During a road trip up the Mississippi River last fall, we ended up in the river town of McGregor, IA. My wife was starting to feel a tad peckish and we decided to find someplace locally to get something to eat. We decided to go to a place that we'd been to a couple times before - The Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery.
The building that houses Old Man River dates back to the 1880's and was once the offices of "Diamond" Jo Reynolds, an entrepreneur who owned grain elevators, steamboats, and mines along the upper Mississippi River. The building has been a brewing facility since 2008 when Dave and Marci Strutt realized their dream of operating their own brewpub. Joining the Strutt's was brewmaster Jake Simmons who was a quality control team member at the Schlafly brewery in St. Louis. Simmons was actually going to school for his PhD in biology, but realized that he'd rather be brewing beer than finishing his doctorate.
In 2011, Schlafly came to Simmons and asked if he could brew some specialty beers for them for distribution into Iowa, northern Illinois and Wisconsin. Simmons readily agreed, but it turned out that Old Man River was at full capacity and had no room to add more brewing vessels. Dave Strutt and Simmons' father James financed a new brewery on the Iowa River Landing in Coralville, IA as - at the time - there were no active breweries in the greater Iowa City area.
The new venture was called Backpocket Brewery (click here to read the Road Tips entry on Backpocket) and it was large enough to make not only their own German-style beers, but to make the specialty beers for Schlafly. (Backpocket brewed a very excellent American Pale Ale for Schlafly for a few years.) Even though The Old Man River and Backpocket shared ownership and a head brewer, they were two separate entities.
Because they were focusing more on the Backpocket Brewery, the Strutts and Simmons sort of let Old Man River Brewery go by the wayside. It closed in the fall of 2015 and sat empty for a couple years. In August of 2018, Duane and Diane Vorwald purchased The Old Man River, but it needed some work on the place before it could reopen. They were finally able to reopen in March of 2019. My wife and I had stopped in on our way back from a weekend trip up to Decorah in the fall of 2019 and we just had beer that trip. This time, however, we were going to get something to eat.
We pulled into downtown McGregor around 1:30 and pulled up to the two-story stately brick building with arched windows on both floors at the corner of Main and A streets. (see map) In the park across the street, there was a re-enactment of some sort going on. We stood there for a moment watching people in 19th century garb doing something and it was obvious that we were late to the party and didn't know what was going on.
We went inside Old Man River and found that the place hadn't changed since the last time we were there. Exposed wooden beams with exposed ductwork were above us while a refinished wooden floor was below. Large wooden beam supports were placed around the middle of the dining area. The 3-sided bar area is right up front as you come in the door from A St.
The sign up front said, "Please Wait to Be Seated" and we stood there for a few moments before a lady with a couple plates of food whizzed by us. "Sit anywhere, folks," she called back over her shoulder. It was evident that they were understaffed that day - they had just two people waiting tables and serving beer at the bar. Later on, I saw that they put a hand-drawn sign over the "Please Wait to Be Seated" sign that said, "Please Be Patient as We're Understaffed."
It was a cold day and the patio area out back was empty. It's actually a nice patio with metal chairs and tables attached to the west side of the building. We've never been there when the weather is warm enough to be able to sit outside, but it looked like it would be a great place to hang out. Below the decking on the outside of the patio were water troughs filled with dirt that held hop vines. There were still some hops on the ropes going up the outside of the patio.
We found a seat at a table near the north entrance of the establishment and we had to tell a couple people who came in that way later on who also waited to be seated to just find a seat on their own. And it was cold in there - my wife is usually chilly in most places, but even I thought it was cold in the place. There were a number of people seated at tables and at the bar who kept their coats on. In the corner behind us was a small stage that is used for live music from time to time
The menu at The Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery is your basic bar food - burgers, sandwiches, wraps, appetizers, soups, salads - nothing fancy. Entrees such as steaks, stuffed pork tenderloin, seafood and stuffed ravioli were available after 4 p.m. A prime rib special was available on Saturday nights. They also featured pizza with a 14" regular flour thin crust or a 10" gluten free crust available.
When one of the two ladies running around the dining room finally got to us, I ordered up an IPA they had on tap and my wife ordered some green tea to warm up from one of the ladies. She brought my wife's tea, but forgot to get my beer. I finally did get my beer about 10 minutes after I ordered it. I did cut them both some slack because the place was about half full or more and they were working their asses off.
I wasn't all that hungry and my wife thought she needed some soup. I suggested that I order a sandwich and get some fries with it that we could split and she could get a cup of soup to help her warm up. There was a caldron of tortellini tomato soup on a table near the door out to the patio. My wife finally deduced that it must be self-serve. She sort of shrugged her shoulders and went over to ladle out a cup of the soup.
I ordered a reuben sandwich with the Thousand Island dressing on the side. We also asked for an extra plate. When it was brought out, there was no dressing on the side, no ketchup, salt or pepper for condiments, and no side plate. My wife went up to the same table where the soup caldron was and picked up a small plate that is used to put the soup cups on. I knew that we wouldn't be able to get either the side dressing or ketchup to go with the fries. I gave my wife half of the sandwich and we decided to just eat up and cut our losses at that point.
The sandwich was fine, a basic reuben with oven-roasted corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut. They did have some Thousand Island dressing on the sandwich so it wasn't a complete loss. The fries were very good - crunchy on the outside and flaky warm on the inside. They would have been better if they would have had some black pepper on them and some ketchup to dip them in.
Now, my wife and I are pretty understanding and patient when it comes to situations like this where the restaurant is understaffed by one or two people - especially since COVID. But there were a couple ladies at a table next to us who were not. They were pretty vocal with their displeasure of slow service and one of the ladies working the floor said, "Ladies, we're sorry. We are short-staffed today. We're doing the best we can."
It was one of those moments when I just wanted to get up, walk over to the table and say, "Just shut up and eat!" I mean it wasn't fine dining.
While there were a few problems with our visit to Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery, I was more than satisfied with the food and the beer we had that day. Service was choppy only because they were understaffed. And it was sort of uncomfortably cold in there. It's a neat place - the restored building has some distinctive character and an interesting vibe. But like a lot of restaurants and brewpubs fighting to hang in there these days, it's got some problems. If you can get past all that, you'll find that The Old Man River is a good destination to hang out for a while.
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