Road Tips

Schwartz's Deli - Montreal, QC

With the pandemic still going on - but with a glimmer of light now appearing at the end of a long tunnel - I haven't been able to travel for work for nearly a year.  To keep Road Tips relevant, I've gone back into the archives to republish some of the more memorable restaurants on my trips over the years.  Over the past month - with winter's fury hanging on deep into February - my wife and I have been hunkering down at night on our couch under blankets catching a few things on TV.  

One of the shows that we got deep into is Somebody Feed Phil, a wonderful program on Netflix if you like travel to interesting places to get food - like we do.  Starring Phil Rosenthal - an actor, writer and producer mainly known for developing the highly successful Everybody Loves Raymond television program which ran from 1996 to 2005 - Somebody Feed Phil follows Rosenthal in his quest to exotic places and cities around the world to learn more about local cuisine.  One of his stops was in Montreal - one of the great food cities in the world.  And one of his stops in Montreal was at the world-famous Schwartz's Deli - a place that I wrote about on Road Tips in 2013.  After watching that part of the episode and excitedly showing my wife where we sat in Schwartz's when my colleagues and I were there nearly 8 years ago, I decided to repost the entry on Schwartz's Deli and relive my introduction to their famous smoked meat sandwich that one day.  

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I like it when my boss calls us to Montreal for a meeting.  I like it even more when he calls the meeting when the weather is nicer than it is in mid-December, such as the two previous times I went up there.  The night before we were to all meet in Montreal a few weeks ago, my colleague, Ian, e-mailed that he was going to have a smoked beef sandwich at Schwartz's Deli in the heart of Montreal for lunch the next day.  I was familiar with Schwartz's and immediately replied that I was in for it, as well.  After getting through customs, and along with my colleagues Matt and Chris, we met up with Ian at Montreal Trudeau International Airport for a trip to Schwartz's Deli.

Schwartz's was opened in 1928 by Romanian Jewish immigrant Reuben Schwartz.  The original name of the place was "Montreal Hebrew Deli" before becoming simply known as "Schwartz's Deli".  Even though he owned the deli for over 40 years, it is said Rueben Schwartz was a very disagreeable man who was not good at running a business.  He was also said to be a gambler, a womanizer, and a man who liked to drink.  Even his immediate family hated him - so much so that he eventually had to move in with Maurice Zbringer, a classically-trained musician who played violin, and Zbringer's wife.  As a sign of appreciation for taking him in, Schwartz made Zbringer a partner in Schwartz's Deli.  And at the age of 75, Zbringer eventually bought the place from Schwartz in 1971.   

During Zbringer's ownership, Schwartz's Deli became profitable and renown for their smoked meat sandwiches - basically they take beef brisket that is cured in water with salt, peppercorns, coriander and sugar.  The meat is cured for 10 days before it is deep smoked for about six hours, then steamed to moisten the meat.  Schwartz's Deli was not the first place to serve Montreal smoked meat.  Local legend has it that Ben's De Luxe Delicatessen was the first to serve the smoked meat sandwiches.  Ian told us that he used to go to Ben's before it closed down a few years ago after being in business for 98 years.  He thought it was the best of the smoked meat sandwiches in Montreal.  But Schwartz's - now by default - is the oldest and most well-known of deli's that serve Montreal-style smoked meat sandwiches.

(I've had a Montreal-style smoked meat sandwich before - in, of all places, Omaha, Nebraska.  Click here to see my entry on the Montreal-style smoked meat sandwich at Brewburgers in Omaha.)   

It's also said that the Montreal Steak Seasoning - a popular spice and herb seasoning that some people (including myself) use to put on steaks - had its beginning at Schwartz's.  Legend has it that back in the 1940's a broiler cook by the name of Morris "The Shadow" Sherman began to season steaks with the pickling seasoning Schwartz's used to season their briskets.  The basic spices and herbs were garlic, coriander, dill weed, black pepper, cayenne pepper and salt.  Customers liked it so much that other deli and steak places in Montreal began to use it.  The Montreal Steak Seasoning is available in most grocery stores in the spice area, or you can order it directly from Schwartz's web site or you can also get it from Amazon.  (Click on this link that takes you to the Schwartz's Montreal Steak and Beef Seasoning on Amazon.)     

