surprising was the amount of wines they featured by the glass.  A full bottle of the Liberty School cabernet was $25 dollars, a fair price for a good-valued wine that we like to drink at home from time to time.  I knew I couldn't drink a full bottle of wine, but one of the many wines by the glass they featured at 10 North Main was the Liberty School cab for $7.00.  When Anna came back with my caprese salad and a basket of bread, I told her that I'd like a glass of that.  "Good choice," she said as she scribbled down my wine order.

The caprese salad was good, but not quite as good as the one I had in Grand Forks the night before.  The tomatoes weren't as ripened as the one at The Toasted Frog, but 10 North Main's caprese salad had a hefty amount of fresh basil on top and a lot more mozzarella cheese than the one from Grand Forks.  The fresh basil and wonderful mozzarella more than made up for the under-ripened tomatoes.

I do also want to mention the homemade bread with the garlic/parmesan butter at 10 North Main.  Outstanding!  I made short work of the two pieces Anna had brought out with the salad and was afraid to get more because I didn't want to be eating bread instead of my steak.  Actually, what was more addicting was the garlic/parmesan butter.  I slathered both pieces with the butter and happily wolfed it down. 

Not long after I finished my caprese salad, Anna brought out my steak.  I thought it looked sort of small for a 12 oz. steak, but there wasn't really anything I could do about it.  I was also afraid that it was over-cooked from the char-marks on the outside.  But I cut into the steak and it was definitely rare.

I'm glad I got the bison strip because after the bad cut of meat I had at The Toasted Frog the night before I needed a good piece of beef to make things right in my world.  And it was a great piece of meat - tender, lean and about as juicy as a piece of bison can be.  The seasoning on the steak was sort of a mixture of salt, garlic, pepper and some other spices.  It worked well with the taste of the meat. 

The garlic mashed potatoes were OK, nothing really special to get excited about.  I had a couple bites of potatoes and a couple bites of the vegetable medley.  The medley of sliced carrots, zucchini, broccoli and cauliflower were cooked just right - warm, yet with a crunch with each bite.

I finished my steak and had one more bite of the potatoes before I let Anna take my plate away.  She got a nice tip for the evening being very attentive, but not bugging me at the same time. 

I was thoroughly impressed with my meal at 10 North Main.  This is a restaurant that could easily hold it's own in a much larger city.  I'm hoping that the people in Minot know just how good this place is and don't take it for granted.  In a city full of buffet and family restaurants, along with fast food and regional chain establishments, 10 North Main stands out as being one of the best restaurants in not only the city of Minot, but in the whole state of North Dakota. 

Derecho!

If 2020 hasn't given us enough problems with the worldwide pandemic, we've had a couple of weather issues this year that have completely knocked us for a loop.  In April, a hail storm damaged hundreds of houses in the Quad Cities - some are still getting new roofs, siding and gutters from that event.  But on Monday, something even more destructive that affected millions of people from Nebraska to Indiana occurred - a rare derecho storm that started early in the morning and pushed across the Midwest throughout the day.  The above picture is an hour-by-hour timeline of the storm as it made its way from eastern Nebraska into western Ohio.  (Photo courtesy National Weather Service)

As I said, back in April we had a hail storm that blew through on what had started out as a beautiful early Spring evening with a full moon rising out of the southeast sky.  This was after the first day we had hit 80° degrees (F) in 2020.  Storms had developed to the northwest of the Quad Cities and a series of severe thunderstorm warnings were issued.  With one storm that was approaching the area, the National Weather Service predicted that it would slide to the north and east of where we lived.  My wife and I sat out in front of our house watching the storm gain intensity.  The cloud-to-cloud lightning was intense and we continued to think that it was going to go past us.  Then we noticed that the lightning was directly above us and scattered large drops of rain began to hit the pavement.  We went inside, down to our family room and turned on a movie. 

As we were watching the movie, about 15 minutes in I thought I heard something like a set of keys or some rocks that had been accidentally left in a pocket of a pair of pants that were in the dryer.  The only problem was that our dryer wasn't on.  When I finally realized that it was probably hail, we ran upstairs and looked out our backdoor into our yard in time to see golf-ball sized hailstones pelting our house, my car, our trees, our deck, etc.  

We were lucky, however.  We had just had a new roof put on about a year and a half prior and it suffered minimal damage because we had A) paid through the nose for high-quality shingles; and B) used a high-quality roofing company to do the work.  The only damage were to some cap shingles and the gutters.  Compared to neighbors up and down our street and behind us who had massive roof and siding damage, we got off pretty easy.  

But, the weather in the spring was certainly fickle.  Four days after we had the hail storm, we had 3 inches of snow.  In mid-April.  And three days after that, we got 3 more inches of snow.  Granted, most of the snow was melted by noon those two days, but still... It's mid-April!  There's supposed to be daffodils, tulips, green grass, and trees starting to bud.  Combined with no baseball starting up due to all the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a bummer of an April.

May wasn't much better.  There was a stretch in mid-May - including our 25th wedding anniversary - where we didn't see the sun or temperatures higher than 57° (F) over a six day period.  I half-jokingly asked my friends on Facebook if a person could get Seasonal Affective Disorder in the spring.  (One of my friends who is a nurse replied with an emphatic "YES, YOU CAN!")

June came and the summer months have been very nice.  There's been no outdoor events this year thanks to the pandemic, so there's been a lot of hanging with the neighbors and sitting on our deck enjoying the weather.  We really haven't had any large weather to speak of other than a spell of hot and humid weather - which, to me, is wonderful.  

