Road Tips

Nally's Kitchen - Davenport, IA

My wife had taken a Monday off recently and I decided to take her out for lunch somewhere in Davenport.  I had read about a new-ish Mexican restaurant on the lower west side of the city by the name of Nally's Kitchen.  We'd heard good things about the place and it sounded interesting enough that we decided to give it a try.  

You'd have to call Nally's Kitchen a diverse multi-cultural culinary destination because owner Nassr Muhammad was born in Brazil to a Palestinian father and a Brazilian mother.  As a young boy, Muhammad made empanadas - Latin pastries with various fillings such as beef, chicken and pork - daily with his mother and they sold them to various stores and schools in his home town located in the state of Mato Grasso in western Brazil.  His father taught him the recipes of his Eastern Mediterranean homeland.  Nassr Muhammad basically spent his youth in a kitchen when his friends were outside playing.  

Nassr Muhammad emigrated to Chicago in the early 80's and he used his background in making empanadas with his mother to find work in a couple of Mexican bakeries in the Chicagoland area.  One bakery he worked at made primarily pita breads while the other featured Mexican breads and pastries. Muhammad loved the baking business so much that he ended up opening his own bakery specializing in empanadas and churros.

While working at his bakery in Chicago, his best friend introduced Nassr to his younger sister, Alicia, who grew up in Mexico and had just arrived in the U.S. three months prior.  Alicia had said as a young girl that she was going to marry a Brazilian man someday, and within a week Nassr had asked her to marry him.  She said yes and looked forward to raising a family in the United States.  

Needing to do something more than running a bakery to provide for his growing family, Muhammad eventually became an over-the-road truck driver before he decided that he didn't like being away from his family for long periods of time.  The family eventually moved to the Quad Cities in 1999 as Muhammad found work on the assembly line at John Deere in East Moline.   

Pictured right - Alicia and Nassr Muhammad.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times.

When Muhammad was laid off in 2013, he decided that he didn't want to go back to John Deere.  Instead, he went back to his first love - cooking - and the he decided to try his hand at the multi-ethnic foods he learned in the kitchen over the years.  He and his family - including two daughters and a son - manned food tents at local events and festivals.  Confident that he could pull off a restaurant venture, the Muhammad's opened Nally's Kitchen in the summer of 2014.  Mexican food is the main stay at the restaurant, but the Muhammad's will also do Mediterranean and Brazilian foods upon request for catering jobs.  His son, Fernando, helps out in the restaurant while Alicia still works as a meat-slicer at nearby Oscar Mayer during the day, but helps out at night.  15-hour days are the norm for the Muhammad family at Nally's Kitchen.  

Nally's Kitchen is situated in what was a former Maid-Rite location along Rockingham Road on Davenport's west side.  (see map)  We got into Nally's around 1 p.m. and there was a sizable crowd in the place having lunch when we first walked in, but it thinned out precipitously while we were eating.  The place isn't all that fancy, but they do have some Diego Rivera prints on the walls of the well-lit dining room as well as a handful of flat screen televisions.  

You order at the counter at Nally's Kitchen and they bring the food out to you.  The menu is on the wall behind the front counter and it features your typical Mexican fare - tacos, enchiladas, burritos, fajitas, tortas, gorditas, pork tamales, and - of course - empanadas filled with your choice of chicken, beef, ham, potatoes and chorizo, cheesy bacon potato, or cheese steak.  They also feature two items that we don't see on menus at many other Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities - guisado, a Mexican-stew featuring potatoes, with either beef or chicken, and served on tortillas; and guaraches (also known as huaraches) which is sort of a Mexican-style pizza that originates from Mexico City.  It's topped with a hot or mild salsa, onions, potatoes, cilantro and a choice of meat including chicken, seasoned ground beef, steak chunks, roasted pork, al pastor, or beans, then finished with fresh crumbled chihuahua cheese.  

We started out with an order of chips and salsa which Nally's Kitchen charges $3.50 for.  We did like the salsa - it had thick chunks of tomatoes along with chopped cilantro and onions mixed in.  The chips tasted fresh, but we were a little perplexed why they would charge for what is usually just given as a opener at most Mexican restaurants.  While the salsa was very good, we didn't think it was worth $3.50 for a starter.  

My step-daughter is married to a Mexican national who is also a cook and he told us one time that you can always tell how good a Mexican restaurant is by trying their tacos.  And that's what I did - I went with a steak taco, a carnitas taco and a roasted al pastor pork taco.  Each of the soft-shelled corn tacos were made in-house and were warm and fresh.  The tacos were topped with chopped tomatoes and shredded lettuce and finished with crumbled chihuahua cheese.  I thought I had ordered them "Mexican-style" with just chopped onions and cilantro, but this is what was brought out to me.  

My wife went pretty basic, as well.  She went with a chicken taco and a ground beef enchilada.  Her taco came out "Mexican-style" as we both like our tacos with plenty of chopped onions and cilantro on top.  The enchilada was in a small plastic bowl and topped with a red enchilada sauce and a bit of cheese.  

Now, I really wanted to like my tacos at Nally's Kitchen, but I can't really say that I did.  I thought the steak was overcooked and rather tough.  The pork on both the carnitas and al pastor tacos was rather drab in taste and sort of dried out.  I thought I'd had better tacos in and around the greater Quad Cities area.

My wife, too, thought the chopped chicken chunks on her taco were dried out like the chicken had been sitting in a warming bin too long.  She did remark, however, that the chopped onions were strong in taste and the cilantro was fresh.  She thought her enchilada was just "all right" as it was filled with ground beef and potato chunks.  I had a bite and the beef was seasoned in a nice way, but I didn't care for the sauce they used on top.    