Maurice Zbringer was in poor health for the later years of his life, but he took a lot of the profits out of the business to fund free music concerts around the Montreal area.  After his wife passed away, he had a professional caretaker - Armande Toupin Chartrande - that looked after him and his affairs.  As a token of his appreciation for her service to him in his later years, Zbringer willed the delicatessen to Chartrande.  She ran it from Zbringer's death in 1981 to 1999.

As the pandemic continues - but with a light seemingly glowing at the end of a long tunnel - it's been nearly a year since I've been able to travel for work.  To keep things going on Road Tips, I've gone back in the archives to re-post some of the more memorable 

In 1999, Chartrande sold the business to its accountant, Hy Diamond.  Up to that point, Diamond was the only owner of Schwartz's that had any type of formal business training.  To help alleviate the long lines of people looking to get a quick sandwich to go, Diamond opened a take-out only location next door to the original Schwartz Deli in 2008.    

Diamond owned the business until 2012 when he sold it to a group that included Paul Nakis, owner of the Baton Rouge restaurant chain that started in the Montreal area; Eric and Martin Sara, whose father, Paul Sara, owned the Nickels Deli restaurant chain in Ontario and Quebec; and their aunt and uncle - superstar singer Celine Dion and her (late) husband/manager Rene Angelil.  (Dion and Angelil were also owners in Nickels restaurants from their inception in 1990 until they divested themselves from the company in 1997.)  

Immediately after the nearly $10 million dollar purchase of Schwartz's Deli, rumors abounded that the group was looking to sell franchises.  But Nakis and Angelil have repeatedly said that they are not interested in franchising the Schwartz's Deli concept.  However, earlier this year, the group began to sell pre-cooked vacuum-packed Schwartz's Deli smoked meat in grocery stores in the greater Montreal area.

Schwartz's Deli is located on Boulevard Ste. Laurent in the heart of Montreal. (see map) Boulevard Ste. Laurent is known as the Main Street of Montreal, or simply "The Main" to the locals.  The street features a number of small restaurants, shops and boutiques, and a somewhat Bohemian population.  Because it was a Sunday and there were a lot of people in the area, we were forced to find parking on a side street a couple blocks away from Schwartz's.  (Unfortunately, we unknowingly parked in a No Parking zone.  When we got back we encountered a Montreal parking attendant writing us a ticket. We soon found out that not being able to read the French "No Parking" signs was not a credible excuse to get out of the ticket.)  

We had driven by Schwartz's and noticed the long lines outside the place - something that happens most every day.  Even after 2 p.m., the line was about 25 people deep when we walked up to get in the queue.  It took us about 25 minutes waiting for people to leave and tables to open up.  

(A quick, but important note - Schwartz's is a cash only establishment.  They have an ATM in the back of the restaurant if you don't have any Canadian money on you.) 

Getting up closer to the front door, we saw a pile of cured smoked meat sitting in a refrigerated case in the window.  Chris was wondering what kind of meat it was.  I tried to explain that it started out as beef brisket, but it was neither categorized as corned beef or pastrami.  Chris decided that it was some sort of "mystery" smoked meat.  He was a little leery of trying it, I believe.   

 
We finally got inside and got a table right as you come in the door across from the deli counter.  The small place was packed with people sitting at tables and at the counter.  A waiter weaved his way through the crowd and came to our table with menus.  He took our drink order - no beer at Schwartz's - and the guys got cans of Coca-Cola and I got a water.  

In addition to the smoked meat sandwiches - which seemed like what everyone was ordering in the place - they have turkey, chicken or salami sandwiches available.  Originally, Schwartz's was a steakhouse when Reuben Schwartz opened 85 years ago and they still have steak dinners on the menu.  They have ribeye steaks on the menu and you can also get smoked meat plates if you don't want a sandwich.  I almost got the large smoked meat plate because I'd been hankering for a good corned beef-style sandwich or dinner for quite sometime.   

