Road Tips

Suki Sushi - Brentwood, TN

On our trip to the Gulf Coast of Alabama, we made it to just south of Nashville to stop for the evening.  After checking into our hotel in Brentwood, we decided to go look for some food in the immediate area.  We had stayed in the area before and we had eaten at a couple restaurants around the hotel, but we were looking for something different.  Directly behind the hotel were a number of restaurants - only we didn't know they were directly behind the hotel until we drove to them.  Not wanting anything too filling that late in the evening, we took a look at a Mediterranean restaurant, but decided against it.  Walking along, I saw a sushi restaurant down the way.  My wife agreed that sushi would be a wonderful meal that night, so we went into Suki Sushi to give it a try.  

Suki Sushi opened in 2016, part of a complex of a hotel, shops, restaurants and office space situated around the Mooreland Mansion, a Greek-revival old-South antebellum home that was originally built in 1838.  It was part of a business park for a number of years before the city of Brentwood took it over for the multi-use City Park complex a few years ago.  When they built the Hilton Garden Inn in Brentwood in 2016, they incorporated Moorland Mansion as part of the hotel.  

It was just before 9 p.m. when we walked into Suki Sushi.  It turns out that we could have easily walked out the back entrance of our hotel and been there in less than two minutes.  (see map) We were greeted by a young man by the name of Nestor who told us that we could sit anywhere.  We ended up in a booth opposite the bar.  The restaurant featured a lively array of lighting schemes that gave a colorful glow to the place.  There were a number of backlit squares behind the sushi bar along the short wall of the restaurant.  A couple of flatscreen televisions were behind the bar.  

Nestor came over and dropped off a couple menus and asked what we would like to drink.  I needed a beer - or six - after the long drive we had that day.  I ordered up an Asahi and my wife got a water to start out.  She was going to have wine - Suki Sushi featured a full bar with mixed drinks, wine and beer.   Nestor showed up with my beer and my wife's water and wanted to know if we were ready to order.  We felt sort of rushed and my wife said that we needed a minute.  Nestor seemed sort of put off by her reply.  

Then I realized that they probably closed at 9 p.m.  And there is nothing worse than being the customer who comes in at closing time.  I said, "Oh, shit.  I think they close at 9.  I'll bet you he's not happy we walked in this late."  

I slammed my first Asahi.  And I mean - SLAMMED!  I had definitely brought my funnel with me that night, but after a long drive through cool, rainy weather, I needed some beers.  Nestor came back about five minutes after he brought my beer and I showed him that it was gone.  He asked, "Have you guys figured out what you'd like?"

I said, "Do you guys close at 9?"  (It was a bit after 9 p.m. at that point.)

"Oh, no," Nestor said.  "We're here until 10."  

Feeling a bit better about things, I ordered another beer and told him that we were still trying to figure out what we wanted.  He wordlessly walked away.  My wife said, "I don't think he's happy we came in this late."   Nestor brought my second Asahi to the table and walked away without a comment.  I did tell him "thanks" for bringing a much needed second beer to the table.  

The menu at Suki Sushi featured your typical sushi items as well as cold and hot appetizers, fried rice and noodle entrees, hibachi dinner entrees and combos, and tempura and katsu dishes.  But we were there for the sushi.  

By the time my 2nd beer was finished - about 10 minutes after we sat down - we were ready to order.  Nestor was somewhat astounded that I needed a third beer when he came back to take our order.  "You're my kind of guy," he said to me as he picked up the second empty bottle and asked what we would like to order.  What ever indifference we felt from him initially had all but faded away.  We realized that he was pretty much laid back and chill in his demeanor.  We got along well with him the rest of the evening.  

My wife always wants a Kani salad when we have sushi, but they didn't have a Kani salad on the menu.  Well, yes, they did, as Nestor said that the spicy crab salad they had was basically the same thing.  And it was.  It was served in a small stemmed glass bowl and featured crab meat, julienne cucumbers and breadcrumbs mixed together in a spicy mayo.  Only we didn't think it was all that spicy.  Some people may think so, but I guess we're sort of used to spicy at this point in our lives.   But it was still pretty good.  My wife got a glass of the house malbec to go with her meal and to help take off the edge from a full day of traveling.  

For our sushi that evening, we went with a spicy tuna roll; a spicy salmon roll; two pieces of tuna sushi; two pieces of yellowtail sushi; and six pieces of smoked salmon sushi.   Since we were basically the only ones in the restaurant ordering food at that point in the evening, the platter came out pretty quickly.   Like the lighting in restaurant, there was a colorful array of sushi and rolls on the plate.  

And the sushi and rolls were also very good.  I was particularly taken by the tuna.  It was fresh and very flavorful.  In fact, I asked Nestor when he came around to check on us that I wanted to get a couple more pieces of the tuna sushi.  The tuna sushi was just outstanding.   By the time I finished the last two pieces of tuna sushi, I was more than full.  

For a quick, late evening meal, I thought Suki Sushi really hit the spot.  Sushi is great because if you're not full, you can order more.  Or it's a light enough meal that it doesn't sit on your stomach if you eat it late in the evening.  We thought the spicy crab salad, sushi and the rolls at Suki Sushi were all very good with the tuna sushi being outstanding.  Our service from Nestor was good, as well. Especially after we figured out his laid-back demeanor.  And the contemporary decor with the lighting scheme in the place made it a very nice and relaxing atmosphere.  Suki Sushi was a good find for the first night of our vacation.

Mirabito's - North Liberty, IA

My wife's father had just gone through a hip-replacement surgery and was resting at his home in North Liberty afterward.  Since my wife and her sister are still working from home, they felt they could move their workplaces to his condo to help out with his recovery.  For lunch one day, they went over to Mirabito's, an Italian restaurant not far from where they were in North Liberty.  My wife reported that the food was excellent.  I had seen Mirabito's a handful of times on trips up to see my father-in-law and my step-daughter and her family and was always intrigued by the place.  One recent evening, I went over to North Liberty to help my wife move her office back home and while we were there we went to Mirabito's for dinner.  

Gregg Mirabito grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY.  His father was half-Italian and half-Lithuanian, while his mother was 100% Irish.  Gregg's pale skin and red hair stood out amongst the other children of the neighborhood when he was growing up.  Having a mixed culture exposed the young Mirabito to a number of different types of food.  His paternal grandfather was a full-fledged Italian immigrant who married a Lithuanian woman who learned how to make Italian food for her husband.  And Gregg's Irish mom learned many of those Italian dishes from her Lithuanian mother-in-law.  But there was also Irish food served in the house including corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day.  

Gregg ended up gravitating more to the Italian heritage in his family and learned how to make many of the Italian specialties his father liked.  After graduating high school, he went west to go to college at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.  Gregg worked in a number of restaurants working his way through college.  

It was at Kansas where he met Terri Wissman, a young lady who grew up in St. Louis, then moved to Kansas City with her family later on.  Terri wasn't raised with the same culinary diversity Gregg enjoyed growing up and he introduced her to many of his family's favorite dishes made with an east coast flair.  Gregg and Terri ended up getting married after getting out of college, and with the help of a local investor they opened Mirabito's Italian Cafe, a small restaurant in Lawrence that the two ran for about four years before a number of factors forced them to close the doors.  

Pictured right - Terri and Gregg Mirabito.  Photo courtesy Iowa City Press-Citizen.  

Gregg was eventually hired to be a corporate chef for the Marriott chain of hotels.  He worked for Marriott for nearly 20 years eventually going from the kitchen to the administrative offices as an assistant general manager.  Marriott moved the Mirabito's to Iowa City when the then-new Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center opened in 2007.  

But it turned out that what Gregg wanted to do was to get back into the kitchen and run his own Italian restaurant again.  Terri sensed that Gregg was getting antsy to be his own boss again and in 2013 they started to scout for locations for their restaurant.  They found a place in a small strip mall along Highway 965 - the main north-south route through North Liberty - and the next year Mirabito's opened their doors.  

To get to Mirabito's, well, it's a little tricky.  From Highway 965, you turn onto W. Zeller St. heading west.  You can either turn into the Casey's convenience store and go back past that building to Mirabito's; or you can turn south on Sugar Creek Lane and take a left into the small parking lot for the strip mall.  There's a Mexican restaurant on one end of the building and Mirabito's is on the northeast corner of the building facing Highway 965.  (see map) 

We stepped inside and were met by Terri Mirabito.  She told us we could sit about anywhere and we sat at a table at one of the windows in the restaurant.  Mirabito's is not a large place and I didn't know if the tables were purposely spaced that way because of COVID-19 restrictions, or if this was their usual configuration.  After dropping off a couple menus for us, she said that Michael would be our server for the evening.  They were doing a robust "to-go" business during our visit.  

Michael came over to say high and take our drink order.  They had a handful of craft beers on the bar menu at Mirabito's and selected a Zoltan, a Mosaic/Citra-hopped IPA from the Exile Brewing Company in Des Moines.  My wife was going to hold off on getting something until she figured out what she was going to order for food, then order a glass of wine.  

The menu at Mirabito's looks like it came out of an old-school Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, NY.  They had antipasti selections such as steamed mussels, a caprese salad, a meat charcuterie board, and a classic escargot featuring six large snails baked in a garlic and parsley-butter sauce.  In addition to the antipasti selections, they had four salad entrees that you could add grilled chicken or shrimp to for an upcharge.  They had a handful of sandwiches to choose from and a number of typical old-world Italian specialties such as chicken parmesan, linguine with clams, veal saltimbocca, fettuccine alfredo with broccoli, and a baked cannelloni made with beef, pork, spinach, onion, garlic and cheese, then topped with a combination of Mirabito's marinara and alfredo sauces.   

They also had pizza at Mirabito's and my wife said their pizza was very good as that was what they took back to her father when they were staying with him during his recovery.  I was tempted to try the pizza, but I really wanted to try something along the lines of a red sauce dish that evening.

The first thing Michael brought out to our table was a small square of cheese-and-herb-topped focaccia bread with some fresh shredded parmesan cheese served on the side.  Olive oil was provided on the table to mix with the parmesan on a plate.  The bread was light and spongy and sopped up the oil pretty easily.  

We got salads with our meals that evening - I had a house salad with a red wine vinaigrette, while my wife got the Caesar's salad.  The greens and veggies were fresh, cool and crispy.  It was a pretty good salad, in my book.  

For our main entrees that evening, my wife got the chicken piccata.  The pounded chicken breasts came in a lemon, butter and white wine sauce, topped with chopped artichoke hearts, portobello mushrooms and tomatoes, then finished with capers and sprinkles of chopped parsley.  It was all served on a bed of linguine.   It looked delicious and my wife said that it was as good as it looked.  She also ended up getting a glass of the house pinot grigio to go with her meal.