We had been hearing over the previous weekend about the chance of storms coming through on Monday afternoon.  By Monday morning, local television meteorologists were warning that storms would gain strength across the state of Iowa with a heightened risk of strong to severe storms occurring that afternoon.  

The first thing I heard of the impact of the storm was on Monday morning from a friend in Nebraska whose work van took a direct hit from a tree that fell into it.  He wasn't inside, thank god.  But it thoroughly ruined his Monday.

Then a couple hours later I started getting reports of the storm impacting parts of Des Moines and central Iowa.  Ames was hit pretty hard, but then reports of heavy damage in Marshalltown (where winds hit nearly 100 mph) and in Newton started to come in on social media.  The Cellar Peanut Pub in Newton (click here to see the Road Tips entry on the Cellar Peanut Pub) lost part of their wall and their roof in the storm.    (Photo above right courtesy Cellar Peanut Pub - Newton Facebook page.)

Suddenly, reports started coming in from Cedar Rapids where wind speeds of over 100 mph had wreaked havoc on the city.  Now, my father-in-law has a farmstead south and east of Cedar Rapids and I had called him earlier in the morning to wish him happy birthday - it was his 80th birthday.  He said that he and his lady friend were heading out from her house in North Liberty to the farm to do some work.  I told him that I had heard some storms were supposed to come in sometime in the afternoon.  He said that he had heard we may get some rain, but he didn't know about any storms.  

When my wife - who grew up in Cedar Rapids - found out that the city was getting pummeled, she called her father out at his farm.  She asked what he was doing and he said that they were about ready to go get into the car and get out of there.  "Where you going to go," she asked him.  

He thought about it for a moment and said, "Well, I really don't know.  Back to North Liberty, I guess."  

By the time he had gotten off the phone and almost opened the door to go outside, a massive gust of wind knocked one of his maple trees onto his car, making it inoperable.  It was an old Buick and I was talking to him about it the next day and he was more upset that he wasn't going to be able to get 300,000 miles on the car.  "It had a great engine," he said.  "I would have been able to get 300,000 on it easily.  Now they'll probably just total it."  My wife was thankful that she made the phone call because, as she pointed out, they probably would have been either inside the car or just outside the car when the tree hit it.  

Following the storm on National Weather Service radar, as well as on local television which had broken in with on-going weather bulletins, we figured the storm would hit the Quad Cities around 1:30 p.m.  That allowed me to go outside and bring in both our American and Hawaiian flags, our hanging baskets, secure larger pots up close to the house, take in our umbrella, and make sure our garden peppers and tomatoes were tied up.  

It came quick.  We were watching one of the local stations that had a downtown Davenport tower camera as the front line of wind gusts emanating from a line of very dark clouds lined up in west Davenport and started to blow dust across the site of the former Kraft Foods plant just west of downtown Davenport.  The dust cloud enveloped the north end of the Centennial Bridge connecting Davenport with Rock Island and soon inundated LeClaire Park.  It was less than two minutes later when the first gusts hit our house.  

We were experiencing a derecho - a rare meteorological event that features a line of fast moving severe storms that can go for hundreds of miles and stretch over 100 miles in length from top to bottom.  Wind speeds usually sustain around 40 to 50 mph with gusts approaching - and easily surpassing - hurricane strength at times.  The wind damage usually occurs in just one direction and is usually known as "straight-line winds".  A derecho (de-RAY-cho) can stay together for long periods of time (as shown in the time-line picture at the top of this post) and their strong winds can last for much longer periods than a normal severe thunderstorm.  We had a derecho in the Quad Cities about 14 or 15 years ago, but this one was much stronger and lasted much, much longer.  

For the next 45 minutes, I have to tell you - I have never been in a storm where the sustained winds were so high for so long.  Mixed in with the high sustained winds over that period of time that were well over 40 mph were 8 or 9 gusts that clocked as high as 89 mph at the Davenport airport.  I have to tell you - and I don't mind saying so - there were at least 3 times when I was scared, as in "Holy shit!" scared.  

We never did go down to our basement - probably a stupid thing.  But it also hearkens back to when I was a little kid and we would sometimes sit outside watching the approaching storm come with a wall of rain racing over the fields west of our house.  I can remember sitting on the roof on a handful of occasions watching storms come in when I was younger.  Of course, I also rode a bike while not wearing a helmet, drank directly out of the water hose, and never wore a seat belt - especially in the back of pick-up trucks.  Kids these days don't know how much fun there is in dangerous situations.  

The wind blew branches, leaves, garbage bins, roofing material and whatever else down the street and across yards from west to east.  Our power went out at 1:46 p.m. and we figured that it would be out for quite sometime.  I would go to the front door and open it up from time to time to look out.  Then a gust from hell would come through whipping the trees back and forth.  I would immediately shut the door and back away into the center of the house.  

We heard a huge "whomp!" not long into the initial throes of the storm.  A large limb from our neighbor's large maple tree fell on our power line.  The power line stayed intact, but the tension guide wire that supported the power wires from the transformer pole to our house had snapped.  Thankfully, the limb soon dropped to the ground and no other large limb hit the wire.  The maple tree in our neighbor's yard has been a point of concern for us for a number of years as it's A) over 60 years old, and B) hangs over a significant portion of our house and deck.  I have to say that if Monday's storm didn't bring it down, nothing ever will.  (Of course, watch it collapse or drop a huge limb on a sunny day with light winds.)  

