My wife wanted to meet her father and his ladyfriend for lunch over in the Iowa City area one recent weekend and she suggested a place that we had never been to, but her father had been to a couple times before - Vesta - located in the Iowa River Landing in Coralville. (see map) I'd heard about Vesta before and was looking forward to giving it a try.
The man behind Vesta is Seth Hershey, who along with Nick Craig, opened Vesta in June of 2008. They wanted to open a restaurant in Coralville away from the suddenly crowded upscale restaurant scene in downtown Iowa City, and away from where their patrons didn't have to compete for parking with the students at the University of Iowa. Unfortunately, two weeks after the new restaurant opened, a devastating flood hit the Iowa City/Coralville area effectively shutting down the place for a number of weeks. Coupled with a tough economy that stretched into 2009, Vesta chugged along with a reduced staff and highlighted specials for lunch and dinner to bring people in the door. Craig - who also had a stake in Blackstone on the east side of Iowa City - eventually left the business to become a wine representative and to open Brix Cheese & Wine Shop in Iowa City as a co-owner. (He is still a co-owner of Vesta along with Brian Flynn, who's also a co-owner in Blackstone, Joe's Place and Donnelly's Irish Pub in Iowa City.)
Seth Hershey's idea of the restaurant included having an open kitchen where people could look in to see the chefs in action. He wanted to have a Mediterranean theme to the foods they served, but use a lot of locally grown produce and meats - including elk meat from the Wildlife Lakes Elk Farm located in West Burlington, IA. Lamb burgers, Greek pizzas, smoked salmon pasta, and an elk bourguignon stew are a few of the interesting items found on the dinner menu at Vesta. (Vesta is named after the Roman goddess of hearth, home and family.)
Vesta is easy to find in the Iowa River Landing - it's just to the southwest side of the Marriott at the end of E. 9th St. There's a parking lot behind Vesta and after walking around the front of the restaurant (the long way, it turned out) and past the closed outdoor seating area, we came to the front door. Cindy's dad and his ladyfriend hadn't shown up yet, so we decided to go ahead and get a table to wait for them. We were lead back through a dining area that looked into the kitchen, around a corner and into a dining room off the nice bar area. The wall had a number of cook books on shelves in this dining room. I thumbed through a couple of them before Cindy's dad and his ladyfriend showed up to join us.
The lunch menu at Vesta is a stripped down version of the dinner menu, minus the main entrees. Soups, salads, sandwiches and pizzas are the main part of the lunch menu, along with appetizers such as shredded pork spring rolls, curried scallops, beef Wellington bites that feature beef tenderloin inside a flaky outer crust and served with a house-made basil aioli and a house-made steak sauce.
The beer menu at Vesta was pretty impressive with a number of local, regional and national craft brews on tap. I decided that I'd get a bloody mary along with a pint of the Oskar Blues IPA out of Colorado. The bloody mary was very, very good and a nice spot-hitter to start out the meal.
I thought about getting the Vesta burger - a locally-sourced beef patty topped with gorgonzola cheese, onion straws, and the house-made steak sauce and served on a toasted brioche bun. But I ended up getting the elk reuben - Wildlife Lakes elk pastrami topped with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and 1000 island sauce and served on toasted marble rye bread. I had a choice of a side between fries, Greek pasta salad, or soup, but for a $2 dollar upcharge I could get a small salad. I went with the wedge salad. The elk pastrami was lean and flavorful, but very salty.
Cindy got the Wild Alaskan salmon BLT sandwich and for her side she got the roasted beet salad. The sandwich featured a roasted salmon filet that was topped with bacon, spinach, tomatoes and the basil aioli sauce and served on a French baguette. The salad featured chopped beets, mixed greens and candied walnuts, all topped with gorgonzola cheese and a house-made balsamic vinaigrette. Cindy said the salmon tasted fresh and flavorful, and she was more than happy with the beet salad/salmon combination for her lunch.
My father-in-law got Vesta's Iowa pork tenderloin - a handbreaded pork tenderloin that wasn't pounded into the size of a hub cap (thankfully), and served on a toasted brioche bun with lettuce, tomato, dill pickles and onions. He got a salad for his side like the rest of us. He had had the tenderloin at Vesta before and he thought it was very good. "I suppose I could have tried something else," he said. "But I like the tenderloin here."
His ladyfriend went with the Philly pineapple cheese steak - tender steak topped with cheese and a couple of pineapple slices. She also got the wedge salad as a side. It was served on a toasted hoagie bun that held together well with all that was inside the sandwich. She enjoyed her sandwich tremendously.
I was taking pictures of the sandwiches and our server, Hayley, asked if I was taking pictures for Yelp. My wife said, "No, he has a blog and it's kind of a big thing." Well, I wouldn't say that, but I did say to Hayley that I don't do Yelp because they aren't too blogger friendly. She did a fine job in taking care of us that day, especially as things got more busy during the lunch rush that particular day.
For my first visit to Vesta, I came away pretty impressed. Everyone in our group was happy with what they had. The food, atmosphere and service were all well above par - although I'd definitely get something other than the elk reuben on my next visit. It wasn't that the elk reuben was bad - far from it. But it was pretty salty, even though it was definitely interesting to try. But that's fine - there appears to be a number of interesting food to try next time.
I felt that Coralville had a lot of chain restaurants and not a lot of higher-end restaurants. As opposed to being downtown Iowa City, where there’s One Twenty Six, Devotay, Linn Street Cafe, Atlas. And you don’t have to fight the college kids for a parking space. We have parking spaces behind the building.
- See more at: http://www.hooplanow.com/2009/01/15/in-the-kitchen-with-seth-hershey#sthash.6k0cS6Ub.dpufVesta is named after the Roman goddess of the hearth and warmth. We wanted a real warm inviting atmosphere, and the hearth part plays in because I got a big brick oven shipped in, and we have a very open kitchen that everyone can see everyone that’s going on. I call it the Food Network craze, where everyone wants to know where the food comes from.
- See more at: http://www.hooplanow.com/2009/01/15/in-the-kitchen-with-seth-hershey#sthash.6k0cS6Ub.dpuf
Comments