I was in the mood for some pasta with a marinara sauce.  I thought about the chicken parmesan for a moment, but went with the basic spaghetti in Mirabito's house marinara.  For an upcharge, I got a couple of their huge and very tasty meatballs on top of the spaghetti and marinara sauce.  I ended up asking Michael for a side of marinara as I knew what I had on the spaghetti and meatballs wouldn't be enough for me.  The marinara was sweet and tangy, and it had chunks of celery mixed in, along with an herb that was forward in flavor, but not obtrusive.   The large meatballs had a mixture of pork and beef with herbs and bread crumbs baked in.  It was a lot of food for just $13 dollars and I couldn't eat the whole thing.  But it was wonderful.  I also got a glass of wine with the meal - a bold Italian Zinfandel Primitivo.  The taste of the wine exploded on my tongue when paired with the excellent marinara sauce.  

Like any Italian restaurant of its kind, Mirabito's also has a nice little dessert list.  Unfortunately, they were out of tiramisu that night, but had some other things like a house-baked marsala cheesecake, cannolis, and a chocolate torte.  We ended up getting the lemon mascarpone cake served with a raspberry compote and a dollop of house-made whipped cream.  The taste of the lemon mascarpone cake with the raspberries was out of this world.  Adding the whipped cream to those two just made it even more sinful than what it was.  It was an excellent end to what turned out to be a very good dinner.  

Terri Mirabito came over to check on us.  My wife explained that she had been in before, but it was my first time.  "I really wanted to try the pizza," I said to her.  "But on my first visit, I wanted to have something more than just pizza."  Terri Mirabito said that her husband - being from New York - makes the old-fashioned thin-crust pizza.  "Well, that's the kind we like," I said promising to give the pizza a try at some point in the future.  

I said, "I know that spaghetti and meatballs is pretty basic, but it was very good.  I really wanted something like a meat sauce and some penne pasta."

"Oh, we could have done that for you," Terri exclaimed.  "We have an Italian sausage bolognese that we could have made up with penne pasta for you."  I don't want to say I was disappointed when she told me that, but it made me want to come back and try that dish at some point.  

Mirabito's was better than I expected it to be.  For a little "mom-&-pop" operation, it exceeded some full-fledged Italian restaurants I've eaten at over the years.  Mirabito's atmosphere is pretty basic, so don't go in there thinking that you're going to have a quiet and romantic dinner.  But the service was very good, and I thought the food was outstanding.  Even their basic spaghetti and meatballs with their house-made marinara sauce was excellent.  My wife raved about her chicken piccata and how wonderful it tasted.  With relatives in the North Liberty area, I won't be so hesitant in the future to accompany my wife to see them - only if a trip to Mirabito's is part of the deal.  

The Gulf Coast of Alabama

Last year, my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary sitting at home due to COVID-19 restrictions.  We had hoped to go to California, but that didn't pan out.  Since we generally go somewhere during our anniversary, it was sort of up in the air this year due to some work obligations on my part that weren't cleared up until the 11th hour.  My wife was wanting to go somewhere to put her toes in the sand and enjoy the ocean.  She had suggested at some point about heading to the Gulf Coast of Alabama - particularly the Orange Beach/Gulf Shores area of Alabama.  It was literally a last minute planning/reservations/packing session as we took off in rainy Iowa weather for what we hoped would be a few days of sun, sand and surf in southern Alabama.  

What it ended up being was, well, something else.  It was one of the worst vacations we had ever experienced in all our years together.  

First of all, we drove.  But it really wasn't that bad of a drive.  My wife got a "new" used car a couple weeks prior to our vacation and was willing to put some miles on it.  The weather between Iowa and Nashville - our stop for the evening - was rainy, cool and gray most of the way.  Driving in rain is much more taxing than driving in sunny and clear conditions.  

We got up early and took off for the final leg of our journey to the Gulf around 8 a.m.  We had hoped to be there by 3 p.m. knowing that we'd have to stop for gas and bathroom breaks along the way.  The weather had broken and by the time we had made it to Montgomery - about 4 hours south of Nashville - the weather was warm with big white puffy clouds.  The sun was coming in and out of the clouds, it was a bit breezy and the temperature was around 85 degrees.  

By the time we got to the Gulf Coast, it was cloudy, spitting rain, temperatures in the upper 60's and a stiff breeze out of the east.  There was a red flag warning in effect that day which meant that only strong swimmers should be out in the ocean.  However, the stiff winds - during the day they were sustained at 25 to 30 miles an hour during our time along the Gulf Coast - necessitated a double red flag warning later that day which closed the ocean to swimmers.  Small craft advisories were issued and riptide undertows were prevalent up and down the coast.  The above picture is the view out of hotel room right when we first got into the room.  

Speaking of the hotel, we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in Orange Beach, AL.  Since I haven't been traveling for work, my Hilton Honors points have dwindled significantly through using points on trips my wife and I took during the past year.  I used a combination of points and money for the rooms on our trip.  It wasn't as nice as being able to book a room 100% via points, but it was still not that bad in the long run.  I had booked a room with a king bed with a sliver of a view of the white sand beach and ocean.  

When we got to the hotel, we were greeted by an amiable front desk clerk by the name of Douglas.  I asked if there were any upgrades available for Hilton Lifetime Diamond members, like myself.  He looked in his computer and said, "Well, I can put you in a room with two queen beds."  I looked at my wife and she shrugged her shoulders and thought that would be OK.  The extra bed gives us a chance to lay out our bags on the unused bed.  Douglas gave us a top floor (6th floor) room with the view of the beach and ocean that you see above.  

The problem was, it was so windy coming off the water while we were there we couldn't really sit on the deck and enjoy the view.  Even keeping the sliding glass door open to hear the waves at night wasn't as enjoyable with the wind blowing as hard as it was - even during the first couple of nights we were there.  

OK, OK - yes, we sort of knew what the weather would be before we got there.  We knew it would be breezy, but we were talking with some locals while we were there who said that while it can be breezy from time to time, this breeze was much more strong than normal.  We were on the fringe of a storm system to the west that was dumping rain on Louisiana (we had discussed going to New Orleans for our anniversary - we're glad we didn't) and bands of showers would flow on from the ocean, rain for 15 minutes, then stop.  But it was that damned wind that kept blowing.  

After getting checked in and acclimated to the hotel, we decided to go out, look around at some of the sights, get the lay of the land, and find some place to eat some oysters on the half-shell.  We drove to the east and headed toward the Florida-Alabama border.  It was right inside the Florida border that I saw a place that I'd heard about before and was intrigued to check out - a roadside bar/restaurant/package liquor store by the name of Flori-Bama.  

Flori-Bama has been around since 1964 and was purposely built on the Florida side of the Alabama border as Baldwin County, AL was a dry county at the time, while Escambia County, FL was not.  As more people came to Perdido Key via a new highway that connected Gulf Shores, AL with Pensacola, FL, Flora-Bama flourished, adding on to the building and eventually building a package liquor store across the street, as well as a restaurant on the north side of Perdido Key with a parking lot that strandles the Alabama/Florida border.

Flora-Bama is famous for having live music 365 days a year and hosts a number of beach concerts, beach rodeos, and their annual Mullet Toss beach party.  Flora-Bama is also one of many venues along the Florida/Alabama coast that hosts the annual Frank Brown Songwriters' Festival that showcases over 200 singer/songwriters.  

We actually parked in Alabama and walked into Florida across the parking lot.  Once inside, we were immediately in a gift shop full of t-shirts, hats, mugs, glasses, bottle openers, shot glasses, cookbooks, and various other overpriced items.  And, of course, the shop was packed.  The place reeked "tourist trap".  

As we walked through the place, we heard live music in two different areas.  I thought about getting a beer while we looked around, but the lines at the bars to get drinks were 8 to 12 people deep.  And this was on a Tuesday.  In May.  With crappy weather outside.  I can almost imagine how packed and crazy this place would be on a nice weekend day.  But by that time, I'd had enough.  I wanted to get out of there faster than I came in.  

We had been reading up on some of the area attractions and the Wilbourne Antique Rose Trail in Foley, AL - about 8 miles north of Gulf Shores - caught our attention.  We grow roses at our home and we're always up for a walk through a rose garden to get ideas for what we may want to add to our 2 dozen rose bushes that we have around our yard.  The description of the Wilbourne Antique Rose Trail said it was a mile-long path through the city that had "5,000 fragrant and hardy roses".  This we had to see.  

Dodging off and on rain showers, we went up there one day and found the entrance to the path.  It was promising when we saw a number of different rose bushes at the southern entrance to the path.  However, as we walked along the path, we noticed that many of the rose bushes were similar, and that many of them were neglected.  As we continued along the path, we got up to the Foley Public Works department that bordered the path and the rose bushes, well, they sort of petered out.  It was well less than a mile walk from where we started.  To say the Wilbourne Antique Rose Trail was disappointing is an understatement.  

That same day, we decided to drive out to Fort Morgan where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile Point.  Built in 1834 as the first line of defense for Mobile Bay, Fort Morgan is a national historic landmark and is open for walking tours during most days.  Fort Morgan is situated 22 miles to the west of Gulf Shores on a two-lane highway that also takes you to a ferry that crosses the mouth of Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island, located just south of Mobile.  By the time we got out there and were in line to pay to drive in, a pelting, wind-driven rain had just started.  We also noticed that the water was too rough for the ferry to operate that day.  Looking at one another, we decided to ditch Fort Morgan and head back toward Gulf Shores/Orange Beach.

Then an all-time low experience for any vacation we had ever been on happened the next day...

After a very nice meal for our anniversary dinner, my wife woke up in the middle of the night with stomach pains.  She ended up having the flu.  And it was bad.  She was miserable as she passed between the bed and the bathroom for much of the early morning hours and into the next day.  

Me?  I felt fine.  Well, I think I was a little hungover from a combination of beers, lemonade and vodka drinks, and a bottle of wine we shared with our dinner.  At least, I thought I was a little hungover.  But I felt fine enough to go out to a store to get my wife some saltine crackers, applesauce and a Sprite to help calm her stomach.  Upon returning, she was still lying in bed moaning that this was the worst case of flu she had ever encountered in her life.  (I seriously doubted that as I gave her a helluva flu bug nearly 20 years ago where we were both nearly incapacitated for two days.)

She thought it was possibly food poisoning from the meal we had the night before.  But, as I explained to her, we both pretty much had the same thing, sharing bites of our seafood entrees as we usually do when we go to a nice restaurant.  So, if SHE had food poisoning, why didn't I?  She chalked it up to my ironclad stomach.  

On top of all this, the sun had come out and it was actually the nicest day since we had arrived along the Alabama Gulf Coast.  The wind was still brisk out of the east-southeast, but away from the beach it was very nice with temperatures in the mid-70's.  My wife actually told me that I should go out and do what I wanted to do for the day, but I decided to hang out with her and make sure that she was going to be OK.

And it was a good thing that I did.  About 11:30, I started to feel rotten.  I ended up getting in bed and pulling the covers over the top of me.  My stomach was upset and I was getting chills.  I realized that whatever my wife had, I now had.  The rest of the afternoon featured periodic trips to the bathroom getting sick for the first time since I was in France about 7 years ago.  And when I wasn't in the bathroom, I was lying in bed shivering.  