We have a handful of friends who have told us about how good the food was at Nally's Kitchen.  But we have to say that on this visit we were none too impressed with the tacos or the enchilada we were served.  We thought $3.50 for a basket of chips and what turned out to be very good salsa was a bit overboard, and the meats seemed to be drab and overcooked.  We really wanted to like Nally's Kitchen, mainly because of the Muhammad family's great story of how their restaurant came to be.  But based upon our visit this day we'd have to say that there are better alternatives for Mexican food in what is already a broad Latin restaurant community in the Quad Cities.  

Jon Russell's BBQ - Overland Park, KS

On my (seemingly) never-ending quest to try all the barbecue places in Kansas City, I had been reading about a place in Overland Park that has been open for over 4 years that was supposed to have top quality barbecue.  Jon Russell's BBQ is the culminating effort of two high school friends who started on the barbecue competition circuit over 25 years ago.  

Jon Russell's is named after the two owners - Jon Niederbremer and Russell Muehlberger - who started out in 1990 as a competitive barbecue team.  In just their second year of competition, Niederbremer and Muehlberger were named Grand Reserve Champions at the prestigious American Royal barbecue competition held annually in Kansas City.  The following year in 1992, the pair won the coveted Grand Champion award at the competition.  Over the years, the two have won numerous local and regional barbecue competitions and continue to compete when they can today.  

It turns out that Muehlberger is the one with a culinary background working for years as a chef in upscale restaurants and as a consultant for other restaurants.  Niederbremer was in the building trade before they opened Jon Russell's BBQ in the summer of 2012 in a former Quizno's location in the Prairie Center office, retail and restaurant complex at the corner of Quivira Road and W. 135th in Overland Park (see map).  Jon Russell's is part of the 39BevCo group that also includes the Club 1000 event and reception center in downtown Kansas City, MO; and two upscale convenience stores - the Prairie Market in Lenexa, KS (which also features Jon Russell's barbecued meats to go) and the 39th Street Market located in World of Spirits near the Westport neighborhood in Kansas City, MO.

It was just before noon on a sunny weekday when I pulled into the parking lot in front of Jon Russell's BBQ.  It was a little confusing getting into the parking lot at Jon Russell's from Quivira, but I was able to find it with a few twists and turns in the Prairie Center complex.  

Walking into the place, you'll find a large chalkboard behind the front counter with the menu on it.  It's your typical Kansas City barbecue fare such as ribs, burnt ends, brisket, pulled pork, chicken, sausage, ham, and turkey.  They have platters available as well as barbecued meat sandwiches and salads on the menu.  Sides include baked beans, mac and cheese, cole slaw (when available), house-fried potato chips, onion rings and fries.  

After I ordered at the counter, I found a seat in one of the booths along the wall.  The dining area wasn't anything fancy, but it was comfortable enough.  There was a pop dispenser, utensil station (plastic utensils, at that), and a barbecue sauce counter along the opposite wall from the booths.  

One of the workers in the kitchen brought my lunch out to me.  I had ordered the Blue Ribbon Combo Platter - brisket, burnt ends and ribs.  For sides, I got the baked beans and an order of fries.  I got a Boulevard Pale Ale to go along with my meal.   

The ribs at Jon Russell's BBQ are their signature item and I have to say they were very good.  They were meaty with a hint of a smoky taste and they were very tender.  Not "fall-off-the-bone" tender, but tender enough where they easily pulled away from the bone with each bite.  The outer bark on the ribs was crispy, but not burnt.  

The burnt ends were equally as tasty.  The thick chunks of brisket ends were moist and tender.  They were very good.  And the brisket slice that I got was thick and juicy, and it easily cut with the plastic fork they provide at Jon Russell's BBQ.  

For the sides, the French fries were seasoned and pretty good.  I used the to dip into the different barbecue sauces they had to offer at Jon Russell's BBQ.  (More on the sauces in a bit.)  And the baked beans were thick and sweet with a spicy bite on the back end.  They also had chunks of meat in the baked beans.  Normally, I like to zip up the taste of baked beans with a spicy barbecue sauce, but these were fine as they were served.  

Being a sauce guy, Jon Russell's had a number of different sauces to choose from.  However, many of the sauces were fruit-based - a nod to Russell Muehlberger's barbecue mentor - the late Karen Putnam - who was a charter member of the Kansas City Barbecue Society and a competitive barbecue chef on her own.  I'm usually not big on fruity barbecue sauces, but I have to say the spicy blueberry sauce was very good.  It had the sweet and tart blueberry taste with a spicy zing on the back end.  The combination of the blueberry and the spicy hot pepper taste were a great combination.  

They also had a cherry chipotle sauce that had that great smoky chipotle taste that was cut with the sweet and tart cherry flavor.  There was a honey and spice sauce that I thought was pretty good.  The pineapple poblano sauce was an interesting combination, but I was too chicken to try the Smokin' Ghost sauce - a sweet sauce mixed with ghost peppers.  Out of the sauces, I liked the spicy blueberry and the cherry chipotle the best.  But I would have also liked to have had a good ol' sweet and smoky Kansas City-style sauce, as well.  

Trophies and awards line the walls at Jon Russell's BBQ and it's no wonder why they have won so many barbecue competitions over the past 25 plus years. I thought the ribs were some of the best I've ever had in the Kansas City area, the burnt ends were also top-notch, and the brisket was moist, tender and flavorful.  The sauces - especially the spicy blueberry and the chipotle cherry - were also very good.  Jon Russell's BBQ can easily go up against the more famous and established barbecue places in Kansas City, possibly very well surpassing some of those in the quality of their barbecue.  Jon Russell's BBQ is one of the better barbecue places I've found in Kansas City.

Atlas Restaurant & Bar - Iowa City

My wife had gotten tickets to go see a show at the new Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City last fall and we decided to go over early to have dinner before the performance.  A place that has been around for over 15 years - and one that I had never been to before - is Atlas Restaurant & Bar in downtown Iowa City.  We decided to go there before heading to Hancher.

