Road Tips

Joe's Pizza - Chicago, IL

A large number of months ago, I got an e-mail from a Road Tips reader in Chicago that said, "I saw your blog post about Dino's Pizza.  That's one of my favorites, too.  But if you like Dino's, I'm sure you'll like Joe's which is just down the street."  The reader was referring to Joe's Pizza, located about a mile and a half east of Dino's on Higgins.  I filed Joe's away in my "Restaurants to Visit" list.  But with the pandemic raging and my travel shut down, I wasn't able to get there until Chicago opened up to vaccinated travelers in early June.  Thinking pizza would be good for a meal one evening, I started out thinking about heading to Dino's.  But then I remembered about the one place down the road.  I looked it up on my saved places on my Google Maps application and decided to head over to Joe's Pizza to give it a try.

Giuseppe "Joe" Pollini was a sailor in the Italian navy during World War II.  However, his ship and fellow crew mates were captured and taken via ship to the United States to be interned in a prison camp.  (My dad was stationed in Texas during World War II and the base he was at held a number of Italian prisoners of war.)  During the trip to the U.S., Joe was one of the cooks who made meals for the crew of the American ship.

Once he got to New York, the war was coming to an end and many of the Italians on the ship just stayed in the U.S.  By the mid-50's, Joe Pollini had made it to the south side of Chicago and worked at a tavern-style pizza place in the Evergreen Park neighborhood.  There were others in the neighborhood who either owned or worked at pizza places and even though they were in competition, the families co-mingled at church and at school.  The pizza restaurants would even share ingredients with one another if one was running low on something.  

Joe's Pizza moved to their present day location on W. Higgins in the late-60's.  Joe Pollini was later joined by his son-in-law Mario Demonte, an Italian immigrant who grew up in a small village in southern Italy.  Mario Demonte was a culinary specialist in Italian cuisine and he expanded the menu to include pasta dishes, deep pan pizza and seafood.  Mario eventually took over the business and he was eventually joined in the business by Joe Pollini's grandson Frankie Pollini - the third generation family member to run Joe's Pizza.

I pulled up to Joe's Pizza just before 6 p.m.  It's situated in a small store front near the corner of W. Higgins and N. Mango Ave.  (see map)  Parking was available on the street in front of the business.  

I went inside and was met by none other than Vicki Demonte, Joe's daughter and the wife of Mario Demonte.  I was the only patron in the place.  I asked if they were open for dine-in and she said, "Yes, we are!  Come on in!"  She told me that I could sit anywhere.  I took a booth along one of the walls of the establishment and she dropped off a menu for me to look through.  I knew that a number of restaurants in Chicago had to close for dine-in services during the height of the pandemic, so I asked Vicki when they reopened for dining-in.  "Early March," she said.  "And it didn't come any time too soon!"   She asked if she could get me something to drink and I saw that they had a handful of local craft beers and a couple imports.  I ended up getting a bottle of the Peroni beer from Italy.  

The inside of Joe's Pizza is pretty small.  There was a small bar and a few tables and chairs in the middle of the floor with four or five booths on the side wall.  While I was there, they had a couple delivery guys hanging out waiting to do their runs.  They also had a pretty brisk take-out business during the time I was there.  It was a nice clean and cozy little restaurant.

The menu at Joe's Pizza is pretty deep.  In addition to tavern-style, stuffed and deep-dish pizza, Joe's features a number of pasta dishes including basked mostaccioli, gnocchi in a vodka sauce, fettuccine alfredo, and linguine in a clam sauce.  They also had entrees such as chicken parmigiana, lemon pepper tilapia, barbecued ribs, and roasted or fried chicken dinners.  Joe's also featured a number of sandwiches and burgers, as well as appetizers and salads.  I wondered how big their kitchen was with all the foods they offered on their menu.  

But I was there for the pizza and that's exactly what I got.  I got a small tavern-style pizza with my standard toppings - sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms.  Vicki brought out the trio of parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes and Italian seasonings in shaker jars.  The Italian seasonings were heavy on the oregano - exactly how I like it.  The 10" pizza was topped with bubbly caramelized mozzarella cheese.  

I always like to take a square or corner triangle of a tavern-style pizza to try before I put any seasonings or cheese on the piece.  From the first bite, I knew I had a winner.  The sauce was sweet and tangy; the cheese was plentiful and smooth in taste with a hint of that burnt taste that really can give mozzarella a good kick in flavor; and the crust was crisp, but not hard to chew.  This was an outstanding pizza.  

I love finding great tavern-style pizza places in Chicago and Joe's Pizza will definitely become part of my rotation.  I loved everything about Joe's - the small, intimate setting, the great service from Vicki and her crew, and the pizza itself.  Joe's is a great little neighborhood pizza place and I'm sort of jealous that I don't have anything like it near me at my home.  I'll certainly look forward to getting back to Joe's at some point during my travels to Chicago.  

Southern Grind - Orange Beach, AL

During our trip to the Alabama Gulf Coast, my wife wasn't too enamored with the breakfast being served at our hotel.  There was a coffee shop just down the road in another hotel - Southern Grind Coffee House.  When we got in there around 9 a.m., the place was packed, the line to order at the counter was at least 10 people deep and we decided to cut our losses and try to find something else.  As we were leaving, we saw a sign in the place that said, "Visit our location at The Wharf".  We had checked out The Wharf at Orange Beach - an entertainment/restaurant/ retail/residential living destination on the north side of Orange Beach - a day or two prior and we decided to head out that way to have some coffee and get my wife something to eat at Southern Grind.

The Wharf at Orange Beach development first opened its 222-acre facility in 2006.  It was billed as the premier travel destination along the Gulf Coast when it opened.  In addition to shops, an event center, restaurants, condos and a marina, The Wharf also had a 10,000 seat amphitheater that hosted Hank Williams, Jr. as its first performer in May of 2006.  

The development company that owned The Wharf was also working on similar destination venues when the bottom fell out of the real estate and financial market in 2008.  The company was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2010 and the amphitheater, inter-coastal marina and over 150 acres of undeveloped land was purchased by a Birmingham, AL bank in foreclosure later that year.  Art Favre, the owner of Baton Rouge, LA-based Performance Contractors - a leading industrial contracting company that builds facilities for energy and manufacturing companies - purchased the retail/restaurant part of The Wharf in 2011.  Months later, Favre - who owned a vacation home in Orange Beach since 1993 - bought the remaining part of the complex from the Birmingham bank.

(If the name Favre is somewhat familiar, it's because Art Favre is the uncle to former NFL quarterback and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Brett Favre.  Art Favre is also well-known as a frequent contributor to Republican Party candidates around the nation.  In 2020 alone, Favre and his company contributed over $550,000 to political action committees, as well as candidates in states such as Florida, Iowa, Arizona, Montana, California, as well as national candidates.) 

The retail end of The Wharf had been in disrepair since the property had fallen into bankruptcy.  To his credit, Favre's local company spruced up the property and sought out retailers and restaurants to come back to his "new" venture.  That's when Jimmy McPhillips decided to take a chance at owning his own restaurant.

McPhillips, a native of Pennsylvania, developed a passion for cooking as a youngster.  He learned how to cook from his mother and he ended up working for a small family-run seafood market/restaurant outside of Philadelphia in his mid-teens.  When the owners put the business up for sale, McPhillips didn't have enough money to buy the place.  That's when he decided he needed to get a real job to be able to make money for his dream of running a restaurant at some point.  

After 25 years of doing what he really didn't want to do, he saw an opportunity to open his own coffee shop in The Wharf.  Along with his sister Carol, and his wife Jamie, McPhillips came up with a concept that eventually became a coffee shop, a bakery, a gelato shop, a restaurant, a gift shop, an art gallery and a home furnishings store all under one roof.  Jamie McPhillips had a background in interior design and helped decorate the coffee shop with pieces of artwork they had both made over the years and kept around their home.