All the time that my flu was raging, my wife was starting to feel better.  She took a shower, got dressed and along about 2:00 p.m., she decided to take the car and go get some other supplies for me.  It was a miraculous turnaround for her while I was in the throes of a full-on attack of the flu.  She even went out and got a sandwich that evening while I laid in bed not wanting anything to eat or drink.  

I woke up at 1:30 in the morning and was thirsty.  I had a bottle of water on my side of the bed and I sat up to take a drink.  Hmmm...  My stomach didn't hurt any longer.  No more chills.  I felt dehydrated and the water was helping me with that.  I was just like my wife - after about 12 to 14 hours after I started to feel rotten, I was fine.  It was very strange.  (We're still debating whether or not it was the flu or food poisoning in conversations we've had with people regarding our vacation.  She thinks it was food poisoning and has been staying away from seafood - especially oysters - since we got home.  I think it was the flu as we weren't sick at the same time like people get with food poisoning.)  

With one day lost in our already short time in Orange Beach/Gulf Shores, we decided to stay an extra day in the area rather than drive up to Birmingham where we were going to take in what we had heard was a thriving craft beer scene in that city.  In hindsight, it turned out that we probably should have gone on to Birmingham.  

Our make-up day consisted of walking along the beach and taking in some of the sights in and around the coastal area.  We had noticed a pier that was part of Gulf State Park, a state park with two miles of white sand beaches in between Orange Beach and Gulf Shores.  After pulling into the parking lot, I walked over to the machine to pay for parking, a young man, his wife and their two kids came up to us and he said, "Hey, I have almost two hours left on this parking pass.  You guys can just have it."  We thought it was very nice of him to do that (we saved a couple bucks) and very odd that they were leaving so soon.  Then when we went out on the pier, we sort of realized why.

First of all there was a charge to get on the pier - I think it was 4 bucks a person.  But then getting out on the pier, the wind was still howling and it wasn't pleasant to be hanging around out there.  The waves were crashing into the supports and it was causing my wife to be somewhat queasy as we stood on the pier.  She doesn't like bridges all that much to begin with and the waves were sending sea spray up on the pier.  

The pier, itself, was still undergoing repairs from the extensive damage that was caused by Hurricane Sally, a category 2 hurricane that made landfall at Orange Beach on September 16 of last year.  The nearby Lodge at Gulf State Park, a nice beach front-hotel under the Hilton banner, also suffered substantial damage from the 110 mph sustained winds and had recently re-opened.  A number of buildings in the area were still under construction over 8 months after the hurricane hit.  On top of the destruction caused by the winds from Hurricane Sally, it also caused localized flooding as the storm was not a typical hurricane that races on-shore and then turns into a tropical system inland.  Hurricane Sally moved at a 2 to 3 mile per hour pace dumping over 20 inches of rain along the coast.  Combined with the high winds, the storm surge and the flooding, it was the worst hurricane to hit the area in over 20 years.  

We tried to get a room for the extra night at the Hilton Garden Inn in Orange Beach, but they were still undergoing renovations from the storm and many of the rooms were not available.  And all the renovated rooms had been sold out at the hotel the extra night we wanted to stay.  We ended up at a Hampton Inn in Gulf Shores, about a mile from the beach.  My wife was OK with that.  "We can hang out around the pool this afternoon," she said as we pulled into the parking lot there.  However, when we looked out at the pool, we saw that it was closed.  "You've GOT to be kidding me," my wife said in an exasperated tone.  "Well, that clinches it.  This is a shitty vacation!"  It was at that point when we realized we should have gone on to Birmingham.  

We did go out later on and hit the only brewery in the area, Big Beach Brewing.  We tried their flagship beer, the Hundred Daze IPA, but we ended up liking their Area 251 hazy IPA better.  We hung out on their patio enjoying a late afternoon craft beer.  

The brewery is owned by dentist Jim Shamburger and his wife, Julie.   Dr. Shamburger's daughter got him a home brew kit about 10 years ago and he immediately loved brewing his own beers.  The little kit turned into a full-blown hobby for Shamburger who started to brew beers between the stilts under their house in Orange Beach.  It turned out there wasn't a brewpub or microbrewery in the area and the couple saw the need for one.  In October of 2016 the Shamburgers opened Big Beach Brewery.  Like many places around the Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area, Big Beach Brewery features live music three or four nights a week.  

After dinner that last evening, we ventured back out to Hilton Garden Inn in Orange Beach and they let us use their access to the beach for a sunset walk.  The wind was still brisk, but not as bad as it was earlier in the day.  It gave us one last chance to enjoy the sand and surf before we had to head back north the next day.  

Oh!  And here's a tip if you want good ice cream.  My wife kept seeing this little place on Gulf Shores Parkway, less than a mile from the beach called Matt's Homemade Alabama Ice Cream.  She finally talked me into stopping one evening when we were driving around Gulf Shores and I'm glad we did.  The ice cream was fabulous.  It was pricey, but in my estimation, it was worth it.  Look for Matt's (they have two locations on Gulf Shores Parkway) if you make it down to Gulf Shores.

We took off after breakfast the next day and drove in heavy traffic along I-65 between Mobile and Montgomery, then again from Montgomery to Birmingham encountering stop-and-go traffic at times in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason.  We did stop at a Whataburger on the north side of Birmingham - which turned out to be an ordeal in itself that then turned out to be the worst experience I've ever had in the over 40 years of seeking out Whataburger restaurants.  The burger gave me a stomachache, so much that I couldn't even eat dinner that evening when we got to Paducah, KY.  But it was typical of the vacation that we had.  We did eat at a few good places while we were there and I'll have write-ups about those places.  But my wife summed it up perfectly as we took off from Gulf Shores to head back home.  "You know, there are times where we've cried when we had to leave some of the vacation spots we've been to over the years," she said.  "But after this vacation, I just really want to get back home."  

Yep, that pretty much sums up our vacation to the Gulf Shores of Alabama...

209 Main - Paton, IA

My wife and I were recently invited for a weekend retreat to my sister's fiancé's lake home along Lake Panorama in west central Iowa.  My sister's fiancé and I were working out dinner plans in advance and he was giving me some options in the area where we could go.  One place that he suggested was a place in the small town of Paton, IA that I had heard about in the past and had wanted to try since first hearing about it.  We agreed that we needed to go have a meal at 209 Main one of the nights we would be at the lake.  

Vaughn Bauer is what you would call a modern success story.  Bauer grew up in a farm family outside of Paton and went to a local community college to study welding and metal machining.  After getting his certificate in 1977, Bauer set up his first shop - Paton Machine and Welding - that he ran in conjunction with working part-time on the family farm.  At the time, jobs were tight and the Bauer family would do what they had to do to make a living.  

As Vaughn Bauer sat on a tractor planting corn or beans in the Iowa soil, his mind would wander to figuring out how to make a better planter, something that would plant wider than the usual 12 rows planters of the day would allow.  In the early 80's, he came up with a toolbar that would allow planter wings on a standard 12 row John Deere planter that could be easily placed in an upright position for easy transport.  Soon, Bauer would modify other planters for friends and farmers in the area.  

By 1989, Bauer had started to manufacture his own multi-row planters.  He called his company Bauer Built and his planters started gaining the attention of farmers across America and internationally, alike.  By 1995, he had redesigned the tool bar on the front of his planters to accommodate more planting boxes that would eventually allow up to 48 rows being planted at once.  

In 2002, John Deere started a co-branding agreement with Bauer Built to sell Deere-Bauer planters around the world.  A few years later, Deere ended up buying out Bauer Built taking over the 150-employee plant in 2013.  Today, Bauer Built has a manufacturing facility just down the road from the original plant that Deere now runs.  Vaughn Bauer employs 60 people that work on special projects for John Deere.  In addition to collaborating with Deere, Bauer Built also manufactures sleds that are used worldwide for tractor pulls, a hobby Vaughn Bauer and his family has been involved in since he was a teenager.  

With so many interested parties coming to Paton to check out the Bauer Built planters - many from countries outside of the US - there was no place for Vaughn Bauer and his wife Lori to entertain clients.  Paton is a very small town with a population less than 200 people.  The town didn't even have a convenience store until the Bauer's put one in a number of years ago.  It became evident that the Bauers were going to have to do something on their own to provide a place where they could entertain clients coming into Paton.  

The Bauers came up with a concept of a steak house-style restaurant that had a nice bar area and a reception/banquet area for larger parties.  Work started on the building in the downtown area of Paton in 2012 and in 2013 along about the time they sold Bauer Built to John Deere, the Bauers opened 209 Main for business.  (The Bauers also own 716 Main in Humboldt, IA, the second of what they hope will be many similar restaurants they hope to bring to small towns in Iowa.)  

It was a 45 minute drive from Lake Panorama up to Paton.  After a quick stop at the Wild Rose Casino in Jefferson, IA to bet horses in the Kentucky Derby, we ended up in front of 209 Main around 5:30 p.m.  (See map)  There was a class reunion going on in the banquet hall of 209 Main, but seating was plenty in both the dining room and in the bar, known as the Tool Bar.  

The Tool Bar at 209 Main is to the left as you walk in the front door.  Multiple flat-screen televisions hang from the walls and around the rectangular bar.  Above the entrance to the restrooms for the restaurant/bar is a Harley-Davidson motorcycle just sitting there.  I've never understood the reasoning why some places will have what appears to be a perfectly good motorcycle on display.  It could be that it was Vaughn Bauer's and his wife didn't want him to ride it any longer.  

The bar, itself, garnered a reputation for its chill strips - basically, a narrow cooling strip along the edge of the bar where patrons could put their beers or drinks to maintain a cold temperature.  The only other place that I've seen this was at the Maui Brewing Company when we had lunch there a number of years ago.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on the Maui Brewing Company.)   The only problem is that the chill strips at the Tool Bar were deactivated.  All I know is that chill strips wouldn't help me out - I drink my beers too quickly.

We found a table in the bar area - there were five of us as my sister's fiancé's son joined us for dinner.  Our server that evening was a nice young lady by the name of Courtney.  After she gave us our menus, we ordered up some drinks.  They had a hazy IPA from the Lake Time Brewery out of Clear Lake, IA on tap - the G-Haze Lives.  We had been to the Lake Time Brewery before and I sort of remember getting that when we were there.  

The menu featured a little bit of a lot of things - steaks, seafood, pasta dishes, pork chops, burgers, sandwiches and even down-home Iowa comfort food staples like an open-faced hot beef sandwich, and a hand-battered fried chicken breast served with mashed potatoes and a creamy pepper gravy.  That actually sounded pretty good to me.  209 Main also had pizza on their menu and I understand that it's pretty good.  

We started out with some appetizers for the table - boneless chicken wings, a bacon-cheese dip that was served with toasted bread, and the 209 poutine consisting of French fries topped with cheese curds, shredded braised beef, chopped green onions and cheddar cheese finished with a rich demi-glaze sauce over the top of the whole concoction.  Now, THAT was delicious!

