My wife and I have been cooped up in our house for the past 3 months doing a lot of cooking at home and occasionally getting some food from curb-side pick-up to bring back home. However, the state of Iowa has been slowly opening up lately and a couple weeks ago most of the restaurants and bars had been allowed to re-open following social distancing regulations. We had our eye on a place that just opened up a little over a month ago next to the TBK Bank Sports Complex on the northern edge of Bettendorf, Twin Span Brewing. Last Saturday night, we decided to give the place a try.
Actually, we tried to head out to Twin Span Brewing a couple Friday nights ago - the first day that restaurants were allowed to fully open in the state. However, on our way out, we were stopped by a road block thrown up by Bettendorf police for a "Black Lives Matter" rally that was getting ready to begin. We decided to just turn around and head down to the Village of East Davenport and go to Rudy's Cantina for a quick bite that evening. (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Rudy's Cantina.)
After having a couple of drinks at our favorite neighborhood watering hole last Saturday, my wife and I took off to go north to I-80 and on east to the Middle Road exit (Exit 301) a few miles down the road. The TBK Bank Sports Complex - known as the "Bett Plex" to the locals - is tough to miss as you're traveling along I-80 in that area. There have been a number of businesses - restaurants, retail stores, convenience stores - that have sprung up around the complex since it opened a little over two years. Parking was plentiful around Twin Spans when we pulled in off of Forest Grove Rd. just before 6:30 that evening. (see map)
Twin Span has actually been open since the second weekend in May when they began to allow "to-go" sales of their beers. A couple weeks later they opened their carry-out or patio-seating food service under the guidance of Juan Hernandez, a native of Mexico City who is known around the Quad Cities for his work with Steventon's and the Blue Iguana in Le Claire, IA. Our visit was the second weekend of full seating in the restaurant. It went against our usual rule of thumb of allowing a new restaurant to work out the kinks for the first three months before we would visit.
It turns out that the restaurant manager at Twin Span is the girlfriend of a guy my wife works with. He was telling us when we visited him a couple three weeks ago that the place was "really nice". He is a beer drinker and he said he thought their beers were very good. He said he had been part of a soft-opening the ownership group had in May and he was impressed with everything.
And it was his girlfriend who greeted us at the hostess stand when we first came in. My wife re-introduced herself to her and we stood and chatted for a few moments. A storm was brewing off in the distance and she said, "We have a large group in here, so we're slammed in the kitchen for a moment. And I'm certain you guys probably don't want to sit outside with the storm coming at us." I saw a four-seat table off to the side and asked if we could sit there. "Absolutely," she exclaimed as she grabbed a couple menus and escorted us to the table.
The inside of Twin Span Brewing featured a very open floor plan with a sort of contemporary/industrial decor. Globe lighting hung from the ceiling and wooden accents and booths were prominent throughout. A series of high-top tables - all pulled together for the large group eating there that night - were in the center of the dining area.
Off to the far end of the building was the brewing room featuring a number of large glistening tanks. Adam Ross - who is a Cicerone Level 2 certified professional; and Glenn Cole - who helped put the Geneseo Brewing Company on the map - head up the brewing team at Twin Span. We were told that there were a number of investors - up to 15 - who have a stake in Twin Span Brewing, but the manager we talked with didn't divulge who the managing partner was in the group.
The patio area featured a large expanse of area off to the side of the indoor-outdoor bar. We were told that they would normally have more tables on both the patio and in the dining area, but due to social distancing restrictions they have cut back the number of tables available. The outdoor patio was very nice - and it never did rain while we were there.
Our server for the evening was a young lady by the name of Hayley. With all the ambient noise in the place, plus the fact that she was speaking to us through a mask, we thought her name was Kaylie. And I think that's what we kept calling her. But when we got the bill later in the evening, we saw that her name was Hayley. We apologized to her when we realized we got her name wrong right off the bat.
She explained to us that the large group of 20 to our right had thrown the kitchen into a tizzy and it would probably be another 20 to 30 minutes before she could take our food order. Baseball and softball tournaments at the TBK Bank Sports Complex had started up again and there were a number of people in there from out of town. We immediately recognized the fact that we probably shouldn't have come here on a weekend evening - especially a Saturday night - with tournaments starting up at the Bett Plex again. And couple that with the fact that the kitchen and wait staff were trying to work out the kinks. But, not to worry - we wanted to drink some beer.