Pictured at right - Jimmy and Jamie McPhillips.  Photo courtesy The Wharf.com

The art gallery/gift shop came about almost by accident.  On opening day in 2012, a customer came into the coffee shop and saw a tray Jimmy McPhillips had made that he was using as a top-shelf decoration.  The customer asked McPhillips if he could buy the tray.  Somewhat taken aback, McPhillips gave him a price and the customer bought it on the spot.  The McPhillips then realized they had something more than just a coffee shop/restaurant/bakery.  

After five years of steady growth, the McPhillips opened a second location of Southern Grind in the Hotel Indigo along Perdido Beach Blvd. in Orange Beach.  Many of their employees that were with them from Day 1 at The Wharf are still part of the Southern Grind family today.  

We pulled up in front of Southern Grind at The Wharf around 9:20 that morning.  (see map)  They had a number of tables out in front of the place, but with the windy and somewhat cool weather (with occasional passing showers coming off the Gulf) the aqua-blue umbrellas were down and no one was seated outside.  Any other day, we would have considered sitting out in on the patio.  

The well-lit restaurant featured a combination of artwork by the McPhillips, home decor items, knick-knacks, and clothing wear on display on the walls of the dining area.  The dining area was situated amongst the items for sale with tables and chairs as well as armchairs with coffee tables for people to linger for awhile while enjoying their coffee.  The most notable paint colors at Southern Grind were sort of a blue/green and an aqua-blue tint.  

Much of the displays were unique including an old boat holding bags, housewares, and home decor items.  Southern Grind had a decided nautical theme to it and a handful of items made from driftwood by Jimmy McPhillips were on display or for sale.  

Southern Grind featured counter service where disposable menus were available for those standing in line.  The menu featured a full selection of coffee and espresso drinks, as well as smoothies and frappe drinks.  Breakfast items ranged from handheld sandwiches and biscuits, to omelets, waffles, French toast, and egg scramble combinations.  After 11 a.m. during the week (12 noon on the weekend), Southern Grind features sandwiches, burgers and wraps, along with paninis, salads and soups for lunch and dinner.  

The line was about four deep when my wife and I walked in and it was moving along nicely.  I wasn't all that hungry, but when we're on vacation and going and doing and seeing, it's usually a good rule of thumb to eat something in the morning because we not be near a restaurant during the noon hours.  My wife has learned to have a good breakfast when she's on vacation as it may be 2 p.m. - or later - before she has her next meal.  

After getting a 12-ounce orange juice and a quad-espresso (I like to get jacked up early in the day), I ended up getting the croissant sandwich.  It featured two eggs made omelet-style on a toasted croissant topped with your choice of cheese (I got Swiss) and a choice of bacon, sausage patty, or ham.  (I got sausage.)   The croissant was fresh and light (I don't know if they made them in-house, but many of the items at Southern Grind are made fresh from scratch in-house), and the combination of the omelet-style eggs, sausage and Swiss cheese was a great taste combination. This thing was huge, too!  I ate about 3/4's of the sandwich before putting it down to nibble on and pick at while my wife finished her breakfast.  For $4.99, I thought it was a very good deal.  

My wife ordered a regular coffee and an orange juice, then for her breakfast she got one of the "Quiche-of-the-Day" selections - a veggie quiche consisting of spinach, asparagus and artichoke hearts.  (The other quiche that day was a ham and Swiss cheese quiche that came about *this* close to getting.)  Along with the quiche came a side of fresh fruit.  My wife thought the quiche was exceptional, fluffy, tasty and filling.  The fruit was also very fresh, too.  The blueberries had that perfect combination of sweet and tart.  

Before we left, my wife decided that she needed to buy a Southern Grind shirt because she loved the place so much.  In fact, of all the places that we went to along the Alabama Gulf Coast, she fondly remembers Southern Grind the most.  I thought my croissant sandwich was very good and an excellent value.  My wife was very impressed with her vegetable quiche and ate every bite of the slice she got.  I thought my espresso - four shots that rung me up like a fire bell - was very good, as well.  I think my wife would have liked to have gone back to Southern Grind to have breakfast while we were there, but we had other places we wanted to try.  In hindsight, we should have gone back - it was that good.  

Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant and Cantina - Davenport, IA

One cool, cloudy and rainy Sunday, my wife and I decided to head out to grab some lunch.  We had had dinner at Fuji Sushi a couple weeks prior (click here to read the Road Tips entry on Fuji Sushi) when we noticed a new Mexican restaurant had opened up in a space across the street.  My wife was intrigued enough about the place - given the number of very good Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities - that she wanted to give it a try that day.  We headed out the door and down the way to Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant and Cantina.  

The building that houses Rio Grande has been some sort of a restaurant off and on for a number of years.  Most recently, it had been a Mediterranean restaurant, but that place shut down a few months prior.  Restaurants on the west end of Davenport - especially west of Marquette Street - haven't had a stellar track record of hanging on for very long.  There are a couple three exceptions - not counting fast food or sandwich chains - but there seems to be a pretty high turnover of locally-owned, family-run restaurants.  That didn't deter Juan Bolanos from opening Rio Grande in October of 2020.  I asked Bolanos if he was affiliated with any of the other Mexican restaurants in the area as there seems to be a connective tissue with a number of Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities.  He said he was not and much of the food on their menu comes from recipes where his family hails from in a city in the Michoacán state of Mexico, a region known for their highly diverse and delectable dishes.  

We pulled into the parking lot of Rio Grande just after 1 p.m. on this particular Sunday.  (see map)  There were a few spots open in the parking lot and the restaurant was half-full when we walked in.  There wasn't much change in the layout from the last time we had been in the place when it was a Mediterranean restaurant.  Booths lined the east and west walls, while tables were in the middle of the restaurant.  Putting some different signage and pictures on the wall was really about the only difference.  

Juan Bolanos sat us in a booth along the wall and left off a couple menus.  The picture on the menu is of the central square in the city of La Piedad, Mexico where the Bolanos family is from.  (Rio Grande is named after a neighborhood in La Piedad which borders the Mexican state of Guanajuato.)  His daughter Mairani then came by with water and to take our drink order.  I ordered a Sol beer while my wife stuck with water for the time being.  

Traditional Mexican foods - tacos, enchiladas, burritos, quesadillas, etc. - were on the menu at Rio Grande.  But they also had some house specialties such as stuffed taquitos (beef and/or chicken), a dish with rib-eye steak, chicken breast and chorizo called La Casuela, and a Hawaiian quesadilla made with grilled chicken and pineapple.  Michoacán cuisine also features seafood (the region goes from the sea to the highlands of central Mexico) and they had a number seafood dishes on the menu at Rio Grande.  Vegetarian options were also available on the menu.  

My wife went pretty basic with the chicken and rice.  It featured about 8 ounces of shredded chicken topped with chihuahua cheese on a bed of Mexican rice.  She thought it was fine for what it was - simple and straight forward.

One of their house specialties was the carnitas in a salsa verde sauce.  It featured slow roasted pork carnitas topped with a very good green salsa with rice and refried beans served on the side.  And as I like to do with new Mexican restaurants we encounter, I got a carne asada taco with cilantro and onions on a corn taco shell.  I've been told by a cook in a Mexican restaurant (who is also my step-son-in-law) that the best way to find out how good a Mexican restaurant is is to get their tacos first.  Well, the taco was certainly very good.  The carne asada was flavorful and the cilantro and onions accompanying the steak meat was very fresh.

But the carnitas in the salsa verde was very good.  The pork was tender and had a great taste to it.  Some flour tacos came with the plate and I made a couple tacos out of the pork, refried beans and rice.  It was tasty.

We have a lot of good to very good Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities and it's difficult to differentiate one from the other sometimes.  But we don't have a lot of Mexican restaurants that specialize in Michoacán food, the diverse cuisine that features seafood and agricultural food products.  Rio Grande finds their own niche in the Mexican food scene in the Quad Cities with their unique style of Mexican favorites.  It's a nice little family-run restaurant and the Bolanos family seem to be the kind of clan that you'd like to support.  I hope they have a long and profitable future at Rio Grande.   