Jack Piper and James Adrian were friends growing up in Burlington, IA, both going off to study at the University of Iowa.  Piper and Adrian worked in restaurants in the Iowa City/Coralville area all through school and after they graduated.  Piper ended up working at the Stein Erikson Lodge in Park City, UT, while Adrian would up at the famed Commander's Palace in New Orleans.  The two hooked up again at a restaurant in Boulder, CO where their dreams of running a restaurant in Iowa City gained some traction.  They moved back to Iowa City and opened the-then-called Atlas World Grill, a restaurant inspired by America's history and the plethora of cuisines found across the country.  Their goal was to use locally grown foods and produce whenever it was available to them.  

Barbecue was a mutual love for Piper and Adrian, and after numerous trips to Kansas City to sample some barbecue joints they decided to open their own place.  Both had become barbecue judges through the Kansas City Barbecue Society and in 2005, the two opened Jimmy Jack's Rib Shack on Iowa City's southeast side.  (Click here to read Road Tips' entry on Jimmy Jack's.)  In the summer of 2011, Piper and Adrian, along with Atlas chef Brady McDonald, opened their third restaurant - Basta - next door to Atlas along Iowa Ave. in downtown Iowa City.  

Atlas is located in the heart of downtown Iowa City at the corner of Iowa and Dubuque Streets.  (see map)  After parking in one of the parking garages in the area, we got into Atlas around 4:30 that afternoon and went in.  We were seated at a booth along the wall in the main dining area just past the bar area.  There's also a smaller dining room off to the side of the main dining area.  It wasn't much longer after we were seated when our server Erin came over to greet us.

It turned out that we were given lunch menus - they don't start the dinner menu until 5 p.m.  And while the lunch menu shares some of same items with the dinner menu, it's not as extensive of a selection up until 5 p.m.  We sort of looked at one another and thought, "Well, should we stay or should we go elsewhere?"  We decided to stay and we ordered up a couple drinks and an appetizer while we waited for the changeover to the dinner menu.  

We ended up getting the Burrata appetizer - it featured a creamy mozzarella cheese ball resting in olive oil along with pesto, roasted cherry tomatoes with chopped fresh basil and grilled bread.   Mixed together, the fresh mozzarella, pesto and roasted tomatoes had a wonderful, but light flavor.  It was a nice set up for our meal.  My wife had a glass of pinot grigio and I had a pint of the Ballast Point Sculpin IPA, a nice surprise since it's one of my favorite beers.  

Erin had given us dinner menus to look over while we enjoyed our appetizer.  When Atlas first opened nearly 17 years ago, Piper and Adrian knew that they needed something other than eclectic foods to draw in the college crowd that populated the downtown bars and restaurants.  They came up with a chicken burrito that evolved over the years into what is now a burrito that features fried chicken tenderloins, a Yukon potato purée, chopped carrots and celery, and crispy onion strings with a choice of Maytag bleu cheese or ranch dressing, and a spicy Buffalo-style wing sauce.  The Atlas Macaroni and Cheese featured four different types of cheese - Gruyère, Fontina, mozzarella, parmesan - with slow-roasted Roma tomatoes mixed in.  

For meat entrees, they had a boneless pork chop with blue cheese and bacon-filled peaches, and they had a steak frites entree - a 10 ounce Black Angus strip steak with maitre d butter (butter whipped with salt, pepper, parsley and lemon juice), and served in a pinot noir reduction sauce.  Fries, or - for a slight upcharge - truffle fries are available on the side.  Atlas also features a number of vegetarian and gluten-free dishes on their menu.  

They had a couple specials that night.  One was a sushi-grade seared tuna filet and the other was a bucatini pasta dish with shrimp.  I asked Erin how the bucatini was prepared and she said that it was heavy.  I thought she meant that it came in a heavy cream and that's what I ordered.  What I found that she meant was that the dish was rich, not heavy.  It featured a handful of plump grilled shrimp in a light white wine and oil sauce with fresh basil and cherry tomatoes.  While the taste of the pasta was light, it was very filling.  And it was also very good.  

My wife went with the Farm Stand Pilaf - toasted faro with quinoa, kale, locally-grown mushrooms, squash, fried oyster mushroom chips, a carrot vinaigrette, roasted beets, and garlic scapes (the flower bud of garlic that is usually pulled off early in the summer to allow the bulbs to grow).   Atlas offers grilled chicken, grilled salmon, grilled shrimp, or falafel to go along with the Farm Stand Pilaf for a slight up-charge.  My wife asked if she could get some of the seared tuna instead of the other offerings.  Erin went and checked with the cook and she came back and said that it would be a $10 up-charge on the dish.  I didn't mind - she paid for the theater tickets.  Plus she enjoyed it very much.  She gave me a bite of the tuna and it tasted fresh and flavorful.  

While we were enjoying our meal, I remarked that I couldn't believe that I hadn't been to Atlas before this.  (My wife had been there before with her daughter.)  The food was very good, the service was also efficient, professional and friendly, and the atmosphere was comfortable and laid-back.  Atlas is a great place to catch a meal anytime when you're in downtown Iowa City.  

TAG Burger Bar - Denver

Out in Denver for a trade show last fall, I was talking with a dealer from the area about good burger places.  If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you'll know that my all-time favorite burger place - anywhere - is the Cherry Cricket in Denver.  (Click here to read a Road Tips entry on the Cherry Cricket.  Unfortunately, the Cherry Cricket suffered a kitchen fire toward the end of November last year and has since been shut down for remodeling.)  The dealer told me, "Yeah, the Cricket is good, but for my money the best burger in Denver right now is TAG Burger Bar."  I made a mental note of that and the next evening I ended up going to TAG Burger Bar to see if the burger was as good as he said it was.  