(UPDATE - We had reported the broken tension wire to MidAmerican Energy after the storm, and the following Sunday evening a team of power contractors came by the house to fix the wire.  We were having problems in our house with lights flickering - getting more dim or getting very bright - especially when something like a hair dryer or the washing machine would kick on.  It turned out that the tension guide wire tore out the ground going into our house.  Once these guys - who were from Colorado and were helping out the local power company - got it fixed, it seemed to fix the dimming and surge problems.)

I've been in two tropical storms in my lifetime - once in Houston in 1985 and once in New Orleans in 1998.  The winds were nowhere as intense as the winds we experienced on Monday.  Many people in the Midwest who have gone through a hurricane said Monday's derecho equaled the experience they had previously.  The storm was also sort of weird.  Lots of wind, but not a lot of rain.  A lot of the rain was coming down horizontally and I'm guessing a lot of it didn't make it into our rain gauge.  Our gauge showed only .15 of an inch of rain, but the yard and soil in our garden seemed to show that there was more than that.  

And the temperature dropped significantly.  Just before the storm hit, our thermometer showed that it was 91° (F).  After the storm had gone through, the temperature stood at 63° (F).  That's a pretty strong cold front that came through.
About an hour after the storm passed, I was able to get outside as I felt the winds had died down enough for me to survey the damage.  Quite frankly, other than a few bigger limbs that were pretty easy to drag to the curb, we didn't have much other than a bunch of leaves and twigs in our yard.  It took my wife and I about 30 to 45 minutes of total clean up.  And what we didn't get picked up, I figured that I'd our vacuum/mow the lawn to pick up the rest of it.   I picked up tree branches with leaves from five different types of trees on our front yard - none of them from either our linden tree or the crab apple tree.  In fact, both the trees on our property came through with flying colors and little to no damage.  Our other neighbors around us seemed to be as lucky as we were.  We did have some trees down in the neighborhood including just down the block to the west of us.  We know a guy just down the street from us who had a tree snap off at ground level that landed on his front yard.  Except, it originally stood between the sidewalk and the street.  "Not my problem," he said with a shrug when we saw him later on.  "The city will take care of it."  Most of the yard debris around our immediate neighborhood consisted of leaves, small branches and some naked twigs.  

We can't say that for a handful of trees in our full neighborhood.  My wife and I ventured out - as authorities said not to do after the storm - to survey areas in the blocks surrounding our home.  Friends behind us lost some of their fencing.  The neighbors next door had their garage door pushed in by the wind and knocked off the track, but they were able to open it up manually.  A neighbor about a half block away had a smaller tree come down on his garage.  But the tree was in such bad shape that it literally exploded when it hit the roof and the damage to his house was minimal.  A neighbor to the north had a large tree come down on their above ground pool and part of their house.  We saw a lot of tree damage, but not a lot of damage to dwellings.  Of course, no one had power.

We figured that if we didn't open the doors on our two refrigerators, we could probably get by with not worrying about the food inside the fridge for about 18 hours and up to 48 hours with the freezer.  Ice was nowhere to be found - at least when we finally thought about it and the few grocery stores/convenience stores that were open had already been stripped bare by people who had similar ideas, but were much more quick at the switch.  I laid in bed that night in a house with no electricity - which meant no air-conditioning or even fans - worrying about the food.

The next morning, something woke me up around 6 a.m.  It was the hum of a small motor.  My wife had moved to our spare bedroom as she was having trouble sleeping and it woke her up, too.  I threw on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and went to look out our front door.  Our next door neighbor had his industrial-sized generator - a 5000-watt loud-assed beauty that he started up moments before.  It was a beautiful morning and I went outside to take a look at the yard after we had cleaned it up the day before.  

I saw that he had two drop cords plugged into the generator - no doubt from their house refrigerator and their garage refrigerator.  They had a phone charger plugged into the third outlet and the fourth outlet was empty.  He also had a high-voltage input for air conditioners or ovens, but I doubt if he would use that as the weather had turned very nice with low humidity after the storm.

My neighbor came around the corner of his garage and he said, "Hey, if you have a drop cord that will reach, you can plug your refrigerator in your garage into the generator."  Well, he didn't have to offer twice.  I mean, we're talking about the infamous "beer fridge" that also is our main freezer.  I grabbed a 100-foot extension cord and ran it out from the garage to the generator.  He plugged it into the generator and I plugged in the power cord from the fridge into the extension cord.  The refrigerator jumped to life.  

My wife groggily came out into the kitchen when I got back into the house.  "How rude," she said half-jokingly about the sound of the generator next door.  

I said, "Well, that rude sound is saving our food and beer in the garage."  

She said, "Can he do the one in the house?"

I walked back outside and he came up to me and said, "Hey, when we're done charging our phones, I'll have another outlet open.  If you have another drop cord, we can hook up your house fridge."  I had to connect a 50 footer and a 25 footer together to make it work, but when he plugged it into the generator, our house fridge popped on effortlessly.  

With that worry out of the way for awhile, we started to reach out to family members.  The only problem was that cellular service was so sporadic - I understand that one-third of all cell towers across the state of Iowa were damaged in the storm - and calls and texts didn't make it to their intended targets.  I had sent a text to a couple three people at my work saying that we had no power, no internet, and "iffy" cellular coverage and that I would have no way to work at home that day.  My wife - who has been working from home since April - was pretty much in the same boat.  

