My wife and I like to go out on Sunday's from time to time to get a burger and a bloody mary. There are a few locally-owned places that have that combination and we were telling a friend about looking for places that have good burgers and bloody mary's. She told us, "Have you guys tried the Double D Diner yet?" Then she raved about the burgers they had there. We had heard about the place, knew its location in northwest Davenport, but we had not been there. We've been there twice now - once for dinner and once for breakfast. We've had the burger and the bloody mary separately and this Road Tips entry is the combination of our two visits.
Double D Diner owner Dusti Reese has been in the concessions business for a number of years. She founded Sunshine Concessions in 2000 and went to local fairs and events selling everything from grilled tenderloins to corn dogs to funnel cakes to fruit shake-up drinks. For over 15 years, Dusti worked the local circuit with her crew and even did catering work for businesses in the area. In 2019, she did a complete 180 degree change by opening a small women's clothing store - LillyPad Boutique - later that year. She was located next door to a small diner by the name of The Kitchen that we had heard was sort of spotty with their food and service. When The Kitchen closed in late 2019, Reese saw an opportunity as there were very few dining options on Davenport's northwest side.
Reese opened the Double D Diner on February 29, 2020. Two weeks later, she was forced to shut her doors to dine-in business due to the pandemic. Reese thinks of herself as a pretty creative person, so she was one of the first to offer to-go dining for her restaurant and relied upon social media to let people know. That kept her going up to the time that limited in-person dining was re-established last summer.
Last August, a derecho hit the Quad Cities and left thousands of people without power for days and a number of restaurants were forced to close until power was restored. Once again, Reese's creative side showed through as she rolled out one of her gas grills that she used for her concession business onto the lot in front of the restaurant and started to make burgers, ribeyes, brats, grilled chicken, and pork tenderloin sandwiches for people who were looking for something to eat. It was a hit and by the early afternoon on some days while waiting for the power to go back on, Reese would sell out of some meat items. Friends and family members helped out by running for more buns and supplies while Reese kept the grill smoking feeding a large number of people who saw that she was open.
Picture at right courtesy Double D Diner Facebook page.
Cedar Rapids was hard-hit by the derecho and Reese ended up taking her outdoor grill up to that city a couple weekends later to make food for people who still had no power in their neighborhoods. From time to time on nice days, she'll put the outdoor grill up on weekends in front of her restaurant to sells brats, burgers and grilled sandwiches.
The Double D Diner grew in popularity due in part to the positive reactions Reese received in the local press and on social media after the derecho. Wait times going into the fall and into the winter on some weekend days were reaching 30 to 45 minutes for a table. While the diner was going gangbusters, her boutique was bobbing along on its own. Reese decided in March of this year to close the boutique and use the space as a combination extra dining overflow/reception/private dining room. By the end of April of this year, the boutique space had been transformed into part of the Double D Diner.
One recent evening, my wife and I weren't in the mood to cook and we decided to head over to the Double D Diner to get one of their burgers our friend had told us about. It was just after 7 p.m. when we got there and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. (see map) Dusti Reese was behind the front counter at the grill and we sat in a booth along the wall opposite the bar. The bar was sort of a catch-all for the kitchen staff and you couldn't have sat there if you wanted to. The main dining area - sans the bar - sits around 36 people.
Marissa was our server that evening and she dropped off a couple menus to look over. They do have a full bar at Double D Diner and I wanted a beer. I saw that they had the Easy Eddy hazy IPA from the Big Grove Brewery on the menu and I ordered one of those. Marissa came back and said that they were unfortunately out of the Easy Eddy. I went with a safe pick after that and ordered a Bud Light. She came back moments later and said they were out of Bud Light. "Do you have Budweiser," I asked. She said she did and went to fetch me one. It was in a can and I was given a glass to pour it in. The beer, however, was not as cold as I would have liked - probably in the 55 to 60 degree temperature range - and it didn't go down all that well.
For a diner, it's a pretty short menu. They serve breakfast all day - 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. (they close at 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and at 3 p.m. on Sunday) - and about 2/3rds of the menu on one side is devoted to breakfast items. Double D Diner specializes in omelettes, French toast, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, and also has Mexican-style items such as eggs and chorizo, as well as a breakfast burrito.