TAG is an acronym of the owner's initials - Troy A. Guard.  Guard was born in Hawaii and raised there and in San Diego where he loved to cook and barbecue with his father.  While in college, he got his first restaurant job at the famous La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA.  After college, Guard went to Hawaii to work for famed Hawaiian/Pacific Rim-fusion chef Roy Yamaguchi.  Under Yamaguchi, Guard learned to make dishes with fresh fish and locally grown ingredients, all the while working with and learning from guest chefs such as Wolfgang Puck, Bradley Ogden and Michael Mina who would stop by to visit Yamaguchi at his famous Roy's restaurant in Honolulu.

Within four years, Guard was Yamaguchi's right-hand man helping open and overseeing a handful of Yamaguchi's restaurants in Asia.  After working for Yamaguchi for eight years, Guard decided to spread his culinary wings and seek other challenges.  Guard moved to New York City to become the executive chef at the highly acclaimed Tao Asian restaurant.

Pictured right - Troy Guard.  Photo courtesy Zagat.  

The frenetic pace in the kitchen at Tao allowed Guard to learn how to work with a large staff and that enabled him to eventually move to Singapore to become the chef de cuisine at the internationally famous (and now closed) Doc Cheng's.  While at Doc Cheng's, Guard met Richard Sandoval, the famed Mexican-fusion restaurateur who was in the midst of opening new restaurant concepts in the United States.  Sandoval convinced Guard to move back to the U.S. and Denver to help him open a Latin-Asian fusion restaurant Zengo.  

After getting Zengo up and running, Guard left there to work at other restaurants in Denver, most notably Ocean and the now-closed nine75.  Guard wanted to control his own restaurant destiny and in 2009 he opened his first restaurant - TAG - along with his wife of five years Leigh Sullivan.  The two opened a second restaurant - TAG Raw Bar (later called Bubu) - in 2011.  (Later in 2011, Guard split from Sullivan who divested herself from the TAG restaurants as part of their divorce.)  

From there, Guard has been a busy man over the past few years.  In addition to the TAG restaurants, he opened Los Chingones, a Mexican-inspired restaurant; Sugarmill, a dessert bar for people with a sweet tooth day and night; Guard and Grace, a steakhouse named after one of his two daughters; and in 2014 he opened TAG Burger Bar in the former Madison Street Grill that Guard ran in Denver's Congress Park neighborhood.  (A second TAG Burger Bar opened in the Highlands neighborhood of Denver in early 2016, but it closed down about six months later with Guard vowing to reopen a second location at a more desirable location in 2017.)  In all, Guard now runs 13 restaurants in the greater Denver area.   

On a Saturday night after the show ended for the day, a large group of us were relaxing having some drinks at our hotel in the Tech Center area of Denver discussing dinner plans.  I didn't want to go out with such a large group - 15 of us in total - because our sales manager always wants us to sit together.  It's pointless to try to participate with conversations all over a large table, especially in a large group, and I always argue that we should break up into smaller groups of four as service usually suffers with a large group at a table, as well.  Well, nope, I got out-voted on that idea - again.  Finally, I just said, "Screw it.  I'm going to go find TAG Burger Bar and get a burger."  I invited anyone who wanted to go with me to fall in.  No one did.  I was perfectly fine with that.  I eat by myself on the road all the time.  (It turned out that they went to a steakhouse near the hotel and they didn't get their food served until after 10 p.m. when most of the patrons had left the restaurant.  "You were right, man," one of my colleagues who went with the large group texted me later that evening.  "Service sucks here.  I should have gone with you.") 

It was about a 15 minute drive from the hotel to TAG Burger Bar located at the corner of Madison and E. 12th Street.  (see map)  For a Saturday night after 8 p.m., I was sort of surprised that I was able to get in and grab a small booth off to the side of the nifty little bar area in the place.  I was given a menu when I sat down.  

TAG Burger Bar was a quaint, cozy little place.  There was a long community table in front of the bar that took up the bulk of the dining space near the bar.  But there were a number of tables and booths in the place for those who didn't want to sit at the long community table.  The low ceiling to the place gave it an intimate feeling.  

My server for the evening was Marc, an out-going young man who asked me if I had ever been to TAG Burger Bar before.  He gave me a short lesson on the drill of ordering burgers  - you pick what you want your burger to be (Black Angus beef, bison, turkey, salmon or a veggie burger); then your bun (an artisan bun from the Bluepoint Bakery in Denver, a lettuce wrap, or a gluten-free bun); then the choices escalate.  

The "Old School" burger was topped with American cheese, grilled onions, and a house-made sauce; while the "Congress Park" was topped with guacamole and a spicy mayo sauce.  The "Lady Gaga" featured toppings such as whipped mozzarella cheese, basil pesto, grilled red onions and balsamic vinegar.  The "Truffle Shuffle" had mushrooms, Swiss cheese, a truffle aioli, and parmesan truffle chips on it.  And the "Blind in Texas" burger was topped with chile-rubbed onion straws, aged cheddar cheese, applewood smoked bacon, and a smoky chipotle barbecue sauce.  But the one that seemed to be the king of the menu was the "Andrew Jackson" - sliced prime rib, topped with pepper jack, fried avocado, grilled onions, a fried egg, applewood smoked bacon, and sautéed mushrooms, and it came with a side of porcini parmesan-dusted fries.  

Marc - who was overly helpful and pleasant all evening long (he probably felt sorry for me since I was dining alone on a Saturday night) - then showed me the bottom of the menu where you can build your own burger with choices of eight different types of cheese, and then additional toppings (for a small fee) such as the applewood smoked bacon, a fried egg, sautéed mushrooms, either guacamole or avocado slices, and grilled onions.  Even though some of the specialty burgers sounded interesting, I ended up building my own.  

I got a Black Angus burger topped with green chiles, sautéed mushrooms, Swiss cheese and the applewood smoked bacon.  Marc told me that all their burgers came with tomato and lettuce and I could either get it on the burger or on the side.  I opted for the veggies to come on the side.  I also got a side of the green chile-cheese fries.  ("Excellent choice," Marc said when I ordered the green chile-cheese fries.)  