Interestingly, they had a salad bar at 209 Main.  With restrictions in place for many restaurants during the pandemic, salad bars had gone by the wayside.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a full salad bar up and running at 209 Main.  It had the normal fixings - pickled beets, sliced mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and other veggies to go with the lettuce greens.  After putting a few things on my plate at the salad bar, I got back to the table and saw that my sister's fiancé had gotten a bowl of soup.  It was a green chile soup and I asked where it was on the salad bar.  "At the end," my sister told me.  "You probably walked right by it."  Well, my wife says that I'm not very observant and I certainly didn't see it.  I went back to get a cup of the soup and I'm glad I did.  It was very similar to some of the better green chile soups I've had during our visits to Colorado.

The salad bar was located in the main dining room.  The dining area featured large tables for group dining as well as a number of booths along the wall.  Laser-cut metal signs and parts made at Bauer Built hung from the walls of the dining area.  Some of the signs were the names of countries that had hosted patrons at 209 Main during their visits to Paton over the years.  The bar area was much more lively and I'm glad we sat in there rather than in the dining room.  

They have prime rib after 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.  Now, I had prime rib the night before at Prime Time in Guthrie Center (click here to see an earlier Road Tips entry on Prime Time), but for some reason I really wanted to try the prime rib at 209 Main.  And I'm glad I did.  It was a wonderful cut of prime beef, juicy and tender.  I had asked Courtney to have the chef cut it as rare as possible and there was a lot of pink color throughout.  It came with green beans on the side.  I had a choice of potato and I got the au gratin potatoes.  I had made my way through much of the prime rib before I threw in the towel and had to take a good chunk of it back with me.  As much as I love beef, two large prime ribs on back-to-back nights was a little too much.  

My wife and my sister's fiancé's son both got the ribeye that evening.  My wife got the loaded baked potato for her potato choice.  She was very happy with the flavor of the ribeye which she had cooked medium.  Actually, my wife was even more impressed with the flavor and texture of the green beans.  She said they weren't overcooked and had a good snap when cut.  I didn't pay much attention to my green beans.  

My sister went with ribeye steak sandwich - basically, the ribeye on a hoagie bun that's dressed out.  And my sister's fiancé got the broasted chicken.  It featured two pieces of chicken - he got a third one with a small upcharge - and came with the green beans and a choice of potato.  He appeared to like it very much as there wasn't a lot of meat left on the bones when he finished.  

I had heard good things about 209 Main and I certainly wasn't disappointed.  Having a restaurant like this in a small town like Paton is interesting enough.  209 Main would fit in most anywhere in the Midwest.  My prime rib was very good - one of the better cuts of prime rib that I've had in a long time - and my wife was very happy with her ribeye.  Everyone in our party was more than satisfied with the choices they had for their dinner.  On top of that, the salad bar was a nice surprise and the green chile soup they had on the salad bar rivaled some of the better green chile soups I've had in Colorado.  Paton is definitely off the beaten path, but if you make it out that way, I'd definitely recommend a stop at 209 Main.  

Links - Davenport, IA

A couple new breakfast/lunch places have opened in the Quad Cities over the past year or so and they've been on our radar to try.  The one we decided to try first was a little place on Utica Ridge Road on the far northeast side of Davenport simply called Links.  One recent Sunday morning, we decided to give the place a try.  

The owner of Links is Kevin Takacs who happens to also own the R Bar, a little wine/cocktail place that my wife and I like to go to from time to time.  Links and R Bar are side projects for Takacs who is the founder and CEO of MedForce, a medical air transport company that services Western Illinois and Eastern Iowa.  Takacs founded the company in 2000 with the company's base of operations in the Quad Cities suburb of Colona, IL, and in 2005 they opened a second operation in Burlington, IA.  

Takacs tabbed James Allen to run the kitchen and to come up with a concept for the breakfast/lunch restaurant.  A Quad City native, Allen started out cutting his teeth in restaurant kitchens at an early age.  He eventually became a pastry chef ending up at the Crow Valley Golf Club in Davenport as their head baker.  While at Crow Valley, Allen became intrigued by artisan butchery which involves whole-animal butchering of local organically-raised farm animals for unique cuts of meat and charcuterie plates.  Allen eventually took courses both at Iowa State University and through the University of Wisconsin to learn the art of artisan butchery.  

We got to first know Allen when he would sell artisan cuts of meat at the Freight House Farmers Market in Davenport.  For awhile, Allen would show up with cuts of meat he cut himself, usually sourced from local farmers such as La Pryor Farms in Ottawa, IL.  We bought a beef tri-tip from him one time and it was one of the best tri-tips I had ever made on the grill.  

When Allen got together with Takacs, he wanted to continue the relationships he had built with local farmers and come up with a restaurant that used locally-sourced ingredients for the foods he would make.  The food served at the new restaurant would be traditional breakfast and lunch fare, only made with a refined twist of better ingredients.  Artisan coffee and a full bar with beers and wine would also be part of the mix.

Links had their soft opening in February of last year, but like every restaurant everywhere they were forced to shut down on March 16 of last year.  Then when restrictions were lifted to allow for restaurants to open at reduced capacity, Links re-opened in June of last year.  

It was a beautiful Sunday morning when my wife and I decided to head over to Links, located on the south end of a new strip mall at the corner of Utica Ridge and E. 56th Ave. that also houses a beauty salon, a financial planner, and a chiropractor.  (see map)  Quite actually, we had gone by the place a couple times in the past on a Sunday where the parking lot was packed and we knew we'd have a wait.  This time, we got there early enough - around 8:30 a.m. - to get in with no problem.  

The dining area was an open room, not all that big, but still comfortable enough.  A line of tables with banquette seating stretched along one wall.  Opposite to the other side was the bar area that also had a barista station.  There was a breakfast bar toward the back of the restaurant that looked into a large window into the kitchen.  The breakfast bar wasn't being used for anything other than to stack items on top when we were there.  The decor and atmosphere was rather drab and somewhat utilitarian.  There is also an outdoor patio on the south side of the restaurant.  Even though it was a nice spring morning, it was still a little too chilly to be seated outside.  

We were greeted when we came in by a lady who turned out to be our server that day - Stacy.  Stacy was friendly and outgoing asking if we had dined at Links previously.  When we told her that it was our first time, she said, "Well, welcome.  We're glad you could make it!"  She showed us to a table in the center of the dining area and dropped off a couple menus.  

Stacy asked us if we wanted anything to drink.  With a full bar and craft beer selections, as well as a barista making coffee drinks, I hit the breakfast trifecta with a bloody mary, an Easy Eddy hazy IPA from the Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City and Solon, IA, and a double espresso.  The bloody mary was loaded with bacon, a celery stalk, sweet pickles and green olives.  It was delicious and a great start for what was going to be a lazy Sunday for us.  

While we were there, Kevin Takacs came in the back door and started to converse with the employees.  Then he sort of took charge on the floor - seating people when they came in, helping bus and clean tables, directing his employees in helpful manner.  When he wasn't doing any of that, he would go around to individual tables and check on the customers.  He seemed like a pretty even-keel, hands-on boss who was probably good to work for.   

The breakfast menu at Links is pretty limited.  I don't know if that's way because of the pandemic, or if they just want to focus on specific items.  They had made-from-scratch sourdough pancakes and waffles, a breakfast sandwich with a choice of bread with two eggs, sausage and cheese, and a basic two eggs, choice of bacon or sausage, and toast breakfast.  Sides included hash browns or fries, bacon, link or patty sausage, and pork belly.  

When I saw the menu, I knew exactly what my wife was going to get.  The root vegetable hash featured roasted root vegetables, with asparagus spears, sautéed kale, and a choice of eggs.  She got scrambled egg whites on top of the hash.  A smoked paprika hollandaise sauce was drizzled on top of the food.  For an upcharge, she could have added sausage, fried chicken or pork belly to the dish.  She wasn't interested in any of those.  She also got a cappuccino to go along with her breakfast.  

My wife was also intrigued enough to get a single sourdough pancake.  It was thin, just like she prefers to make her pancakes at home.  (And my wife makes outstanding pancakes.)  More on the pancakes in a little bit.  

I ended up getting the eggs Benedict - or "Classic Benne" as it was on the menu.  It was pretty straight forward - poached eggs topped with the smoked paprika hollandaise sauce, on top of slices of Canadian bacon and a toasted English muffin.  

I also ordered a side of Links thick-cut bacon figuring that James Allen probably does his own butchering for his cuts of meat at the restaurant.  However, when Stacy brought our breakfasts out to us, she also gave me a single pancake.  I said, "I didn't order a pancake.  I got the bacon."  

Somewhat flustered and embarrassed, Stacy said, "Oh!  I'm sure you probably said bacon and I heard 'cake'. I'll get you your bacon right away."  And she took the single pancake away.  

Moments later, she brought it back.  "It looks like you're going to get a free pancake, today," Stacy said as she set it back down on the table.  "No use letting it go to waste."  I wasn't going to argue.  

The eggs Benedict were good - the eggs were cooked perfectly and they were big.  And the smoked paprika hollandaise sauce was very rich.  Actually, it was a pretty decent breakfast and somewhat filling.

But what was filling was the sourdough pancake that I got as a mistake.  Oh, man!  It was one of the most delicious pancakes I had ever tasted!  And I think my wife's pancakes are world class!  But whatever they do to the pancakes at Links, there's no comparison to anything I've ever had in a restaurant before.  What started out as just a couple bites to give it a try, it quickly turned into a "can't-stop-eating-this-even-though-I'm-full" moment.  The eggs Benedict were filling enough, but the sour dough pancake completely stuffed me.  And my wife thought they were excellent, as well.  

The only bad part of the breakfast was, well, the bacon.  For what I thought would be flavorful, thick-cut bacon turned out to be thin-cut and pretty basic in taste.  It was just two slices and they charged $4.25 for two normal strips of bacon.  That was a big disappointment.  I just sort of felt somewhat ripped-off for what I thought I was getting for a side of bacon and what actually showed up.  

Other than the bacon, I have to say that our breakfast at Links was very good.  My wife thoroughly enjoyed her root vegetable hash dish, and I was happy enough with the eggs Benedict that featured two very large poached eggs with a rich and flavorful hollandaise sauce.  But the sourdough pancakes were the hit of the meal and even the over-advertised bacon couldn't dampen the overall meal.  Well, and it certainly didn't hurt to have a bloody mary, a good craft beer and a double espresso to help get the day going.  My wife and I were so stuffed from the breakfast at Links that we didn't eat a thing the rest of the day.  It was a very good and very filling meal.     

Marquee Pizzeria - Coralville, IA

My wife and I made a recent Sunday trip over to Iowa City to hit the Trader Joe's store in Coralville.  My wife had suggested a place in Iowa City to go to for lunch, but when we got there it was packed and there would be a wait.  We went to another place I thought about, but it turned out they were closed.  A third and fourth place in Coralville were respectively closed as well.  My wife and I were incredulous that these many places would be closed, even though it was a Sunday.  Finally, my wife said, "There's a place down in the (Iowa River) Landing in Coralville that (her sister) and I noticed one time.  Let's try that place out."  She gave me directions how to get there and it turned out this place was open.  We were going to check out Marquee Pizzeria.  

