Road Tips

Creative Signature Cuisine - Silvis, IL

Our neighbor's tree that partially hangs over our yard had been getting to the point where it needed a good trimming.  They had hired a tree service to come over and trim up branches - mostly on our side of the fence.  We were told that our power was going to have to be dropped while they did the trimming since most of their work would be above our main power feeder line from the transformer pole to our house.  My wife suggested that we get out of the house since we wouldn't have any power and head over to a breakfast place she had been reading about on social media over the past few months.  As soon as the tree trimmers showed up, we took off to head across the Mississippi and over to Silvis, IL to have breakfast at Creative Signature Cuisine.  

Fernanda Lisbeth Verduzco grew up in Poncitlan, Mexico, about 60 miles from Guadalajara, while Jorge Hortado Briseño grew up in the nearby Mexico town of La Barca.  The two met while going to the Valley University of Mexico (UVM) in south Guadalajara to study culinary arts at the Kendall College culinary program the college had there.  Lisbeth got her degree as a pastry chef, while Jorge got his culinary degree in international cuisine.  The couple first worked in Mexico - Lisbeth at a chain of restaurants, while Jorge worked in hotels.

The couple moved to the Quad Cities in 2017 - Jorge worked at various restaurants at hotels in the area initially, while Lisbeth became a pastry chef at Rhythm City Casino in Davenport.  When the pandemic forced the casino to temporarily shut down in March of 2020, Lisbeth decided to start selling her desserts, cookies and personalized cakes to keep an income flowing.  She was doing so well that when the casino called her back to work, she declined.  And as more orders for desserts and cakes came in, Lisbeth decided that she needed a bigger kitchen.

Jorge was looking to do something on his own, as well.  Jorge was trained as a classic chef with sauces, molecular structures and pairing ingredients.  The couple decided to find a spot to do a combination restaurant/bakery.  

Pictured right - Fernanda Lisbeth Verduzco and Jorge Briseño.  Photo courtesy Canvas Rebel.  

In July of 2020, La Michoacana opened in Silvis.  Paired with a bakery - La Canasta - it was the first Mexican-style ice cream parlor in the Quad Cities.  La Michoacana's are found throughout Mexico and there are some disputes going on between three different entities in the country as to which La Michoacana is the actual one.  But it seems that all three co-exist across the country.  American-based La Michoacana franchises began to pop up around the US with many opening in the Chicago area.  Quad City resident Gerardo Chavez felt the area was needing Mexican pastries and ice cream treats.  But a series of delays that included getting equipment that was manufactured in Mexico kept pushing back the opening date for Chavez.  And when they were finally ready to open in March of 2020, the pandemic hit.  

La Michoacana was a big hit as were the pastries at La Canasta.  However, La Canasta owner Lidia Gonzales was looking to cut back after working in the bakery for a couple years and Lisbeth was interested in taking over the space.  Creative Pastry moved into the old La Canasta in April of 2023.  By September of last year, they had fully opened as Creative Pastry and Coffee, a small coffee shop that served pastries, cookies and cakes.

While Lisbeth worked in the bakery, Jorge was coming up with his own menu of foods to serve alongside the pastries and coffee they sold.  They were soon open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but serving salmon wraps and steak sandwiches confused many of their customers who thought it was just a small coffee shop/bakery.  In March of this year, Lisbeth and Jorge changed the name to its present Creative Signature Cuisine.   

The restaurant is located on 1st Avenue in downtown Silvis, which is also Illinois Highway 92.  (see map)  Actually, I drove by the place because I was confused by the big La Michoacana sign that was on the building.  When we realized that Creative Signature Cuisine was in the same building - but their sign still said Creative Pastry and Coffee on the front of the building - we stopped and parked in front of the restaurant.  

The restaurant was small, cozy, and well lit.  it featured a couple booths and some tables.  Playing in the background was music from 70's soul artists such as Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder and Al Green. The place was clean and had a homey and friendly vibe.  

To the right when you come in the front door is the counter for La Michoacana.  We took a look at the menu and found some interesting ice cream drinks such as a Mangonada which is a pureed drink with mangos and and a sweet, spicy and tangy chimoy tirola sauce.  They also had Tostidos or Doritos with pork skins, pico de gallo, sour cream, cotija cheese, and chopped avocado.  It was definitely a true Mexican ice cream shop.  