For beer that evening, I ended up getting the Melvin IPA, one of the many interesting beers they had to offer at TAG Burger Bar.  I had never had a Melvin beer before whose brewery is located up in Jackson, Wyoming.  It was a good beer.  

The burger was - well - it was very good.  Was it as good as the ones at the Cherry Cricket?  I didn't think so, but it certainly gave the Cricket burgers a run for their money.  The beef was juicy and flavorful, the sautéed mushrooms and the green chiles were a great topping on the burger, the bacon was a nice touch, but almost overpowering in taste, and the Swiss cheese was thick and oozing off the burger.  The bun held together very well with all that was going on with this multiple napkin burger that I was eating.  

The green chile-cheese fries were definitely an artery-hardener.  But they were absolutely delicious.  They were very rich and while I didn't clean the whole plate, I made a significant dent in the pile of fries.  I probably ate more than I wanted to. 

Denver is a burger town with some very good burger places.  I've eaten at most of the places that the locals have told me had good burgers and while I'm still partial the the burgers at Cherry Cricket, I would say the burger I had at TAG Burger Bar was nearly as good as a Cricket burger.  I liked everything about TAG Burger Bar - the atmosphere was cozy and laid-back, Marc's service was wonderful making me feel comfortable and welcome as a lone diner on a Saturday night (I probably undertipped him for as good of service that he provided that evening), and the burgers were top-notch.  While the Cricket is shut down for renovations after their fire, I'd have to say that TAG Burger Bar could be the best burger in Denver for the moment.  

Dalie's Smokehouse - Valley Park, MO

I was reading in Sauce Magazine (I call Sauce my restaurant bible for St. Louis) in late 2015 about the newest addition to the family tree of barbecue places that is headed by pitmaster-extraordinaire Skip Steele - Dalie's Smokehouse.  It was in the far western part of St. Louis County in what is called Valley Park and I decided to head there for lunch one day on a trip to St. Louis last fall.  Any barbecue place that has the DNA of Skip Steele and his partner Mike Emerson, I'm up for giving it a try.  

Skip Steele, of course, is the godfather of all the good barbecue places to eat at in St. Louis.  Along with Emerson, they are famous for two of the best places for barbecue in "the Loo" - Pappy's Smokehouse and Bogart's Smokehouse.  (Click here for the Road Tips entry on Pappy's and here for the entry on Bogart's.)  Steele got his start cooking barbecue as a 14-year-old when he made his first smokers out of 100-gallon propane tanks salvaged from a metal scrap yard near his home in Georgia.  He had his first restaurant - a carry-out barbecue place - when he was going to college.  After college, Steele worked in restaurants, but then found work with a freight company that shipped products around the world via ocean going freighters.  Steele worked for the company for nine years before being able to retire and get back into his first love - barbecue.  

Steele joined his college roommate Terry Black at Super Smokers helping to open locations around St. Louis. (Click here for Road Tips' entry on Super Smokers.)  It was at Super Smokers that Steele met Mike Emerson and the two forged a friendship that eventually took them to a partnership that continues today.  In addition to Pappy's and Bogart's, Steele and Emerson's parent corporation - Mothership - holds shares in other St. Louis restaurants such as Adam's Smokehouse (click here to see the Road Tips entry on Adam's), as well as Southern, a southern-style "hot chicken" eatery next to Pappy's that opened last summer; as well as the Notorious P.I.G. in Missoula, MT.  They also have a stake in a barbecue restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany - Boogie's - a restaurant run by Falk Norris, a German native who worked at the Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis for over 20 years before heading up the food and beverage service at Washington University.  Norris fell in love with Pappy's Barbecue and he wanted to open something similar to it back in Germany.  Norris studied under Steele for 18 months and he went back to Germany to open what is thought to be the first true barbecue smokehouse in that country.  (Above right - Mike Emerson and Skip Steele.  Picture courtesy St. Louis Magazine.)  

For their seventh restaurant, Steele and Emerson found a spot that used to house the former Squeakers BBQ and Bar in a strip mall at the corner of Big Bend and Dougherty Ferry Road.  (see map)  They had a soft opening on June 30 of last year ramping up throughout the summer to get the kinks out of the business.

Steele paid homage to his maternal grandfather "Papa Joe" Dalie Wells by naming the new barbecue joint after him.  Wells was born into a wealthy family who had interests in manufacturing, insurance and banking.  When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the Wells family lost everything and Joe Dalie turned to teaching, then running a taxi company before he got into the restaurant business.  As a 12-year-old, Skip Steele learned the art of cooking and barbecue from working in the kitchen at his grandfather's restaurant.  There's a corner of the restaurant that is set up as sort of a shrine to Joe Dalie Wells.  (Picture at left courtesy St. Louis Magazine.)

Dalie's is in a corner spot in the strip mall and while it's nothing fancy, it was comfortable enough.  Large windows allowed for the natural light to come in.  Sturdy tables and chairs were interspersed around the place and the walls were adorned with posters and beer signs.  A couple three flat screen televisions also hung from the wall.

Being a Dalie's rookie, I made the mistake of taking a table instead of going to the cash register to order.  A young lady came out and explained to me that it was similar to Pappy's and Bogart's - you place your order at the cash register and they bring it out to you.  The menu is on a chalkboard behind the cash register.  Like Pappy's and Bogart's, Dalie's Smokehouse will run out of meat during the course of a day and they immediately put up "86ed" next to the meat that they've run out of.  

Ribs, pulled pork, pulled chicken, brisket, smoked ham, beef & pork belly pastrami, and smoked roast beef are the meats on the menu.  Sandwiches and platters are available with nearly all the meats.  Combo plates include a half-side or a full-side of ribs with your choice of a meat, or a half-rack of ribs and a half chicken, or you can get "The Judge" - a full slab of ribs or a full chicken, your choice of three-sandwiches and four sides.  Sides include baked beans, mac 'n' cheese, potato salad, apple sauce, thick cut fries, cole slaw and "fire-and-ice" pickles - sweet and spicy pickles that Skip Steele found on a trip to barbecue joints in Mississippi a few years back.  