 

Cobalt, the Restaurant - Orange Beach, AL

Spending our 26th wedding anniversary along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, we didn't have quite the stellar time that we had hoped to have.  (Click here to read the brief summary of our vacation to the area.)  But we did find some good places to eat and one of them was the place where we celebrated our anniversary with a nice dinner at Cobalt, the Restaurant in Orange Beach.  

Brian Harsany got his start in the restaurant business at an early age.  While still in high school in the early 80's, Harsany worked as a bus boy and a dishwasher at a local restaurant.  The hospitality bug bit him hard enough that he ended up majoring in hotel and restaurant management at Florida State University.  After graduating from Florida State, Harsany worked in a number of restaurants - both family-owned and corporate-owned - over the next 15 years.  

Over the years, Harsany and his wife, Jodi, had been hatching a plan for their own restaurant.  The couple were animal lovers - mainly dogs and cats - and wanted a restaurant to reflect their affection for both food and their four-legged friends.  One day, a friend was telling Brian and Jodi about a property in Orange Beach, AL that would be perfect for a restaurant.  The following day, another friend told them about the same property.  And the next day after that, another friend who knew they were looking at starting their own restaurant told them about the very same piece of property in Orange Beach.  Completely interested by that time, they traveled to Orange Beach and looked over the building sitting on Canal Road just south of Wolf Bay, about a mile and a half north of the Gulf shoreline.  

Harsany didn't want to pigeon-hole his new restaurant concept into one specific type of cuisine, so he needed a chef who was adept at different styles of cooking.  He hooked up with local chef Jack Baker and the two came up with a menu that featured seafood, Italian dishes, some Cajun specialties, as well as steaks and chops.  In 2006, the Harsany's opened Cosmo's - named after their dog that they had gotten from an animal shelter previously.  

Pictured right - Brian and Jodi Harsany.  Photo courtesy Gulf Coast News Today.

Cosmo's became a favorite for both the locals and tourists, alike.  One of Cosmo's biggest fans was a local real estate developer by the name of Larry Wireman.  Wireman was building a new upscale resort on the west end of Perdido Key in Orange Beach that he would eventually name Caribe Resort.  Wireman approached Harsany and Baker to come up with a restaurant that would fit the concept of his new resort.   They came up with the idea of an upscale seafood restaurant that had beautiful views of Bayou Saint John fed from the Gulf of Mexico through the Perdido Pass.  Cobalt, the Restaurant opened in late 2008.  

Since Cobalt opened, the Harsany's and Baker have opened other places around Orange Beach such as Luna's Eat and Drink - a Southern-style restaurant and tap house named after another one of the Harsany's rescue dogs; GT's on the Bay - a Southern-style seafood restaurant on Wolf Bay; and BuzzCatz - a coffee/pastry/ice cream shop so named for the Harsany's three cats at the time.  Cosmo's, Luna's and BuzzCatz are part of Cosmo's Courtyard which also has retail shopping in the small complex.  Jack Baker is listed as the "corporate chef" for the restaurants and each of the eateries has their own chef and sous chef on premises.  

Cobalt is located just over the Perdido Pass bridge, about a mile from the Florida/Alabama line on Perdido Key.  (see map)  We got there just after 6 p.m. with no reservation figuring that we'd have to wait.  By the time we got there, the parking lot was packed and people were parking in the overflow lot underneath the Perdido Pass bridge.

It turned out that it would be about an hour-and-a-half wait according to the hostess who checked us in and told us we would get a text to let us know when our table would be ready in the dining area.  We sort of shrugged our shoulders and decided to stay because Cobalt had come highly recommended from more than one local source.  

The crappy weather we had experienced since we had gotten to the coast was actually cooperating that evening and we went outside to the large patio area.  A three-piece band was playing that evening and the area around the bar was packed.  I stood in line for over 15 minutes just to get a couple drinks for us.  They had something called the OBA-rita (OBA - Orange Beach, AL) that consisted of a housemade lemonade - real lemonade, not that pink lemonade crap they keep trying to give me when we're in the south - along with Hornitos tequila and Gran Gala, an Italian orange liqueur similar to Grand Marnier, only that it's made with Italian brandy instead of French cognac.  I had a Tito's vodka and lemonade.  Those two drinks were $20 bucks - the OBA-rita was $13.  Ouch!  

We watched the sun slowly fall toward the horizon in the northwest and listening to the band on the patio.  I was able to track our progress on my phone as to how far down the line we were on the reservation.  When we checked in, we were 54th in line.  After about 30 minutes, that had gone down to 38.  At that rate, we figured that it would be over 90 minutes from the time we got there to the time we would get seated.  

It was getting a little cold for my wife out on the patio, so we decided to go in and hang out near the bar.  Walking inside the main restaurant, we found a large space with walls painted cobalt blue (naturally) with colorful seascape paintings on the walls.  A large kitchen was in the corner with long walk-up windows for the staff.  It was sort of loud, but not too obtrusive.  

Stepping up a level to the bar area, we found a small table off to the side where we could hang out and wait for our table to open up.  I got another lemonade and vodka while my wife wanted to hold off until we were seated.  A spot at the bar opened not long after we started standing there and the older couple seated there offered their seats to us.  We could have eaten at the bar, but my wife was content to wait for a table in the dining room to open up.  I took a look at my phone and saw that the wait had gone down precipitously.  We had been there for about 50 minutes and there were just 14 parties in front of us.  

And it really didn't take us that long after that before we got the text message that our table was ready.  I looked and it was just a bit less than an hour and 10 minutes to get a table without a reservation that evening. We went up the hostess stand and checked in.  Then we were directed to a six seat table along a window that looked out onto the patio.  My wife was a bit embarrassed that we were seated at such a large table, but I told her the rush was over and it was the first available table.  Besides, it allowed us to sort of spread out.  

After we had gotten menus from the hostess who sat us, our server for the evening - an outgoing young man by the name of Zecharia - came over to greet us.  We talked with Zecharia after dinner and found that he had an itinerant childhood as his dad had a job that kept the family on the move.  He told us he tells people he was from Kansas City because that was the longest time (4 years) he lived in one place.  By his count, he's lived in 33 states in his life and has worked in 14 cities.  "I like it here, though," he said.  "This is a great place to work."

We immediately signed up for a half-dozen of oysters-on-the-half-shell to start out. We had talked about getting the garlic/parmesan grilled oysters, but decided to go with the raw oysters.  I thought they were fine, but my wife was a little squeamish with the taste of them.  (If you saw the synopsis of our trip, I described the day we both got sick.  My wife thinks it was from the oysters the night before.  I'm still sort of skeptical, but it could be.)  Still, to me, it was a nice little opener to the meal. 

Seafood was the main focus at Cobalt.  For people that didn't want seafood they had a beef tenderloin filet on the menu, as well as a grilled chicken breast.  They also had a pork tenderloin that was marinated in an Alabama-style white barbecue sauce (a concoction of mayo, white vinegar, spicy brown mustard and creamy horseradish all mixed together), then grilled and then served on a bed of gouda mac & cheese.  But we were definitely there for the seafood that evening.  

Since we were both going to have fish that evening, we decided on getting a bottle of white wine to go with the dinner.  Zecharia turned out to be rather adept in his knowledge of the wines on the list at Cobalt.  We were looking for a rich, full-bodied white to go with our meal and he suggested the 2018 Banfi La Pettegola Vermintino, a complex, but easy to drink wine from the Tuscany region in Italy.  It was reasonably priced and it went very well with our meals.  

The first thing that caught my eye on the menu was the blackened redfish and there wasn't anything else that could sway me from that.  (Although, the yellow fin tuna was intriguing.)  The blackened redfish came on a bed of jambalaya with grilled asparagus on the side.  Zecharia talked me into getting the redfish "Oscar-style" with a dollop of fresh crab meat on the top.  This was a delicious and outstanding dish.  The blackened seasonings along with the somewhat spicy jambalaya really popped the taste buds that evening.  And the bold tasting white wine tasted like butter on the tongue countering the spicy nature of the meal.  