Marquee Pizzeria was started by the same group of people - Sam Hall and siblings Ravi Patel, Raj Patel and Sajni Patel - who started La Vecina, a wood-fired Mexican restaurant just around the corner from Marquee Pizzeria.  (Click here to see our visit to La Vecina.  Also, quite interestingly, La Vecina is closed on Sunday.)  The group was also involved with the Clinton Street Social Club and the Patel's are all part of the family who owns the Hawkeye Hotels hospitality group of hotels and restaurants.  

After purchasing the Clinton Street Social Club, the group came up with a concept of a restaurant that had communal dining.  The logical food selection was pizza which large groups can enjoy.  They wanted to make the restaurant festive, sort of a "Brooklyn, NY comes to Iowa City" vibe and they wanted a large space with sort of a "backyard party" touch.  Strings of Edison lights were hung from the ceiling and criss-crossed over the tables of the space.  

The type of pizza was also important to the group.  Neo-Neapolitan-style pizzas were selected, but they added a type of New York signature to their pizzas - thin crust with a crispy underside to the pizza.  And they had to be wood-fired pizzas, so the group turned to the world renown Pavasi Forni Modena company located in Modena, Italy for their oven.  The oven is capable of reaching temperatures of 900 degrees (F) to be able to cook the pizzas quickly.  

Finding the right kind of dough was also crucial to Sam Hall's vision of what makes an exceptional pizza.  Hall worked with five or six different types of dough structures before deciding up on a naturally leavened dough that takes 48 hours from the time it's mixed to the time it's portioned out in dough balls.  With a wood-fired oven, it takes more time to prepare the pizza - shaping the dough and putting housemade mozzarella, sauce and premium toppings on top - than it does to cook it.  Pizzas at Marquee Pizzeria are usually fully cooked in as little as 90 seconds.  

With everything in place, Marquee Pizzeria started out with a soft-opening in October of 2017 to help shake the kinks out.  They opened their doors with full menu dining in November of that year.  

Pulling up in front of Marquee Pizzeria, we weren't certain that IT was open, either.  (see map)  But as we turned the corner to go into the public parking ramp at the Iowa River Landing, we saw that there were people inside.  

After parking the car, we came in the back door of the place and found that the hostess stand was up to the front of dining room underneath a replica portrait of the Mona Lisa.  A full bar with seating was along one wall with a number of tables throughout the place.  We were greeted by a young lady who said we could sit anywhere, so we took a table up front next to a large garage door that opened out to a small patio in front of the restaurant.  

In the back of restaurant was the large wood-fired pizza oven.  The large red oven was difficult to miss.  It had char marks on the top of the opening from a number of wood-fired pizzas made over the last two-and-a-half years.  

Our server that day was a friendly young man by the name of Nate.  I have to say that Nate had a good sense of humor, was more than helpful with suggestions and requests, and was more than accommodating during our time at Marquee Pizzeria.  He was what you would categorize as a "good guy".  

Nate dropped off a couple menus on the table and wanted to know what we would like to drink.  My wife ordered her usual Tito's and cranberry juice, while I asked if I could get a bloody mary.  Nate said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry.  We don't have bloody mary's.  I don't know why, but we don't have the mix for them."  I was sort of crestfallen when he told me that as I was craving a bloody mary.  And I was sort of confused as they appeared to have a full bar as they certainly had vodka, but didn't have bloody mary mix.  But that didn't matter all that much as I found out they had a number of craft beers on tap.  I ended up ordering a Toppling Goliath Pompeii mosaic IPA, one of my favorite hazy IPA's.

The menu at Marquee Pizzeria featured a handful of shareable appetizers and salads.  They had a handful of pasta dishes, but the main aspect of the menu are their pizzas.  They have a number of speciality pizzas on the menu including a margherita pizza that sounded wonderful with their housemade mozzarella, a red sauce and fresh basil.  The Vice City pizza consisted of smoked mozzarella, locally-sourced sausage and pepperoni, with a pickled pepper sauce and hot honey.  And the Prosciutto Primavera featured - of course - prosciutto, housemade mozzarella, Prairie Breeze aged-white cheddar cheese from the Milton Creamery in Milton, IA, red pepper flakes, garlic-oiled arugula with Calabrian olive oil drizzled on top.  Marquee also had a vegan pizza available, as well.  

My wife likes to have some greens when she can and she was sort of interested in the Classic Italian Salad - romaine lettuce, sliced cherry tomatoes on sliced cucumbers, chopped red onions, pepperoncini, with parmesan cheese and bread crumbs on top with a red wine vinaigrette on the side.  We decided to get a full size salad to share as I thought it sounded good.  Well, it looked even better than the description on the menu. My wife remarked that it was almost too nice to dig in to.  The presentation was equalled by the fresh taste of the ingredients on the salad.  It was a great start for our lunch.  

We ordered up the Falco pizza - probably the most popular one on the menu according to Nate.  It consisted of locally-sourced pork sausage with a red sauce, then sliced red onions, breadcrumbs, garlic, fresh basil and  parmigiano cheese were all added.  I asked Nate if he could add some of the locally-sourced pepperoni to the pizza and he said it would be no problem.  

The pizza was a 12" pizza - as are all the pizzas at Marquee Pizzeria.  It was thicker on the blistered outer ridge, but nice and thin in the middle - just as my wife and I like our pizza.  And from the first bite, we could easily tell it was a quality pizza.  The fresh flavors of the basil, tomato sauce, the sausage and the pepperoni exploded with each bite.  The dough was perfect with little to no sag with each piece.   

My wife and I have experienced some pretty good Neapolitan-style pizza in our travels and I would have to say that the pizza we had a Marquee Pizzeria would rival many of the better ones we've had.  Everything about the pizza was wonderful - the fresh toppings were flavorful, the dough was spongy, but still had a crispiness to it, and the overall taste was very good.  I can't say enough about our server Nate who was attentive and accommodating throughout our visit, going about his job in a friendly and jovial kind of fashion.  The only drawback - and a minor one, at that - is that for a place with a full bar, I was surprised that they didn't have a bloody mary mix.  But it still seemed like a nice place to gather and even with a number of very good pizza options in the Iowa City area, I'd go back to Marquee Pizzeria at some point.

Stompbox Brewing/Kitchen Brigade - Davenport, IA

We have a couple that we like to meet up with for craft beers and libations from time to time on some Sundays.  My wife and the wife in the couple used to work together years ago, while the husband and I just like to drink beer and laugh.  Earlier this year, we met up for beers at a microbrewery over on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities.  After a couple three beers there, we decided to head over to a newer microbrewery/brewpub in downtown Davenport called Stompbox Brewing.  We hadn't been there before and looked forward to giving it a try.  It turns out that they also had a kitchen on the premises - the Kitchen Brigade -  and while we didn't have food on that visit, we did go back there a few weeks later to meet up with the same couple to have more beers and food at Stompbox Brewing and the Kitchen Brigade.  

Stompbox Brewing grew out of the tragic circumstances that forced the original tenants of the new built-out restaurant space, Roam, to close less than a year after they opened in December of 2018.  

Brothers Dylan and Griffin Steil envisioned Roam as a combination bistro/motorcycle repair shop - something that is found in places in Europe where people on motorbikes roam the countryside and may need a little food and drink while getting their rides serviced.  It was a bold initiative for the Steil brothers and I openly questioned how a motorcycle repair shop in the back of a European-style bistro would go over with patrons trying to enjoy innovative foods and drinks.  

During the spring of 2019, the Mississippi River rose to record heights in the Quad Cities.  A series of HESCO barriers were put up along River Drive to help keep the river at bay.  However, at approximately 3:30 on the afternoon of April 30th, the rising flood waters pushed through the barriers just east of Roam causing the flood waters to rush in and inundate parts of downtown Davenport.  The video below is from Roam's security camera and shows the moment the barrier was breached with people inside Roam running out to move their vehicles out of the parking lot.  

Businesses in a wide area of downtown Davenport were impacted for weeks that turned into months.  It was a tragic turn of events for the Steil brothers who put just about every penny they had between them into Roam.  It became apparent that financial relief would not be coming quickly enough - nor would it be enough to recoup their investment in the bistro/motorbike repair shop - and the brothers announced in September of 2019 that they would not reopen.  They were forced to sell off equipment and fixtures to help pay for the losses incurred from the flood.  

In December of 2019, a group of investors announced that they would be taking over the space that housed Roam and put in a brewery.  When I first heard that a brewery was going into the old Roam building, I was sort of taken aback as it was right next to arguably the most established brewpub in the Quad Cities - Front Street Brewery.  But, so far, they seem to cohabitate pretty well.   

The group of investors - which include local music enthusiast/photographer Matt Erickson and James Prickett, a cost analyst at the Rock Island Arsenal who is also a musician and homebrewer - took over 6 months to renovate the space putting in a micro-brewery in the back where the motorbike repair shop was, and put in a kitchen area for food to be served in the space.  They started to brew and can beer in June of 2020 and officially opened their doors in early July of last year.  They called their new brewery "Stompbox" after a switching device a guitarist uses to control volume and tone that they step on with their feet.  

To run their kitchen, the group turned to an established food truck entrepreneur who has been around the Quad Cities food scene for a number of years.  Chad Cushman started his culinary journey at the age of 15 working in a number of restaurants over the years before becoming an executive chef, restaurant manager and consultant.  For the past 10 plus years, Cushman has been known locally as "The Crepe Guy" who would offer his services for coffee houses, outdoor markets, private parties and local events as a pop-up restaurant making sweet and savory crepes.  Cushman's distinctive red "Cushman's Food & Engine" box van is a staple at the Freight House Farmers Market in downtown Davenport from May to October.  

(Pictured left - Chad Cushman.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times)

When he's not doing the food truck thing, Cushman runs Kitchen Brigade with a European-inspired menu of snacks and shared plates, as well as a short list of main entree items such as a burger, chicken and green chile grits, a pork tomahawk schnitzel chop, and mussels that are steamed with a Stompbox beer and served in a unami broth.  You can find Cushman and his Kitchen Brigade staff at Stompbox Wednesday and Thursday from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., on Friday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

We got to Stompbox not long after noon on a recent Sunday.  There is ample parking in the area including a parking lot in front of Stompbox that is open for public use after 5 p.m. through the week and all day on Saturday and Sunday.  (see map)  The long bar sits in the middle of the space with a number of tables that are spaced throughout the place with a couple community-style tables near the bar.  I would call the decor with dark walls, exposed duct work and a polished concrete floor as contemporary industrial.  They also have a patio in front of Stompbox, but very few people were out there as it was sunny, but a bit cool.  