The traditional order at Schwartz's is a smoked beef sandwich ($6.40 Canadian Dollars), an order of fries, a kosher dill pickle, cole slaw and a Cherry Coke.  That sounded like a lot of food.  When the waiter came back to take our order, I was the first to order.  I ordered a smoked beef sandwich, fries and a pickle.  The waiter asked me how I wanted the sandwich.  I looked at him quizzically and he explained, "You can get it lean, medium, medium-fat or fat."  I figured fat would be brisket with a lot of the fat still on the meat, so I went with medium.  I understand medium-fat is one of the more popular choices among the regulars who go to Schwartz's.   

Everyone else at the table followed my lead and went with the exact same thing.  And it didn't take long for our sandwiches appear at the table.  The meat was piled high on the rye bread with sandwich halves teetering precariously on top.  Yellow mustard comes on the sandwich.  

I took a bite of the meat without the bread and it was moist and tender, but it was missing that corned beef or pastrami "pizazz".  There wasn't much of a smoky taste to the meat, nor did I get much of a salt or peppercorn taste to the meat.  It wasn't that it was dull in taste, it was different that what I expect in a cooked beef brisket.  Maybe the steaming takes some of the taste out of it.  The Montreal-style smoked meat sandwich I had in Omaha was more like a corned beef sandwich.  While the sandwich at Schwartz's was similar in look and texture, it was missing that little bite in taste that I like in a good cured brisket sandwich.  

I will say the French fries were pretty damned good, however.  Whatever they cooked them in gave them an excellent taste.  They were a bit soggy, but were loaded with great flavor.  My sandwich was good, but the fries were great.  I purposely didn't eat any breakfast that morning so I devoured my sandwich, my fries and the large kosher dill pickle with ease.  

Schwartz's Deli is one of those places you have to experience at least once if you're seeking historic places to eat.  My sandwich was fine, but not the earth-shaking taste sensation that I had hoped it would be.  The reactions of my two colleagues who had never had a Montreal-style smoked meat sandwich before were "Yeah, it was good," to "Aaah, yeah, I guess it was all right."  But we decided it probably wasn't anything that we'd stand in line for again.  Overrated?  Possibly.  But it was still cool to give Schwartz's Deli a try. 

 

Yampa Valley Kitchen - Steamboat Springs, CO

There are a number of very good breakfast places in the Steamboat Springs area.  We usually don't do big breakfasts, but we found that with all the running around and sight-seeing that we would do during the course of the day, a hearty breakfast was needed if we didn't have time to stop for lunch.  One of the places in the downtown Steamboat area was situated in an old house which really intrigued my wife.  We looked the restaurant up on line, found that they did breakfasts and one day we took a trip to Yampa Valley Kitchen. 

While we were in Steamboat Springs this past year, we ate at two restaurants - Mambo and Bésame - both owned by chef Hannah Hopkins and developer Jeremy MacGray.   (Click on the links to go to the Road Tips entries on both restaurants.)  It turns out that Yampa Valley Kitchen is the third of the trio of restaurants that Hopkins and MacGray own in Steamboat.   

The building that houses Yampa Valley Kitchen is an old farmhouse that was built in 1918.  The building was declared unstable and was condemned about six years ago.  However, a local chef by the name of Patrick Ayers took over the building in 2014 and remodeled it into a full-service restaurant.  In 2017, he started Cloverdale, a very high-end farm-to-fork restaurant in which he used food stuff grown on his farm outside of Steamboat Springs.  Ayers caught the eye of many food enthusiasts - primarily because the patrons were not given a choice of the foods when they would come to the restaurant.  They would eat whatever Ayers would have available that evening.  

Coupled with Cloverleaf being rather pricey - five-course meals for two ran about $130 dollars while 10 to 14 course meals could end up being close to $275 for two people - and that the menu changed daily, the restaurant proved to be a very risky proposition.  While many food critics and editors applauded Ayers avant-garde style, it didn't catch on with the locals.  Cloverdale closed in September of 2018.  (An aside - my wife and I remember seeing Cloverdale when we were in Steamboat in 2018, but my wife thought it was a gift shop and we didn't bother checking the place out.)  