My wife got the special that evening - lightly blackened swordfish served on a bed of roasted poblano peppers and gritted rice (it's like grits only made with rice than corn) with chorizo mixed in.  It was topped with a chimmichurri vinaigrette and finished with bourbon confit tomatoes and onions.  She, too, thought her meal was fantastic.  "There's just so many taste sensations going on with each bite," she said at one point.  We traded bites a couple times and I thought her swordfish was excellent.

We chatted up Zecharia after dinner and he told us about his life and how he ended up at Cobalt as a server.   He had been working as a cook in a restaurant when the pandemic hit.  "Then Hurricane Sally hit right about the time that restaurants were reopening and the place I worked at just shut down again," he said.  "I found out that they were looking for servers here and got hired on.  It's sort of good for me as I have a cook's perspective on the food and can give recommendations based on that."  

Our two meals - along with the raw oysters - were really filling, but my wife's sweet tooth was raging, especially after having some spiciness to our meals.  They had five dessert items on the menu including bread pudding (we thought it would be too rich), a triple-layer chocolate cake (ditto), fried apple pie a la mode (I don't care for apple pie), and a Creole cheesecake made with house-made Creole-style cream cheese with a roasted pecan crust with pecan praline and topped with a caramel sauce.  (That sounded too dangerous!)  So, we ended up getting the creme brûlée.  It was light, yet rich in taste served with a fruit combination on top of a turbinado sugar shell.  But we couldn't finish it all.  We had had enough very good food for one evening.  

We always try to make our anniversary meals memorable and the one we had at Cobalt, the Restaurant was certainly no exception.  We didn't mind the 70 minute wait for a table, thanks to the live music out on the patio.  Once we were seated, we had a great meal and the service we had from Zecharia was impeccable.  He did a great job with his suggestions for us from the food we had to the wonderful Italian Tuscan white wine we had to complement the meal.  Cobalt had come highly recommended to us by a handful of locals who we asked where to go for a great celebration meal.  And their recommendation couldn't have been more spot on.  

River Ridge Brewing - Bellevue, IA

One of our favorite day trips to make for a good craft beer is to Bellevue, IA to River Ridge Brewing.  Since they opened in 2016, River Ridge was in a small space along Riverview St. in downtown Bellevue.  But the owners  were in the process of renovating it for a larger microbrewery just a couple blocks down the street when the pandemic hit in March of 2020.  Because of pandemic protocols, they were forced to close down their small location and offer only growlers to go that were brought out to cars by brewery personnel.  They had hoped to be in the new facility by last fall, but the build out was also going slow due to various reasons.  Since last fall, we had been anxiously awaiting the news that their new microbrewery would be opening at any time.  And it was sometime in April when we found out that they had, indeed, opened the doors to their new facility.  On a recent sunny Sunday, we made the hour-long trek up to Bellevue to check the new place out.  

The original founders/owners of River Ridge Brewing - local banker Nick Hueneke and his wife Kelly, along with Kelly's brother Jeremy Roth and his wife Nikki - decided to start the brewery after years of experience both as home brewers and working in the industry.  Jeremy and Nikki Roth decided to divest themselves from the business in 2018 and the Hueneke's turned to one of their bartenders, Allison Simpson and her husband, Nic Hockenberry, to join them in the business.  Simpson and Hockenberry had moved to Bellevue a couple years prior as Hockenberry was the associate director (now director) of the Jackson County Economic Alliance and loved to hang out at the nano-brewery before Simpson started to work behind the bar.

Once Allison Simpson told her father Greg that she and her husband were going to become partners in the brewery, he became very excited.  Greg Simpson's primary job was as a health care professional and a political operative in nearby Dubuque, but he had been a home-brewing enthusiast for a number of years.  Greg Simpson and his wife Amanda (Allison's step-mother) also invested in the business.  On previous visits to the original tap room at River Ridge Brewing, we would see Greg Simpson and talk with him about many of the beers they were working on.  

Pictured at right - Nic Hockenberry and Allison Simpson with their son, Henry; and Kelly and Nick Hueneke holding their son, Nile.  Photo courtesy River Ridge web page.

Nic Hockenberry and Nick Hueneke had their eye on an old building that was once a implement dealership along S. Riverview that had sat empty for over 30 years.  Hockenberry and Hueneke knew that it would take a lot of work to get the building into shape for a brewery, but when they walked out and saw that they could build a patio that overlooked the river, they were hooked.  Work began on the new space in 2019.  

When they finally opened in April of this year, they were able to expand from their single barrel (31 gallons) operation at their old location into a 3.5 bbl brewery at their new site.  Their old space - which was a restaurant before it was a brewery - is presently being converted back into a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant that should open later this year.  

River Ridge Brewery is open just 4 days a week - Thursday hours are 4 to 9 p.m., Friday, Saturday and Sunday they open at noon.  Friday and Saturday they're open until 10 p.m., while on Sunday they are usually open until 5 p.m.  (However, some Sunday's - including the day we were there - are declared as "Sunday Funday" and they'll stay open until 8 p.m.) 

It was just before noon when we pulled up to River Ridge Brewery after taking backroads up from the Quad Cities to Bellevue.  (see map)  There's a driveway down to a parking lot next to the new patio for the microbrewery and some people were already walking down the grade toward the patio.  We decided to go in the front door at street level and down the stairs to the brewery's tap room. 

Once inside, we found that we were the first people in the place that day, but it filled up inside and out on the patio pretty quickly.  Nic Hockenberry and Allison Simpson were behind the bar, as was Kelly Hueneke pouring beers that day.  River Ridge has a handful of regular beers including an amber, a honey blonde, a good lager, a very good IPA and the Bale Ale pale ale that my wife and I both like.  We got our first Iowa Bale Ale pale ales of the day from Nic Hockenberry and went out to the patio.  

The tap room at River Ridge has sort of a contemporary/rustic charm.  A stone brick wall was the main visual behind the bar, but concrete columns holding metal beams crossing the ceiling were prominent on the high-polished concrete floor.  On weekends, River Ridge has stone-oven pizzas available.  We had one during one of our recent visits there and it was just all right for a $12 10-inch pizza.   

Since my wife and I like the Iowa Bale Ale pale ale beer, River Ridge has some beer cheese made with the Bale Ale by a local cheesemaker.  They have a mild cheese spread and a spicy spread, but I think the mild has a bit of a spicy taste to it on its own.  It's $7 bucks for an 8 ounce container of the cheese spread and a sleeve of club crackers.  It's a nice little snack to complement the taste of their beers.  

The patio features a number of metal-mesh tables and chairs with umbrellas.  Strings of lights criss-cross the patio that is situated about 30 feet above the Mississippi River.  It was windy that day - abnormally windy - and a couple of the umbrellas had come loose from the base.  I helped one table control their umbrella, but an umbrella on a table on the other side of us got loose, went straight up in the air and sailed down and out onto the Mississippi River.  Nic Hockenberry came out with the guy who was cooking pizzas that day and they started to crank the umbrellas down, apologizing to the patrons seated outside that it was obvious they couldn't be open.  As they did that, a boater had seen the upside-down umbrella spiraling down to the river and he went to retrieve it for the brewery.  

The view from the patio at River Ridge is spectacular.  The vista goes from Lock and Dam 12 just up the river from the brewery all the way down about four or five miles south into Pool 13 of the river.  Not a lot of boats were on the river that day due to the windy conditions, but we did see a barge coming up river that locked through the dam later in the afternoon.

One of the nice things about River Ridge is that they pull people in from all over Eastern Iowa and Northwestern Illinois.  We talked with people from Dubuque - about 13 miles up river from the tap room - for awhile.  But we also met and talked with a couple who lived over in Cedar Rapids, about a 90 minute drive from Bellevue.  But the biggest surprise was when a couple who are friends of ours from the Quad Cities called us to see what we were doing.  They had been fishing above the Bellevue dam earlier in the day and had just pulled their boat out and were heading back to the Quad Cities.  When we told them we were sitting on the patio at River Ridge, my buddy said, "We'll be there in less than five minutes!"  The next thing we knew, we saw them walking down the driveway to the patio.  We had a couple beers with them before we all decided to head back home for the day.  

