Our local newspaper - the Quad City Times - has downsized their news staff over the past few years which means fewer stories with a local angle. These days, the bulk of the the newspaper is filled daily with articles from other news outlets around the state of Iowa and the Midwest. One article that they had back in early December was from the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald on a new craft beer and wine-centric restaurant in the fast growing town of Peosta, IA - a bedroom community located just about 15 minutes south and west of Dubuque off U.S. Highway 20. My wife had a Friday off and was sort of in the mood for a little road trip. We took off going north out of Davenport and I made it over to Peosta to search for this new restaurant. After some confusing twists and turns trying to get to the place, we finally pulled up in front of the Darkbird Taphouse to check it out.
It had been less than a month since Darkbird Taphouse had opened their doors. And that went against our usual 90-day start-up period we try to give restaurants to try and work the kinks and newness out of their system. But the article intrigued me enough where I wanted to go to a place that wasn't a brewpub, but a place that highlighted craft beers from across Iowa, parts of the Midwest and beyond. We weren't even really thinking about food, but if they had food we'd certainly consider it.
Jeff Burds is the man behind the Darkbird Taphouse. The local entrepreneur helped start Dimensional Brewing Company in Dubuque along with co-owner/co-founder Tom Rauen in November of 2018. Living out in Peosta, Burds saw the potential for a modern-style taphouse that he wanted to build on a greenspace area in southeast Peosta. Burds went to the Peosta City Council in March of last year with his plans for a $2 million dollar building that would be the focal point of other development in the area. Work started on the site later in the spring and the building was finished in late October. After a handful of soft-opening dates which featured live music, Darkbird Taphouse opened around Thanksgiving of last year.
To run the place, Burds called on his daughter-in-law Amanda Burds to manage the day-to-day operations. To run the kitchen, Burds hired Andrew New. For the previous five years New worked in the kitchen at Brazen, an upscale bistro in downtown Dubuque that my wife and I have wanted to go to for quite sometime.
We sort of knew where Darkbird Taphouse was, but it was so new that it didn't show up in our GPS. My wife used her phone to direct us back onto Highway 20 eastbound from Peosta and we saw the building just north of the divided highway on a frontage road. We got off at Thunder Hills Road and then took a left onto Thunder Valley Drive, the frontage road that goes in front of Darkbird Taphouse. (see map) As I said, it was a little confusing for our first visit, but will now know how to get there on subsequent visits.
We were lucky the day we went to Darkbird Taphouse - they fully open (bar and kitchen) at 11 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They open at 2 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, but the kitchen doesn't open until 4 p.m. those days. They're closed on Monday and Tuesday. There was a large parking lot in front of the building.
Going inside, we found a large open space with a high ceiling with exposed ductwork and ceiling fans, polished concrete floors, and large southern exposure windows that let in an abundance of natural light. Two garage doors were on the east end of the space that could be opened in warmer months for access to an outdoor patio.
We took a seat at a booth along the west wall of the tap house. It's counter service at Darkbird Taphouse and beer and food menus were available via a QR code that we could easily scan with our phones.
I was sort of intrigued by some of the beers they had available on tap. Of course, they had beers from Dimensional Brewing Company out of Dubuque, but they also had beers on tap from breweries such as Exile Brewing out of Des Moines, and brews from 3 of our favorite microbreweries - Pulpit Rock out of Decorah, Wake Brewing from Rock Island, and Contrary Brewing out of Muscatine. I was also surprised to see beers on tap from breweries from different parts of the country including Weldwerks out of Greeley, CO.
They had four or five hazy IPA's to choose from on tap and I went up to the counter to see if we could get some samples. It turned out that Amanda Burds was working the bar area that day and I asked her about samples or some flights. She told me that they did have flights of 4 available, so I picked out 4 of the hazy IPA's they had on tap. My wife and I agreed that the Juicy Bit's hazy IPA from Weldwerks was the best of the bunch.
It was a limited menu for the time being during our first visit to Darkbird Taphouse. (We were told the menu would expand as time went on.) There were appetizers such as fried pickles, a beer house pretzel, cheese curds and a charcuterie board that were available. Chicken tenders, a reuben sandwich and three different burgers were available. Frozen pizzas from Chad's Pizza - which is out of Cedar Falls, but has an outlet in nearby Dyersville - were also available.
We had a beer and my wife started to think that maybe a burger didn't sound too bad at that point. We made our choices and I went up to the counter to order them from Amanda. About 15 minutes later, Andrew New came out of the kitchen with our two burgers and served them to us.
My wife went with the beer cheese burger. They make their own beer cheese sauce at Darkbird Taphouse. Fresh lettuce, sliced tomato and red onions, and pickles came with the burger. Battered fries came on the side.
I went with their regular cheese burger that came with Muenster cheese as well as the battered fries. It was a generous slice of Muenster that they put on the burger which sat on a lightly toasted bun. The burger patty was thick and juicy.
And it tasted very good. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the burger tasted. The condiments were fresh, the bun was soft and spongy, and it held together well with all that was going on with the burger. The battered fries were also very good. They had the right amount of crunch on the outside while maintaining that nice feathery potato texture and taste on the inside.
We had finished up our burgers and Andrew New came out to check on us. As he was was clearing our plates, he asked how the burgers were. There were absolutely no complaints on the burgers from my wife and I, and we were both very happy we ordered them.
After finishing up our lunch, we decided to go up the stairs and check out the second floor mezzanine area. There was a small bar up there and a door that went out onto a deck that overlooked the patio below. A number of tables with chairs were in the space and you could look out over a heavy railing onto the taproom below.
Sitting up at the small mezzanine bar with an open laptop computer was a guy who we had noticed running around the place earlier. I asked him if he was the owner and he said, "Well, I pay the bills here." It turned out that it was Jeff Burds and we were able to talk with him for a moment.
I told him that we were from the Quad Cities and we had read the article from the Dubuque paper in our local paper. Jeff was sort of surprised that the article made it into the Quad City Times. "I know it was in the Waterloo newspaper," he said. "But I didn't know that it was in the Times."
I asked him what the relationship between Dimensional Brewing Company and Darkbird Taphouse was. "Well, I helped start Dimensional," he said in a vague fashion. "Other than that, there's no real relationship other than we have some of their beers." I thought it was kind of odd that he was being somewhat evasive about the relationship, figuring that possibly he wasn't part of the ownership at Dimensional any longer.
We were asking him about some of the beers he had on tap, including the Weldwerks hazy IPA that we liked so much. "There's a beer wholesaler up in Wisconsin that we've been working with who will get tanks of some beers from around the nation from time to time," Jeff Burds told us. "That's where the Weldwerks comes from."
When I asked him about the beers from the Quad Cities area and he said, "I have a son who has a girlfriend down in the Quad Cities." Burds chuckled and said, "He's my runner for the beers from down there."
There wasn't much - if anything - to complain about during our initial visit to Darkbird Taphouse in Peosta. The place had been open for less than a month, but it seemed that there were no operation kinks or service problems new restaurants tend to experience during their first 90 days. The beer selection was interesting, the burgers we had were very good, it was a nice atmosphere in the place, and the service we had was very friendly. Although it's a bit of a haul from our home up to Peosta, we figured that it would be another place where we could go for a weekend drive once the weather warms up again. Well, then again, it would be a nice place even before springtime hits.
Comments