It turned out that her uncle - her dad's brother - and her son were going to go out to her dad's farm and help cut up the tree that killed his car.  We started to get stuff together to head up there and we took off around 11 a.m.  About 30 miles outside of Davenport on our way to his farm, my wife got a text message from her son. "Ohp!  Change of plans," she said.  The text from her son said that they were pretty much done out at the farm and were heading into Cedar Rapids to help clear debris from her sister's yard.  "We're going to Cedar Rapids now," she said as more of a command than a statement.  

When we got near Cedar Rapids we began to see the scope of the damage.  Between the Cedar Rapids airport exit and the U.S. Highway 30 exit, we counted 7 semi's that were on their sides, blown over from the high winds the day before.  It was quite the sight.  

Getting into Cedar Rapids, we were astonished and horrified at the amount of tree damage suffered in the city.  Trees had been uprooted, large branches were laying on roadways, trunks of tree were twisted and shorn of bark, and power lines were hanging dangerously along sidewalks and low over roadways.  I had never seen so much damage to trees that didn't involve a tornado in my life.

My wife's sister lives just west of downtown Cedar Rapids and we turned down her street and were horrified at what we saw.  The amount of destruction was amazing.  It was certainly astonishing to see.  Wind gusts in the area around the city climbed to 112 mph - good enough for what would be classified as a Category 3 hurricane. 

My wife's dad was "supervising" his brother and Cindy's son as they used chain saws to cut up the larger tree that had fallen on my sister-in-law's yard.  It turned out I was a much needed extra hand to help move some of the larger chunks of wood to the side of the yard near the street.  My wife, my sister-in-law, and their cousin from the Twin Cities who came down from NE Iowa with my wife's uncle and aunt to help out all grabbed rakes to take care of the leaves and small branches in the yard.  

It was a beautiful day - much nicer than the day before at the same time of the storm was slamming into Cedar Rapids.  We actually made pretty short work of most of the debris in her yard - I think it took us a little less than two hours to get much of the debris close to the street.  My father-in-law was concerned that we were covering the sidewalk in some places and I had to assure him that the city of Cedar Rapids probably viewed this episode as a special situation and would probably waive any considerations of citing my sister-in-law for having debris on her sidewalk.  In fact, my wife pointed out other neighbors up and down the street that had debris on the sidewalks in front of their homes to my father-in-law.  "Don't worry, Dad," she assured him. "She's not going to get a ticket from the city on this one."   

Next to my sister-in-law's house was a large tree that had slammed into the garage in back.  If you click on the photo on the above right, you may be able to see a light grey vehicle that was parked in the garage.  It turned out that the former family had outgrown the house and moved to a larger property.  The father of the lady who lived there had his Chevrolet Traverse stored in there.  When the property was sold to a young lady, the man who stored the Traverse in the garage came up with a proposition to the new owner - allow me to continue to store my Traverse in the garage and I'll mow your lawn for you at no charge.  The new owner was like, "Well, duh!  Yeah!"  

After I was told that story by my sister-in-law, I said, "Well, how did that work out for him?!"  It was going to be interesting how they were going to get the tree off the garage and the Equinox extracted from the garage without it collapsing on top of the vehicle.  

(UPDATE - It turned out that more of the garage collapsed on the Traverse and it was declared as totaled by the insurance company.  The man told my sister-in-law that it only had 8000 miles on it.  Not only was his vehicle crushed, but the man was emotionally crushed that he lost his Traverse.)  

We took off to go back home a bit after 3 p.m. and the interstate out of Cedar Rapids was a rush-hour mess with cars and trucks only able to go about 20 mph out of town due to the number of overturned trucks still on the side of the road.  My wife suggested taking the airport exit and making our way east, then south to get to Interstate 80 near Iowa City.  Along the way, we were amazed by the number of cornfields where the corn stalks were just flattened.  It is estimated that 10 million acres of farmland was heavily damaged across the state and that corn yields this year will be half of what was expected.  

In fact, the damage to cornfields was so severe that you could see it from space.  The wispy white blotches you see from west central Iowa into the eastern part of the state are cornfields that were blown over during the derecho.  

We got back home around 5 p.m. and our power was still not on.  Behind our neighbor's house is the large transformer that serves a number of houses in the area.  A large branch had fallen from our neighbor's maple tree onto the main wire near the transformer during the storm and there had been repeated attempts to contact MidAmerican Energy to tell them about the branch.  Between four or five neighbors in the area, we hoped that at least one of us was able to circumnavigate the website on our phones that continued to have sporadic service as the toll free number to report outages was busy every time one of us would call.  I figured that as long as that branch was up there, we wouldn't have power.  

At the height of the outage, over 111,000 customers in the greater Quad Cities area were without power.  I was able to finally get through via phone on Tuesday night to MidAmerican and an automated message said that there were still over 25,000 outages on the Iowa side of the river including over 1500 in our immediate area. But it never did allow me to let them know that we had a limb on the main line behind our neighbor's house.  

To give you a perspective of what it looked like a night after the storm, the above photos are a before and after satellite view of central and eastern Iowa (the Quad Cities are just out of the frame on the right) showing the widespread power outages suffered across the state.  When the August 11 picture was taken, you can see that Cedar Rapids was nearly all dark.  And while Des Moines appeared to be well lit, they still had over 70,000 customers without power.  (Photo courtesy KCRG/NASA Worldview)  

The one saving grace through all of this - we had water.  And we have a gas water heater.  After working hard moving debris in Cedar Rapids earlier in the day, a long, hot shower felt damned good just before we went to bed.  Plus it helped keep us cool on another night of no air conditioning or even being able to use a fan to blow some air around.  