In December of 2018, another restaurant took over Cloverdale's spot - Low Country Kitchen, a southern-style eatery run by Brian and Katy Vaughn.  The Vaughn's opened the original Low Country Kitchen along Lincoln Avenue in Steamboat back in 2014.  But after a record winter of 2018-19 for Low Country Kitchen, a financial restructuring fell through and the Vaughns were forced to close Low Country Kitchen in June of 2019.  

Hopkins and MacGray saw the potential of the little restaurant and they took over the property in late 2019.   MacGray's wife, Krysta, redesigned the interior of the restaurant to give it more of a farm-house effect.  Chef  Joe Campbell - who was also the executive chef for Mambo and Bésame - came up with a menu using locally-sourced and organically-raised food ingredients.  With everything in place, Yampa Valley Kitchen opened in July of 2020.  

We pulled up to Yampa Valley Kitchen at the corner of Oak St. and 9th St. just before 9 a.m.  (see map)  The restaurant definitely looked like it would have been an old farmhouse from the early 20th century, but updated to look more modern.  It had a metal roof and some impressive landscaping around the building.  Off to the one side was an outdoor patio for dining outside when the weather was nice.  But the weather had turned unseasonably cold during our visit and outdoor dining was out of the question for the remaining days of our visit.  

We had actually tried to get into Yampa Valley Kitchen one morning, but we were told that it would probably be a 45 minute wait and they really didn't have a spot for people to wait.  We promptly made reservations for breakfast the next day at 9 a.m.  This time, we were able to get right in.  

Just past the hostess stand was the bar area.  Yampa Valley Kitchen has a full bar with specialty drinks, wine and beer.  Their bloody mary consisted of a base made with juiced beets, peppers and tomatoes, then lemon juice, ginger, spices and herbs are mixed in with a horseradish-infused vodka.  It's finished with celery and a hot sauce if you want it spicy.  I came about this close to ordering one, but I didn't.  We were going to have a long day of sight-seeing and walking around some of the area lakes.   

The main dining area wasn't all that big with a small dining area with a large bay window off to the side.  There was an upstairs to the place, but I don't know if there was any dining space up there.  With the multiple windows on the main floor of the restaurant, the room was filled with a lot of natural light.  

Our hostess showed us to a table near one of the front windows and dropped off a couple breakfast menus for us.  Our server that morning was Clarissa, a friendly and soft-spoken young lady.  I immediately ordered a double espresso and a glass of orange juice.  My wife was sort of surprised to see smoothies on the menu and thought about getting the golden mango smoothie made with mangoes, bananas, coconut turmeric and agave juice.  But she ended up getting an orange juice and coffee, as well.

We were sort of surprised at the number of items on the breakfast menu.  (The lunch menu featured soups, salads, sandwiches, a burger, and light entrees featuring shrimp and grits, salmon miso soup, and a daily "chef's-choice" frittata.  Some of the breakfast menu items migrate to the lunch menu at Yampa Valley Kitchen.)  They had a basic American-style breakfast with two eggs, toast and a choice of either sausage, bacon or ham, and a choice of fried potatoes or a medley of greens made fresh in the kitchen.  They had a French omelet made with gruyére cheese and ham, eggs Benedict, traditional biscuits and gravy, and a choice of crepes.  They also had a number of vegetarian selections such as a banana-smoothie bowl with almond butter and almond milk, a vegetable omelet, and avocado toast.  

My wife was torn between the lemon crepe and the chocolate hazelnut crepe made with an in-house chocolate hazelnut spread, similar to Nutella.  I had my eye on the French omelet.  Or the lemon crepe, as well.  I really didn't know which way to turn.  

Well, that is until Clarissa brought out a couple plates of breakfast items to a couple ladies seated at a table in the middle of the dining room.  I'm usually not one to pry into what someone is eating at another table and I certainly wasn't going to ask the lady who was seemingly enjoying what she ordered.  I asked Clarissa instead when she came back to take our order.  

