A little less than two years ago, a huge sports complex opened near the intersection of Middle Road and Interstate 80 on the far north side of Bettendorf. The TBK Bank Sports Complex features indoor and outdoor soccer fields, basketball courts, baseball and softball fields, a bowling alley, volleyball courts, as well as exercise areas and running tracks. The $50 million dollar project was designed to bring people in from all over the Midwest for tournaments and events. The only problem was that when it opened, there was really nothing else out there other than the hulking building that was visible for miles as you traveled past it on the interstate. However, over the past year, a number of developments have taken shape around the complex to add hotels, restaurants, convenience stores and other places to service the people who have driven in from wherever to watch or play sports at TBK Bank Sports Complex. One of the restaurants that opened last year is a place by the name of The Foundry. We had been wanting to check the place out at some point, and one weeknight when I didn't feel like cooking, my wife and I headed out there to get something to eat.
Michael DeWitte is the man behind The Foundry. DeWitte also runs The Barrel House which has four locations around the Quad Cities. (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on The Barrel House.) When the opportunity to put a restaurant near the sports complex came about, DeWitte thought that a family friendly place with a large and varied menu for any appetite, large or small, along with a full bar with craft beers for the adults would be the ticket. Ground was broke on the building that houses The Foundry late in 2018 and the restaurant opened in June of last year.
The Foundry is located just off Middle Road on the aptly named Competition Drive next to the sports complex. (see map) There's parking in front of the building, but even though it was a weekday night, it was somewhat tough to find an open spot. We took a parking spot after someone backed out of one just down the way from the restaurant.
We went inside and were met by a young lady at the hostess stand just inside the bar area. There was a three-sided bar with large flat-screen televisions on the walls around the room. The bar area had high top tables and banquette seating along one wall. The hostess asked us if we'd like to sit in the bar, but I wanted to take a look at the dining room.
The main dining room at The Foundry had a number of booths and tables in the floor plan. There was a smaller dining room off to the side that could be used for groups or gatherings. The dining room also had a number of flat-screen televisions on the wall and the tables were regular height. For some reason the hostess kept pushing us to sit in the bar area, but my wife doesn't like to sit at a high-top if a regular table or booth is available. When my wife asked if we could sit in the dining room, the hostess curiously gave out a bit of a huff, handed menus to another girl and told her to take us "in there." My wife and I sort of looked at one another with a quizzical look on our faces as we walked to the table. "That was odd," my wife said after we were seated. "I guess I don't know what the deal is about sitting in the bar. She acted like she was pissed off we wanted to sit in (the dining room)."
Our server for the evening was a pleasant young lady by the name of Rachinda. She asked if we wanted anything to drink and I saw that they had the Big Grove Easy Eddy IPA on their beer list. My wife was fine with water for the time being, so Rachinda went off to fetch my beer. She came back a moment later and said, "I'm sorry, but we're out of that beer." Plan B was an easy one - they had the Toppling Goliath Pseudo Sue on tap, as well. They did have that one.
The menu at The Foundry is vast and varied, something that I have a bit of trepidation with because I've found in my travels that restaurants that have extensive menus geared to satisfy all ages and tastes usually does everything just all right - not great, but OK. The menu at The Barrel House is sort of similar, but I like their burgers at The Barrel House. My wife has sort of soured on The Barrel House mainly because she thinks the food selection there is nothing more than glorified bar food. I could tell as she thumbed through the menu at The Foundry that she thought it was nothing more than a Barrel House - only with even more food to choose from.
The appetizers were sort of interesting - they had poutine with crumbled Italian sausage mixed in with the cheese curds, fries and gravy. There was ahi poké on the menu - that's something you normally don't see at a sports bar. My wife sort of raised her eyebrows when she saw the honey Sriracha Brussels sprouts on the menu. She loves Brussels sprouts and she thought about getting those. Avocado egg rolls, mussels steamed in and India pale ale, and fried portobello mushroom planks were other things that caught our eye on the appetizer part of the menu.
On the main part of the menu, The Foundry featured steaks, seafood, fajitas, pasta dishes and a number of burgers and sandwiches. They also had a selection of flat bread pizzas as well as pork chops and Korean-style baby back ribs. Prime rib is available after 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and all day on Sunday.
My wife was having trouble figuring out what she wanted to get. I sensed that by the description of some of the food on the menu that she was intrigued, but still somewhat fearful that the food would be just "OK". A couple things caught her eye - the garlic-infused flat iron steak and the lobster and pea cavateppi. The pasta dish came with chunks of Maine lobster mixed with English peas, sliced portobello mushrooms with cavateppi pasta noodles in a lobster cream sauce. "That sounds good," she said with a bit of hesitation in her voice. "But I don't know if it will be."
I had sort of had my eye on another pasta dish - the four meat cavateppi bake. It had beef, sausage, pepperoni and ham mixed in a combination of cavateppi pasta and a marinara sauce, then topped with shredded mozzarella and baked. That sounded really interesting, but I also deemed that I wasn't quite that hungry.
In the long run, I went with the portobello mushroom/Swiss cheese burger. I asked Rachinda if the kitchen could put some bacon on it, too. The burger featured two quarter-pound patties topped with Swiss cheese and copious amounts of sautéed sliced portobello mushrooms. A couple strips of bacon topped the burger. It was served on a toasted brioche bun and came with a side of fries.
My wife also decided that the lobster and pea cavateppi would be a lot of food, as well. Plus she wasn't certain that it would be as good as it sounded. She ended up going with the Memphis-style pulled pork sandwich. The pulled pork was mixed with a honey barbecue sauce and a dollop of cole slaw came on top of the meat. Instead of fries, my wife was so intrigued by the lobster and pea cavateppi that she got a side of The Foundry's lobster mac & cheese. But she didn't think the lobster in the mac & cheese was real, only imitation lobster.
My burger was fine - I didn't think it was as good as the mushroom/Swiss burger served at The Barrel House. The fries were pretty "blah", but I was just concentrating on the burger. When my wife asked how my burger was, I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and said, "Yeah, it's all right. Nothing special."
She sort of thought the same thing about her pulled pork sandwich. She had removed the top of the brioche bun that it came on and ate the cole slaw and pulled pork without the bun alternating bites with the lobster mac & cheese. "Ahh, it's all right," she said sort of dismissively of her pulled pork and side. "But I still don't think that's real lobster in the mac & cheese."
The other thing was that we thought it was sort of expensive for what we got. $14 bucks for the burger plus a couple bucks for the small amount of bacon was sort of a wallet hitter, as was my wife's $12 dollar pulled pork sandwich. I think we were charged $4 bucks for the upcharge on the mac & cheese. Add in a couple beers for me and one for my wife, and it came to about $50 bucks before tip and tax. I said to my wife, "Well, when you get a bunch of people out here from out of town and it's right next to the sports complex, they've got a captive audience. They can pretty much charge what they want."
Our first visit to The Foundry gave us both mixed feelings. The place was nice, there's no doubt about that. The craft beer list was more than adequate, and they did have a lot to choose from on the menu. And the service we had that evening was friendly and prompt. But the food was just all right in our book. And we were still sort of perplexed with the attitude we got from the hostess who kept trying to push us to sit in the bar area when we clearly wanted to sit in the dining room. We'll probably end up going out to The Foundry again at some point, but we won't make it part of our rotation of restaurants we like to go to.
My husband and I went out there a few weekends ago and I got the pulled pork sandwich. I also thought that it was just OK. My husband got the hot chicken sandwich and he thought it was pretty good.
Posted by: Steph's Mom | February 04, 2020 at 07:24 AM