Later that evening, something woke me up.  Lights had come back on in our house!  The television in the bedroom was recycling through the DirecTV box startup menu.  I looked at the clock and it said 10:57.  I sort of tapped my wife on the leg and I said, "Power!"  She threw the covers over her head and didn't move a muscle.  That was her way of telling me, "You deal with it!"  

I got out of bed, threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and proceeded to try to get things back to normal.  That included turning off lights, resetting clocks, turning off the TV on our four-season porch, and - most importantly - plugging our refrigerators back into the wall.  Our neighbor had shut off the generator earlier in the evening because I'm sure the neighborhood wouldn't want to hear that thing going all night long.  I got the fridge in the kitchen plugged back in and went out to the garage and got that one plugged back in.  I gathered up our drop cords that were outside and took them into the garage.  

Then I went into the office to check my computer.  That's when I discovered the internet was working fine and dandy in conjunction with the power coming back on.  And I had a bunch of e-mails that I knew I would need to return first thing in the morning.  But the first thing I did was go to the MidAmerican Energy web site and report the branch on the power line.  I guess that having a large branch on the line like that doesn't matter.  

But the best thing is that I also had to shut all our open windows as the air-conditioner and ceiling fans were also working.  After being up for about 45 minutes trying to get everything back to normal in the house, I crawled back into bed listening to the hum of our HVAC unit outside our bedroom window.  My wife was more than happy that the AC was back on.  

As I finish this up entry on Thursday evening - three-plus days after the derecho hit - there are still over 25,000 houses and businesses across the Quad Cities that still do not have power.  In highly affected places like Des Moines, Newton, Marshalltown and Cedar Rapids, they may not have power until this weekend, at the earliest.  There are a number of rural customers who may not have power until early next week.  But we were certainly lucky.  We had helping neighbors with a generator, we had minimal damage to trees and personal property at our place, and we have power when many others do not.  

But the hell of it is - the large tree branch is still on the main power line behind our neighbor's house...

(UPDATE - A tree company working in conjunction with Mid-American Energy was able to get the branch down about five days after the storm hit.  Turned out that it didn't matter if a tree branch was on the line for power to continue on to houses in our neighborhood.)

(UPDATE 8-29-20) Since we had power less than two days after the storm hit and my sister-in-law in Cedar Rapids did not, we invited her to stay with us for a few days.  She also works from home and needs an internet connection - which wasn't going to happen until well after she got power back on.  Those few days have stretched into two weeks.  She got power back on in her house a little over a week ago, but there's still no internet connection from her cable company.  She said that she would hear from the cable company when they would be working in her neighborhood, but would not know for sure if her internet would be up and running until she went back to try it.  But it turns out that the extensive damage in Cedar Rapids could cause cable and internet access to be delayed a little longer than expected.  But we're fine with her here.  We now have three people working out of the house and no one seems to be getting in each other's way.

My sister-in-law went home to Cedar Rapids on Friday night to hang for a couple days and she told my wife on Saturday morning that she was depressed because it's been nearly 3 weeks since the storm and she still has piles upon piles of debris from the fallen trees in front of her house.)    

La Herradura - Le Claire, IA

At the little neighborhood bar that we like to go to from time to time, one of the bartenders lives out in Le Claire, just up the Mississippi River from the Quad Cities.  Just before the pandemic caused bars and restaurants to close down across the state of Iowa, she was telling us of a new Mexican restaurant in Le Claire that had just opened up.  She said the food was delicious.  Recently, my wife and I made our way out to Le Claire for a Saturday afternoon getaway and we ended up at La Herradura for a late lunch.   

For years, I've said that we're very blessed to have a number of very good Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities area.  Since the 1920's migrant workers from Mexico came to the area to work on the railroad and in farm fields in the valley along the Mississippi River.  And many of them stayed in places like East Moline, Silvis and Muscatine.  There are easily a dozen great - and authentic - Mexican restaurants between Muscatine and the Quad Cities.  So when we found out that one was opening in Le Claire - and it was reportedly very good - we were eager to give it a try.  

The owners of La Herradura had hoped to open sometime in February of this year, but like any new venture there were some delays involved.  They finally opened on March 2, but were forced to close two weeks later when Iowa shut down all bars and restaurants because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  La Herradura reopened for to-go food orders in April and re-opened for inside dining earlier this summer.  

After an afternoon of visiting a couple three local watering holes in Le Claire, I turned the car north along Cody Road and found La Herradura just north of the downtown area.  (see map)  The building that houses La Herradura was once a small grocery store before it closed down.  A restaurant by the name of Tasty Cafe took over part of the space of the old grocery store, but it was replaced by a place called Destyni's Cafe.  That restaurant was in the spot until last fall when it closed down.  Hopefully, La Herradura breaks that streak of restaurants in that location going out of business.

La Herradura is named after the wonderful Herradura tequila which my wife and I prefer for our homemade margaritas.  La Herradura has a wide open floor plan with tables in the middle of the room and booths ringing the perimeter.  It's brightly lit and has a number of Mexican artwork and artifacts on the walls.  There's also a small outdoor seating area in front of the building.   

We sat down in a booth by one of the front windows and were given menus to look over.  La Herradura doesn't have a bar, per se, but a small shelving unit near the kitchen window on which to make drinks.  They had margaritas, sangria and wine, as well as a number of domestic and imported beers to choose from.  

