My wife and I were invited to a birthday party for the mother of a friend of hers on a recent Friday night. It was going to be held at a place we'd been to numerous times before, but I had never talked about it on Road Tips. One of the reasons I wanted to go is because it's a fun place and right on the Mississippi River outside of Muscatine - the Lighthouse Grill & Bar at the Fairport Marina.
When I first moved to the Quad Cities over 30 years ago, I had heard about the Fairport Marina and a little bar/restaurant that was there from a buddy of mine. We went down there in the fall on a Sunday afternoon and had a great time. I was enamored with everything about the Mississippi River at that point being new to the area and the little shanty-style restaurant being right on the river was sort of exciting to go to.
After my wife-to-be moved to the area in 1994, we used to go out to Fairport Marina on occasion and have margaritas and appetizers as we watched boaters come in off the river. One time, friends of our invited us to go with them in their boat from up river in Princeton, IA through two locks and dams and ending up for a late afternoon/early evening dinner before we went back up the river - through two locks and dams - getting back to their place just before midnight. That was a memorable day.
The restaurant has gone by a handful of names since it first opened in the early 80's, but was known as the Charthouse when Tim Schoenthal bought the marina and restaurant in 1999. Along with his girlfriend - and now his wife as of 2015 - Annette, the two have operated the marina and restaurant for 25 years and live in the house right next to the restaurant.
A few years ago, the Schoenthal's received a cease-and-desist letter from the corporate lawyers for the Chart House restaurant chain demanding that they no longer use the Charthouse name. There was a small lighthouse at the marina at the time - I can't remember if it's still there or not - and the Schoenthal's changed the name to the Lighthouse. (The Lighthouse in Muscatine is not affiliated with The Lighthouse Inn supper club outside of Cedar Rapids which suffered a devastating fire earlier this summer.)
The Lighthouse is a seasonal business, naturally. They generally open in April and run through the end of October open Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, then utilize their boat storage units for the winter months. While the snow flies in Iowa, the Schoenthals are hanging out in sunny places like Florida or Hawaii. What a business model!
Then again, they have to contend with the river from time to time. Flooding can shut down their operations in the spring and into the summer months if they're having a lot of rain up in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And they ran into that earlier this year when the Mississippi went out of its banks from mid-June into mid-July. While the marina was shut down, the restaurant was able to stay open since it's built up. The problem was that the parking lot was underwater and people had to park up over the train tracks to get down to the restaurant. But at least the restaurant and bar were still accessible.
The Fairport Marina/Lighthouse is located just about 3 miles just east of Muscatine along Iowa State Highway 22. (see map) Since it was a Friday night, the parking lot was pretty full. However, a car pulled out of a parking space on the concrete section of the lot and we pulled in there.
The view from the deck at The Lighthouse gives one a panoramic view of the Mississippi River over to the Illinois side. The river runs east to west along this stretch from just up the river from Davenport to Muscatine before it turns south. This is the longest distance the Mississippi runs east-west on its trip from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.
The skies had been cloudy all day, but the clouds parted late in the day and the sun was just coming out when we got there. The orange hue of the sun was hitting the trees just before sunset giving the view a more colorful aspect on a beautiful evening. My wife noticed that the marina was no longer selling gas for boats. I guess I hadn't noticed that on recent previous visits, but I do remember gassing up at the marina for the long ride back up river all those years ago.
The party was in the screened-in patio on the front side of the Lighthouse. There were a fair amount of people there, both for the party and for people coming out to have dinner on a Friday night. The Lighthouse features a prime rib dinner on Friday and Saturday nights and a number of people take advantage of the good prices. Colorful rope light gave the rather rustic room a bit of sparkle and character.
There is a partition that separates the front patio. I was sort of surprised that they didn't have the party on the west end of the patio as the east side has the main door into the restaurants. But that didn't seem to faze the people who were there to celebrate an 87th birthday party. There was a mix of people in the place - boaters coming in for dinner, farm people from around the area, townies like my wife and me, and bikers who were out on their motorcycle on a warm, but pleasant evening.