"Oh, that," she turned back to me after looking at the table.  "That's the Reuben Benedict."  I said that it looked good and Clarissa said it was one of the more popular items on their menu.  I ended up order that instead of the French omelet.  My wife ordered the lemon crepe, so I knew that I'd be able to get a bite or two of that to try.  

The reuben Benedict was outstanding.  It's no wonder it's one of the more popular items on the menu.  It featured house-made pastrami along with kimchi on English muffin halves topped with poached eggs and a house-made hollandaise.  The house-made pastrami was terrific and the overall savory flavor of my breakfast was out-of-this-world.  

My wife also couldn't say enough about her lemon crepe.  The thin crepe was filled with a rich lemon curd filling.  Pods of whipped vanilla cream topped with fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries surrounded the crepe.  My wife offered me a bite of the crepe with some cream and berries.  I have to say it was delicious with a lot of different taste sensations going on in my mouth.  My wife tried a bite of the reuben Benedict and decided that while it was good, she was happy with her lemon crepe.  So, we were both happy with what we ordered.  

We were very happy with the breakfasts we got at Yampa Valley Kitchen.  My reuben Benedict was off-the-charts, while my wife loved her lemon crepe with whipped vanilla cream and berries.  While they did have a couple three traditional breakfasts on the menu, most of the items were definitely a step-up in terms of taste and quality of the ingredients.  But, once again, like many other places in Steamboat Springs, breakfast wasn't cheap.  It was $55 bucks before tax and tip.  And Clarissa did get a nice tip as she did a very good in taking care of us.  Other than the high prices, we thoroughly enjoyed our breakfasts at Yampa Valley Kitchen.  But, you know, we don't mind paying extra if the food is good.  And the food at Yampa Valley Kitchen is very good.  

Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza - Eldridge, IA

My wife and I have a friend who had a home in the small town of Long Grove, about a 20 minute drive north of the Quad Cities.  Had is the correct tense here as she just moved back to West Virginia to be closer to family while her husband works overseas as a government contractor.  A couple weeks before she moved, she invited us out to her place to help her make heads or tails of some electronics equipment her husband said to go ahead and sell in the upcoming garage sale.  I jumped on the chance to see if there was something that was appealing to me.  (There was - I got a vintage Yamaha cassette tape deck player.  I haven't had a cassette tape deck player in my system since my Nakamichi LX-3 died - for the third time - a few years back and I didn't want to keep putting money into the thing.  And - yes - I still have hundreds of cassette tapes in my music collection.)  To further entice us to come out, our friend said that she wanted to go to a new pizza place in Eldridge, the town just to the south of Long Grove.  We thought that would be a fun night, so after spending some time going through things at her house, we ventured down the road to Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Kitchen.

Now, I was somewhat familiar with Tony Sacco's and knew that it was a franchise.  About 10 years ago, I stayed at a hotel in the northwest Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect.  The hotel was part of an entertainment/shopping destination called Randhurst Village that had a Tony Sacco's pizza joint in it.  That Tony Sacco's location didn't last too long - maybe two or three years - and I never did try it.  

The original Tony Sacco's dates back nearly 15 years ago when three Florida friends - all Michigan natives - decided to open a coal-fired pizza place, similar to old-world wood-fired Italian pizza places they had in their youths.  Only one - Tony Sacco - had any restaurant experience, while the other two - Chuck Senatore and George Kurajian - were an engineer and a former food service equipment executive, respectively.  They decided upon using Sacco's name since it sounded the most Italian of the bunch, but Sacco left the venture before they opened their first Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza in Estero, FL in 2008.  The group decided on coal over the old world wood ovens because coal burned hotter - and faster - than wood.  

Now, opening a restaurant in the midst of a recession probably isn't the smartest thing to do, but Senatore and Kurajian stuck it out and Tony Sacco's started to get a following.  They initially had plans to open 10 of the Tony Sacco's locations in the southwest Florida area on their own, but then the co-owners were approached by a handful of people looking to open franchised restaurants in the Midwest and southern states.  Senatore and Kurajian soon started the TSP Management Group to oversee franchising the Tony Sacco restaurants.  At one point, there were over a dozen Tony Sacco's in states from Illinois and Michigan down through Indiana and Ohio, and on south all the way to a handful in southwest Florida.  