About the only drawback - for us - about River Ridge Brewing is that it's a bit of a drive from the Quad Cities up to Bellevue.  While the tap room is nice, it's tough to beat the view and ambiance of their patio overlooking the Mississippi River.  River Ridge has a nice selection of craft brews - both year round and seasonal - and the people who work there are friendly.  While we liked the coziness of their original tap room, the new River Ridge tap room and patio is a great place to spend a couple hours watching the river go by while having a good craft brew.   

 

Beach House Kitchen - Gulf Shores, AL

During our first day along the Alabama Gulf Coast, we did a lot of exploring of the Orange Beach/Gulf Shores area.  Traveling down W. Beach Blvd. west of Gulf Shores Parkway in Gulf Shores, we didn't find many options for restaurants along that stretch of road.  After traveling along W. Beach Blvd. for a couple miles and realizing that there were no restaurants down that far, we circled back on Lagoon Ave. and headed back to the east.  On our way back down Lagoon Ave, I looked over and saw a restaurant sitting back on 11th Street in Gulf Shores.  It had a front porch dining area and looked pretty nice.  We decided to give the Beach House a try for dinner that night.  

Oklahoma native Brent Sexton graduated from the University of Nevada - Las Vegas with a degree in physical education.  He landed a job as a health/physical education teacher and coach at a middle school in Las Vegas just after he graduated in 2012.  But after two years as a teacher, he made a 180-degree life turn by quitting teaching and moving with his girlfriend Erika Duff to Gulf Shores to open a restaurant.  The couple opened the Beach House Kitchen & Cocktails in October of 2014.  The couple got married two years later, then in 2019 they opened a new pizza restaurant in Orange Beach called Sauced.  After another life-changing moment - the birth of the Sexton's daughter in 2020 - Brent decided to get into real estate and became an agent in late 2020.  Erika Duff continues to run the Beach House and is helped out at Sauced with the Sexton's business partner and chef Lee Bell.  And there's a chance you may even see Brent Sexton playing his guitar at one of the many live music venues in and around the Gulf Coast of Alabama.  He's obviously a guy who doesn't let the sand stick to his feet.  

The Beach House isn't on the beach - not a lot of restaurants in the area were on beach front property - but is situated on 11th Street between W. Beach Blvd. and Lagoon Ave., right in between the Gulf Coast and Little Lagoon.  (see map)  There was a pretty good sized parking lot in front of the restaurant which shares its building with an ice cream shop and a couple other businesses.  We saw cars in the lot with license plates from Illinois, New York, Colorado and Texas.  

We were greeted at the front stand by a young lady who asked if we wanted inside or outside dining.  The front patio was about half-full, but it was sort of cool outside so we decided to sit inside.  She took us to a booth along the wall and dropped off some menus.  Moments later, our server for the evening, a laid-back young man by the name of River came over to greet us.  My wife got a Tito's and cranberry, while River suggested their house IPA that's made for the Beach House by the Fairhope Brewing Company in Fairhope, AL - about 30 miles away from the coast.  We never made it up to Fairhope to try that craft brewery, but I did have a couple of the Causeway IPA's from Fairhope Brewing Co. during our stay along the Gulf Coast.  The Beach House IPA that Fairhope Brewing was very good - hoppy, yet smooth.

The dining room at the Beach House featured a long bar with a faux awning across the top of the bar.  Quite actually, the decor was rather muted with a few flat-screen televisions and some small pictures on a lime-green wall.  There were a number of tables on the hardwood floor in the center of the restaurant while the booths were opposite the bar area.  It wasn't fancy, but it certainly wasn't a dive.  

We were hungry, but not all that hungry since we had just had a dozen oysters-on-the-shell a couple hours previously.  And they were big and meaty oysters, at that.  But we needed something else for dinner that evening.   

The menu at the Beach House wasn't all that extensive.  They had just a handful of entrees, a number of sandwiches and wraps, and just one burger on the menu.  They had salads and appetizers including wings, bacon-wrapped shrimp, and spring rolls.  

But they also had a handful of tacos on the menu including shrimp tacos, beef tacos, chicken tacos and fish tacos.  Of course, I'm a big fan of fish tacos - especially grilled fish tacos.  (They also had battered fish tacos on the menu.)  I got the blackened fresh-caught triggerfish tacos.  They came with shredded lettuce, avocado, chopped tomatoes and red onions.  Aged white cheddar cheese came with the tacos, but I told River to hold the cheese.  I just don't like cheese on fish tacos.  The tacos also came with a chili-lime aioli.

The tacos came on lightly grilled flour soft shells.  And there was a nice chunk of blackened triggerfish in the tacos.  The chili-lime aioli gave the tacos a nice little punch in taste.  The tacos were light and tasty, a perfect dinner for what I needed that evening.

My wife went with the Southwest salad.  It sort of intrigued her because the salad featured roasted sweet corn with black beans, chopped red onions and tomatoes, and avocado slices on a bed of mixed greens.  Aged white cheddar cheese was supposed to also come with the salad, but she also told River to hold the cheese.  A cilantro-lime vinaigrette came with the salad.  And for an extra $5 bucks, she got some grilled chicken strips on the top of the salad.  She also got a side of mixed vegetables to add to the healthiness of the meal.  

She thought her salad was very good.  She really liked the different flavors in the salad including the cumin-flavored black beans.  My wife offered me a bite of the black beans and I thought they were great - I had never thought about adding cumin to black beans when we make them at home.  She was very happy with what she ordered that evening.

As we were having dinner, we heard a commotion coming from the kitchen just off the bar area.  Suddenly, bartenders and other waitstaff were running to the kitchen and we wondered what was going on.  We hadn't seen River for a while and when I heard someone ask to call for an ambulance, we were worried that something had happened to him.  Moments later, the EMT's came in the front door and went back to the kitchen.  (Turns out the Gulf Shores fire and rescue station is directly across the street from the Beach House.)  

Finally, we saw River come out of the kitchen.  My wife said, "Oh, good.  There he is."  River came over to our table and explained that one of the kitchen workers suddenly fainted and literally fell at his feet.  

"I was just coming into the kitchen and I saw her sort of wobble out of the corner of my eye," he was explaining to us.  "Then when I turned toward her, she literally fell in front of me."  He said that he stayed with her as she came to and up until the EMT's came to help get her up.  "So, that was sort of exciting," he said.

"I'll say," my wife said.  "We didn't know what was going on and then we heard someone call for an ambulance.  And we hadn't seen you for a while."  

"Well, that's where I was," he said while apologizing to us for not coming back out to our table to check on us. My wife said there was no need to apologize, but she was worried about they young lady who passed out.  "I think she'll be fine," he said.  "It gets hot in the kitchen and she may have been dehydrated."  

River tried to tempt us with dessert.  "We have a key lime pie that I think is the best in the area," he said.  As good as he was making it sound, we decided to pass.  We were pretty full even with the light meals we just had.  

So, other than the excitement in the kitchen, we thought our visit to the Beach House Kitchen & Cocktails was fine.  It wasn't anything special, nor was it bad at all.  The meals we had - the blackened triggerfish tacos and the Southwestern salad with grilled chicken - were nice and light, exactly what we were looking for.  The menu offerings are pretty narrow, but that's usually pretty good compared to restaurants that offer a lot of everything and are usually only average in the quality of the foods.  And our server with the unique name - River - did a good job for us.  The Beach House was a nice place, nothing fancy, but not a dive.  We could see why it was a popular place the night we were there.  

Noon O Kabab - Chicago

Now that Chicago has reopened to out-of-state travelers without having to quarantine, I finally got back into the Windy City to see some accounts that I had not visited in over a year.  One of my accounts is located in the north side of Chicago and I stopped in to see him one late afternoon and after we finished up our meeting, I offered to take him out to dinner.  He's keen on Mediterranean/Persian restaurants - he took me to a Mediterranean restaurant a couple years ago for a buffet lunch.  This time, he wanted to take me to one of his favorite places in Chicago - Noon O Kabab in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago.  