Up front was a display case that a young lady - who I determined later on was Lisbeth Verduzco - was filling with cookies and pastries.  Off to the side, she was packaging cinnamon rolls in individual containers.  The pan of cinnamon rolls looked delicious.  It was all I could do from taking one home with me.  

Lisbeth gave us our menus and told us we could sit anywhere we wanted.  We sat at a four-seater table and settled in.  There were two ladies seated behind us who were eating large portion breakfasts.  I immediately said to my wife, "Expect to get a lot of food."  She suggested that we split something and I wasn't too certain I wanted to do that given the interesting menu they had.  

Creative Signature Cuisine featured traditional American and Mexican breakfasts, but also had some items with an international flair.  The chicken poblano omelet was interesting, as was the chilaquiles with shredded chicken.  They had French toast, waffles and leches pancakes.  Fruit bowls, croissant sandwiches and avocado toast with a sunny-side up egg were featured, as well.  Lunch items featured barbacoa burritos and tacos, chorizo toast, chicken wraps, and a shrimp burger - a beef burger patty topped with shrimp, cheese, mixed greens, and a garlic aioli.  They also had penne pasta in an alfredo sauce with a choice of chicken or shrimp.  There were so many interesting items on the menu that I wanted to come back to try some of the things.  

We started out getting a coffee for my wife and a quad-shot espresso for me.  The espresso was very good, had a bit of a bitter taste that some raw sugar was able to smooth out.  We also got a glass of orange juice to go with our breakfast.  

My wife was having a tough time figuring out what to get.  She finally settled upon the breakfast croissant sandwich - black forest ham with arugula, tomato slices, sliced onion, American cheese and a folded egg omelet.  And it was huge!  She had to cut it in half just to be able to eat it.  But she said it was wonderful.   

For a side, we shared the breakfast potatoes.  They were seasoned potato wedges topped with arugula.  They had some fried onions mixed in.  The seasoning on the potatoes gave them a bit of a spicy flavor and they were also very good.  My wife felt a little guilty about eating the potatoes and she asked Lisbeth if she could get a small dish of fruit to go along with her sandwich.  

As we were looking over the menu, the ladies seated behind us got up to leave.  "The French toast is to die for," one of them said as they passed our table while we were looking at the menu.  I was looking at the French toast that was served with mixed fruit berries and a baked meringue with a mixed fruit berry syrup.  Man, that sounded wonderful, but I was looking for something more savory that day. 

I went with the Madame Croque Sandwich - it featured Black Forest ham with Swiss cheese and bacon on toasted sour dough bread topped with two over-easy eggs and a hearty and creamy béchamel sauce.  Parsley flakes and shredded red cabbage straws finished the presentation.  This was an outstanding sandwich.  The béchamel sauce was rich in flavor and had a hint of herbs and nutmeg.  There was a lot to this sandwich and I was almost certain that I wouldn't be able to finish the whole thing.  But it was so good that I couldn't stop.  I was so stuffed at the end of the meal that any notion of getting a cinnamon roll to go went out the window.  

I don't know if I can adequately paint how surprisingly good our breakfast was at Creative Signature Cuisines.  It's a great "mom-and-pop" kind of place run by a young couple chasing their dreams.  The menu was so interesting and the food we had was outstanding with huge portions.  This is the kind of place where I would come back time and time again just to support Jorge and Lisbeth.  Our next visit may be for dinner at some point in the near future.  

Dizzy Horse - Milan, IL

We've been fans of chef Toby Christianson since he started out as the managing partner/chef at the Woodfire Grill in downtown Davenport in 2008.  The enigmatic Christianson unexpectedly did a 90-degree turn from a casual upscale restaurant to turn it into an artisanal taqueria by the name of tacobar? in 2020.  We liked tacobar? a lot.  (Christianson got the idea for the name of the restaurant from the retort he would instantly get when he'd tell people what he wanted to do with Woodfire Grill.)  But in the summer of 2022, my wife and I went there a couple times only find out that tacobar? was sold out of some of their smoked meats that went on their tacos.  We sort of wondered what was going on, so it was no surprise that Toby Christianson shut down tacobar? in the fall of 2022.  Last fall, we heard he surfaced again to run a restaurant over in Milan, IL, just south of Rock Island. Of course, we were intrigued.  We heard some good things and we heard some bad things about his new restaurant, a chef-driven concept/upscale dive bar that he named the Dizzy Horse.  We made our way over to Dizzy Horse on a recent Saturday evening.  