Their signature margarita is made with, of course, Herradura tequila.  We had a choice of either the Herradura reposado or the silver.  We got the silver for these margaritas.  The Herradura is mixed with Cointreau, orange and lime juices.  It was served in a huge glass and it cost $14 per drink.  Now, at this point in the afternoon, we weren't certain that we needed a margarita, let alone a $14 margarita.  But it was very smooth, refreshing and flavorful.

We started off getting a basket of their house-made chips and salsa.  The salsa was sweet and tangy, and had a very good flavor.  I asked our server if I could get some of the salsa verde to go with the chips.  She brought over a bowl of their salsa verde and it was served warm.  Most salsa verdes that we've had are usually a little too salty for our tastes, but the salsa verde at La Herradura wasn't salty at all.  There was a hint of saltiness, but nothing really noticeable.  The salsa verde was excellent, in my book.

Most of the food items on the menu were your typical Mexican fare - tacos, enchiladas, burritos, and combo plates.  But they also had a number of seafood items on the menu including grilled tilapia tacos, a handful of shrimp dishes, and both shrimp and fish ceviche.  I was really keen on the seafood items on the menu, but I also had my eye on the pork chile verde dish, as well as the carnitas platter.  In fact, they had about six or seven items on the menu that I was really interested in.  

My wife thought the fajitas sounded good to her and she ordered up the chicken fajitas.  Since it was still a bit before 3 p.m. when we ordered, she was still able to get the fajitas in the lower priced lunch-sized platter. The fajitas were served with grilled onions and peppers along with a side of shredded lettuce and pico de gallo.  Mexican rice and refried beans came with the grilled chicken and veggies.  Flour shell tacos completed her meal.  

Torn between too many choices that sounded good to me on the menu, I ended up ordering the beef enchiladas verde.  But the carnitas also sounded good to me and I asked if I could get a single carnitas taco.  Normally, you would get three enchiladas on the platter, but the lunch portion only served two.  And that was fine with me.  Refried beans and rice came with the enchiladas.  

The beef enchilada verde was very good.  Once again, the chile verde sauce was not salty and had a wonderful natural taste that went well with the enchiladas.  The rice was also good and the refried beans were decent.  But, then again, refried beans are not my favorite thing in a Mexican restaurant.  

The carnitas taco was topped with chihuahua cheese, pico de gallo and a slice of avocado.  The carnitas were simmered, then grilled for a crunchy taste.  I poured a bit of the salsa verde on top of the taco to give it a bit more of a pizazz in taste, although it really didn't need it.  

My wife was sort of disappointed in her chicken fajitas, however.  She said they were too salty.  She offered me a bite and I got some on my fork to try.  And they were very salty.  My wife is the salt eater in the family and if she says something is too salty, well, it's very salty to me.  She thought the overall taste of her chicken would have been much better had it not been so salty.  

My wife's disappointment aside, we decided that we would come back to La Herradura at some point because they had so many things on their menu that we really wanted to try. We probably went a little overboard ordering up a couple of their signature margaritas - we decided that would could have shared one - but they were outstanding in taste and quality.  I especially enjoyed my beef enchilada verde and the single carnitas taco that I got was also very good.  Other than my wife's chicken fajitas being too salty, she seemed to like the place very much.  It was comfortable and the service was prompt and friendly.  Compared to other noteworthy Mexican restaurants in the area, I felt that La Herradura held their own.  We figured we could go back to La Herradura a number of times and try something new on each visit, the menu was just that interesting to us. 

Spices - Kihei, HI

As the Coronavirus pandemic lingers on, the lack of travel on my end has created a void in new places that I've been able to visit.  One of the things I've learned in the nearly 15 years of Road Tips is to have consistent content - the number one rule that I've told many other burgeoning bloggers who have asked me for advice on blogging over the years.  

I try to eat in pretty good restaurants.  But sometimes I hit a dud here and there.  And it's somewhat amazing in that a bad review generates more page views than a good review of a good restaurant.  There must be something in the fact that people want to read more about bad things than good things.  

With that said, I scoured the back log of Road Tips entries looking for a review on a restaurant that turned out to be disappointing - and that generated a lot of page views.  This is one on a seafood restaurant on Maui where I had a bad vibe about the place when we sat down and it didn't get much better.  Here's a review on Spices that was originally published 10 years ago.

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We had driven by Spices on South Kihei Road a number of times during our visit to Maui and I was sort of intrigued by the open air restaurant connected to the Maui Coast Hotel.  We did a little homework from our hotel room (even with a horrible internet connection) and thought Spices sounded pretty interesting.  We decided to go there for dinner one warm Hawaiian evening. 

Spices wasn't far from our hotel - about a 10 minute drive to the restaurant (see map).  There wasn't a lot of people in the place when we got in about 7:30.  We were seated next to the open ledge looking out onto S. Kihei Rd.  That was sort of a mistake because it was sometimes loud with traffic and exhaust fumes permeating the air. 

The dining room was open and airy with a number of tables throughout the place.  There was a small bar in the corner and a nice little outdoor fountain with a few tables near it.  No one was seated outside that evening.  The decor was sort of a contemporary Hawaiian theme.  It was very comfortable. 

Our waiter was a pretty nice guy and very good at his trade.  We were given menus and we ordered up a couple drinks - I had a Kona Big Wave Golden Ale and my wife had a mai tai.  I also looked over Spices very short wine list trying to find a nice white wine to go with dinner.  There wasn't much to be had.  I finally ordered a Kendall-Jackson chardonnay which was about the best they had to offer.  

