My wife and I have had our eye on a brewpub over in Geneseo, IL since it opened up a little over two years ago - Lionstone Brewing Company. We had been by it a couple three times on trips to The Cellar, one of our favorite steakhouses in the Quad Cities area (click here to read about The Cellar), but we've never stopped in. On a beautiful Saturday earlier this year, we decided to take the trek to Geneseo and have lunch at the Lionstone Brewing Company.
Steve Fiers is the longtime owner of Imaging USA, a document scanning and processing company that saves important documents for governments, legal offices, health care providers and insurance companies located in Rock Island. It turns out that one of Fiers hobbies - and one that turned into a passion - was home-brewing beers.
It started out at Christmas time a few years ago when Fiers wife, Julie, bought Steve Fiers and their son, Hunter, a home brewing kit. The "instructor" who showed the Fiers the basics of home-brewing beer was a teacher associate of Julie Fiers, Logan Hamilton, who was a high school art teacher by day but an avid home-brewer at night and on the weekends.
The first beer that Steve and Hunter Fiers made was a basic American wheat beer, and after tasting the finished product the Fiers were hooked. While Hunter was still in college, the Fiers experimented with many different varieties of beers getting help and advice along the way from Hamilton as well as from a family friend who worked for a large Midwestern brewery. The home beers they made were very good and the Fiers began to think about doing a microbrewery in Geneseo.
The Fiers family came up with a concept to do their own microbrewery with a restaurant and an on-site brewery. They convinced the Geneseo city council to give them the first license to brew beer in the city in over 100 years. Then they looked for a spot in Geneseo to put one in. There was a small strip mall on Geneseo's south side that had mostly sat empty for nearly 7 years. The Fiers leased the property in the spring of 2014 and set about putting a brewpub together. Their first employee was the man who got Steve and Hunter Fiers hooked on brewing their own beers - Logan Hamilton. Hamilton was named the head brewer at the brewpub and continued in that capacity until May of this year.
The Fiers chose to name their brewpub Lionstone as a nod to the family's Belgian heritage - the lion is the symbolic protector of the Belgian coat of arms. They finally opened Lionstone Brewing Company and Gastropub in the summer of 2015. (It turns out that their brewpub sits less than a quarter mile away from the last brewery in Geneseo that had closed over 100 years before.)
The Lionstone Brewing Company sits just north of Interstate 80 along Illinois Highway 82 as you drive north into Geneseo. (see map) It was about a 25 minute ride for us from our house out to Geneseo and we got there just moments before noon. The interior of the place can be describe as contemporary industrial with a bar area, a number of high wooden-topped tables with high metal chairs were in the middle of the dining area. There were a series of lower wooden topped tables with metal chairs - that weren't the most comfortable seats - along the glass-walled area up front. The large vessel tanks for brewing the beers at Lionstone were behind a glass partition behind the bar.
We had heard that they had wood-fired pizzas at Lionstone Brewing and the brick oven was located in the corner of the restaurant. It was rather spartan looking sitting in the corner with an L-shaped prep counter in front of it. But the smell emanating from the pizza oven was pretty tempting.
We took a seat at one of the lower tables along the glass front wall of the brewpub. Moments later, our server, a young guy with a great sense of humor by the name of Tyler, came over over to greet us and to drop off a couple of menus. Their beer menu featured a handful of year-round "flagship" beers and a list of some seasonal offerings. My wife got a pint of the Savage IPA that they offer year-round, while I went with one of their seasonal beers, the interesting named "Shotgun Jesus" that was an American pale ale brewed with both east coast and west coast hops. Both beers were actually pretty good, so we were happy about that right off the bat.
They're also known for their "Mary Meal" bloody Mary's that feature one of their regular bloody Mary's and then they add everything but the kitchen sink to it. It featured a burger slider along with a skewer of cheese and meat cubes, a crab stick, stuffed green olives, a dill pickle spear, a celery stalk and finished off with jalapeño poppers and tater tots on a skewer. And these are $16 each. A table of ladies seated next to us had ordered up the "Mary Meal" drinks and were given small mimosa to enjoy while the loaded bloody Mary's were prepared. When they were brought to their table, the women erupted in astonishment. We were laughing along with the ladies at the size and the ridiculous amount of food they piled on top of the bloody Mary and I was able to get a picture of one of the ladies' drink.