It turned out that the Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza concept didn't work out well for a lot of franchisees as there are now just four other locations outside of the original one in Estero, FL.  And the confounding things is that the remaining locations are located in peculiar areas - there's one in northwest Indiana, one in a small city outside of Cleveland, one in a small town between Detroit and Lansing, MI, and the newest one in Eldridge, a bedroom community/agriculture-centric area just north of the Quad Cities.  

In 2017, the Whitty family - whose father, Joe, founded Happy Joe's Pizza - sold their interests in Happy Joe's to a newly formed company called Dynamic Restaurant Holdings.  At the same time, Dynamic Restaurant Holdings acquired majority interest in Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza.  Ironically, Dynamic Restaurant Holdings named industry veteran Tom Sacco (formerly with Bonanza and Ponderosa Steakhouse, Red Robin and BJ's Brewhouse) as their new CEO in October of last year.  Sacco - who has no family connection to the original Tony Sacco - announced last fall that they would put in a Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza in what was the old Lancers, then Grille 350 location in Eldridge.  

The Eldridge Tony's Sacco location is attached to the Happy Joe's restaurant, and because of that it has a different menu than the other locations.  From Day 1, Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza never had fryers, microwave ovens, or stove tops.  Everything was made in the coal-fired ovens.  But while the Eldridge location still has a coal-fired oven, the attached kitchen from Happy Joe's allows for an expansion of food offerings such as burgers, sandwiches, Italian entrees and appetizers such as Buffalo chicken dip and Italian nachos featuring crostini bread instead of corn chips.  

Our friend had eaten there with other friends a few nights before, but she said, "The service was just so bad.  I  thought the food was good, but the service was horrible."  It could be that the service is bad because Tony Sacco's is having trouble getting employees to work there.  In a recent article in the Quad City Times, Tom Sacco lamented that he was struggling to find full-time employees - even paying more than the going rate of most other restaurants in the area.  He said that many of the potential employees indicated that they didn't want to make the drive from the Quad Cities up to Eldridge - just 15 minutes north of downtown Davenport.  Sacco said that he only had 12 employees at one point when he ideally would like to have 30 to 35 people on staff.   Sacco said that he had to move a couple employees over to Eldridge from the Tony Sacco's operation just outside of South Bend, IN.  

This past late fall, we lost one of our favorite pizza places in the Quad Cities, Crust Pizza.  (Click here to see the entry on Crust.)  We liked the variety Crust offered (Chicago-deep dish, wood-fired Neapolitan, and tavern-cut thin crust pizzas) and they had a great selection of craft beer, wine and a full bar menu.  So, when we heard that a Tony Sacco's was opening in the area, we were hoping that it would, at the very least, fill some of the hole that the closing of Crust put into our regular rotation of non-Quad City-style pizza establishments that we like to go to.  

We pulled into the parking lot at Tony Sacco's just after 6 p.m. on a Friday night.  (see map)  We think that getting employees was still a problem for Tony Sacco's because we were told it would be a 30 minute wait for a table.  Even with social distancing guidelines in place, there appeared to be a number of open tables and booths in the restaurant.  It was a very large space.  We had eaten at the old Lancers Grille a couple of times years and years ago, but I didn't remember it being this big of a place.  We just figured they didn't have enough wait staff to take care of people if they sat everyone as they came in.  

After we put our name in, the hostess asked for a phone number to contact us when our table was ready.  I looked over and saw a small bar area with a corrugated tin facade.  I asked if we could get a drink while we waited.  The hostess flatly said, "No, you cannot."  We sort of stood by the front door and she finally said, "And you can't even be in here waiting for your table.  You'll have to go to your car."  I asked if we could stand in the vestibule and she said, "No, I'm sorry."  