We looked over the menu on line before coming to Spices and there were a lot of intriguing things to try.  One thing was the garlic clams - a pound of fresh clams sauteed in butter and garlic.  We decided to try that as an appetizer.  

The waiter brought out the clams and the wine and we dug in to the plate.  The clams were *OK*, really nothing special.  I would have thought the taste sensation would have been a little better given that they were sauteed in butter and garlic, but they didn't really have much pizazz.  It was rather disappointing.  

We ordered up dinner after the clams were gone.  One thing that jumped out at me when I first looked at their menu on-line earlier in the day was the mahi mahi piccata.  They take fresh mahi mahi and cook it like a veal or chicken piccata with a light breading, then cooking it with a butter wine sauce with mushrooms and capers.   They served it on a bed of rice with a side of fresh steamed veggies.  Now, THAT sounded interesting to me. 

My wife was torn between Spices' Hawaiian-style mahi mahi - they take a mahi mahi filet and encrust it in macadamia nuts and top it with a tropical fruit salsa - or the special that evening which was baked opakapaka, which is also known as "pink snapper".  Opakapaka is plentiful all over the tropical regions of the Pacific Ocean, but they seem to grow rather large around Hawaii.  She decided to try the opakapaka and it was served on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes. 

It really wasn't all that long before our entrees showed up at the table.  My wife's opakapaka was a large filet that had a light cream sauce on top.  Three grilled shrimp came with the fish which was served on some steamed vegetables.  She said the opakapaka was "good", but not great.  I tried a bite and I thought it was OK.

My mahi mahi piccata was highly disappointing.  It was nowhere close to being a true piccata-style meal.  The piccata sauce was more of a glaze and the fish was overcooked and dry.  It just wasn't very good.  The veggies were good, however.  They weren't overcooked or lifeless to the taste.  Sadly, it was a mediocre meal compared to other places we were at while we were in Hawaii.

Since we tried Spices, I've read reviews from travelers on some web sites that denigrated the food at the place.  I will say the waiter we had was very good and very attentive, but the level of service and the atmosphere at Spices is the draw.  I understand they have very good breakfasts at Spices, but my dinner was pedestrian, at best.  My wife's opakapaka was good - much better than what I had - and that's not saying much.  Overall, Spices was probably the worst meal we had while we were in Hawaii.  That's too bad as the place seemed to have a lot of potential.

(Update - It's been called to my attention that Spices has closed.  It's probably for the better.  It was highly disappointing.)

7 Hills Brewing Company - Dubuque, IA

A couple three Saturdays ago, my wife had had enough of working out of the house and not being able to get out and go somewhere.  I wasn't too enamored with taking a day trip somewhere, but that's sort of what it turned out to be as we drove up to Guttenburg, IA, then made our way back down through Dubuque.  My wife - who needs three square meals a day - was getting hungry by the time we made it to Dubuque and we decided to stop for a late lunch.  We had been to a brewpub in Dubuque - 7 Hills Brewing Company - once before on a brewpub/microbrewery weekend tour of NE Iowa a little over a year before.  We decided to stop in and get something to eat.  

Keith Gutierrez was a PRN occupational therapist who loved craft beer.  Working around the Dubuque area, he was getting weary of finding part-time gigs as a PRN.  He always had it in the back of his head that he would love to run a brewpub at some point.  However, he had no experience brewing beers, nor running a restaurant.  

Gutierrez saw a need for a brewpub in Dubuque and local developers were turning buildings in the historic Millwork District in downtown Dubuque into residential and commercial spaces including restaurants, shops and gyms.  He thought that he could put a brewpub in one of the spaces that was being renovated, but he needed to assemble a team of experts that could help him in making his dream come true.  And he turned to social media to figure out who those people could be.  

It turned out that there were very knowledgeable people locally who could help steer Gutierrez in the right direction.  One of those people was Sean Carter, the brewmaster at Galena Brewing Company over in Galena, IL.  Carter was a graduate of the World Brewing Academy curriculum at Chicago's Siebel Institute of Technology and had garnered several medals at the Great American Beer Festival while working at Galena Brewing Company.  His wife, Megan, was the front of house manager at Galena Brewing for a couple years before she went to work as a restaurant/catering manager at Eagle Ridge Resort outside of Galena.  The Carter's were intrigued with the prospect of helping start a new brewpub that they signed on with Gutierrez.  

Gutierrez wanted to have food offerings that were a step above just regular bar fare.  He enlisted the help of Tim Conlin, a graduate of the (now closed) Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Minneapolis, to come up with a selection of foods that people could either have for appetizers or for full meals.  Gutierrez's team came together in early 2016 to plot their course to opening up the new brewpub.   

The group initially thought they'd be able to open by the end of 2016, but unforeseen obstacles and some hiccups got in the way of some of those plans initially.  After getting the OK from the City of Dubuque to start work on the building in the summer of 2016, more snags developed and hurdles had to be jumped.  Brewing tanks were delivered in early 2017 and Gutierrez hoped to have the business open by the spring.  But more delays set back the opening day for a few months more.  It was in late August of 2017 when the brewpub opened, the name "7 Hills" coming from the number of hills found in Dubuque.  