The main bar area has been a "must-see" for a number of years based upon the vast beer can collection that is on display along the long wall in the main dining room. Thousands of beer cans are in a lighted case behind plexiglass and there are some pretty classic cans in the collection. It's worth a 15 to 20 minute perusal to check out some of the cans on display. A small stage for live music is off to the side of the beer can display. But, quite honestly, I can't remember seeing live music at the Lighthouse. But, then again, I'm only out there a couple times a year.
Also on display opposite the beer can collection were a number of lighted beer signs. I'm a beer sign kind of guy as I've collected some neon and fluorescent beer signs over the years and the colorful array of signs always gets my attention, no matter how many times I've seen them on the wall.
Above the beer refrigerators along the wall behind the bar was another collection on display - this one a number of beer steins. It's a little difficult to get up close to examine the steins since they're up high behind the bar, but I could see a few commemorative steins that the Schoenthal's have picked up over the years. It's a pretty impressive collection.
My wife was ready for a drink and I was ready for a cold beer having just gotten home from a trip earlier in the day. It's counter service at the Lighthouse and I waited in a short line to order up something from the overworked bartender that evening. But there was a football game on the only television in the place behind the bar. Plus they have a couple large aquariums embedded into the wall behind the bar that catches most people's eyes as they order a drink. My wife got her usual Tito's and cranberry juice, while I noticed they had Easy Eddy in cans from the Big Grove Brewery in Solon, IA. It was $5.75 for my wife's drink and a can of Easy Eddy - a great value, if you ask me.
It's also counter service for food. The menu is on the pine board wall above the entrance to the kitchen. It's mostly bar fare, but they do have ribeye steaks, breaded jumbo shrimp dinners, and the aforementioned prime rib on Friday and Saturday nights. Appetizers include a lot of fried vegetables, wings, calamari, and chicken strips; while sandwiches include a reuben sandwich, a pulled pork sandwich, and a French dip sandwich. Burgers, deli sandwiches, breaded or grilled chicken sandwiches, and salads round out the menu at the Lighthouse.
Just down from where you order food is a glass-enclosed counter filled with colorful tie-dye t-shirts and sleeveless shirts with the Lighthouse logo on them. Since the place is definitely retro in decor, so should their shirts be retro. I used to wear a lot of tie-dye shirts a number of years ago, and I've considered getting a shirt at the Lighthouse over the years. But my wife is always there as the voice of reason as to why I shouldn't be getting a tie-dye shirt in the 2020's.
The line to order food was long when we got into the Lighthouse. That offered us time to visit with people at the party and to just unwind after a long week for both my wife and me. We were there about an hour before the line had subsided to where it was just a couple people deep when I went to the counter to order. When our food was ready, they called out a number that I received after I'd ordered from the lady at the counter.
My wife went with a patty melt and fried cauliflower. It was a basic patty melt - chargrilled burger patty topped with grilled onions and Swiss cheese and served on toasted marble-swirl-rye bread. It was a nice and light meal, but just enough for her that evening. The fried cauliflower was, well, fried cauliflower. It's tough to screw up fried cauliflower.
I was kind of hungry since I hadn't had any lunch and it was well past 8 p.m. when we ordered food, so I went with the double mushroom/Swiss cheese burger. I had them add bacon to the burger. It featured two quarter-pound chargrilled burger patties topped with sautéed mushrooms, a couple strips of bacon and two thick slices of Swiss cheese. The cheese was oozing out of the burger and it was a minor mess to eat. The bun was light, but held together very well with all the juiciness and the dribbling cheese from the burger.
I also got onion rings as a side. They were the basic previously-frozen food-purveyor type of onion rings and they were fine. I had no problem sharing them with my wife who seemed to like the onion rings better than her fried cauliflower.
There aren't a lot of places right along the Mississippi River where you can get a drink, some food, and relax while watching the river lazily stream by. And because of that, the Lighthouse has been a popular place for over 40 years - even through name and ownership changes over that period. I thought my burger was very good, my wife was happy with her patty melt. We got a lot of food for under $30, and the drinks and craft beer were very reasonable in price. The place isn't fancy, there's no wait staff, there's no air conditioning so it can get a bit warm, but they have enough fans to move the air around. For about six months, the Lighthouse is a great place to be during the warmer parts of the year.
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