The bar area features seating on one side. The beer tap spigots all have "stomp boxes" as their handle tops.  A flat-screen television on the south end of the bar lists the beers currently on tap at Stompbox.  Another flat-screen on the opposite end of the bar usually has a sporting event being shown on it.  Just past the bar area are more tables and some booths with half-circle bench seating.  On the wall behind the booths was a large 3-piece colorful medieval-style mural. 

Our friends showed up not long after we got there.  My wife and I had settled in at a high-top table near the seating side of the bar.  Just off the bar was the open window with a "Kitchen Brigade" neon sign above it.  

Beers can be ordered at the bar, but they also have servers who can take beer and food orders at Stompbox.  Alexa was our server that day and I was dismayed to find that they don't have a full bar at Stompbox - just beer only.  "For now," one of the bartenders told me when I asked if they had bloody mary's.  "We may do a full bar sometime later on."

Since this was just our second visit, I remembered a beer that I had on my previous stop into Stompbox - a wonderful hazy IPA that they called "Chilly Nelson".  I ordered up one of those and my wife got the same.  But in talking with James Prickett who came out to our table later during our visit, he said that the Chilly Nelson was going away as they're trying a number of different types of beers from recipes they've garnered over the years.  I was sad to hear the Chilly Nelson was going away.  "We may bring it back at some point," Prickett said.  "In fact, we probably will and make it a seasonal beer."   I hope they do bring it back - it's excellent.  

As we were talking for awhile, my wife said that she was a little peckish and wanted to get something to piece on.  Our friends suggested the cheese curd plate, but my wife isn't big on fried cheese all that much as it gives her indigestion.  While our friends got the cheese curd plate to munch on, my wife got a bowl of the roasted olives.  "That's perfect," the wife of our friends said. "You can't handle fried cheese and we don't like olives all that much."  The olives were a mixture of green and black slightly roasted olives served in a bowl topped with a citrus oil and whipped feta cheese.  Some toasted country bread came with the bowl of roasted olives.  

I was looking for something a little extra.  The chicken and green chile grits were intriguing to me, but I didn't want that big of a meal.  At one of the booths near where we were seated, a couple of the Kitchen Brigade burgers were placed in front of the people seated there.  I told my wife, "That looks good.  But if I get one of those, I probably won't have dinner tonight."  She assured me that she could rustle something up on her own if I wasn't hungry later on.  

The burger featured a 1/2-pound beef patty from cattle that were initially grass-fed, but were fed corn before they were processed.  It was topped with butterkäse cheese - a German/Austrian butter cheese that is rich and creamy - and a house-made sauce.  The burger was served on a bun topped with black and white sesame seeds.  The burger came with julienne-chopped romaine lettuce, butter-pickle slices and an onion spread.  And a generous portion of their thin cut fries came with the burger on the side.  

The burger was very good.  The burger patty was cooked to a pink center and maintained its juicy taste throughout.  The butterkäse cheese didn't overpower the taste of the beef patty and helped enhance the overall taste of the burger.  The bun was spongy and there may have been a little too much of it as I was peeling off parts of the bun as I ate.  But the bun stayed together very well with all the toppings on the burger coupled with its juiciness.  It was a big burger and I was definitely full after I finished what I could.

The fries became community fries for the table as there was going to be no way that I was going to be able to finish them.  My wife especially liked the fries that gave her some salty flavor to counteract the tart and sharp taste of the olives.  We still had some left over by the time Alexa came to clean our plates and she wanted to know if I wanted to take them home.  I declined because I knew there would be no way they would be better heated up later on.  But my wife did end up taking more than half of her roasted olives home.  Shared among two or more people, there would have been enough.  But for one person, well, it was a lot of olives.  

My wife and I like to go out to brewpubs around the area from time to time and Stompbox has entered our rotation. And coupled with having a good burger from the Kitchen Brigade, we'll probably be there sometime in the near future for our semi-regular Sunday afternoon burger and beer.  The only problem is that I can't get a bloody mary to go along with the beer and burger at Stompbox/Kitchen Brigade.  It's a nice, laid-back atmosphere there, the staff is friendly, and the beer we've had in our visits there is very good.  I used to think we were getting too many brewpubs/microbreweries around the Quad Cities.  But if they all offer something a little different - and many of them do, like Stompbox - then I have no problem with more of them popping up.  Stompbox is a very good choice if you're looking for a tasty craft beer with some interesting food.  

Captain's Table - Moline, IL

When I first moved to the Quad Cities nearly 30 years ago, I had a friend and his wife coming into town and I wanted to take them out for a nice meal.  Not fully knowing the landscape of restaurants in the area at the time, I asked a handful of locals who were in the know with the local dining scene to give me recommendations.  Nearly everyone mentioned the Captain's Table along the Mississippi River in Moline.  We went there that evening, the food was wonderful, the service was great and it was tough to beat the views of the Mississippi River.  It became my go-to place to take people who were in town or for special occasion dinners.  However, changes in ownership over the years meant changes in the quality of the food and service, and in January of 2018 a massive fire destroyed the Captain's Table.  We didn't know if it would be back in business, but the group who own the restaurant worked with the City of Moline on getting a new building built.  Last summer, the restaurant reopened and on a recent Friday evening where my wife and I were out and about, she suggested heading over to the "new" Captain's Table to give it a try.  

Now, I have previously written about the Captain's Table (you can click here to see that entry), but a lot of things have changed over the last 11 years since I wrote about the place.   The Captain's Table had ceased to be our restaurant of choice for special occasion meals, but they had a great Bloody Mary bar and $3 off their gourmet burgers on Sundays.  We found ourselves over there a number of times meeting or running into friends who we had turned on to the Sunday specials at the Captain's Table.  

The hey-day of the restaurant stretched over a nearly 25-year period starting in 1974 when Jim Sweet founded the Marquis Harbor marina and with the help of the City of Moline built an adjoining steakhouse/seafood restaurant and called it the Captain's Table.  A gregarious guy and gracious host, Jim Sweet was larger than life.  He and his wife, JoAnn, along with their children Dave and Lori, could be found at the Captain's Table at various times of the day.  The place was cozy, had great views of the river, and the Sweet family were all so very friendly and made us feel welcome each time we went to the restaurant.  My wife fell in love with the restaurant the first time I took her there when we first started to date.  We got to know the Sweet family through our visits to the Captain's Table and at their sister restaurant over in Davenport, The Boat House.  

In 1998, the Sweet family sold the restaurant and marina to the Heart of America restaurant group, the company that oversees Johnny's Italian Steakhouse, The Machine Shed and a number of other restaurants and hotels around the Midwest.  That's when we noticed that the level and quality of the food began to suffer.  The menu had changed drastically, the welcoming feeling that we always felt with the Sweet's in charge was gone, and the Captain's Table became a soulless shell of its original self.  

After Heart of America's five-year lease on the building ended in 2003, the chef in charge of the restaurant for the Captain's Table - Mark Luciani - bought the restaurant outright.  (At the time, Heart of America also sold the marina operation to American Marine based out of LaCrosse, WI.)  Luciani tweaked the menu and made some positive changes to the restaurant.  But the tailspin the restaurant began to go into during the Heart of America period still weighed heavy on the business and coupled with two floods and an economic downturn with the Great Recession in 2008, Luciani wasn't able to make the restaurant work.  He closed the doors in February of 2009.  

It was not long after that when three friends from Blue Grass, IA - Rod Teel, Jeff Delf and Casey Dolbin - came in to resurrect the Captain's Table.  The group then contracted with Peter Harman - a.k.a. The Food Guru - to come in and help run the restaurant as a consultant.  Harman owned or managed a number of restaurants including the Davenport location of Graze.  Harman was in the midst of closing down Graze and he moved a handful of his employees across the river to the Captain's Table.  (The Iowa City Graze location is still open.)  

The partnership with the investment group and Harman didn't last long - I want to say Harman was pretty much out of the picture in a little over a year - and a number of chefs and managers revolved through the door over the years before Rob Eggers, who used to own the old Paddle Wheel restaurant/bar in Bettendorf, was brought on board in 2017 to run the Captain's Table for the group.  

Then in the late evening of January 15, 2018, disaster struck in the form of a devastating fire that fully consumed the building.  A passerby saw flames coming from the building (the restaurant was closed on Monday nights) and alerted authorities.  By the time the fire department was on the scene, the whole building was fully engulfed.  Because of the abnormal lay-out of the building due to additions that were made over the years, the fire department had no choice but to let the fire burn and employ a defensive strategy to keep the fire from spreading to the marina.  No cause was found for the fire as state fire marshals said the building sustained so much fire and water damage that there would have been no way to pinpoint what started the fire.  (Photo courtesy Todd Mizener - Rock Island Dispatch-Argus.)

The City of Moline still owned the building that housed the Captain's Table and after clearing the rubble from the fire they decided to work on putting a new building in place.  Working with an architect, the city came up with a new design that would have an upper deck bar that would allow for sweeping views of the Mississippi River with a new dining area with outdoor seating on the main level.  (That design is shown below at right.  Graphic courtesy Rock Island Disptach-Argus)

However, it turned out that particular design would be too costly for the city to bear for the replacement building.  A second design that took off the upper floor bar, but kept outdoor seating along the river front was approved.  Work began on the new Captain's Table in 2019 and it opened for business in August of last year. (Shown above left is the final design of the "new" Captain's Table.  Graphic courtesy Rock Island Dispatch-Argus)  

It was just after 7:30 when we pulled into the parking lot at the Captain's Table back at its original location at 4801 River Drive in Moline.  (see map)  One thing that they did during the construction of the new building was to add more parking.  The parking lot is probably one-third bigger than the parking lot that they had before.  Still there were a lot of cars in the parking lot and we weren't certain we were going to be able to get in right away.  

As we went inside (a distinctive porthole window was near the front door - a nod to the five porthole windows the old Captain's Table had in their bar area), we went up some steps and were greeted by Rob Eggers working the front desk that evening.  We were told that it would be probably a 15 to 20 minute wait, so we decided to stay.  The bar was full, but there were bench seats up near the front stand. On a ledge above the seats in the waiting area were four large aquariums - a nice touch for a nautical-themed restaurant.  

The bar used to be in a back corner of the Captain's Table, but with the new design in the restaurant it's in the middle between two dining areas.  The three-sided bar had high-backed chairs with an ornate back-bar area with dark wood accents.  Flat screen televisions were on the walls behind the bar.  

The two dining areas at the new Captain's Table were on opposite ends of the building.  There was a smaller area up front with high-backed booths that were situated just below the aquariums.  Short four-seater tables were on the floor up toward the windows that looked out onto the deck.  It was a little cool that evening so there was no one seated out on the deck.  

There was a larger dining space on the opposite end past the bar area.  It featured more booths under a mural of the Mississippi River where it runs east-west through the Quad Cities.  The river bends from the north just up-river from the Captain's Table - the bend is easily viewed from the restaurant - and continues west to Muscatine where it bends back to its usual north-south direction.  Yes, you actually drive south into Illinois from Iowa in the Quad Cities.  My wife's directions were screwed up the first few years she lived in Davenport as she learned growing up in Cedar Rapids that the Mississippi runs north-south.  She always thought she was looking east into Illinois from the Iowa side when she was looking south the whole time.  