Gutierrez and his team were together for one year before Sean Carter decided to get out of the brewmaster business and open up an outfitters business in Galena.  Megan Carter followed her husband in their new endeavor in late 2018 leaving her restaurant manager post at 7 Hills Brewing Company.  Sean Carter was replaced as brewmaster by 7 Hills associate head brewer Brian Zeimet in the summer of 2018.  Zeimet was at the helm of the brewery at 7 Hills for a couple years before he left earlier this summer.  His replacement, Adam Rubach, came over from Galena Brewing Company.  Rubach also had a part-time gig as an associate brewer at Titletown Brewing Company up in Green Bay, WI.  

7 Hills Brewing Company is located in the heart of the Millwork District at the corner of Washington and E. 11th Street in downtown Dubuque.  (see map)  We were able to find parking just across the street on Washington.  From the outside, the building is pretty nondescript.  A small sign hangs above the main door into the brewpub and there's outside seating on what was probably a shipping dock at some point in the building's previous life.  

As I said, we had been in there once before when we had taken a weekend journey up to Decorah to try some of the brewpubs/microbreweries there, then made our way down to Dubuque stopping at a couple three breweries along the way.  We sat at the bar in the spacious German-style beer hall at 7 Hills on our first visit. Wooden supports held up large wooden beams that crossed over the main dining/bar area in the brewpub.  Exposed brick walls gave the large room a sort of retro-warehouse vibe. 

They also feature live music from time to time at 7 Hills Brewing.  A small stage is set up opposite the bar area as the brewpub hosts small bands or 1-2 person musical performances from time to time.  Karaoke and trivia nights also are part of the entertainment at 7 Hills.  

We were greeted by a young lady who took us to one of the long tables in the beer hall.  Social distancing practices were in place and we were at the far end of one table leaving room for others to sit at the other end of the table if needed.  But it was the middle of the afternoon and there weren't a lot of people in there having food at that time.  

The hostess dropped off a couple food menus for us, and it wasn't long before a 20-something guy by the name of Elijah came over to drop off a couple of beer and craft cocktail menus for us to look over.  He said he would be our server that day, but he needed to take care of a couple things before he could take our drink selections.  That gave me some time to look over what they had at 7 Hills.  

The beer menu that day was pretty extensive.  They keep 7 beers on tap year-round and a number of seasonal beers pop up from time to time.  I had their 7 Headed Monster American Pale Ale on our first visit over a year ago and I thought it was pretty good.  But they had two other beers - both hazy pale ales - that I was interested in.  One was the Triple Hoptics that had a much lower IBU than the Cerebral Haze.  When he came back, I asked Elijah if I could try a sample of both.  My wife was not that much in the mood for beer, so she ended up getting a Strawberry Fields, a fruity-tasting margarita.  The Triple Hoptics was much too fruity for my taste while the Cerebral Haze had a wonderful smooth taste with a bit of bitter hoppiness to it.  The Cerebral Haze is offered as a seasonal beer in conjunction with the Potosi Brewing Company just up the Mississippi River a ways in Potosi, WI.  

For food, 7 Hills offers your typical appetizers - wings, tortilla chips with artichoke dip, onion rings, and nachos - as well as a selection of salads, burgers, sandwiches and pizza.  A family at a table near us were having pizza and it looked very good.  They also have smoked barbecue meats such as brisket, chicken and baby back ribs available, too.  They also had a couple of seafood dishes such as a blackened salmon platter served with garlic mashed potatoes, and a shrimp linguine served in a garlic butter sauce.  

I told my wife that if I got something like a sandwich or a full meal, I wouldn't probably have dinner that evening.  She didn't like the sound of that as she knew that she would probably be eating alone later that evening if that happened.  She said, "I just need something, not a lot.  Just something to tide me over until later."  

My neighbor had been to 7 Hills before and he got the chicken wings.  He raved about how good they were and my wife suggested getting those.  She asked Elijah how many wings came in a pound, as it was advertised on the menu.  He said, "I think it's 8 or 9, depending upon how big the wings are today."  Well, there were 7 wings in a pound that day.  We got them with the mild Buffalo sauce - there were other options such as a sweet barbecue sauce, a barbecue sauce made with stout beer, a sweet chile sauce, and a peanut butter curry sauce. We got a side of both ranch and blue cheese dressing with them.  

And they were very good.  The wings had a nice crispy outer shell to them covering the tender meat morsels.  They weren't small, but they weren't too big, either.  The mild sauce had a bit of a kick that I enjoyed and it was tolerable enough for my wife who doesn't do spicy all that well.  

We also got an order of the red ale beer-battered onion rings.  These alternated from very good to sort of disappointing.  I don't know how they could serve onion rings where some were cooked perfectly and others were completely overdone.  The ones that did survive the overcooking were very good.  The ones that didn't were too crispy and had sort of a burnt taste.  But the beer-batter was also pretty thick and between the wings and the onion rings I was pretty full.  I told my wife that even though we ordered a couple appetizers that I didn't know if I would have dinner that evening.  The onion rings sat like a brick in my gut.     

7 Hills Brewing Company is a nice place with a notch-above-bar-food menu.  Their beers are good, they have a full bar with specialty cocktails, and it's situated in a historic building in downtown Dubuque.  It's a large open spot that is akin to German beerhalls with long community-style tables and it has a nice comfortable feeling to the place.  I thought their chicken wings were very good, but was somewhat disappointed in the onion rings as they were alternately very tasty to almost inedible.  But what I did eat, it filled me up to the point where I don't believe I did have dinner that evening.  I would like to go back at some point, however, and have either a burger or a sandwich, or we may even try one of their pizzas that looked pretty good.