So we did.  We sat in our car waiting for just over 30 minutes before my phone buzzed with a text that our table was ready.  While we were sitting there talking, our friend kept peering over at the front door.  "There's people standing in the entry way," she said with a disgusted tone.  We told her that it was fine to wait in the car.  I'd rather be hanging in an area away from people in the dead of winter in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.  

We went back inside and were greeted by another young lady who took us to a booth just past the hostess stand.  We were given menus and it wasn't too long after that when our server for the evening, an energetic and fun young lady by the name of Pam came over to greet us.  The first dilemma we had was what to drink.  They had a couple IPA's on tap - one of 12 beers they had on tap - one, the Space Dust from the Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle, Washington, and the other the Surf Zombie IPA from the Iowa Brewing Company in Cedar Rapids.  I started out with a Space Dust, then switched to a Surf Zombie for my second beer.  

Drinks for the women were tough.  My wife wanted a vodka and cranberry, but all they had were cans of cranberry lemonade.  She ended up taking a Space Dust IPA.  Our friend loves lagers and she's a big fan of Samuel Adams beer.  Well, they had no lagers on tap, no Sam Adams in bottles and the only full-bodied lager they had was Budweiser in bottles.  She reluctantly took one of those.  Pam apologized for them not having Samuel Adams.  "We get requests for that beer all the time," she said.  "I need to let the owner know that we may need to bring some in."  

(I saw Tom Sacco sitting up at the bar later in the evening, recognizing him from his picture in the paper.)

We figured that we'd get a pizza - our friend was completely good with our standard Italian sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.  At Tony Sacco's, they offer two kinds of pepperoni - the regular cut and the "cupped" pepperoni that curls up and is a little more crisp than the regular pepperoni.  We ordered a large (16") pizza with the regular pepperoni.  

My wife also wanted to get a salad and she was able to talk our friend into sharing the Italian chop salad they had on the menu.  It featured chopped romaine lettuce mixed in with pepperoni, sliced ham and salami, red onions, chopped tomatoes, banana pepper rings, chopped celery with green and Kalamata olives.  Shredded provolone cheese topped the salad.   

We sat there for quite sometime waiting for the salad to show up.  It finally came to the table and not more than 30 seconds later while the women were divvying up the salad, our pizza came.  "Oh, geez," my wife said.  "I would have liked to have gotten the salad long before the pizza."  

Pam came over to check on us after the pizza made it to the table and I said, "I think they would have liked to have gotten the salad a lot sooner than just 30 seconds before the pizza showed up."   

She immediately apologized.  "That's on me, you guys," she said.  "I should have asked if you wanted it before the pizza because we consider our salads as regular entrees."  Quite honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal and it was another learning experience for us as patrons and Pam as a server at a new restaurant.  

The pizza looked pretty good.  It featured chunks of sausage, large discs of pepperoni, and a bunch of sliced fresh mushrooms.  The only thing that I could see was that it seemed that they concentrated much of the toppings in the center of the pizza.  

And I have to say that the pizza was very good.  The crust was puffy, but not too thick.  The mozzarella cheese was fresh and creamy.  And the sausage and pepperoni were slight spicy.  The earthiness of the fresh mushrooms rounded the overall flavor of the pizza into a very favorable taste.  

The women concentrated more on their salad - which was served in a large bowl and put on two plates that they had brought out - than they did the pizza.  I had three pieces before I threw in the towel.  My wife and our friend both had one piece each.  The remaining 3 pieces we put into a box and let our friend take them back to her house.    

Since Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza had been open less than 6 weeks when we went there for our first visit, we completely broke our rule of waiting 3 months after a restaurant opens to give it a try.  While there were a couple hiccups along the way on this visit, we wrote them off to growing pains of a new restaurant trying to find itself on a short staff.  Our friend said that the service on this visit was markedly better than the service she experienced on her first visit just a few days before.  I was pleased with our pizza - the cheese and toppings were fresh and full of flavor.  It's one of the better ones that I've had in the greater Quad Cities area.  We're not averse to taking the drive out to Eldridge and I'm sure we'll find ourselves out at Tony Sacco's Coal Fire Oven every once in a while to enjoy a good non-Quad City-style pizza.