My wife and I had gone back for my high school class reunion in Central Iowa earlier this June and on our way back to the Quad Cities we decided to stop in the Iowa City area to get some dinner. After stopping at Trader Joe's in Coralville, I suggested that we go have dinner at a place I had been to with a friend a year ago, a brewpub with the ironic name of ReUnion Brewery, considering we were coming home from my reunion weekend. We scooted down to the 2nd Ave. strip in Coralville and pulled into ReUnion Brewery around 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday evening.
The building that houses ReUnion Brewery has been a number of different concepts over the years all owned by local Iowa City serial restaurateur Jim Mondanaro. Mondanaro bought the old COD Steam Laundry bar and restaurant in 1978 and turned it into the Copper Dollar, a popular hangout when I was going to Iowa in the early 80's. After selling the Copper Dollar, Mondanaro established Micky's, one of my all-time favorite bar/pubs in Iowa City. From there, Mondanaro has owned restaurants such as Venessa's, Vito's, Givanni's, and Joseph's fine dining establishment that he named after his father. In all, Mondanaro has opened over 40 restaurants in 4 states during his time as a restaurant owner.
Mondanaro also put an Italian/pizza restaurant out on the Coralville strip and gave it his nickname - Mondo's. (Actually, the first bar he owned in Ames, IA back in the mid-70's was also named Mondo's.) Mondo's was also a popular place for a number of years before he rebranded the restaurant into Mondo's Draft House about 15 years ago.
Pictured right - Jim Mondonaro. I reused this photo from an earlier blog post from 2009 on Mondo's.
In 2015, the allure of the growing craft brewery movement made Mondanaro rethink the Mondo's Draft House concept. Along with partner Aaron Jennings, they put in a brewing facility in the building and hired Logan DePover away from the Backpocket Brewery just up the road in Coralville. In early 2016, ReUnion Brewery officially opened. In October of 2022, ReUnion Brewery set up shop on the Pedestrian Mall in downtown Iowa City in what the long time location of the popular Fieldhouse Bar.
ReUnion Brewery is located on the famed "strip" in Coralville. (see map) Parking is available either on the east side of the building just past where you enter from the strip, with more parking available in the rear of the building. There wasn't a lot of people there so we were able to park close to the building.
The inside of ReUnion Brewery hasn't changed since the days of Mondo's. It featured a long bar under a curved ceiling with table seating along the walls. There's a little room off to the side toward the front of the building and that's where we were seated that evening.
There's an outdoor patio at ReUnion Brewery and while we had the option to sit there, it was a warm evening and my wife wanted to sit inside in the AC. It's actually a nice beer garden area with lights over the top and it's shielded off from 2nd Ave. by a row of tall bushes.
On the west side of the building is the on-site brewing facility at ReUnion Brewery. They actually have a bigger facility in Iowa City the staff calls the "Juice Factory" and it consists of a 30-barrel brewery that produces 20 different types of beers for distribution of ReUnion Brewery around Eastern Iowa.
After getting seated and given menus to look over, our server for the evening - a young lady by the name of Clara - came over to greet us. We wife was "alcoholed-out" from the weekend and just got water with a lemon wedge. But I wanted to try one of their beers from their expansive in-house tap list, and I ended up getting the Juice Factory, a nice tasting New England-style hazy IPA.
Food at ReUnion Brewery is your typical brewpub fare - appetizers, sandwiches, soups and salads, but they also have pizza (a holdover from the days of Mondo's), Mexican food such as tacos and chimichangas, and breakfast items such as a breakfast burrito and a corned beef skillet with eggs, onions and peppers. On Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., ReUnion Brewery has a big brunch buffet that includes ham, salmon with lemon dill sauce, eggs Benedict, rosemary pork tenderloin, and a cheesey hash brown casserole.
My wife needed some comfort food after a weekend of eating not the best items we could have and she started off with a cup of the chicken noodle soup. It was rather interesting in that in addition of small chunks of chicken with house-made egg noodles, it came with a scoop of mashed potatoes made with chopped celery. I'm not certain I had ever seen chicken noodle soup served that way, but my wife said it was very good.
For her main that evening, she got the open faced brisket sandwich - slowly-braised beef brisket on a piece of sourdough bread topped with a beef gravy. Mashed potatoes came on the side along with some broccoli. After about three bites my wife said, "This is EXACTLY what I needed!"
I decided to go the simple route and I ended up getting the basic cheeseburger with pepper jack cheese. Fries came on the side. I'm not quite certain why I got the burger because they had a prime rib wrap on the menu, as well as carnitas tacos. But the burger was fine with me. It came with the usual veggie additives and was served on a toasted bun. The bun was actually very good and enhanced the overall taste of the burger. The fries were also very good and there were a lot of them. I was more than happy to share some with my wife who only had a couple bites of her mashed potato side with her open-faced brisket sandwich.
ReUnion Brewery was a solid choice that evening. The food was very good, the service we got from Clara was also very good, and I really liked the hazy IPA that they had on tap. I've found that just about every concept Jim Mondonaro has tried over the years seems to work out very well. ReUnion Brewery is just another feather in Mondonaro's hat and is definitely an above average brewpub.
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