We were seated in the back dining area and we were giving menus by one of the young ladies working at the front desk that evening.  Our server that night was a young lady by the name of Amber.  Even with Amber wearing her mask, my wife recognized her, but she didn't say anything.  Turns out that she's the girlfriend of a friend of ours.  She didn't recognize us - we had only been around her a couple three times with our friend - or if she did recognize us, she didn't say anything.  Amber asked if we wanted anything to drink and my wife ordered her usual Tito's Vodka and cranberry juice.  They had a handful of craft beers on the menu including some specialty beers from four or five local breweries.  But I ended up ordering a Deschutes Fresh Haze IPA. 

The food selections at the Captain's Table featured steaks, seafood and some combo dishes.  Sandwiches including burgers, pork tenderloins, chicken and catfish were on the menu - many of which were featured on the menu from the old Paddle Wheel that Eggers brought over when he came to the Captain's Table.  Appetizers included fried calamari, bacon-wrapped scallops, shrimp and crab dip, and chicken wings.  One of the things they also had on the menu was clam chowder.  

Now, when I first moved to the Quad Cities years ago, there were a handful of places that had wonderful clam chowder - restaurants such as the original Captain's Table, the Dock, the Belgian Village and a couple three other places in the area.  In fact, the guy who I worked for before I moved to the area in 1991 told me one time that the best clam chowder he had ever had outside of New England was in the Quad Cities. Unfortunately, those restaurants - in their original forms - are all gone and it's been tough to find good clam chowder in the area.   

But I was intrigued enough to try the clam chowder at the Captain's Table.  It was a thick creamy base with chunks of potatoes and clams mixed in.  Chopped green onions came on the top of the chowder.  I asked Amber for some Tabasco and it reminded me of the time when I put Tabasco in my clam chowder in front of JoAnn Sweet at the original Captain's Table years ago and she went ballistic.  "You're ruining the taste of our clam chowder," she said in a raised voice.  "It's made to not have anything put in it!"  But I've been putting Tabasco in my clam chowder ever since I first had it back in the early 80's and I like a little zip to the taste. 

Now, I can't say that the Tabasco hindered the taste of the clam chowder at the present day Captain's Table.  In fact, it probably helped it.  The clam chowder was pretty bland and somewhat lifeless for my taste, but I'm sure some people probably like it that way.  

While I had my clam chowder, my wife got a dinner salad.  It came with mixed greens and chopped veggies, and was topped with house-made croutons then drizzle with a creamy garlic dressing.  My wife thought it was fine for what it was, just a basic dinner salad.

Along with the clam chowder and the dinner salad, a small loaf of warm house-made bread came with the starters.  The bread was crusty on the outside, but spongy on the inside.  It was a small loaf and we were able to each have two pieces of the bread with our salad and chowder.  

Quite actually, I really didn't know what to get that evening.  I wasn't certain I wanted a steak, and I wasn't certain I wanted seafood.  I thought about getting one of their burgers, but I didn't want my first meal at the new Captain's Table to be a burger.  They had crab cakes on the menu and I was just about to settle on those when my wife looked at a flap inside the menu.  "Oh," she exclaimed.  "They have prime rib tonight!"  On Friday and Saturday evenings starting at 4 p.m., the Captain's Table has a 12 ounce or 16 ounce prime rib for $27.00 or $30.00 respectively.  I hadn't had prime rib for long time, either, and I decided to get that.

However, when Amber came to the table to take our order, I ordered up the 12 ounce prime rib.  "Oh!  I'm sorry," she said apologetically.  "I guess I forgot to tell you guys that we had run out of prime rib."  It was around 8 p.m. - they're only open until 9 - and I'm sure the early birds came in droves to run them out of the prime rib.  Somewhat crestfallen, I went with the crab cakes.  

The crab cakes entree featured two thick patties that were overcooked and topped with a remoulade sauce.  A side came with the meal and I went with the fries because someone at a table next us got the fries with a burger and they looked good.  But, looks can be deceiving as the fries were lukewarm and limp.  It was like they had made them up 20 minutes prior and left them in a bin for the cooks to pull from when needed.   The crab cake was rich, but it was dry and rather unappealing.  Overall, my meal was disappointing.  

My wife went the seafood route and ordered the 8 ounce grilled salmon.  She got a side of their potatoes-au-gratin.  Well, if I was disappointed with my meal, my wife was appalled at what she was served.  The piece of salmon - and a strong emphasis on "piece" - was nowhere near 8 ounces.  My wife remarked, "This looks like a piece of salmon you get in one of the big bags of frozen salmon filets from Costco!"  She thought the taste of it was fine, there just wasn't a lot of it.  

And she was even more upset with the potatoes-au-gratin.  It was like they had dumped two cups of cheese on a handful of cube-cut potatoes.  "My god, this is like cheese soup with a little bit of potatoes mixed in," she said as she stirred the concoction in its dish.  We counted 11 small chunks of potatoes in the dish - the rest was cheese.  

The crab cakes were so over-cooked and so rich that I couldn't finish them.  And I really didn't care if I finished them.  And I hardly made a dent in my fries.  Our meals were simply disappointing.

Amber tried to coax us into some dessert, but we were done.  We'd had enough and were ready to get out of there.  I just couldn't believe that the food didn't live up to the new and improved architecture of the Captain's Table. 

A couple days later, we met up with friends of ours, one of whom works for a food distributor in the Quad Cities.  "We went there for their soft opening," he said.  "We didn't think much of the food."  His wife agreed that she was disappointed in the food, as well.  My wife said, "Disappointed.  Yep, that sums up how we felt."  We all agreed that it would be a nice place to go to on an afternoon or evening and have a drink and some appetizers on the outdoor patio overlooking the river.  But going there for a special occasion, that was probably out of the question.

We were so hoping that the new Captain's Table would be a cut above the pre-fire Captain's Table.  But I can't say that it was.  And it may have even gone downhill from that era.  For people like us who remember the Captain's Table when the Sweet family owned the place years ago, the bar was set so incredibly high that any other incarnation of the Captain's Table would be difficult to match. For now, the Captain's Table is only open Wednesday through Sunday from 4 to 9.  We asked before we left if they were going to start doing lunch on the weekends and they said they hoped to during the upcoming boating season.  I would come back to try a burger some Sunday afternoon if they were to re-open during the day through the weekends.  Or I'd come back to sit on the deck on a nice summer afternoon to watch the river go by.  But as a destination for special event dinners, I'd have to give the new Captain's Table a hard pass.

Costa Del Mar Mariscos - Davenport, IA

A couple three weeks ago, my wife and I had the chance to get out and try a new restaurant in Davenport, one that specialized in seafood with a Mexican twist.  The place had been open since last summer, but with COVID-19 protocols in place we just didn't feel comfortable going out to restaurants like we normally do.  Now that things have settled down a bit, we decided to do a date night and have dinner at Costa del Mar Mariscos.

The corner of N. Brady St. and E. Kimberly Road in Davenport (see map) has always been a busy intersection in the city.  I've lived in the Quad Cities for nearly 30 years and the building on the southwest corner of the intersection has been a series of restaurants over the years.  The first one I remember was a Ground Round, a casual American-style dining restaurant chain that was popular in the 80's and 90's.  It has housed a number of Mexican restaurants over the years, most recently it was the home of a place by the name of Casa Maguey, and before that it was a Los Agaves location.  None of the restaurants were bad - in fact, nearly all of them have been very popular over the years.  But none of them have ever lasted more than a few years.  

In 2019, Casa Maguey closed its doors with the promise of a new and improved Mexican restaurant taking over the spot.  A large semi-trailer had been sitting in the parking lot for quite some time and I could tell there was construction going on in and around the building.  It looked like things were coming along nicely for a springtime 2020 opening, but then that little thing called COVID-19 came around.  Restaurants were shut down for a number of weeks before the State of Iowa allowed some to reopen at reduced capacity.  Costa del Mar Mariscos (which roughly translates into "Seacoast Seafood") opened in July of last year.  

Since Brady Street is a one-way northbound, and there's no left turn access off of westbound E. Kimberly Road, there's only two access points into the parking lot at Costa del Mar Mariscos - a left turn from northbound N. Brady or a right turn off of eastbound E. Kimberly Road.  We were sort of surprised to see a number of cars in the parking lot when we pulled in, but we knew the restaurant was large enough to have people spread out for seating.  

There's two dining areas in Costa del Mar - the original dining area that dated back to the Ground Round days is to your right as you walk in.  It still has the atrium seating up front that was a signature of Ground Round restaurants in the past.  To the left is the cantina area that features a number of high-backed booths along with wooden tables and chairs, similar to the other dining area on the other side of the restaurant.  A large mural of the sea was on the wall on the far end of the cantina.  I have to say that the decor in previous restaurants probably hadn't been spruced up for a number of years and I remember remarking to my wife not long before Cafe Maguey closed in 2019 that the place looked rather tired.  But the remodeling project by Costa del Mar Mariscos management really sparked some life into the restaurant.  

The cantina area was completely redesigned from the previous bar/cantina area in previous restaurants.  Before, the bar was rectangular situated in the middle of the room with seating on all four sides.  The new design moved the bar back into a corner of the cantina area taking away two sides of seating.  I've been noticing that some of the newer Mexican restaurants that have bar areas have a number of flatscreen televisions around the bar.  Costa del Mar was no exception.

We were seated in one of the high-back booths in the cantina and were given a couple menus to look over.  My wife decided she didn't want to get a margarita that evening, but I ended up getting a Sol.  Later on, she decided that she wanted a Sol along with her dinner which was surprising since she very rarely drinks beer any more.   

Chips and a red salsa, the prerequisite for any Mexican meal served in a restaurant like Costa del Mar, came out to the table.  I asked our server if she had any of the green chile salsa.  She brought out a large bowl of the salsa verde not long after.  It was actually very good - not as salty as we've found many green chile salsas to be - and it had a bit of a spicy bite on the back end.  

The menu at Costa del Mar Mariscos featured the usual Mexican favorites - burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, fajitas and chimichangas.  But the back part of the menu featured a number of seafood dishes along with steaks.  They had oysters on the half shell, shrimp and octopus cocktails, ceviche, seafood soups, and entrees with fish, shrimp or lobster.  They also had a number of shareable platters with various seafood offerings consisting of shrimp, octopus, mussels, oysters, crab legs and scallops.  The Paella del Mar featured both peeled and head-on shrimp, mussels, octopus, clams, and scallops all sautéed and mixed in with crab legs and rice.  You could get most of the sharable plates as single dinner selections, as well.  

My wife wasn't all that hungry and I wasn't either for some reason.  I can't remember if we had a big lunch earlier in the day, but I just remember that I didn't feel like getting much.  I ended up getting the pork chile verde - slow-roasted pork sautéed in a green chile salsa and spices, then served with Mexican rice and refried  beans.  Tortillas came with the pork chile verde.  The pork was tender and flavorful with the green chile salsa. I just love good salsa verde and what they had at Costa del Mar was very good.  