Amin Naghavi grew up in the city of Tabriz in the high country of northwestern Iran.  Tabriz had the reputation of having some of the finest cuisine and best cooks in the country.  In 1978, political unrest rocked Iran and Amin Naghavi could see a change coming in the future of the country.  Like many Iranians at the time, Naghavi felt it was time to find a new home for his family.  The Naghavi's emigrated from Iran and ended up in Chicago.  But what they brought with them was a trove of family recipes that dated back to near the turn of the 20th century.  One of the recipes Amin Naghavi had was a lightly marinated salmon with Persian spices, a recipe his father had come up with decades prior.  

A number of those recipes were passed on to Amin's son, Mir Javad, and his daughter, Parvin.  And it was a few years down the road when the three Naghavi's decided to open their own Persian restaurant.  The original Noon O Kabab opened in 1997 as a small cafeteria-style restaurant with seating for just 20 people on N. Kedzie.  Over the years, the restaurant expanded, then retracted in size before moving to a larger space across Kedzie in November of 2016 in what was a former Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.  The Naghavi's had built a loyal following and wait times at Noon O Kabab would regularly reach over 90 minutes during peak times.  Sensing they needed more space, the Naghavi family expanded the dining area adding on with a more formal dining space in 2019.  

We took separate cars to Noon O Kabab and I found a parking space in the parking lot on the south side of the restaurant.  (see map)  I made the rookie mistake of waiting for my dealer in what was the more casual side of the restaurant.  When he showed up, he said, "Oh, no.  We're going over to the other side."

The "other side" was a large circular dining area that featured beautiful pictures made from colorful ceramic tiles.  The centerpiece of the room was a large chandelier with sheer drapes which went out from the center.  As the sun went down, light blue accent lights lit up the dome above the dining room floor.  There was a bar area off to the side of the dining room, but with Chicago just getting ready to come out of pandemic restrictions, it was sort of roped off and closed.  

We were seated at a large round table on the edge of the dining room and we were given menus by a lady.  It turned out my dealer and the lady knew each other.  "That's the wife of the owner," he said to me as she walked away.  "I probably haven't been in here for a year and a half, so it was good to catch up."  She came back a while later with some water and a Efes Pilsen, a popular Turkish beer that I had never had before.  It had a nice light taste and went well with the food I ordered.  

I was a babe in the woods when it came to what to order off the menu.  With "Kabab" in the restaurant's name, it was obvious that the menu had a number of skewered meats to choose from.  Beef skewers - including marinated sirloin and beef tenderloin cuts, lamb skewers and chicken skewers were available on the menu.  They had a number of combinations of the meat skewers, as well as vegetarian dishes on the menu.  They also had a handful of appetizers on the menu.  My dealer ordered some falafel and hummus.  I have to say that I'm not much of a hummus person, but the hummus at Noon O Kabab was outstanding.  

Not really knowing what to do on my first time in a Persian restaurant, I figured that I'd be safe with lamb and chicken.  (We had grilled steaks the night before and I was kind of "beefed-out" that evening.)  I got the Lamb & Joujeh combination - charbroiled lamb meat with grilled chicken marinated in butter.  But when the owner's wife asked me what kind of rice I wanted with the combination, I had that "deer-in-the-headlights" moment.  My dealer came through in the pinch and said, "Give him both kinds of rice."  One type of rice was a white rice with saffron, while the other was a mixture of brown basmati rice and spices.  When the plate was set down in front of me, I was like, "Whoa, man!  That's a lot of food!"

I have to say the chicken was very good.  It had a nice buttery flavor on the outside and was very tender and juicy in the inner core.  The lamb was equally as tasty, tender and juicy.  And I enjoyed the basmati rice - both kinds.  But there was no way that I was going to be able to finish what I had on my plate.  I made a significant dent in the skewered chicken and lamb, however.  It was just that good.  

Expanding my culinary horizons once again, I have to say that I was impressed with Noon O Kabab.  It's not all that different from some types of Mediterranean food I've tried in the past and you'll find staples like beef, chicken and lamb on the menu, as well as a number of vegetarian dishes and traditional Persian appetizers.  My skewers of grilled buttery chicken and charbroiled lamb were outstanding.  And the mixed rice I got was fine, as well.  It was just a lot of food and I could have easily shared my meal as I was stuffed at the end and I hadn't finished everything on my plate.  I won't be as apprehensive with my next visit to a Persian restaurant in the future and I hope to get back to Noon O Kabab at some point to try some of their beef skewers.  

Fish River Grill - Foley, AL

We went up to Foley, AL during our stay along the Gulf Coast of Alabama to check out the Wilbourne Antique Rose Trail.  After being thoroughly disappointed in what we were led to believe was an eye-popping array of roses along a mile-long trail, we decided to find someplace to get lunch.  Not far from the start of the rose trail was a restaurant that was touted as being "where the locals eat".  We should have known better, but this place sort of looked like a place where the locals would eat - situated in a strip mall, not too fancy on the outside.  We thought we'd give Fish River Grill a try.  

The Fish River Grill in Foley is the second of what are three Fish River Grill locations in the Alabama Gulf Coast area.  The first one was established in between Foley and Fairhope, AL located about 12 miles to the north and west of Foley.   A third Fish River Grill is in Gulf Shores, AL near the Gulf of Mexico, all of which are owned by Diana Rohe-Pennington.  There is also a Fish River Grill by the Bay on the shores of Mobile Bay in Fairhope.

It was well after the lunch hour rush when we found Fish River Grill in Foley, just south of the downtown area a bit off the main north-south road that goes through Foley.  (see map)   The outside front was pretty basic and we found that the inside wasn't all that fancy, either.  It definitely wasn't decked out like the type of place tourists would be flocking to.  

The main dining room at Fish River Grill featured a hodge-podge of tables and booths in the middle of a large open space.  A light blue ceiling hung over the dining room with walls affixed with nautical items and signage circled the area.  Hard wood floors helped to make the room a little more loud than it needed to be.  

The nautical theme extended into a back room that was used for overflow dining.  Located just off the bar, the room was well-lit with fluorescent lighting and featured posters, paintings and life-preservers hanging on knotty pine walls.  

Speaking of the bar area, it also had a nautical motif with netting hanging from a cabana-style overhang above the bar.  The bar and the back room were understandably empty during the lunch hours, but the bar looked like the kind of place I'd like to hang out in from time to time.  

We were taken to a booth in the center of the dining room and given a couple menus to look through.  Our server that day was a middle-aged lady by the name of Natasha who started and ended many of her sentences with "hon" - as in "Hon, I'll be with ya in a minute."  Or, "What can I get you to drink, hon?"  Her syrupy drawl almost made it sound like "Hon" had two syllables instead of one.  We immediately liked her down-home and folksy demeanor.  

Now, I wasn't all that hungry, but being that close to the coast I knew I wanted to have some seafood.  The only problem is that - well, with most Southern food - a lot of it was fried.  Fried shrimp, fried catfish strips, fried alligator bites, fried green tomatoes - you get the picture.  They had a number of burgers to choose from on the menu as well as a number of sandwiches including Cajun-style po' boys.  But, once again, the po' boys featured fried shrimp, fried oysters, fried catfish or fried alligator for the choices.  And I didn't really want a burger for lunch.

My wife has to have 3 squares a day, but not anything all too filling for lunch.  There weren't a lot of choices of non-fried food, but she saw a fish sandwich that had grilled white fish.  She asked our server if she could just get the fish without the bread.  "Hon, we can make it any way you want," Natasha replied in her smooth Southern drawl.  "We can grill it, we can blacken it, we can fry it.  Anyway you want, hon."  

So my wife went with two pieces of grilled whitefish.  A basket of French fries with fried okra and hushpuppies mixed in came on the side with a small container of coleslaw.  She took a couple bites of the fish and said it was delicious.  "Exactly what I needed," she said as she cut another piece off.  She wasn't too enamored with the fries, fried okra or the hushpuppies, but she said she really did like their coleslaw.   

