The Village of East Davenport is not far from where my wife and I live and we find ourselves down there quite a bit - going to the cleaners, picking up bird feed, having a meal at one of the restaurants, or hanging out having a cold one at one of the bars. One place that has turned into one of our favorite spots is a small restaurant/bar by the name of Brew in the Village. It's quietly turned into one of the more popular places to have breakfast on the weekends - mainly because they start serving Bloody Mary's on Saturday and Sunday mornings before 11 a.m., one of the few places that do that in the Quad Cities.
The entity of Brew has been around since 2011, but the building that houses the little bistro dates back to around 1860 toward the beginning of the city of Davenport's existence. The building was built as a blacksmith shop on one side and a hotel/saloon on the other side. In the early 1900's, a gentleman by the name of Frank Boyler bought the blacksmith shop and changed the name to Boyler's Blacksmith Shop. But Frank did a lot more than make horseshoes. He eventually expanded the building to the north to put in a horse wagon and buggy shop where each one was handmade. Boyler lived in the old rooming house upstairs and the basement of the building was a notorious speakeasy during Prohibition. When cars began to become popular and people weren't needing horseshoes or buggies, Frank put in a gas pump with a holding tank beside the building and put a lift in the old wagon shop making it the first full service gas station in Davenport. On top of all this, the colorful Frank Boyler was also the mayor for the Village of East Davenport for over 20 years.
Frank Boyler passed away in 1949 and the business passed along to his son, Richard. With all the blacksmithing equipment in place and the lack of need for a service station since a number of free standing gas stations had been built around Davenport over the years, Richard decided that he'd turn the business into a fabricated metal shop and eventually renamed it Boyler's Ornamental Iron. Richard grew the business so well over the first few years that it had to expand into the old service garage next door. By 1975, he had to move the whole business to a facility on State Street in Bettendorf.
Richard Boyler used the original location in the East Village as a display showroom for a number of years after moving the bulk of the operations to Bettendorf. Boyler's sons - Mike, Bruce and Doug - took over the business when Richard retired in 1983 and continue to run Boyler's Ornamental Iron today along with the help from their respective children making it 4 generations of Boyler's in the business. The Boyler family still owns the original East Village building with a large "Frank W. Boyler" painted on the brick facade and they lease out the spot in which Brew is located, as well as Pete Peterson's Wild Bird Shop (where we get our feed for our bird feeders) and a hairdressing shop where the old service garage was located. The former Boots country bar (it was called Bootleggers up to about year and a half ago before permanently closing earlier this year) was located on the west side of the building and there are still apartments on the upper floor of the building.
I don't quite remember exactly when there started to be a bar/restaurant in the spot. I remember seeing the Boyler truck there quite a bit moving things out of their showroom starting about 10 years ago. The space eventually became a small coffee shop by the name of Brew that eventually expanded into being a wine bar with a convection oven to make pizza. Quite actually, their pizza was very good, and my wife and I would get one of their pizzas to take home from time to time.
The gentleman who owned the coffee shop and small bar in the East Village was also the general manager at another restaurant in the Davenport area called Pepperjacks. But both Brew and Pepperjacks abruptly closed in late December of 2013 when he moved his family out of state. We were sort of crestfallen as Brew was a great place to grab a coffee or espresso on weekend mornings. The building stood empty for awhile before Bill Sheeder happened to walk by the place with one of the Boyler's standing out front one morning a few months after the original Brew closed down.
Sheeder was the owner of a commercial cleaning company, but his partner, Stephanie Sellers, was running a small bakery out in LeClaire by the name of The Sweet Life. We first got to know her when she was selling her gourmet cupcakes at the Freight House Farmer's Market in downtown Davenport a few years ago. They had talked about running their own little bistro-style restaurant that specialized in craft beers and Sheeder saw an opportunity in the old Brew location. Virtually everything was in place for Sheeder and Sellers to take over the spot, and by that evening they had signed the lease to reopen Brew. And they did so in early 2014.
There's no room for a full kitchen at Brew and Sheeder and Sellers felt constricted with what they could do with a menu at the restaurant. They immediately got rid of the convection oven for the pizza, and they de-emphasized the coffee offerings to the point that the "Brew" in the name quickly became more associated with beer than coffee. But Sheeder had his eyes on another building a couple blocks to the west that he could gut and shape into a restaurant/brew pub of his own design.
Sheeder and Sellers bought that building in 2015 and ended up selling Brew to nearby neighborhood residents Tim and Jennifer Chen. Tim Chen was the International Business Development Manager for HON Industries in Muscatine at the time while Jennifer ran The Plaid Rabbit, a small stationary/gift store in the East Village. After gutting their new building and renovating it into a brewpub/restaurant/bakery/live music venue, Sheeder and Sellers opened Baked Beer and Bread Company in 2016. (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Baked.)
