My wife and I have been venturing out on weekends trying to find some places that have a good burger around the Quad Cities. We were familiar with Kavanaugh's Hilltop Tap just up the hill from Augustana College in Rock Island and we had heard from some other people that they had a pretty good burger. One chilly and rainy Saturday afternoon in early Spring, we headed over to Kavanaugh's for lunch.
In 1984, Mike Kavanaugh, a union electrician whose experience with bars was having an occasional drink in one, bought the little bar in the College Hill neighborhood of Rock Island along with his wife, Diane, and a couple of other partners. The area was a little seedy when they bought the place and the couple did their best in helping clean up the neighborhood and helping attract more reputable businesses to the area. In 1991, the Kavanaugh's bought out their partners to become sole owners of the establishment. Their sons, Tim and Mike, Jr. helped run the place, as well.
Each year, the Kavanaugh's reinvested profits into their little bar helping expand the floor plan of the place. In 2013, just in time for their first annual Shamrockin' Paddy O'Pardy on St. Patrick's Day, they expanded their deck in the back and added a covered area that has also served as a live music venue and an overflow dining area with a bar. And earlier this year, Mike and Diane Kavanaugh retired and sold the bar and grill to their son, Tim, and two of Tim's friends.
It was around 1:30 p.m. when my wife and I pulled into Kavanaugh's parking lot along 30th Street in Rock Island. (see map) The outside of the building features a light stone facade with a matching stone wall on the parking lot side. It's a long and narrow structure with a peaked roof.
The back annex area was about half full when we walked in to the place. The Mississippi Valley Blues Society has sponsored a number of shows over the past couple three years that have been held in the covered deck area. For a cool and rainy day, the place was buttoned up and it was sort of cozy in there. An event was being held down at Augustana College that day and a handful of people were coming up the hill and into Kavanaugh's to get out of the rain. The back bar in the deck area was closed.
My wife and I ended up going out to the original front bar area. It featured a traditional long bar on one side with a number of flat screen televisions throughout the room. Short tables were located in the center of the bar room with high top tables along the far wall opposite the bar. It had a low ceiling and had a great little neighborhood bar vibe to the place.
There were a couple ladies working behind the bar as my wife and I took a seat at one of the high-top tables along the wall. One of them, Tracy, shouted out, "You guys hang on and I'll be over in a minute to take your drink order." We took a look at a couple menus that were on the table to get an idea of what to get while we waited for her to come over. She eventually made it over, apologized for being too busy (which we quickly dismissed as being fine with us), and asked what we wanted to drink. I got a bloody mary and a bottle of beer to chase it back. Unfortunately, the bottle of beer was warm.
Tracy came back over and I said, "I don't know if you have a problem with the cooler, but this beer is nearly room temperature." She put her hand around the bottle and said, "Oh, my gosh! They must have just filled the cooler before I came in." She was going to go get me another bottle, but I had noticed that they had the Leave It to Henry American Pale Ale from the Five Cities Brewery over in Bettendorf on tap. We hadn't been to Five Cities yet and I was intrigued enough to want to give it a try. I told Tracey that I'd get that. After she brought the pint over, I knew something wasn't right from the first sip. It tasted flat. But I still drank it. (Turned out that it probably wasn't flat - I've had another one since then and it tasted the same way at another establishment that had it.) My wife got a bottle of the Lagunitas IPA. Later on, I got a Lagunitas to go along with my lunch. It took three beers before I got a good one. At least the bloody mary was good.
The menu at Kavanaugh's isn't all that long with a number of your typical appetizers - wings, nachos, deep-fried breaded cauliflower with cheese, and something they call "Drunken Mushrooms". They soak their mushrooms in Jameson whiskey before they're breaded and deep-fried. They also had three or four wraps, as well as sandwiches and burgers. The special they had that day was an Italian beef sandwich that someone at a table adjacent to us got. It looked as good as any Italian beef sandwich I've had in Chicago.
My wife and I ended up going the burger route - she got a single (1/4 lb.) burger topped with American cheese. A choice of house-made French fries or house chips came with the burger.
I got the double burger topped with pepper jack cheese, mushrooms and bacon. Pickles, lettuce, tomato and onion are available on request with the burger, I asked Tracy I'd take all that too, but that didn't get done. But that was fine - there was enough of the other stuff on the burger the way I'd ordered it.
The burgers at Kavanaugh's are chargrilled and I'm getting to the point where I like a good flat-top-grilled burger over a chargrilled one. Nonetheless, it had a lot of good flavor to the burger. The mushrooms were fresh and sautéed, the pepper jack cheese was oozing out from under the bun top, and the bacon was cooked the way I like it - not too crisp and could easily curl up in between the burger patties.
About the only quibble that I had with the burger at Kavanaugh's was that it was too salty for my taste. My wife thought her burger was a little salty, as well. She uses salt on her food a lot more than I do and if she detects an abundance of salt in her food, well, then there's a lot of salt in the food. The fries were good, but the burger was so big that I concentrated more on that than I did the fries.
I have mixed feelings about Kavanaugh's Hilltop Tap - more positive than negative. I liked the atmosphere of the place, it had a nice neighborhood feeling. The service was good, but the first beer was warm and they forgot my requested veggies for my burger. While the burger was too salty for my tastes, it was still pretty good. We'll put Kavanaugh's on our rotation for food because I want to try their reuben at some point and it appears that they have some interesting appetizers, as well.
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