They had a "Pick 2" platter on the menu and I got the pulled pork and the brisket.  I was sort of at a loss as to get other than baked beans and the young lady who took my order said, "Our mac 'n' cheese is a big seller for us."  I took her advice and got that.  I also got a cold beer to go along with the barbecue.  (Barbecue and cold beer are just made for one another.)  

Similar to the other restaurants Steele and Emerson are involved in, the meats I had at Dalie's were delicious.  The brisket was thin and lean with a hint of a smoke ring around the edges.  It was easy to cut and tasted wonderful.  The pulled pork was tender and juicy with a hint of a smoky taste to it.  The meats were fabulous.  

The baked beans were also a winner - thick and saucy with chunks of meat mixed in.  And the mac 'n' cheese that the lady at the counter suggested were also very good.  The cheesy mixture of macaroni noodles, bread crumbs and real bacon bits had a rich and decadent taste.  (I would have liked to have tried the fire and ice pickles.  Well, there's always next time.)

Being a big sauce guy, Dalie's didn't disappoint.  They had six sauces on the table and I tried them all.  Papa Joe's Original sauce was thick, sweet and tangy with a pepper taste on the backside; the Cranberry Cayenne was fruity, sweet with a spicy taste on the backside; the Voodoo had a little bit of sweetness with a very spicy backside; the Sweet Hope was sweet and smoky; the Dalie's Vinegar was a somewhat spicy vinegar-based sauce; and the Carolina Sweet was a Carolina-style sweet mustard sauce.  I didn't care at all for the Carolina Sweet, and I wasn't thrilled with the Dalie's Vinegar sauces.  But I really did like the Cranberry Cayenne where the sweet fruity taste of the cranberries tamped down the spiciness of the cayenne spice.  And I liked mixing up the spicy Voodoo with both the Sweet Hope and the Papa Joe's Original sauce.  There were a lot of taste sensations going on with the mixture of the sauces.  

Well, Skip Steele and Mike Emerson have done it again.  The owners of the arguably best barbecue places in St. Louis have another winner with Dalie's Smokehouse.  The pulled pork and brisket platter was delicious, as were the mac 'n' cheese and baked beans sides that I got.  I enjoyed the variety of sauces Dalie's had to offer and the place had the comfortable barbecue joint vibe.  Now people in West County don't have to drive deep into the city to try some of Steele's and Emerson's barbecue.  They have pretty much the same thing at Dalie's Smokehouse.  

Umami Sushi - Chicago

In Chicago on a trip last fall, I was in another "food funk" where I was hungry for something, but I wasn't overly certain what I was hungry for.  Sushi is always my default whenever I get into these "blah" moods when I'm on the road.  I searched for sushi places near my hotel near O'Hare Airport and I found a place on S. Cumberland by the name of Umami Sushi.  

I couldn't find much out about the place which is located in the Shops at Cumberland Court, just south of Lawrence that's part of the far western reaches of Chicago and right next to Norridge.  (see map)  The only thing I could find on Umami Sushi that it opened in December of 2012.  But I did find out that the term "Umami" roughly means "pleasant savory taste" in Japanese.  

When I pulled up to the place that evening, the parking lot was packed.  As I was orbiting the parking lot for the second time thinking that I was going to bag this trip and find someplace else to eat, I found a spot when a car was pulling out of spot.

Going into the restaurant, I found the place was packed.  And it they didn't have a normal sushi bar - it had just one seat.  Since all the tables and booths were full I asked the hostess if I could take the one seat at the sushi bar.  My server for the evening - Milica - came over to great me and to drop off a menu.  I asked if I could get an Asahi beer and she said, "We don't have a liquor license.  But there's a liquor store next door if you'd like to go get something and bring it back."  I thought for a moment that if I got up to go get something to drink from the liquor store, I probably wouldn't come back.  I just had water instead.  

Looking through the menu, I soon found out why the place was packed - Umami Sushi features an "all-you-can-eat" menu for $19.99 at night ($12.99 for lunch).  As I glanced around the place, it was full of 20 and 30-something diners and I realized that I was probably the oldest person in the place.  I thought, "Well, hell.  I'm already here.  I may as well have some sushi."  

I ended up getting some spicy tuna and spicy salmon rolls, as well as some tuna, salmon and red snapper sushi.  The rolls had some "crunchies" added to the outer side.  They were just all right - they didn't really have much a spicy taste to them.  

The sushi was, well, just OK, too.  I was sort of watching the 6 or 7 sushi chefs behind the counter and it was a veritable sushi assembly line.  They weren't pulling the fish out of the refrigerated cases - the fish filets seemed to be lined up so they were just cutting fish and forming the sushi to get them out as fast as possible.  It tasted to me like the fish was closer to room temperature than cool.  And because of that, the sushi had somewhat of a fishy taste - especially the red snapper.   Milica asked me if I wanted to order any more sushi, but I decided that I'd had enough.  Even if I was still hungry - and I really wasn't - I wouldn't have ordered up any more sushi.  

I can't say that I was too impressed with Umami Sushi.  The "all-you-can-eat" concept brings in the younger crowd, but the sushi wasn't that great.  It wasn't bad, but I didn't really think the overall taste of the sushi or the rolls that I had was all that it could be.  These type of sushi places don't appeal to me.  They're trying to get the sushi out as soon as possible and it seems to hurt the overall taste and quality.  Umami Sushi probably won't be part of my rotation of sushi restaurants located near O'Hare Airport.  