Since Tim Chen was traveling quite a bit overseas and Jennifer was deeply involved with The Plaid Rabbit, the Chen's turned to a neighborhood friend, Tracy Cameron, who had a background working as a bar manager at some more upscale restaurants around the Quad Cities area. (My wife and I first met Tracy and her husband, Ed, when we moved into our house nearly 17 years ago as they lived just down the street from us for a couple of years before moving to the McClellan Heights neighborhood just up the hill to the east of the East Village.) Tracy had stepped back from the restaurant business for awhile to focus on raising her two boys and was happy not to worry about the day-to-day operations associated with being a bar manager. When Tim Chen approached her to manage Brew for them, she initially turned them down. But the Chen's eventually got Tracy to agree to run the place for them and she continues to run Brew in the Village today.
Brew in the Village is located at the corner of Jersey Ridge and 11th St. in the East Village. (see map) We got there early enough on this particular Sunday morning that we were able to park in front of the place on the street. (Brew opens at 8 a.m. on the weekends and 11 a.m. throughout the week.) There's a small patio area in front of the place that's popular for al fresco dining on warm days. A small smoker where they make their own bacon out of pork belly sits in the corner of the patio. Some days when I'm driving by or stopping by the bird shop, the smell of the smoking bacon can be somewhat intoxicating.
It was sort of cool, but partly cloudy the day we were there that Sunday and we decided to sit inside the restaurant. It's a cozy space with a long bar and a long, narrow space filled with high-top tables. One of the regular servers at Brew, Jessica, came over to greet us and drop off menus for us to look over. She clearly recognized us from earlier visits. Not long after we sat down, Tracy Cameron came in to drop off some supplies and she stopped at our table for a "getting-caught-up" chat with us.
In the corner of the restaurant next to the bar, there's a display of former items that were made at Frank Boyler's original blacksmith shop. Horseshoes, harnesses and blacksmithing tools hang from the exposed brick walls in the corner at Brew. On the menu is a small history of Frank Boyler and his business that was once in the same spot over 100 years before.
One of the first things that I had to get was one of their Bloody Mary's. I always like getting a beer to go along with my Bloody Mary's - even at 8:30 in the morning. They have a number of Quad City-area and Iowa craft beers on their menu and I ended up getting a Raygun IPA from the Backpocket Brewing Company over in Coralville. They load up the Bloody Mary at Brew by putting a pickle spear and green olives on a spear with a strip of their wonderful house-made bacon. One of my neighbors and I have been known to stealthily roll down the hill to Brew from time to time on Saturday or Sunday mornings to have a quick Bloody Mary and a beer. Or two.
On the weekends, they have bottomless mimosas available until 2 p.m. for $14.95. My wife likes a mimosa from time to time, but she isn't one to sit there for a long spell drinking them down. They will just charge you for one mimosa at a time if you like and that's exactly what my wife ordered from Jessica.
As I said, there's really not a lot of room for a kitchen at Brew in the Village, so their menu is pretty limited. They don't have a fryer or a grill top, so if you're looking for a burger and fries, Brew ain't the place. But they do have sandwiches, flatbreads and salads available. Appetizers such as a charcuterie board of cured meats and local cheese, stuffed mushrooms, and red pepper hummus served with fresh vegetables or crostini bread for dipping are also available.
I have to tell you, though - I've never been there for anything but breakfast since the Chen's and Tracy Cameron have been running the place. My wife has met friends there for wine and appetizers in the evenings, but I've only been there for breakfast. And their breakfast items are rather unique. Once again, you won't find omelets, French Toast or pancakes on the menu. But they do have breakfast sandwiches - big enough that my wife and I can usually split one - breakfast tacos, and biscuits and gravy. On the weekends, they also bring in a waffle iron and make their variation of a cinnamon roll waffle that's served with cinnamon butter and a cream cheese icing.
What my wife and I usually get, however, is one of the Brew breakfast bowls - a concoction of scrambled eggs and a varied choice of cheese, vegetables and meat to add into it. They call this the Hulk Smash and it's served with a biscuit and honey on the side. This morning we got the bowl with smoked gouda cheese (that appeared to be cheddar, but the chef at the bar swore to us when we asked about it that it was, indeed, gouda), spinach, ham, and avocado chunks. Also on the weekend, Brew serves Tracy's wonderful cheesy potatoes. We'd been trying to eat smart in the previous weeks, but the oven-baked cheesy potatoes are too good to pass up at Brew. And we usually get a side of bacon with our breakfast, but for some reason I didn't order any on this visit.
My wife and I usually split the breakfast bowl at Brew passing it on between us to nibble on for a bit before passing it back. The cheesy potatoes - well, that's a free for all. We try to position them where we both can reach them with a fork. There's more than enough food in the breakfast bowl for us to easily split one. And when you add in the cheese breakfast potatoes, we usually don't have to eat lunch that day.
Brew in the Village isn't the restaurant you're looking for if you're thinking about getting a burger, some fried appetizers, or an omelet. But for the space they have to work with, their small kitchen area behind the bar is efficient enough to offer a number of interesting items for breakfast and sandwiches. They have a number of craft beers available, as well as wines and mixed drinks. Their Bloody Mary's that they serve are usually spot-hitters for me on Saturday or Sunday mornings. It's a quaint little space housed in a building that dates back to pre-Civil War days. Brew in the Village is one of the best out-in-the-open hidden secrets in the Quad Cities.
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