The winter weather had finally broke and it was a sunny and unseasonably warm Saturday over a recent weekend. My wife was suffering from cabin fever and was wanting to go for a drive down the Mississippi River to escape the last vestige of snow on the ground. (We had over 60 days of continuous snow cover - the 5th longest on record for our area.) I wanted to watch basketball that day, but as I learned a long time ago - a happy wife is a happy life. While I wasn't looking to head as far as Burlington or Quincy, I decided to head down Iowa Highway 22 along the river and we ended up in Muscatine. But I also had an ulterior motive. I wanted to try a place called Boonie's on the Avenue that I had heard had good burgers. Once we got to Muscatine, my wife was up for some lunch, so we sought out Boonie's to give it a try.
Almost his whole adult life, Mike Kleist has been involved in the bar and restaurant business around the Muscatine area. As a kid in high school, Kleist always wore a baseball cap that said "Boondocks" across the front. His friends ended up giving him the name of "Boonie" because he wore the cap incessantly. At the age of 22, Kleist opened Boonie's Basement, a small tavern in downtown Muscatine, and over the years Kleist ran other places such as The Loading Dock and Bootleggers in the area. Kleist was also a semi-professional poker player who lived part-time in Las Vegas for over 15 years following his passion for the game. So it was a natural gamble for Kleist when local businessman Tom Meeker approached him in 2012 with an opportunity.
Meeker owned a building that housed the former MVP's Sports Lounge, but prior to it being MVP's, it was the location for Kleist's Bootleggers sports bar and restaurant. Meeker wanted to do something with the space and talked with Kleist about opening a more upscale sports bar in the space. At first, Kleist was hesitant - he'd already been through his sports bar phase with Bootleggers - but Meeker (who also owned The Button Factory restaurant at the time) was persistent. Finally, Kleist agreed to take over the spot and Boonie's on the Avenue opened in April of 2013. He was joined in the business by his son Cord who was just getting ready to graduate high school a little over a month later.
(Mike Kleist and his wife Teresa also own Proof Social, a wine/martini bar in downtown Muscatine; while Cord Kleist and his brother Chance own Skinny's Barbeque in Muscatine.)
It was just after 1 p.m. when we pulled up to Boonie's on the Avenue on Iowa Ave., about 3 blocks from the Mississippi River in downtown Muscatine. (see map) Upon entering the place we realized that we had been in there before - probably when it was called MVP's a number of years ago when we were in Muscatine for a street festival on Iowa Ave. where a friend of ours was playing in one of the bands that night. The inside of the sports bar featured exposed brick walls with corrugated tin sheathing on the walls of an elevated dining space in the back. Tin tiles painted in sort of a rust color were on the ceiling. The place was packed on that Saturday afternoon with tons of people also wanting to get out and enjoy the day.
The bar area was to the right as you walk into Boonie's. They had a number of craft beers on tap and a full bar selection. Boonie's has 27 flat-screen televisions in the place, but curiously they only had two basketball games showing on the majority of the screens. Knowing that there were at least six games available to watch at that time (remember - I was all set to watch basketball at home that day), I thought it was very curious that on the main wall of 8 televisions five of the TV's were set to one of the two games they were showing at the time.
We were greeted by a hostess when we walked in and she asked us if we wanted to take the high-top table near the window just off the bar. It wasn't cleaned off yet and looking around at the lack of available tables in the place at the time, we decided to take it. Our server for the day, an energetic young lady by the name of Donnina, came over to wipe down and disinfect the table. After she finished doing that and we sat down, she took a couple menus out of the condiment holder on the table and gave them to us. She asked what we wanted to drink and I saw that they had the Easy Eddie hazy IPA from the Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City and Solon. My wife got a tall Tito's vodka and cranberry.
Donnina left to get the drinks and came back moments later. "I'm sorry," she said. "We're out of the Easy Eddie." I took a quick look at their craft beer list which featured 14 beers from various Iowa breweries such as Contrary Brewing in Muscatine, Exile Brewing in Des Moines, and Gezellig Brewing out of my hometown of Newton. I opted for the Surf Zombies American IPA out of Iowa Brewing Company in Cedar Rapids. They had that one.
Most of the menu at Boonie's featured your typical sports bar food - appetizers, wings, sandwiches, burgers, soups and salads. They also had a handful of entrees such as a grilled salmon dinner, an 8-ounce sirloin steak, and fish & chips. The salads caught the eye of my wife who was intrigued by the Strawberry Spring salad - it was a choice of mixed greens or fresh spinach topped with fresh strawberries and a choice of grilled or popcorn chicken. Sliced red onions, feta cheese, candied walnuts and a choice of dressing finished the toppings.
Me - I got caught looking at the Ultimate Ham & Cheese sandwich - ham, Swiss and American cheese, an over-hard egg and bacon on triple-decked wheatberry bread. That sounded really yummy, but I wanted to try their burger.
