It seems like we've been heading down to Muscatine a lot over the past couple of years to change things up in terms of food offerings when we go out on little date nights. One recent night found us heading to Muscatine to circumnavigate the massive construction along Mississippi Drive to try the Contrary Brewing Company. As we were enjoying our beers at Contrary, we decided to try and find someplace to have dinner nearby. I did a quick search on my smartphone and found a place that I'd heard about, but we had yet to visit - Port City Underground.
Sister and brother Lacey Henderson-Mueller and Cameron Henderson used to travel to Chicago with their family and one of their favorite places to eat was the Gino's East on E. Superior. The Henderson family loved the subterranean ambiance of the original Gino's East and the memories stuck with them for years. Their mother, Diane, was a good cook who had a good pizza recipe that she used to serve to the Henderson family and friends, and Lacey Henderson-Mueller had some service background working in restaurants. Lacey had always wanted to own her own restaurant at some point and when an underground space in downtown Muscatine became available in late 2004, she and her brother Cameron jumped in with both feet.
The family spruced up the downstairs space with carpeting, put in a bar and dining area, and fashioned a kitchen in the back of the place. By February of 2005, Port City Underground was up and running. Diane Henderson, who - by day - was a postmaster at a small post office in a nearby town, helped out in the kitchen primarily making her pizzas and breadsticks. But over the years, the menu expanded to include pasta dishes, sandwiches and salads.
We were able to find a parking space along W. 2nd St. in downtown Muscatine just down the street from Port City Underground. (see map) We were rather confused as how to get to the place and we entered the building where we saw a sign for the place. We didn't know if we needed to take the steps or the elevator and we ended up walking down a stairway and found that it wasn't the way. We ended up taking the elevator down and found what is basically the hostess stand near the small bar on the end near the kitchen.
The dining room is long and narrow with stone walls. It was cozy and sort of tight in the place, but it was manageable enough. We had to wait a moment for a table and they sat us at a table that was up front with windows looking out at some stairs that went upward to the street level. Our server for the evening, a nice guy by the name of Mitch, came over to greet us, drop off menus and get our drink order. It turned out that Mitch was also the manager of Port City Underground. My wife got a glass of the James Mitchell cabernet they had on their small, but impressive wine list while I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had Alaskan Amber available for one of their craft beers.
A good portion of the menu at Port City Underground was devoted to pizza. They had a handful of appetizers, some salads and soups, some sandwiches and about a half dozen pasta dishes. They also featured some specials that evening, but I can't remember what they were.
I was in the mood for pasta, but my wife really wanted pizza. So, I got a pasta dish that sounded interesting, while she got a pizza. With my pasta entree, I got a small dinner salad. I let my wife pick the dressing and unsurprisingly she went with the garlic dressing. The salad featured crisp greens with a large bread stick. The dressing wasn't all that strong as far as a garlic taste, but it was all right.
My wife got a small specialty pizza - the Man Cave Pizza that featured Italian sausage, pepperoni, ground beef, black olives, mushrooms, jalapeños, onions and extra cheese that seemed to be a mixture of mozzarella, provolone and cheddar cheese. It was a thin-crust pizza and cut into triangle squares with some caramelization along the edges. My wife seemed to be happy with it - I had a piece and I thought it was good, as well. There were a lot of flavors going on with the pizza. She was able to eat three pieces and she was able to take a couple pieces home with her for a snack in the coming days.
Even though they didn't seem to have a lot in terms of pasta at Port City Underground, I ended up finding something that sounded good to me. It was called the Baked Pastizza and it featured rotini noodles in their pizza sauce with a choice of up to three toppings from their pizza menu. Of course, I got the Italian sausage, pepperoni and mushroom. It was covered with a cheese blend, including bits of shredded cheddar. I'm not huge on cheddar cheese in Italian dishes, but it seemed to be a signature of Port City Underground's.
Once I peeled back the top to allow the steam to rise out of the pasta dish and cool down a bit, I saw a wonderful gooey mess of pasta, sausage, mushrooms and pepperoni in their pizza sauce. When it finally cooled down a bit to enjoy, I found a very flavorful dish with a lot of flavors going on. While the noodles and the other toppings were very good, I found the pizza sauce to be a little too sweet for my taste. Having a piece of my wife's pizza, I found that the sauce was consistent in taste. It was thick, but it was very sweet. It wasn't a deal breaker, but we both just found it to distract from the overall good taste of both the pizza and the pasta dish.
Things had settled down enough for Mitch to visit with us as we were getting ready to pay. We told him that we thought the pizza sauce was a little too sweet for us. He said, "Yeah, we get that every once in a while. But there's a lot of people who like it that way." I told him that for as packed as the place was that night and for how long they've been in business, it appeared that a lot of people liked it that way.
So, other than thinking the pizza sauce was too sweet, we couldn't come up with any other complaints about our visit and meal at Port City Underground. It was a quaint and cozy little place, they had a nice wine selection and a small, but surprising selection of craft beers. The pastizza dish I had was very good, and my wife was more than happy with her pizza - even though the sauce was pretty sweet. As many trips we've made to Muscatine for dinner over the past few years, we're sort of surprised that we'd never been to Port City Underground before this. But it won't be our last visit.
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