The food menu consisted of a number of appetizers that would go great at a brewpub. They had things such as beer-battered cheese curds and fried pickles, truffle fries, housemade pretzels, and something called "Nacho Tot-chos" which were tater tots topped with seasoned ground beef, white cheese and a beer cheese sauce, pico de gallo, pickled jalapeños, and a sriracha and chipotle cream sauce.
They also had a number of salads on the menu including a Cobb salad, a Mediterranean salad, and a blueberry almond peach salad that my wife thought was pretty interesting. She ended up ordering a small house salad to start out with. Tyler sold her on the IPA vinaigrette dressing saying it was one of their most popular. But the taste of it wasn't all that exquisite - it was really nothing more than some Boetje's mustard mixed in with some oil and vinegar with maybe a little India pale ale mixed in, as well. It wasn't all that special in taste. She ended up calling Tyler over and saying that she didn't really like the IPA vinaigrette dressing. She ended up getting the cilantro/lime ranch dressing (which also had a hint of dill weed in it). She liked that dressing much more than the former.
The overall food menu at Lionstone is pretty short. They have a couple of sandwiches, some fish tacos, four different burger selections, and, of course, their wood-fired pizza. I was a little underwhelmed at the lack of choices, as was my wife. We contemplated getting a pizza, but decided to come back out at night sometime to get one.
My wife ended up getting the brisket sliders - two ground beef brisket sliders topped with smoked provolone cheese, onion straws, and a sweet and smoky barbecue sauce. She got a side of the creamy cole slaw with her sliders. My wife sort of shrugged her shoulders when I asked her how they were. She thought the brisket sliders were just "all right", neither great, but certainly not bad. The cole slaw she thought was just "meh!"
I ended up with the Homestead burger - a 1/2 pound prime Angus beef burger patty topped with pepperjack cheese, onion straws, a tomato/onion/bacon jam, and served on a jalapeño bun. The burger was a little overcooked and dry in taste, but it was still edible. I didn't get much of a taste of either the jalapeño bun, nor the tomato/onion/bacon jam - the flavors were sort of hiding from the rich taste of the beef patty.
However, for my side I got the onion straws. And they were very good. I contemplated getting the tater tots, but I was more than happy with the onion straws. They were thin cut, beer-battered and fried to a perfect golden color retaining the great beer-batter taste. I asked Tyler how they made their onion straws and he said they cut the onions on a mandolin slicer. My wife and I both started to chuckle and she said, "You've got to be careful with those things." We were laughing because a neighbor friend of ours had just bought a mandolin slicer - because he always wanted one - but his wife told him that he had to be very careful with it. Sure enough, he was playing around with it even BEFORE he sliced anything on it and sliced a portion of skin off his thumb. (He'll appreciate reading this, I'm sure.)
Before we left, I had to go to the restroom and I went into the men's room. There on the wall was a urinal made out of a stainless steel beer keg. "Now, there's something you don't see every day," I said to myself. I just thought it was clever and funny at the same time, and I was jealous that I hadn't thought about putting in a beer keg urinal in my home. (Like my wife would approve of that, I'm sure...)
We liked more about our visit to Lionstone Brewing Company than things we didn't. The menu was a little sparse with not a lot of selections, but there were some interesting items on it. We both were a little underwhelmed with our burgers - mine was a little overcooked and my wife thought the ground beef brisket sliders were just all right. But, the beer we had was pretty good, and once my wife got the salad dressing that she liked, she was happy with her salad. The onion straws were excellent and I can't say enough about Tyler's service that day. He was prompt and courteous, and he took care of any request while showing a decent sense of humor that made my wife and me laugh more than once during our visit. We'll go back to Lionstone to try one of their pizzas, but I don't think I'd go back for a burger.
Comments