Just north of Davenport is the small bedroom community of Eldridge. There's a small public golf course along U.S. Highway 61 called Rustic Ridge and it has a combination clubhouse/restaurant/bar between the parking lot and the first tee. A little over two years ago the owners added Memphis-style barbecue items to the menu. My wife and I had been talking about going out there to try their barbecue for some time and one recent evening we decided to go have dinner at Lynn's Barbecue and Saloon.
Kevin and Sandy Wohlford bought the Rustic Ridge Golf Course in 2001, the third owners of the golf course that began back in the 1970's. Initially, Sandy was the clubhouse manager while Kevin kept his day job and worked at the course when he could in the spring, summer and fall months. But improvements to the course in 2006 and a remodel of the clubhouse/restaurant four years later meant that Kevin needed to be more hands-on with the golf course. The Rustic Grille restaurant was famous for their delicious sandwiches and their Friday night fish fry, and their bar area was a favorite for golfers and non-golfers alike.
In early 2015, they changed the decor of the restaurant and bar area to more of a barn wood motif and decided to add barbecue to their menu. They continued with some of their more popular items on the menu, but the focus was more on the Memphis-style dry-rubbed barbecue they began to feature. They decided to call it Lynn's Barbecue because the Wohlford's middle names were both Lynn.
Now, I'd been out to Lynn's Barbecue with my wife and friends of ours on a couple of occasions to have drinks and to hang out, but we'd never had the food. While it's easy to see the golf course and the old style water tower with the Lynn's BBQ sign on the side from Highway 61, it can be a bit confusing getting back to the entrance of the golf course/restaurant. Many people have made the mistake of taking a right onto Country Club Court - like I did the first time I went out there. But you continue on E. Iowa Street until it curves around toward the parking lot for the golf course. (see map)
The outside of the building still has sort of a country/rustic look to it - almost like it was an old barn at one point. Inside the bar/restaurant, the walls have a faux barn board look to them. There's a handful of booths along one wall with a various sized tables in the middle of the room.
The bar is always popular at Lynn's Barbecue and there is a line of high-topped tables near the bar for drinkers and diners. In the corner of the dining area is a small stage they used for karaoke or live music from time to time.
There's a patio just outside the bar that looks out onto the No. 1 tee box and onward out onto the first fairway. It's a quaint little golf course with tree-lined fairways. It almost makes me want to take up golf again so I can enjoy the outdoors at Rustic Ridge.
We sat at one of the booths in the restaurant and we were greeted by Taylor, a young lady who would be our server that evening. She dropped off menus for us to look over. The beer selection at Lynn's Barbecue is actually pretty good with a number of craft brews to choose from.
The menu is pretty extensive at Lynn's Barbecue. As I said, they kept many of the items on the menu when they added more of a barbecue-centric fare. Burgers, sandwiches, wraps, salads, and appetizers were included on the menu. But we were there for the barbecue. They had pork ribs, brisket, pulled pork and burnt ends on the menu, as well as pulled pork and brisket sandwiches.
I got the beef brisket with a side of baked beans. The brisket was powdered on one side with a slightly spicy rub that somewhat overpowered the taste of the beef. It was put on after it was sliced and I thought that was a bit strange. The barbecue places I've been to in Memphis usually lets the customer add more rub if they desire. A slice of cornbread with a small tub of honey came with the barbecue. The brisket was all right - once again, the rub sort of masked the true taste of the beef, but it was tender enough and wasn't dried out. The cornbread was dried out, but I didn't care about that. I'm not much of a cornbread person. The beans were also good and I was able to zip them up in taste by putting some of Lynn's hot and tangy sauce in there. I wouldn't call it hot as much as a bit of a spicy taste to the sauce. (They also featured Lynn's original sauce - a sweet Kansas City-style sauce - and a honey-mustard barbecue sauce that I didn't care for as much.)
My wife got the burnt ends and she thought they were just all right. She likened them more to beef tips like you'd get with noodles. They didn't have as much of the rub on them, but they were tender enough. She got the cole slaw that she thought was sort of bland, and she definitely wasn't happy with her very dried out cornbread. At the end of the meal, she was like, "Eh! It was OK. But I don't think I'd be beating a path out here on a regular basis to have barbecue."
The barbecue we had at Lynn's Barbecue and Saloon was just all right, in our opinion. They had so much of the Memphis-style rub on the brisket - put on AFTER they cut it into slices - that I really couldn't taste the beef. My wife thought the burnt ends were sort of like regular beef tips like you'd find in a beef stroganoff dish and didn't have much of a smoky flavor. The baked beans I had for a side were fine, but better when I added some of Lynn's hot and tangy barbecue sauce to them. My wife felt the cole slaw was bland, and we both thought the cornbread was way too dry. Even the honey in the small tubs that came with the cornbread couldn't save the taste. But it's still a nice place to go get a drink with nice views and a sort of rustic feeling to the place. And the service was prompt, friendly and efficient. We'll probably go out to Lynn's again at some point to have drinks again and maybe a burger, but I don't know if I'd get the barbecue. We really wanted to like the smoked meats at Lynns as there's not a lot of barbecue options around the Quad Cities. But the barbecue we had at Lynn's was just average, at best.
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