I saw something on the appetizer menu that I thought I could try.  It was a dozen peeled shrimp and I asked Natasha if I could get them blackened.  "Sure thing, hon," she replied as she wrote down the order.  And I asked her to have the chef "step on" the blackening seasoning.  But there was also something else on the menu that I wanted to get - a bowl of Fish River Grill's crab and shrimp gumbo.  

For not being hungry, well, hell, this was a lot of food.  The gumbo was very tasty and I had our server get me some Crystal Pure Louisiana Hot Sauce to bump up the flavor a bit of the very good gumbo.  

The blackened shrimp were also very good.  I small tub of cocktail sauce, but I didn't need any of it because the blackened seasonings were excellent.  They were cooked perfectly, not rubbery in consistency at all.  

But the one thing that stood out - to me - were the hushpuppies.  Now, the fries were pretty much the crinkle-cut/throwaway variety, and I stayed away from the fried okra, but the hushpuppies were outstanding.  

The hell of it is, I'm not big on hushpuppies - I've never been a big fan of corn meal-based foods.  Yeah, I live in Iowa, lived here most of my life, but I can't stand corn bread, corn dogs, corn bread muffins, corn bread quiche, nothing with corn meal in it.  And up until this time in my life, I definitely didn't like hushpuppies which are basically deep fried balls of corn meal dough.  And for the life of me, I have no idea why I picked one up and took a bite out of it on this visit.  

They looked like just regular hushpuppies that you'd find anywhere they serve hushpuppies.  But that's where the comparison stopped.  The corn meal was mixed with chunks of spicy red and green peppers and a subtle herb seasoning.  The outer shell was crisp, but the inner core was warm and nearly melted in my mouth.  I know hushpuppies are far from healthy, but these were outstanding.  I ate all the shrimp, about half the bowl of the gumbo, and four or five hushpuppies - even pulling some out of my wife's basket of fried foods she got for her side.

OK - so maybe Fish River Grill WAS the kind of place where the locals eat.  We didn't exactly see many people wearing beachwear in the place (then again, it was cool and spitting rain when we were in Foley).  But I thought the blackened shrimp, as well as the shrimp and crab gumbo were both very good.  My wife enjoyed the grilled white fish she had, and I was able to broaden my palate by thoroughly enjoying the great hushpuppies they had as part of a side of fried foods (we WERE in the South, you know) that came out with our meals.  Plus, we liked the down-home Southern friendly manner of our server, Natasha. While Fish River Grill isn't a fancy place, we liked it because it wasn't a tourist trap like many places we checked out while we were on vacation along the Gulf Coast of Alabama.   

Iowa Taproom - Des Moines

My wife and I were headed back home from a weekend at my sister's fiancé's lake home along Lake Panorama in west central Iowa and by the time we got to Des Moines, my wife thought she needed something to eat.  It was about 3 p.m. and I told her that if I had something to eat in Des Moines that late in the afternoon, I wouldn't want any dinner that evening.  She said that was fine with her.  I had her do some searches on line for a good burger place in Des Moines and one of the first ones that came up was a place that I had been wanting to go to for a long time - the Iowa Taproom.  I popped the address to the Iowa Taproom in my GPS and we took off to go there.  

Jeff Bruning is the head of an ownership group called Full Court Press that has developed and owns a number of restaurants around Des Moines such as Fong's Pizza, Hessen Haus, Buzzard Billy's, El Bait Shop and the High Life Lounge.  It was Bruning who came up with the concept of the Iowa Taproom when he realized in 2014 that Iowa had over 50 craft breweries around the state.  (There are nearly 90 today.)  With the growing number of breweries, Bruning and his partners wanted to develop a restaurant that showcased the state's craft beer selection.   

Finding a spot that could house a restaurant/bar with enough room to store beer kegs for their distribution system would be critical to the concept and they found an old building east of the Des Moines River that they felt would fit their needs.  The building was built in 1882 and initially housed a factory that made retail store fixtures.  In the mid-1910's it was converted to a tire manufacturing operation - it was the first tire company in the state of Iowa and one of the first ones established west of Ohio.  

In the 1930's, the building was converted into two businesses - one was a printing company that ended up printing morale-boosting pamphlets and postcards during World War II; and the other was the Des Moines warehouse and distributorship for Old Style beer.  A fire destroyed the beer warehouse in 1949 and that part of the building was rebuilt in 1952.  The building then went through different variations of both retail and wholesale businesses until the early 70's when it was purchased by the Dilley Manufacturing which reverted the building to a printing plant that printed book covers and binders.  

After Dilley Manufacturing merged with another local printing company in 2014, the building was purchased by a local developer who renovated the building.  Bruning toured the building and found it to be perfect for the Iowa Taproom concept Full Court Press had been working on.  The restaurant group leased the property in 2015 and started a nearly year-long construction of the Iowa Taproom.  The new beer bar/restaurant opened in early March of 2016.  

(In October of 2020, Full Court Press opened Ken's Speakeasy, only the group calls it a "not so secret speakeasy".  It's located in the basement of the Iowa Taproom and is assessable via a set of stairs near the front door of the taproom.   Ken's pays homage to bootlegger Kenneth Sonderleiter who provided beer and spirits in the 1920's to a range of people that included pillars of society, captains of industry, politicians, members of the press, and guests in stately downtown hotels.  Ken was eventually caught and put in prison, but was pardoned by President Roosevelt in 1942.  Ken's Speakeasy features a number of repurposed fixtures picked up from around the state of Iowa, as well as photographs of gangsters and Prohibition-era memorabilia.  Many of the spirits served at Ken's are from a number of Iowa distilleries, which are growing in number like the number of craft breweries.)    

It was close to 4 p.m. when we pulled up to the Iowa Taproom located on E. 3rd St. between E. Walnut St. and E. Court Ave.  (see map)  The entrance way is the old elevator that went to the now non-existent 2nd floor from the part of the building that burned back in 1949.  We were greeted by someone when we came in and were shown to a table toward the front of the restaurant.

The open floor area of the restaurant features a number of sturdy metal and wood chairs and tables.  The table tops were made from repurposed barn wood.  Open beams across the ceiling with exposed ductwork gave it sort of a 1920's warehouse look.  There were a number of nostalgic and historical signs on the exposed brick walls with repurposed barn wood slats forming small half walls and the full wall along the back part of the restaurant near the kitchen.  There is a narrow outdoor dining patio on the north side of the restaurant that we walked through when we left

The main focus of the Iowa Taproom is the grain silo that was made specifically for the restaurant by .   Sukup Manufacturing.  The company is located in Sheffield, IA, and according to their web site it's the largest family-owned manufacturer of grain bins, dryers, and steel buildings in the world.  The specially made silo holds 120 taps and is situated behind a bar whose top is made from a repurposed counter top from a general store in Jewell, IA that dated back to the 1880's.  

Our server for the day was a young lady by the name of Brenna.  She was friendly and helpful in sorting out the beers they had to offer that day.  Iowa Taproom features a wide array of beers, sours, and ciders on their beer menu.  I was looking for something that I hadn't had before and Brenna suggested the Neon Hazy IPA from the Barn Town Brewing, a craft brewery and restaurant located out in West Des Moines.  The beer was very good and we put Barn Town Brewing on our places to try when we get back to Des Moines later this summer.  

The food menu at the Iowa Taproom consisted of a number of appetizers and salads, as well as 9 different styles of bone-in chicken wings served with Maytag Blue Cheese dressing.  Since we were drawn there primarily for the burgers, they also had sandwiches and a number of entrees including beer-battered fish tacos, a pan-seared Iowa pork chop, a barbecue meatloaf platter, and a sautéed chicken breast dish called Hunter's Chicken that is topped with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, shallots and tarragon, then finished with a porter demi-glace.  Smashed Yukon Gold potatoes and steamed broccoli came on the side.  That actually sounded pretty damned good.  