We took a quick look at the beer menu for Twin Span and saw that they had six or seven beers to choose from that evening. The Ten-Forty was a traditional German lager that was unfiltered. The Liffey was a combination English ale and Pre-Prohibition American lager that is more of an Irish heritage beer. The Steel Beam was a traditional Irish stout, while The Gold was a traditional English golden ale. We've been really getting into hazy India Pale Ales as of late and we both ended up getting a 13-ounce tulip of the 80 East, a wonderful concoction that featured Ariana, Citra and Mosaic hops. From the first taste, we immediately liked the beer.
We were told the food menu at Twin Span was evolving, but there seemed to be some interesting items to choose from. Their appetizers featured blistered shishito peppers served with a sriracha sauce. There were beer-brined chicken wings tossed with a choice of sauce that included a buffalo sauce, a sweet Thai chile sauce, and a mango/serrano pepper/honey sauce. And they had barbecued pork nachos, as well as a signature appetizer called The Gift of Bacon which featured hand-breaded fried buffalo mozzarella that was wrapped in bacon and served with a house sauce. There was a seared tuna salad on the menu that caught the eye of my wife, as well as flatbreads, burgers, and sandwiches including a Nashville hot chicken sandwich and a mahi mahi "poor-boy" sandwich.
Since we had plenty of time to look over the menu, we pretty much were set on a couple three things that we wanted to try. After a second 80 East for me, Hayley came over and said that the kitchen was no longer overwhelmed and we could order up some food. One of the first things we ordered was the beer mussels appetizer. They sautéed mussels in a combination beer and garlic sauce. Fresh parsley and chopped tomatoes came with the mussels with a couple small pieces of garlic bread on the side.
The mussels were fresh tasting, meaty and all opened up in the sautéing process. Chunks of tomatoes and fresh parsley added to the flavor of the garlic/beer sauce the mussels were swimming in. The sauce was absolutely outstanding - so much so that we asked the manager for more garlic bread to sop up the sauce when she came over to check on us. (Note to Twin Span staff - you can't just serve two small pieces of bread with the mussels. You need to serve at least six, if not eight pieces.)
One of the other things we got off the appetizer menu was the tuna poké. It featured sashimi-grade tuna mixed with chopped mango, red and green onions, avocado, and a sesame seed sauce. All of that was placed on a bed of lettuce greens, then topped with cilantro, wonton chips and a sriracha aioli. The poké was simply outstanding. We made very short work of the tuna poké.
My wife was very interested in the moho tacos. It was a choice of grilled or fried/breaded ancho-seasoned mahi mahi - we ordered grilled - that was topped with a citrus slaw, sliced avocado, and a sriracha aioli. It came with a side of house-made tortilla chips and a beer cheese dipping sauce. When I first glanced at the mahi mahi after it was served to us, it had a golden brown covering on it like they were breaded and deep-fried.
When the manager came over and asked if everything was fine, I said that we had ordered grilled and not the deep-fried mahi mahi. She immediately ran to the kitchen to get us another order. But then my wife - who is much more observant than I am - realized that the ancho-seasoning gave the fish a breaded and deep-fried look to them. We waved Hayley down and told her to tell her manager that we got the right order and not to make us a second one. We were somewhat embarrassed when the manager came back and we told her that we were fine with what we had ordered. Rookie mistake at a new restaurant, I'm calling it. But the mahi mahi tacos were also very good.
But everything we had was also very expensive. When Hayley came by to present us with our bill - which was not on paper, but on the screen of a handheld point-of-sale device - I about jumped out of my seat when she said we owed $73 before tip and tax. I was incredulous, but it was true. My wife and I had 5 total glasses of the 80 East at $7 a glass, the mussels were $13 bucks, the tuna poke was $12 bucks, and the moho tacos were $13. I sort of shuddered a bit, but paid it - along with a nice tip for Hayley who had a great attitude while working her butt off the whole time we were there. Plus, the fact that we kept calling her "Kaylie". But, as my wife said, "It IS Bettendorf, and it IS next to the sports plex. They have a captive audience out here and food is going to be more expensive out here than most other places."
So, be forewarned - if you go out to Twin Span or stop by the place as you're driving by the Quad Cities on I-80 - expect to spend some money. But I have to say that everything we had - from the 80 East hazy IPA, to the moho tacos, to the tuna poke, to the excellent sautéed mussels - was very good. We could tell there were some kinks that needed to be worked out in terms of the overall operations, but we sort of expected that going in. As the menu continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see what they add to the choices of food in the future. But for right now, they've hit a home run at Twin Span in terms of their food, beer and ambiance.
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