For the past couple of years, one of the finalists for the Iowa Beef Industry Council's "Best Burger in Iowa" contest was a bar up in Maquoketa, about 30 miles north of Davenport. I had always been wanting to go there to try the burger and one evening when my wife was next door at our neighbors house for some "women's night out" thing, I decided to drive up to Maquoketa to try the burger at PerXactly's Bar and Grill.
PerXactly's Bar and Grill is like many small town taverns - it's a neighborhood hangout located just off the two main drags in downtown Maquoketa. (see map) It's the kind of place that has domestic beers on tap and a handful of craft beers in the case. The building for PerXactly's looks like it could have been a garage at some point in time as two corrugated metal coverings flank the front door.
The inside of the place isn't all that large and features a three-sided bar with the kitchen on the backside. A number of high top tables were in a small dining area. Flat-screen televisions, beer signs and sports paraphernalia were hanging on the walls. The were doing a pretty brisk business when I stopped in just after 7 p.m. and took a seat at the bar.
The first thing I noticed about the place was the overpowering smell of the oil from the deep fryer. They really needed to change the oil out, I thought to myself. And it was sort of smoky from the grill cooking any number of burgers. Their fan system wasn't able to keep up with clearing the smoke from the kitchen.
They had a mushroom and Swiss cheese burger on the menu that I ordered up. I asked the bartender if he could have the cook throw some bacon on top of the burger, as well. I had a choice between home fries or potato wedges and I took the home fries.
The burger came out of the kitchen with a knife stuck in the top of it - a serious no-no in my book. The home fries were really nothing more than French fries that I figured I wouldn't be eating many of them because of the smell from the fryers.
It was a good sized burger on a larger than normal toasted bun. The Swiss cheese was slathered over the top of the burger patty and oozed down along the sides. The mushrooms were the canned variety and the two strips of bacon were average in thickness.
The burger, itself, was, well... It was all right. I mean, it wasn't bad, but I didn't think that it was what I would call a multi-finalist for the Best Burger in Iowa contest. It was juicy enough, but the taste wasn't anything special to me. I've had a few burgers over time and while it was good, there were other Best Burger finalists that I thought had a much better tasting burger.
A minor surprise at the end of the meal came when I pulled out my credit card to pay for the burger and a couple of beers. The bartender said, "Uh, we don't take credit cards. But we got an ATM over there," pointing to a machine along the wall near the restrooms. Fortunately, I had enough cash on me to take care of the bill and a tip for the bartender.
Talking with a friend of mine on the phone as I was driving home from Maquoketa that evening, and he asked me what I thought of PerXactly's. I told him that I liked the bar - it was the kind of place where I felt comfortable in, even though I didn't know anyone in there. But I felt that while the burger was good, I didn't think that it was worthy of a couple finalist nods for the Best Burger in Iowa. At least compared to other finalists and winners that I've had over time. But, all in all, for a small town tavern having a big burger, PerXactly's Bar and Grill was a good place to visit.
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