During Father's Day in June, we decided to join my wife's sisters and her dad with his lady friend to help him celebrate the day. He likes going to a little lakeshore bar and grill along Coralville Lake north of North Liberty about halfway between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. I wasn't familiar with the place, but my wife - who grew up in Cedar Rapids - was familiar with the place when it was called the Jolly Roger. But a few years ago under new ownership, they changed the name to Bobbers Grill.
Bobbers Grill is part of the Scales Pointe Marina and Campground located on Scales Point that sticks prominently out on the lake. (see map) As I said, for years it was known as the Jolly Roger Marina and Jolly Roger bar and grill before an ownership change a few years ago changed the name to Scales Pointe Marina and Campground and Bobbers Grill. But it was the longtime dream of two friends - Rick Frauenholtz and Jeff Dostal, who had worked together for nearly 30 years as car salesmen in the Cedar Rapids area - to someday own the marina, campground and bar & grill. Frauenholtz lived near the marina while Dostal camped down there nearly every summer, so they were very familiar with the property.
In April of 2013, the two found out that Scales Pointe Marina and Bobber's Grill (then owned by two separate parties) was for sale and it set off a whirlwind of events. They needed to make the arrangements to buy and open everything by May 1 - the traditional start of boating and camping season at Scales Point. Once they got the financing in place, the two quit their jobs at the car dealership in late April and worked frantically to get the place ready to accept campers and boaters in early May.
With no experience in running either a campground, a marina, or even a bar and grill, Dostal and Frauenholtz found themselves jumping right into a major fire. They had no liquor license for the bar, they had no cooks or waitstaff for the grill, they had no food to serve even if they DID have cooks or a waitstaff. Seasonal campers started moving into their leased lots on May 1 and it took a couple more weeks before they had Bobbers open for business.
Just like this year in the upper Midwest, the spring of 2013 was cold and rainy. The first few weeks of their owning Scales Point Bobbers proved to be a dire situation for the Frauenholtz and Dostal families. Boats weren't coming into the docks at the marina to have food and drinks at the bar & grill because the weather was so dismal and that continued through the Memorial Day weekend. Then it wasn't long after the holiday that the Army Corps of Engineers informed them that heavy rains upstream on the Iowa River would probably flood the marina, campground and put one to two feet of water in the bar & grill.
Bad weather, Frauenholtz and Dostal could handle for awhile. But a flood would be devastating to their career of start-up entrepreneurs. However, a large group of volunteers descended on Bobbers with heavy equipment and large cement boulders to build a flood wall around the bar & grill in about 3 days. Even though the flood waters never made it up to the makeshift flood wall, both Frauenholtz and Dostal felt that if they could weather the horrendous problems they faced in their first few weeks of being in business, they could pretty much handle anything else that was thrown at them later on.
The lake stayed closed to boat traffic for a number of weeks afterward, but people started to come out to Bobbers to enjoy food and drinks as the weather returned to normal summer temperatures. Once the lake went down and boat traffic came back, things began to hum for the partners. In the winter, the lake turns into a playground for snowmobilers and Bobbers became a central meeting point for many winter enthusiasts. Both Frauenholtz and Dostal's wives kept their day jobs - just in case things went south on business venture - but they ended up helping out on the weekends at Bobbers and the marina.
We pulled up into the parking lot at Bobbers just before noon on a cloudy and cool Father's Day. My sister-in-laws were both waiting in the parking lot, but it turned out that my father-in-law and his ladyfriend were already inside. They had picked out a table in the middle of the rapidly filling restaurant - which was surprising to me since the weather wasn't that great. The bar was packed with people and many of the tables were filled. Beer signs lined the walls of Bobbers and a Leinenkugel canoe with a large stuffed frog and a large stuffed bear hung from the ceiling.
Menus were on the table when we sat down and it wasn't long before a young lady by the name of Hannah stopped by to greet us. I saw that they had a big wall sign for the Kona Big Wave Golden Ale - my beer of choice when I can find it in a bar - and I ordered one of those along with a bloody mary. Hannah came back a little while later to inform me that they didn't have the Kona Big Wave available - just the sign. They didn't have much - if anything - for craft beers, so I just cut my losses and ordered a domestic beer to go along with my bloody mary.
My father-in-law thought a bloody mary sounded good, too. After he ordered one from Hannah, she forgot to bring it out. Once we got her attention to let her know that he hadn't gotten his bloody mary, she apologized and said that she hadn't been working there very long and it was pretty busy in the place. We gave her a pass on that one, which turned out to be her only mistake of the visit.
The food fare at Bobbers is your basic bar & grill food - burgers, sandwiches, quesadillas, pizza and appetizers such as shrimp cheese poppers, fried pickles, and breaded catfish strips. My father-in-law said that he wouldn't mind having some of Bobbers chicken wings. He said they really like the barbecued chicken wings there, so we got an order of those.
My wife was thinking about ordering up the fried pickles, but the consensus at the table was that it would probably be just her and me eating those. We ended up getting a basket of their onion rings. I couldn't really tell if they were made in house, but they weren't too bad.
I had finished up my bloody mary and Hannah came by to see if I wanted another one, but I was pretty underwhelmed with the bloody mary at Bobbers. Besides, we were ready to order up our food.
My two sister-in-law's and I all got burgers. I got the mushroom, bacon, Swiss cheese burger basket with fries. It came with lettuce, tomato and dill pickles. As burgers go, this was pretty pedestrian in taste and quality. I mean, it wasn't bad, but I wouldn't be giving it much praise either.
My wife went with the cod planks - breaded cod filets that are deep-fried. They were just basically just glorified fish sticks. And they didn't provide tartar sauce with them. Quite frankly, I can't remember if our server ever brought any out to her. I don't think she did.
My father-in-law and his lady friend both got the unbreaded pork tenderloin sandwich. I took a picture of it, but it was so blurry and out of focus that I didn't want to post it here. My father-in-law and his ladyfriend are kind of cute - whenever we take them out for something to eat, they generally get the same thing. But my father-in-law is also a creature of habit. Once he latches on to something that he likes - like the barbecued chicken wings and the grill pork tenderloin sandwich at Bobbers - he keeps going in that direction.
After we finished up lunch, we went outside to check things out. They have a large patio area in the back of Bobbers that features a number of picnic tables and an outdoor bar that wasn't open - even though the patio was nearly full on a blustery afternoon. My father-in-law and his three daughters wanted their pictures taken out by the big blocks they put in place from the flood five years ago. We wished that the weather would have been nicer that day.
They have live music at Bobbers on Friday and Saturday nights and on some Sunday afternoons. They had a band playing that afternoon and we sat on one of the picnic tables for awhile listening to the music. Some people were playing sand volleyball near the patio area, but for the most part it was a pretty low-key day thanks to the weather.
To me, the food at Bobbers is pretty plain Jane, but OK for bar food. I really wasn't expecting to be knocked on my can with the quality of the food. We've been to places like that along the Mississippi River and other lakes where it's more of a party place than a food place. And we were fine with that. They do have great views of the Coralville Reservoir around Bobbers and the Scales Pointe Marina, and I suppose I would have liked it a little more had the weather been nicer. Nonetheless, Bobbers remains one of my father-in-law's favorite places to go and it was Father's Day, so it was his choice. As I see it, he could have picked someplace much worse.
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