For awhile now, my wife and I have been on a quest to find a place that has a good burger along with a good selection of craft beers in the Quad Cities. She had mentioned a place clear over in Coal Valley, a small community on the far southeast side of the Quad City area. I read up on it and on a Sunday afternoon we headed over to Bourbons Bar & Grill.
Troy and Shelly Shehorn lived in the Coal Valley area and loved to go to a neighborhood bar there called Headquarters. Shelly was an accountant by trade and Troy was self-employed. A few years ago, Headquarters went up for sale and the Shehorn's thought it would be fun to own the bar. However, after weeks of negotiations, the deal fell through.
But the Shehorn's always kept an eye on the property and when it became available for sale in the fall of October 2016, they didn't hesitate this time. They knew they could do something with the little neighborhood bar in terms of food and drink, focusing on Troy's love for barbecue and bourbon. But first they had to do some renovations.
The building, itself, dates back to the 1890's with the original tin ceiling still intact. The Shehorn's brought in over 10 tons of stone for walls and accents, and they installed cedar panels for walls and trim around the stone walls. They renovated the kitchen and bar area, a meat smoker was installed in the back, and they put up about a half-dozen large screen flat panel televisions around the place. By March of 2018, Bourbons Bar & Grill was ready to open to the public.
It was around 2 p.m. when we pulled up to Bourbons which is located near the corner of 1st Street and E. 22nd Ave. A in Coal Valley. (see map) We parked in front of the building, but there's ample parking off to the side. From the outside, the building is pretty nondescript with a couple beer signs in the window. But upon entering Bourbons, we found a cozy and inviting space that featured a number of tables in the center of the bar with a nice three-sided bar off to the side. The combination of the lights from beer signs and the glow of the televisions with some accent lighting along the walls gave the bar a colorful glow.
We took a seat at a table toward the back of the dining area of the bar. Our server that day - a pleasant and helpful lady by the name of Jane - came over to greet us and to drop off a couple menus. They had a pretty good craft beer list and I saw that they had Kona Big Wave. I asked Jane if their bloody mary's were good and she said, "Oh, yeah. We load 'em up." I ordered a Big Wave and a bloody mary. The "packed" bloody mary featured a thick and zesty mix served in a salt-rimmed glass. A skewer of green olives, pickles, salami and cubed cheese came on top of the bloody mary glass. And it was a very good bloody mary. My wife got her usual cranberry juice and Tito's vodka - light on the cranberry juice.
The menu at Bourbons wasn't all that large, but most of the items they had sounded pretty interesting. Appetizers included jalapeño poppers, fried portobello mushrooms, and fried avocado wedges which caught the eye of my wife. They had sandwiches such as grilled or breaded pork tenderloins, and a grilled chicken sandwich topped with bacon and a house-made bourbon barbecue sauce. They had four different burgers on the menu, along with fish and chips, chicken strips, and a four-piece broasted chicken dinner. Pizzas (I understand they're Quad City-style, which we don't care for) and calzones are also available. On Thursday night, they have barbecued rib dinners as a special.
My wife wanted to try their pulled pork sandwich. They smoke the pork shoulders at Bourbons with hickory and it's slow-cooked and shredded. The barbecue pork is placed on a toasted brioche bun and topped with their house-made bourbon barbecue sauce, cole slaw and an onion ring. She had a choice of sides that came with the sandwich which included French fries, seasoned waffle fries, bourbon baked beans, or cottage cheese. She ended up getting the macaroni salad. She thought the barbecue pulled pork sandwich was very good.
Of course, I was looking to try one of their burgers and I ended up getting their mushroom burger. For some reason, I thought that I would be getting sautéed mushrooms, but the menu said the burger was topped with fried mushrooms. They were portobello mushroom strips, similar to the ones they serve as appetizers. The burger patty was topped with provolone cheese and an aioli sauce. I asked Jane if I could get some bacon on my burger and she said that it was no problem. I also got a side of onion rings for a $1 dollar upcharge.
I ended up taking the mushroom strips off the burger and just having it with the bacon and cheese. The burger was very good. It was juicy and flavorful, and the bun held together well for what turned out to be a multiple-napkin burger. The onion rings were pretty good as well. They had an abundance of beer-batter on them - almost too much, even if you like beer-battered onion rings - and I found them to be a little too salty for my taste.
A few weeks after our first trip to Bourbons, my wife's son came to visit us on a Sunday. He had just come back from Cincinnati for a factory training session he took part in, and he was telling us that the factory guys took the group out to a couple bourbon bars in Newport, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati. We were telling him about Bourbons in Coal Valley and he is much more into bourbons than my wife and I are. But he was intrigued enough that we took him over there for lunch.
On this visit, he got to look at the over 120 different bourbons that they offer at Bourbons Bar & Grill. In fact, we had a nice conversation with Shelly Shehorn about her husband's love for bourbon, the trips they have taken that have centered on bourbon-centric bars and restaurants, and she compared notes with my step-son on the more expensive bourbons that are out there. Once again, I'm not well-versed on bourbons at all, but my step-son was telling her about a Pappy Van Winkle bourbon that one of the places across the river from Cincinnati he went to had for $500 a shot. Shelly Shehorn said that she was familiar with that bourbon, but they didn't have that particular liquor at their bar. "We're working up to it, though," she told us. "We're slowly getting the reputation for good bourbons and we're starting to become a destination for some bourbon lovers." She said that the highest priced bourbon they have is about $80 bucks a shot.
We've found some pretty good places over in the Illinois Quad Cities over the past few months that have good burgers, a good craft beer list, and good bloody mary's. I'd have to put Bourbons Bar & Grill toward the top of that list. The only problem is that it's about a 20 minute drive for us, and with the I-74 bridge work going on, it's even longer to cross the river to go back home. But to us, it's worth the drive. The atmosphere is cozy and comfortable, the service that we've experienced on our visits has alway been friendly and folksy, and the food is interesting and a step or two above your typical bar food in taste and quality. I wish Bourbons was a lot closer to our house because it would be the kind of place where I'd like to hang out.
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