Toby Christianson grew up in a small Minnesota town and went to school at Minnesota State - Moorhead.  After college he got into the restaurant business and worked at places in Fargo, ND, Grinnell, IA and Muscatine, IA.  When Centro - which had opened in 2004 in downtown Davenport - transitioned over to Woodfire Grill in 2008, Christianson came to the Quad Cities and never left.  

Pictured left - Toby Christianson.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times.  

During his hiatus from tacobar?, Christianson helped out his friend Amanda Kernan and her Girl + Food by Cafe Fresh food truck.   But the bug to run his own place came back in the spring of 2023.   Christianson was looking to find a location that was much smaller and more chef-driven Midwestern/Americana fare than what he had at Woodfire Grill and tacobar?.  The owner of Legends Sports Bar and Grill in Milan, IL announced in May of 2023 that he wanted to put his restaurant up for sale.  Christianson eventually took it over last summer and transformed the place into his vision of an upscale dive bar.  

What to name the place was another task that Christianson had to do.  Next to his new location was a storage building that used to be the home to a Western-wear store.  The store had a sign with a horse on the top that turned in a circle and could be seen for blocks away.  After the store went out of business and the new owners turned it into storage units, they kept the sign with the horse on top.  Of course, the horse got dizzy from turning in a circle 24/7 and that's where Christianson came up with the name.  

After getting his business and liquor licenses from the city of Milan last November, Christianson started out slow having "pop-up" nights on Fridays and Saturdays for the first couple months.  Food selections were limited, but they were interesting such as smoked pork fried rice, jalapeño/bacon wontons, smoked brisket tacos and his famous meatloaf that he carried over from his Woodfire Grill days.  By the end of the year, Christiansen expanded the menu and opened up for longer hours over a four day period each week.

Word on the street about the Dizzy Horse sent throngs of people into his little restaurant.  There were times people would have to wait for a table and by the time they got an open table, Christianson announced that he was out of food for the night.  This happened on a semi regular basis to the point where people were getting upset and giving his restaurant one star on Yelp and trashing it on social media on Facebook and Twitter.  But his most ardent fans knew that Christianson had a vision and made his foods in small batches and smoked pork, brisket and chicken on two small smokers in the back.  As the one star reviews and social media bashing continued, Christianson took it as a badge of honor.  He figured the ones who were giving such a bad review for his place, they didn't know the difference between chef-driven, menu-changing cuisine and heading to a chain restaurant for a meal.  Earlier this year, Christianson came up with a logo of a horse head with a single star at the bottom to signify that he really didn't care what some people thought of his little restaurant.  

We had been wanting to go over to Dizzy Horse for some time.  One evening when I was cooking steaks for a golf outing for a friend, my wife and a friend of ours from Des Moines who was over visiting for the weekend decided to head out to Dizzy Horse for the first time.  My wife brought home half of a smoked pork chile verde burrito that she couldn't eat.  The next day, she was out with our friend and I was looking for something to eat in the fridge.  I found the burrito and I called my wife to see if she was saving it for herself.  When she told me that I could eat it, I warmed it up in the microwave and sat down to eat it.  Oh, my god!  It was outstanding!  The smoked pork with the chile verde sauce was just heavenly.  

A week later on a Saturday night, my wife and I were sort of trying to figure out someplace to go have dinner. We were going to head over to Coal Creek Inn in Coal Valley, IL to get a burger, but just before the I-74/I-280 exit my wife said, "Hold it.  I have a better idea."  She turned onto westbound I-280 and then took the Airport Road/U.S. Highway 67 exit that takes you into downtown Milan.  She pulled up to a parking lot just across the street from the Dizzy Horse around 7:30.  (see map)   

To get into the Dizzy Horse you have to pass a covered patio with patio lights hanging from the rafters.  There are some four-seat tables on the patio, but - quite curiously - they also had lounge chairs with coffee tables that people were eating off of.   