But the sandwiches they had were very interesting to me - so much that I started to waver on my original plan to get a burger.  Oh, the burgers sounded good, too.  The All-American featured two patties with American cheese, the Maytag burger was topped with Maytag Blue Cheese and honey-peppered bacon with blue cheese mayo, and the Morning Farm burger featured a patty blended with beef and sage-infused breakfast sausage, then topped with cheddar cheese, a slice of grilled ham, a fried egg, hickory-smoked bacon, onion straws and finished with a BBQ mayo.  That probably would have been the one I got.

The sandwiches at the Iowa Taproom seemed more appealing to me.  They had a barbecued meat loaf sandwich topped with cheddar cheese, onion straws and a bourbon barbecue sauce.  The Buffalo chicken Swiss sandwich featured a breaded chicken breast tossed in Buffalo wing sauce and topped with Swiss cheese.  The French dip sounded good, as did the reuben.  My wife took a long hard look at the lobster artichoke melt that featured lobster meat with artichokes, mayo, onions and parmesan cheese, topped with melted cheddar cheese and served on a garlic crostini.

My wife - who wasn't drinking after a fun weekend at the lake - felt she needed some greens and some protein to counteract all the decadence we experienced for the past couple of days. She got the Southwestern chicken salad, but instead of the chicken spiced with Buffalo sauce, she just had Brenna ask the chef to put the regular grilled chicken on it.  It appeared to be a full chicken breast sliced in strips, then placed atop a bed of mixed greens with pico de gallo, pepper jack cheese, sweet corn, black beans and crushed tortilla chips.  A chipotle ranch dressing normally comes with the salad, but she got just regular ranch dressing.  She thought the salad was fabulous and definitely what she needed for a late lunch/early dinner.

Man, I wavered back and forth between about four or five different things before I finally order the Italian grinder at the last moment.   Like most Italian grinders found at restaurants around Des Moines, it featured Graziano Brothers ground Italian sausage, then it's mixed with marinara sauce, grilled onions, along with Anaheim and sweet red peppers.  The mix is stuffed into a grilled Italian roll and topped with melted Provolone cheese.  A side of seasoned battered fries came with the sandwich on the side.  The sandwich was delicious - but I knew what would happen later on.  The peppers and onions talked back at me all the way back home to the Quad Cities.

The seasoned battered fries were excellent, as well.  They had a very crispy outer shell and a soft flaky core.  I shared some with my wife and she thought they were very good.  

I'm glad we finally got the chance to visit the Iowa Taproom for the first time.  I'd been wanting to check the place out for quite sometime.  And given the number of Iowa-based craft brews they have on tap, as well as some of the interesting food items on their menu, I know I'll be back again at some point.  Our server, Brenna, was accommodating and friendly during our visit and I was actually impressed with how well versed she was in the different beers they had.  The Iowa Taproom is a very unique place and one that should be checked out if you want to take a craft beer tour across the state of Iowa without all the driving.    

Live Bait - Orange Beach, AL

If you previously read the overview of our trip to the Gulf Coast of Alabama, you'll remember that the weather wasn't all that great for the first couple of days we were there.  We really wanted a drink after we checked into the hotel, but the little poolside cabana bar at the hotel we stayed at was closed due to air temperatures in the 60's coupled with persistent high winds and off-and-on rain showers coming off the gulf.   We decided to head out, get the lay-of-the-land and find someplace where we could wet our whistle.  We didn't have to go far from our hotel where we found a place called Live Bait.  

Live Bait is one of many similar bar/restaurant/music venues up and down Perdido Beach Boulevard - also known as Alabama's Coastal Connection.  Whereas we found a number of bars and restaurants along the beach in the Destin, FL area when we were there a few years back, we only found a couple three places along the stretch of the Alabama/Florida Gulf Coast on this trip.  Most of the buildings along the beach on the south side of Perdido Beach Blvd. were hotels or condos, while many of the restaurants and bars were on the north side of the road.  Live Bait was one of those situated across the road from beachfront property.

Live Bait originally opened in 1995 making it one of the more established local hangouts in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores.  The restaurant/bar - owned by Mike and Rita Callahan - features two live music areas including a dance club, and a tiki bar that hosts karaoke starting at 7 p.m. most nights.  

We pulled in during the late afternoon and found a spot in an already nearly full parking lot out front.  (see map)  We walked into the place and there was a good-sized crowd seated inside listening to a guitarist/singer playing on a stage.  The main dining space had a step-up bar, then a lower level with the stage at one end.  There was an enclosed patio area off the dining room.  

It was a little loud in the main dining room from the music and chatter going on, so we asked the hostess if there was an outside bar.  She took us out to the Tiki Bar.  It was cool outside, but we were sheltered from the strong breeze coming off the gulf.  

We ended up at a table along the wall opposite the bar.  The hostess dropped off a couple menus and one of the bartenders came over to take our drink order.  We saw that Live Bait had their own take on the New Orleans classic Hurricane cocktail - three different types of rum, passion fruit juice and lemon juice.  We both signed up for one of those to get us going.  

The menu at Live Bait was a little bit all over the place.  Of course, they had seafood selections, as well as steaks, chicken, sandwiches, and burgers.  Their signature burger is the Bait Burger as shown on the right.  (Photo courtesy Live Bait Facebook page.)  It features three burger patties with three different types of cheese and a whole bunch of other stuff on it.  In fact, while we were there, a guy sitting at a table near us with his significant other had one brought to him.  I wanted to get a picture of it, but I didn't want to bug him as he was looking at the burger from all different types of angles figuring out where to begin.  His girlfriend (or wife) was just shaking her head. 

On weekends, Live Bait hosts a brunch from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.  (UPDATE - Live Bait is now open 7 days a week at 7 a.m. with a full breakfast menu.) In addition to brunch items such as shrimp and grits, Bananas Foster French toast, and a New York strip steak Oscar, Live Bait has build-your-own omelets, different varieties of Eggs Benedict, pancakes (including red velvet pancakes topped with a cream cheese icing), Belgian waffles (including a waffle infused with Fruity Pebbles cereal), and a country fried steak and eggs.  What caught my attention, however, was their French toast that is dipped in a house-made custard and flat-grilled.  I've heard about custard-battered French toast before, but I had never seen in on a menu until now.  I wanted to come back and try it at some point, but for a number of reasons we never did.  

We weren't certain that we wanted to eat a full meal at Live Bait as we had lunch on the road just about three hours previously.  But my wife thought a couple drinks and an appetizer would suffice on this visit.  They had a lot of fried foods on the appetizer menu including deep-fried alligator.  But they also had oysters-on-the-half shell, as well as charred oysters, oysters Rockefeller, and something they called Bama Bait Oysters served on the half shell with sausage, cooked peppers and onions, then topped with gouda cheese.  That was interesting, to say the least, but we ordered a dozen of the raw oysters instead.  When they were brought to the table, I could hardly believe what was in front of me.  They were all large and meaty, some of the biggest oysters I'd ever seen.  My wife - who is skittish about oysters (and even more so after this vacation) - seemed to like them just fine.  They were rich in flavor and very filling.    

We had noticed a small crowd had formed over by the railing on the far side of the tiki bar looking down into the backwater bayou that was between the bar and The Club, Live Bait's dance bar which also hosts live music from time to time.  When the bartender came over to check on us, my wife asked what was going on over on the other side.  "Oh, we have some gators out there and they're probably looking at one," he said.  We meandered over to the railing and waited for the people to clear out.  Sure enough, there was about a 4 to 5 foot long alligator just poking his head up above the water line.  

The bartender came over and said, "Yep, there he is.  We have a few smaller ones in here and a couple bigger ones.  They come and go from time to time."  

We decided that we wanted to go somewhere else for dinner, but we kept Live Bait in mind for breakfast at some point.  Unfortunately, that never came about as the flu (or food poisoning, as my wife still thinks it was - but not from these oysters) came into play a day or two later knocking us out for awhile.  But I really liked the oysters-on-the-half shell at Live Bait and we got halfway tipsy on the delicious hurricanes they had.  Places like Live Bait that specialize in seafood and full menus are all up and down the highway that goes from Gulf Shores to the Florida-Alabama line.  Some are going to be better than others and I thought that Live Bait was good enough for one of those types of places.