Tavern (Tech Center) - Denver

Out in Denver for a trade show last fall in the Denver Tech Center area, some of my colleagues and I were looking for a place close by to have dinner one evening.  We didn't want anything fancy, we definitely wanted a place that had a good selection of beer, and we wanted some place that would be comfortable and laid back.  Someone suggested the Tavern Tech Center, which was less than a five minute drive from our hotel.  Four of us took off for dinner at the Tavern.  

The Tavern in the Denver Tech Center is one of six Tavern restaurants in the Denver area and are part of the the Tavern Hospitality Group which also oversees four other bars/restaurants including The Soiled Dove Underground (which evolved from the original Soiled Dove, a dueling piano bar that eventually became a live music venue for bands and musical artists).  

Frank Schultz was a Denver native living in Philadelphia working for a metal salvage company and for an auto-towing company his father owned.  His mother, Terry Papay, was looking to open a unique style of bar/tavern and Frank decided he'd move back to Denver to help her out.  A year after moving back, Schultz - who had no background in running a bar or restaurant - helped his mother open The Soiled Dove dueling piano bar.  It was the second dueling piano bar in Denver opened weeks after Sing Sing (which closed a little over five years ago).  The Soiled Dove was located in an old warehouse that had supposedly been the site of a brothel one hundred years before and it took its name from an early 20th century Old West term for a prostitute.  

Schultz decided to try some other live music one time and he brought in a band to play at The Soiled Dove.  He soon found that the nights he had bands were more popular than the dueling pianos.  He chucked the dueling piano concept in 1999 and went to live music only.  It wasn't long that The Soiled Dove gained a national reputation for having some of the best up and coming and nationally-known artists playing on their stage.  The Soiled Dove hosted the likes of John Mayer, Bruce Hornsby, Susan Tedeschi, The Indigo Girls and Blues Traveler in their first year.  

Looking to get into the restaurant/bar business, Papay and Schultz opened the first Tavern in Denver's Uptown neighborhood in 2002.  While the concept was popular, Schultz soon found that having just a regular bar menu of wings, burgers and fried foods was boring to his customers.  He got rid of the original menu and instituted a more upscale menu consisting of pan-roasted salmon, grilled-fish tacos, and roasted beer can chicken.   

The Tavern became even more of a hit and they decided to open a second location in 2006 and they picked the Soiled Dove location near Coors Field for the new Tavern Downtown.  With a large roof top bar, the Tavern Downtown became one of the top places in downtown Denver to go to.  They opened a third location - Tavern Lowry - the same year in the Lowry neighborhood of Denver and moved the Soiled Dove into the basement of that location, renaming it the Soiled Dove Underground.  

Two years later, Papay and Schultz opened the Denver Tech Center Tavern location, then opened the Tavern Wash Park the historic Old South Gaylord district near Washington Park.  A fifth Tavern opened in Littleton, CO in 2011, and a sixth location along S. Pearl Street in Platt Park opened in early 2016.  There are also Tavern outlets at Coors Field and at Sports Authority Stadium at Mile High.  (The Tavern Hospitality Group also oversees a popular country rock bar - Cowboy Lounge - located in downtown Denver; along with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a whiskey-centric bar in the renovated Union Station, as well as Chopper's Sports Grill in the Cherry Creek area of Denver.  

The Tavern Tech Center is located in a strip of restaurants and stores between Denver Tech Center Boulevard and S. Park Terrace Ave.  (see map)  There was plenty of parking out front when we pulled in around 8 p.m.  

Inside the restaurant, the Tavern looks like an upscale sports bar.  There's a large bar area with a number of flat screen televisions hanging on mounts around the bar and on the walls.  The bar area was lively and loud. There's also a roof top bar area at the Tavern, but they had it closed off on what was a cool and somewhat drizzly evening.   

There is a dining area at the Tavern that is decidedly more low-key than the bar.  It featured high-backed booths, an array of Edison lights hanging from the ceiling, and a more quiet atmosphere than the bar.  

Unfortunately, they weren't seating people any longer in the dining area and we were shown to a corner booth in the bar area.  Menus were dropped off and it wasn't long before our server - a young lady who went by the name of Jazz - came over to take our drink orders.  I got a can of the Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale to start out.  (I had a couple of the Dale's Pale Ale, but when I went to order a third one for my dinner, Jazz told me that they had run out.  I ended up getting an Alaskan Amber instead.)  

It had been awhile since we had eaten lunch and a couple of our guys were very hungry.  They had some interesting appetizers on the menu like the crispy pork shanks with a smoky chipotle glaze; Asian chicken lettuce wraps; and seasoned fries smothered in a white cheese sauce and topped with chopped bacon, chopped green onions and gorgonzola cheese.  

I was sort of lobbying for the smothered fries, but a couple of the guys out-voted me to go more healthy and we ended up getting the hummus with grilled naan bread, fresh sliced red and yellow peppers, broccoli, and celery.  I will say the peppers were fresh, cool, crisp and very tasty.  

For my main meal that night, I really didn't know what I wanted.  I had a burger earlier in the day and I knew I didn't want that.  They had a meatloaf entree on the menu, but I sort of talked myself out of that.  They had grilled cod tacos on the menu and I usually get the grilled fish tacos if they're on the menu.  But for some reason, I didn't pull the trigger on them this particular evening.  They had a turkey and ham croissant club sandwich that was about the only thing that appealed to me on the sandwich part of the menu.  I was perplexed as to what to get when Jazz came back to take our orders.

I ended up getting a calzone - sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.  The calzone was more thin than most calzones I've had, which was perfectly fine with me.  It came with a small bowl of a marinara sauce with melted cheese on top.  The calzone was crispy on the outside with plenty of the three ingredients inside.  Mozzarella cheese oozed from the sides of the calzone.  The marinara sauce was a little sweet and spicy, and it went very well with the calzone.  I wasn't expecting much from the calzone at the Tavern, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with what I ordered.  At the end of the meal I wasn't full, but I certainly wasn't hungry.  