The inside dining area also had sort of a living room motif with comfy chairs and low-slung tables in the middle of the dining space.  I just found it sort of weird that they would have people eat that way in a restaurant.  That's one thing that has rubbed people the wrong way about Dizzy Horse, the seating arrangement with just a few conventional tables and a bar area to sit at to eat if you don't want to have to be bending over to try and eat like you're in someone's living area.  I sure as hell didn't want to eat at one of those tables.  

Since all the conventional tables inside and out were taken by people (and why wouldn't they?), we decided to sit at the bar.  There was a young lady behind the bar that looked familiar to me and she immediately recognized me.  It was Dallas, a perky blonde who has worked the bar area for Toby first at Woodfire Grill, then again when it transformed into tacobar?.   We've known Dallas for years before she started to work for Toby.  My wife said, "I thought that was you when I was in here with my friend last week, but I didn't want to say anything."

Dallas said, "Well, I thought that was you last week, too!  I should have said something."  Dallas gave us some menus to look over and she asked us what we wanted to drink.  They had Kona Big Wave on tap and I took a pint of that.  My wife had Dallas make her an extra dirty Absolut martini.  

Since the menu changes periodically - and Dizzy Horse doesn't have a dedicated web site - you're kind of at the mercy of what Toby has to offer on any given evening when he's open.  And since he changes his menus at the drop of a hat, some item that someone really liked the time before, he may not have it the next time they come out.  And THAT pisses people off on social media, too!  

That evening, Toby was featuring his jalapeño bacon won tons, crispy Brussels sprouts, calamari, and elote corn "ribs" - fresh sweet corn that is grilled and powdered with a chili-lime concoction, and topped with grated parmesan/romano cheese and served with a chipotle aioli.  

The food menu that evening absolutely blew me away.  Toby had a number of delectable items to choose from including a wok-seared Mongolian Beef with fire-grilled cabbage rice; a bourbon-glazed grilled salmon; spicy red chili garlic noodles with wok-seared jalapeño chicken; and his drunken noodles with wok-seared bulgogi beef in a bourbon glaze.  He also had his Dizzy Burger - 3 quarter-pound smashed burger patties with cheese (x 2), bacon and a garlic aioli.  And if you didn't think you had enough cheese on the burger, a side of melted cheese came with the burger to dip it in.  

My wife - for some reason - thought it would be good to start out with an appetizer.  She ordered up some of the crab rangoons.  They were large, crispy creamy crab-filled rangoons served with a somewhat spicy sweet and sour sauce on the side.  I believe there were 8 in basket and they were large.  And they were also very rich and filling.  I had two and said, "No more!"  I didn't want to spoil my dinner.  We ended up taking 3 of them home as Dallas gave us more dipping sauce to go with them.  

They had the same pork verde burrito that night that my wife had the week before.  But this time she went with the barbecue brisket tacos.  They were topped with a cole slaw pico de gallo and chimichurri.  Served on a small cookie sheet on paper, a large amount of fries came with the two tacos.  Even though she said they were great, my wife was able to eat only one of the tacos.  

I was really up in the air as to what to get that evening.  The Oklahoma-style burger sounded great - in Oklahoma, they smash onions directly into the burger patty as it cooks on a flat-grill.  I contemplated the Navajo bread "puffy" brisket taco, and the drunken smoked pork tacos with a bourbon sauce, cider slaw, cilantro and pickled onions also sounded great.  But something I saw on the menu brought me back to the days when Toby ran the Woodfire Grill - the meatloaf grilled cheese.  

The meatloaf at Woodfire Grill was some of the best I've ever had in a restaurant.  I don't think Toby would give me his recipe, but I'm happy with the way I make my meatloaf at home.  I've found that some restaurants don't do meatloaf the way I like it, but Toby's meatloaf was always great.  When Dallas brought the sandwich out to me, I couldn't believe the size.  A bowl of tomato bisque came on the side and another large portion of fries came on their own container boat.  

I cut the sandwich in half and the cheese was just oozing out from underneath the thick-cut house-made bread.  The wonderful flavor of the meatloaf came through all the cheese and the bread just fine.  I dipped the sandwich in the tomato bisque a couple times, but I didn't think it did anything to enhance the already wonderful taste of the sandwich.  