My wife went with the carne asada quesadilla - chunks of flank steak folded in a flour tortilla shell with cheese, grilled onions and cilantro, then lightly grilled. Mexican rice and refried beans came on the side along with pico de gallo and sour cream served in a tortilla bowl.  The was worried that the quesadilla would be big, but she was happy to see that it was manageable for her.  While she didn't eat the whole thing, she was very happy with her choice.  

For our first foray into the menu at Costa del Mar Mariscos, we were pretty impressed with what they had to offer and with what we ordered that evening.  My pork chile verde was very good and my wife really liked her carne asada quesadilla.  Our server that evening was attentive and friendly, and the decor was very nice after an extensive sprucing up that new management did before opening last year.  While we didn't try any of Costa del Mar's seafood offerings on our first trip, we made mental notes of what they offered for seafood dishes and made plans to go back at some point and try some of their shrimp dishes, the grilled octopus and some of their oysters-on-the-halfshell.  

Boonie's on the Avenue - Muscatine, IA

The winter weather had finally broke and it was a sunny and unseasonably warm Saturday over a recent weekend.  My wife was suffering from cabin fever and was wanting to go for a drive down the Mississippi River to escape the last vestige of snow on the ground.  (We had over 60 days of continuous snow cover - the 5th longest on record for our area.)  I wanted to watch basketball that day, but as I learned a long time ago - a happy wife is a happy life.  While I wasn't looking to head as far as Burlington or Quincy, I decided to head down Iowa Highway 22 along the river and we ended up in Muscatine.  But I also had an ulterior motive.  I wanted to try a place called Boonie's on the Avenue that I had heard had good burgers.  Once we got to Muscatine, my wife was up for some lunch, so we sought out Boonie's to give it a try.    

Almost his whole adult life, Mike Kleist has been involved in the bar and restaurant business around the Muscatine area.  As a kid in high school, Kleist always wore a baseball cap that said "Boondocks" across the front.  His friends ended up giving him the name of "Boonie" because he wore the cap incessantly.  At the age of 22, Kleist opened Boonie's Basement, a small tavern in downtown Muscatine, and over the years Kleist ran other places such as The Loading Dock and Bootleggers in the area.  Kleist was also a semi-professional poker player who lived part-time in Las Vegas for over 15 years following his passion for the game.  So it was a natural gamble for Kleist when local businessman Tom Meeker approached him in 2012 with an opportunity.  

Meeker owned a building that housed the former MVP's Sports Lounge, but prior to it being MVP's, it was the location for Kleist's Bootleggers sports bar and restaurant.  Meeker wanted to do something with the space and talked with Kleist about opening a more upscale sports bar in the space.  At first, Kleist was hesitant - he'd already been through his sports bar phase with Bootleggers - but Meeker (who also owned The Button Factory restaurant at the time) was persistent.  Finally, Kleist agreed to take over the spot and Boonie's on the Avenue opened in April of 2013.  He was joined in the business by his son Cord who was just getting ready to graduate high school a little over a month later.  

(Mike Kleist and his wife Teresa also own Proof Social, a wine/martini bar in downtown Muscatine; while Cord Kleist and his brother Chance own Skinny's Barbeque in Muscatine.)

It was just after 1 p.m. when we pulled up to Boonie's on the Avenue on Iowa Ave., about 3 blocks from the Mississippi River in downtown Muscatine.  (see map)  Upon entering the place we realized that we had been in there before - probably when it was called MVP's a number of years ago when we were in Muscatine for a street festival on Iowa Ave. where a friend of ours was playing in one of the bands that night.  The inside of the sports bar featured exposed brick walls with corrugated tin sheathing on the walls of an elevated dining space in the back.  Tin tiles painted in sort of a rust color were on the ceiling.   The place was packed on that Saturday afternoon with tons of people also wanting to get out and enjoy the day.  

The bar area was to the right as you walk into Boonie's.  They had a number of craft beers on tap and a full bar selection.  Boonie's has 27 flat-screen televisions in the place, but curiously they only had two basketball games showing on the majority of the screens.  Knowing that there were at least six games available to watch at that time (remember - I was all set to watch basketball at home that day), I thought it was very curious that on the main wall of 8 televisions five of the TV's were set to one of the two games they were showing at the time.  

We were greeted by a hostess when we walked in and she asked us if we wanted to take the high-top table near the window just off the bar.  It wasn't cleaned off yet and looking around at the lack of available tables in the place at the time, we decided to take it.  Our server for the day, an energetic young lady by the name of Donnina, came over to wipe down and disinfect the table.  After she finished doing that and we sat down, she took a couple menus out of the condiment holder on the table and gave them to us.  She asked what we wanted to drink and I saw that they had the Easy Eddie hazy IPA from the Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City and Solon.  My wife got a tall Tito's vodka and cranberry.  

Donnina left to get the drinks and came back moments later.  "I'm sorry," she said. "We're out of the Easy Eddie."  I took a quick look at their craft beer list which featured 14 beers from various Iowa breweries such as Contrary Brewing in Muscatine, Exile Brewing in Des Moines, and Gezellig Brewing out of my hometown of Newton.  I opted for the Surf Zombies American IPA out of Iowa Brewing Company in Cedar Rapids.  They had that one.  

Most of the menu at Boonie's featured your typical sports bar food - appetizers, wings, sandwiches, burgers, soups and salads.  They also had a handful of entrees such as a grilled salmon dinner, an 8-ounce sirloin steak, and fish & chips.  The salads caught the eye of my wife who was intrigued by the Strawberry Spring salad - it was a choice of mixed greens or fresh spinach topped with fresh strawberries and a choice of grilled or popcorn chicken.  Sliced red onions, feta cheese, candied walnuts and a choice of dressing finished the toppings.  

Me - I got caught looking at the Ultimate Ham & Cheese sandwich -  ham, Swiss and American cheese, an over-hard egg and bacon on triple-decked wheatberry bread.  That sounded really yummy, but I wanted to try their burger.  

They had a number of specialty burgers on the menu including the Five Alarm burger with pepper jack cheese, jalapeños and a sriracha sauce.  The Breakfast burger was topped with bacon, a cheese sauce, an over-easy egg and hash brown potatoes.  The Sticky burger had peanut butter (no thanks!), bacon and cheddar cheese on it.  And the Coordinator burger was topped with pulled pork, jalapeños, barbecue sauce and onion straws.  Some of them sounded interesting, but I was probably going to opt for a "build-your-own" burger.  

My wife decided she wanted a burger, as well.  She got just a basic cheddar cheese burger that featured two beef patties that came with lettuce, tomato, pickles and sliced red onions.  She had a choice of a side and she decided to try Boonie's sweet pepper cole slaw.  There are choices for buns at Boonie's including a regular bun, a Ciabatta bun, an onion bun or a wheatberry bun.  She went for the regular bun.  

One of the interesting touches they do to the burgers at Boonie's is to brand the top of the bun crown with Boonie's logo.  "Soon to be World Famous" is Boonie's motto and that was part of the brand on the bun.  

My "build-you-own" burger consisted of my usual - pepper jack cheese, grilled mushrooms and bacon with a regular bun, also.  I thought a bit about the onion bun, but decided against it at the last moment.  I got the same lettuce, tomato, red onion and pickles on the side.  I was amazed at how ripe and fresh the tomato slices were for late winter.  For my side, I got tater tots - naturally.  Donnina provided Cholula hot sauce on the side for me to dip the tots in.  

After dressing the burger, I had to get a shot of the finished product.  It looks pretty scrumptious, doesn't it?  Well, as we all know, looks can be deceiving.  

The twin quarter-pound patties were woefully overcooked.  While the toppings were fine, they couldn't compensate for the tasteless burger patties.  And on top of all that (get the pun?), the bun was dried out and there turned out to be too much of it.  We speculated that branding the top as well as toasting it, the bun got dried out.  It was very disappointing, to say the least.  

My wife also remarked that her burger was overcooked, too.  She said, "Ah, I've had better burgers."  But she did like her sweet pepper cole slaw.  I tried a bite and it had a very unique taste.  I would have never thought about putting sweet peppers in cole slaw, but I didn't mind it a bit.  

Before we were served our food, I was ready for another beer.  I saw on the beer menu that they had the Big Grove IPA on tap and I ordered one of those from Donnina.  Except, once again, she came back to tell me that they were out of THAT as well.  I ordered up another Surf Zombies IPA - not my favorite, but it worked for me that day.  

Now, they were pretty busy in the place and I had gone through my second beer during lunch.  My wife still had half of her tall vodka and cranberry to go through after I finished my lunch and I wanted to order another beer.  Donnina came over to check on us and I ordered another beer.  Time passed.  And passed.  And passed.  My wife had all but finished her vodka and cranberry when I decided I had to go to the restroom.  We were ready to go by that time and as I walked toward the restroom, I caught up with Donnina who was coming out of the kitchen with some food for a table.  I said to her in passing, "Hey, we're ready to go and I don't want my beer that I had ordered."

"Are you sure," she said to me.  "I mean, it's sitting right here on the bar."

I said, "Yeah, I would have liked to have had it 15 minutes ago when I first ordered it.  But my wife is finished with her drink and we have to get going."  

"Well, I'm sorry," she said in a terse and somewhat protesting manner.  "We're very busy in here today."  I told her that I could see that, but we needed to get going and we just needed our check.  

I went back to the table and told my wife that I canceled my beer order - even though it was sitting on the bar.  And when Donnina came back with our bill, another person brought my beer - that had been ordered nearly 20 minutes prior to the table.  "Oh, he doesn't want it now," Donnina told the person.  

My wife felt bad for Donnina, but I didn't.  "I understand that they're busy in here and if they're understaffed, that's management's fault.  Waiting five minutes for a beer is understandable.  Waiting more than 15 minutes is not."  

When Donnina came back to get my credit card my wife asked if she had to pay for the beer.  "Oh, heavens, no," she said.  "I know some places will make the servers pay for drinks or food that someone skips out or changes their mind.  Not here."  Then she thanked us for coming in and said, "We are busy and I'm sorry I didn't get it to you."  We told her not to worry.  Besides, we were going to Contrary Brewing for a beer after we left Boonie's.  

My wife still felt sorry for Donnina and left her cash on top of the tip that I had put on my card.  "She is running her ass off," my wife said in a caring manner.  "She deserves this cash."  

I don't want to say our visit to Boonie's on the Avenue was bad, it was just disappointing that the burgers I had heard were so good weren't anywhere near what I was expecting.  While I admit they were busy and our server was having a hard time keeping up, I didn't expect to be waiting over 15 minutes for a beer that I had ordered.  I liked the decor of the place and even though they didn't fully utilize the capabilities of their 27 flat screen televisions they had throughout the place, I could see coming in to watch sporting events in Boonie's.  I don't know, maybe we'll head back down sometime in the future to give it another try - hopefully when they aren't as busy - because that Ultimate Ham & Cheese sandwich has been calling my name.