They had a number of specialty burgers on the menu including the Five Alarm burger with pepper jack cheese, jalapeños and a sriracha sauce. The Breakfast burger was topped with bacon, a cheese sauce, an over-easy egg and hash brown potatoes. The Sticky burger had peanut butter (no thanks!), bacon and cheddar cheese on it. And the Coordinator burger was topped with pulled pork, jalapeños, barbecue sauce and onion straws. Some of them sounded interesting, but I was probably going to opt for a "build-your-own" burger.
My wife decided she wanted a burger, as well. She got just a basic cheddar cheese burger that featured two beef patties that came with lettuce, tomato, pickles and sliced red onions. She had a choice of a side and she decided to try Boonie's sweet pepper cole slaw. There are choices for buns at Boonie's including a regular bun, a Ciabatta bun, an onion bun or a wheatberry bun. She went for the regular bun.
One of the interesting touches they do to the burgers at Boonie's is to brand the top of the bun crown with Boonie's logo. "Soon to be World Famous" is Boonie's motto and that was part of the brand on the bun.
My "build-you-own" burger consisted of my usual - pepper jack cheese, grilled mushrooms and bacon with a regular bun, also. I thought a bit about the onion bun, but decided against it at the last moment. I got the same lettuce, tomato, red onion and pickles on the side. I was amazed at how ripe and fresh the tomato slices were for late winter. For my side, I got tater tots - naturally. Donnina provided Cholula hot sauce on the side for me to dip the tots in.
After dressing the burger, I had to get a shot of the finished product. It looks pretty scrumptious, doesn't it? Well, as we all know, looks can be deceiving.
The twin quarter-pound patties were woefully overcooked. While the toppings were fine, they couldn't compensate for the tasteless burger patties. And on top of all that (get the pun?), the bun was dried out and there turned out to be too much of it. We speculated that branding the top as well as toasting it, the bun got dried out. It was very disappointing, to say the least.
My wife also remarked that her burger was overcooked, too. She said, "Ah, I've had better burgers." But she did like her sweet pepper cole slaw. I tried a bite and it had a very unique taste. I would have never thought about putting sweet peppers in cole slaw, but I didn't mind it a bit.
Before we were served our food, I was ready for another beer. I saw on the beer menu that they had the Big Grove IPA on tap and I ordered one of those from Donnina. Except, once again, she came back to tell me that they were out of THAT as well. I ordered up another Surf Zombies IPA - not my favorite, but it worked for me that day.
Now, they were pretty busy in the place and I had gone through my second beer during lunch. My wife still had half of her tall vodka and cranberry to go through after I finished my lunch and I wanted to order another beer. Donnina came over to check on us and I ordered another beer. Time passed. And passed. And passed. My wife had all but finished her vodka and cranberry when I decided I had to go to the restroom. We were ready to go by that time and as I walked toward the restroom, I caught up with Donnina who was coming out of the kitchen with some food for a table. I said to her in passing, "Hey, we're ready to go and I don't want my beer that I had ordered."
"Are you sure," she said to me. "I mean, it's sitting right here on the bar."
I said, "Yeah, I would have liked to have had it 15 minutes ago when I first ordered it. But my wife is finished with her drink and we have to get going."
"Well, I'm sorry," she said in a terse and somewhat protesting manner. "We're very busy in here today." I told her that I could see that, but we needed to get going and we just needed our check.
I went back to the table and told my wife that I canceled my beer order - even though it was sitting on the bar. And when Donnina came back with our bill, another person brought my beer - that had been ordered nearly 20 minutes prior to the table. "Oh, he doesn't want it now," Donnina told the person.
My wife felt bad for Donnina, but I didn't. "I understand that they're busy in here and if they're understaffed, that's management's fault. Waiting five minutes for a beer is understandable. Waiting more than 15 minutes is not."
When Donnina came back to get my credit card my wife asked if she had to pay for the beer. "Oh, heavens, no," she said. "I know some places will make the servers pay for drinks or food that someone skips out or changes their mind. Not here." Then she thanked us for coming in and said, "We are busy and I'm sorry I didn't get it to you." We told her not to worry. Besides, we were going to Contrary Brewing for a beer after we left Boonie's.
My wife still felt sorry for Donnina and left her cash on top of the tip that I had put on my card. "She is running her ass off," my wife said in a caring manner. "She deserves this cash."
I don't want to say our visit to Boonie's on the Avenue was bad, it was just disappointing that the burgers I had heard were so good weren't anywhere near what I was expecting. While I admit they were busy and our server was having a hard time keeping up, I didn't expect to be waiting over 15 minutes for a beer that I had ordered. I liked the decor of the place and even though they didn't fully utilize the capabilities of their 27 flat screen televisions they had throughout the place, I could see coming in to watch sporting events in Boonie's. I don't know, maybe we'll head back down sometime in the future to give it another try - hopefully when they aren't as busy - because that Ultimate Ham & Cheese sandwich has been calling my name.