The lunch and dinner part of the menu features sandwiches, salads, and burgers, while full dinner entrees such as a bruschetta chicken breast, an 8-ounce Iowa pork chop, and a 10-ounce ribeye are available. Double D Diner features daily lunch and dinner specials such as meatloaf, tacos and special pricing on pork tenderloin sandwiches. Appetizers such as chicken wings, fried pickles, and sirloin steak bites served with a blue cheese fondue were also on the menu.
We were there for the burgers and they have a "build-your-own-burger" part of the menu. I went with my standard burger of Swiss cheese and sautéed mushrooms. I could have gotten bacon on it, but I decided against it on my first visit. I had my choice of a brioche or a pretzel bun and I went with the brioche. I got a side of the fries to go along with the burger.
In addition to the cheese and mushrooms, I got lettuce, a tomato slice, some red onions and dill pickles for the burger. All together, the burger was stacked high when I went to take my first bite.
Now, I grew up in Newton, IA and there was a place there called the Cardinal Lunch that was a 24-hour place in its day. They had burgers there where they used some sort of a butter sauce or batter that they would put on the bun and then grill the buns face down on a flat-top grill. The taste was one of those things I cherished in my youth. The burgers - especially the buns - tasted exactly like that at the Double D Diner. In fact, Dusti Reese came over to talk to us after we finished and I asked her if she did anything special with the buns to get that taste. "Oh, no. Nothing special at all," she said. "We just put butter on them, then put them on the grill to toast them." I was hoping she would give me an insight to something really special about the type of butter or if she mixed anything with it, but she said it was just straight butter. In any event, this was an outstanding burger.
My wife went the burger route, as well, getting a cheddar cheese burger with sautéed onions along with chipotle mayo and a garlic aioli sauce on the side. For her side, she got Double D Diner's creamy cole slaw. She also got lettuce, fresh onion, pickles and tomato with her burger.
Each burger starts as a 1/2 pound patty and is flat-grilled in its own juices. It has a crispy outer shell and both of our burgers were cooked perfectly inside to a medium with a hint of pink. The brioche buns that we both got were light, but held up very well with the juiciness of the burger combined with the veggies, cheese and condiments that we put on them. The garlic aioli that my wife got was especially pungent and forward in taste. I dipped some of my fries into the garlic aioli because I knew that I wouldn't want to be around her later that evening if I didn't eat some of the aioli to counter what she had eaten. I also dipped some of my fries - which were also very good, by the way - into the chipotle mayo. It had a nice little spiciness to it, but wasn't overpowering in taste.
Over the 4th of July weekend, we went back to the Double D Diner for breakfast. This time, the place was packed and we had to wait a short while for a booth to open up. This time, I got a bloody mary and it was pretty underwhelming. They use Jimmy Luv's Bloody Mary Mix, a mix from a small company out of Milwaukee. I've had the Jimmy Luv's before, but wasn't all that impressed with it. (For a bloody mary at home, I prefer the Zing Zang mix for a number of reasons. Then I usually doctor it up with ground horseradish, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, juice from a real lime and a lot of cracked black pepper. Plus Zing Zang has the lowest amount of sodium compared to other mixes on the market.)
For breakfast that day, I got a sausage, mushroom and Swiss cheese omelet. It featured three eggs in the omelet and it was paper thin - the way I like my omelets. Hash browns came on the side. I asked our server that day for some Cholula hot sauce to go on to the omelet and hash browns to zip up the taste a bit. On their own without any hot sauce, both the hash browns and omelet were good. Not outstanding, but good.
My wife went with the two eggs, bacon, hashbrowns with toast breakfast. And as she usually does when she checks out a new breakfast place, she got a single pancake to try. The pancake was a little more fluffy than she prefers, but it had sort of a crusty edge that she likes. The eggs were ordered as scrambled, but they came out sort of like an omelet. She just cut up the eggs like they were scrambled.
My wife was happy with her breakfast. She ate all her eggs, gave me a piece of bacon, and had a bit of the hash browns. But she must have liked the pancake as she ate about half of it. I tried a bite of the pancake and I thought it was fine.
Our friend definitely did not steer us wrong on the burgers at the Double D Diner. I will say it is one of the best ones I've had around the Quad Cities. The breakfast at Double D Diner is also good - nothing special, but dependably good. I wasn't too whippy on the their bloody mary, so that may take them out of our Sunday burger and bloody mary rotation. But the service was efficient and friendly. The Double D Diner isn't anything fancy, but it's far from a greasy spoon restaurant. We would recommend giving it a try if you're in the area.
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