A couple of my colleagues went with the fish and chips, a traditional beer-battered deep-fried North Atlantic cod served with the seasoned Tavern fries and coleslaw, and served with both cocktail and tartar sauces.  The two cod pieces were large cup and the beer-batter on the fish was light and fluffy and it looked tasty.  And the guys said that it was tasty.   

My other colleague went with the grilled flank steak with Tavern fries and the vegetable of the day, which were green beans.  It was a large chunk of flank steak with a lot of fries and green beans on the plate.  It came with a sherry peppercorn sauce.  The steak looked good and my colleague said that it was very good.  It would have been perfect to throw some strips of the flank steak into some taco shells, add some grilled onions and peppers, and top it off with some guacamole and pico de gallo.  

Not exactly knowing what we were getting into when we went to the Tavern in the Tech Center area of Denver, I'd have to say that each of us were more than happy with our meals.  The menu has a wide array of foods to choose from and they're all upscale from just regular sports bar foods.  We were also happy with the service we had that evening - Jazz kept checking back on beers and drinks for us in a timely fashion.  I'm guessing that each of the Tavern locations around Denver are similar as far as atmosphere and the quality of the food.  If they're all like the one in the Tech Center, I don't think you'll be disappointed.  (Photo courtesy Lovely Denver.) 

California Pho - Davenport, IA

For some reason, I was driving along W. Kimberly Road in Davenport a few weeks ago and I happened to look over at a small strip mall that housed a few businesses including a space that was a former pizza place, then a Chinese restaurant.  In the space that the restaurants had occupied, I noticed that there was now a Vietnamese restaurant in their place.  Not long after that, my wife and I decided to head over to California Pho to check things out.  

The west side of Davenport hasn't been friendly to restaurants since I moved to the area in 1991.  Only a handful of restaurants have made it more than two years in the area west of Division Street.  The space that houses California Pho was first a pizza place - Upper Crust Pizza - that was not the typical Quad Cities-style pizza that proliferate the area and are universally liked only by people who grew up in the Quad Cities.  

Of course, that place didn't last more than a couple of years before it was turned into a pseudo-Chinese restaurant called CreAsian that basically morphed into a Chinese buffet restaurant in a couple of years.  It, too, closed about three years after it opened.  

Quang Le is a Vietnamese immigrant who opened an Asian grocery store by the name of Oriental Food Store in Davenport in 1999.  Business was so good after awhile that Quang moved to a new and bigger location along River Drive on the west side of downtown Davenport in 2010.  On the weekends, the market had a restaurant - Pho 999 - that served authentic Vietnamese foods.  As the popularity of Pho 999 grew, Quang decided to find a place where he could be open every day.  He found the open spot that used to house the pizza restaurant, then the Chinese restaurant and opened California Pho last summer.  

California Pho is located on the far west side of Davenport along W. Kimberly Road, the main east-road through the heart of the city.  (see map)  There's plenty of parking in the strip mall's parking lot and there wasn't a lot of people in the place that evening.  The decor is tasteful and comfortable, and the dining area was well-lit.  

We took a seat in a booth along the west wall of the restaurant and were given menus to look through.  Curiously, the man who seated us and gave us the menu hovered near the table possibly thinking we were going to order something right away.  I noticed that they didn't have any beer on the menu and I asked him if they had a beer list.  "No beer," he said.  He continued to stand next to our table before my wife said, "Uh, we'll both take some water."  "Water, sure," he said with a smile and went away.  

"What was up with that," I questioned my wife.

"Boy, beats me," she said.  "He must have thought we were ready to order or something."

Sure enough after he brought back two glasses of water, he hovered near our table once again.  Finally, my wife said, "Uh, give us a couple of minutes to look over the menu.  This is our first visit." 

"Sure, sure," he said with a smile and he went away.  My wife and I sort of looked at each other with amused smirks on our faces.  

We're still far from being experts in Vietnamese food, but it looked like they had the basics on the menu.  Of course, they had different styles of pho, vermicelli - or bún in Vietnamese, rice or egg noodle soups, and either steamed rice or fried rice entrees where you can add pork, chicken or seafood to the mix.  One thing that I was sort of surprised that they didn't have were banh mi sandwiches.  I sort of thought that was a staple in most Vietnamese restaurants, but not at California Pho.  They did, however, have spring rolls filled with shrimp, pork, vermicelli noodles, and lettuce all rolled up in rice paper and served with a spicy sweet sauce.  The spring rolls were very good and tasted very fresh.  It was a nice start to the meal.

My wife ended up ordering the fried rice combination with shrimp and chicken.  It was a large helping of the combination fried rice and it was colorfully adorned with red and green pepper slices, raisins, chopped veggies, and topped with cilantro sprigs.  She said it was very good, but there was no way that she could eat the whole plate.  

Still not willing to venture outside of my comfort zone with Vietnamese food, I got the pho with meatballs.  They actually had some interesting pho offerings that included pho with rare beef filet, pho with rare steak slices and well-done brisket, and the phò tái chin gâu gân sách - pho with rare steak, well-done brisket, fatty flank steak, soft tendon and trip.  Uh, no - I'm not quite ready to go that far just yet.  

But the pho with meatballs was good - the meatballs were sliced into quarters and there was plenty of them mixed in with the noodles and fresh cilantro in the hearty broth.  It, too, was a large portion - something that we're finding with the Vietnamese restaurants we've visited.  But it was a spot hitter for me that evening.

We're still learning about Vietnamese food, but we're starting to get better opinions as to the things we eat.  I was happy enough with my meatball pho at California Pho while my wife enjoyed her combination fried rice with chicken and shrimp.  The spring rolls we had as a starter were very good with a crisp and fresh taste to them.  We're hoping that California Pho bucks the trend of restaurants on the west side of Davenport going away after a couple three years.  We don't mind the drive over to that side of town to eat there.  But I'm hoping people closer to the place discover how good of food they have to offer at California Pho.