Toby came out of the kitchen as things were slowing down for the evening and we talked for a bit.  I said, "Toby, thank god you are still making the same meatloaf you had at Woodfire Grill.  But, man - this is a huge sandwich!"  

"That's is a big sandwich," he said with a laugh.  "But that's how we do it here!"  

And - oh, man!  Was it filling.  With two crab rangoons, a couple beers and half a sandwich in my belly, I threw in the towel.  And that's not to mention the copious amount of fries that my wife and I were both served.  We ended up taking one of her tacos, half of my meatloaf grilled cheese, the three crab rangoon, and a whole container of fries.  We carried three containers out of Dizzy Horse that evening.  I joked with Toby, "I'd hate to see what your monthly budget for to-go containers is."  I was able to get two meals out of half of the meatloaf sandwich that I took home.  

It was great to finally get to try the Dizzy Horse.  My wife is now a certified veteran as this was her second visit.  I do want to try one of Toby's burgers at some point, and a fresh made smoked pork chili verde would also be on my list of things to try on a return visit.  It was great to reconnect with Dallas who did her usual good job of taking care of us at the bar.  And it was great to talk with Toby again.  His vision of a restaurant is more of a pop-up variety with changing menus of fresh-sourced ingredients, smoked meats, and large portions.  To stay on top of what's going on at Dizzy Horse, when they're open and what they may be featuring on any given day, follow them on their Facebook page.   

Dam Tacos - Davenport, IA

After a long and somewhat stressful week, my wife and I headed to downtown Davenport to get a couple beers/drinks at one of our favorite brewpubs, Stompbox.  (They have a new kitchen staff and menu at Stompox and we need to try their food there at some point.)  After I had probably one beer too many, I told my wife that I needed to get something to eat.  We ventured over a couple blocks to a restaurant that had been on our radar for sometime, but had never been to until that evening.  Here is the story of our visit to Dam Tacos.  

Dam Tacos is a joint venture between Bill Sheeder - who along with his wife Stephanie has owned a handful of restaurants in the Quad Cities area (but none that lasted more than a couple three years); and Marc Van Severen - who is the guy behind Van's Pizza & More with locations in Davenport and LeClaire (and formerly in Bettendorf).  Van Severen bought the Dam View Inn, a popular, yet small hole-in-the-wall dive bar that is right next door to Dam Tacos.  The building that houses Dam Tacos was previously the home to two popular retro-style stores - Trash Can Annie that specialized in vintage women's clothing and styling, and Ragged Records which was (and still is) a great place to go look for new and used vinyl records.  After the flood of 2019 devastated downtown Davenport and forced the move of Trash Can Annie and Ragged Records to new locations, Sheeder and Van Severen took over the building in 2021.  They spent nearly the whole year of 2022 renovating the building and getting it back in working order.  

The premise of Dam Tacos was basically a "grab-and-go" concept where street-style tacos would be served in containers that could be eaten in the restaurant or taken to-go, as well as a full bar serving top quality margaritas.  Anticipation for the opening of Dam Tacos was high given Sheeder's and Van Severen's background in restaurants.  Finally on May 5th, 2023 - Cinco de Mayo - Dam Tacos opened their doors.

Initial reports and reviews on Dam Tacos were mixed.  Friends who had been there thought the tacos were good, but very overpriced.  "$15 bucks for 3 tacos is a bit much, man," a friend of mine told me after he went there not long after it opened.  

But another friend thought the tacos were outstanding.  "They're tough to beat," he told me.  "Everything is very fresh."  

Dam Tacos is located on 2nd Street on the far east end of downtown Davenport, just before the north entrance to the Government Bridge just up stream from Lock and Dam 15 on the Mississippi River.  (see map)  The road in front of Dam Taco and the Dam View Inn has been shut down for a couple months due to roadwork at the mouth of the Government Bridge where the city is putting in a round-about.  Parking in the lot directly behind the Dam View Inn and Dam Taco is readily available when on-street parking is not available.  A rear door entrance to Dam Tacos is off the rear parking lot.  

Inside the restaurant we found a lively space with colorful santa meurte murals on the wall.  The main lighting was provided by barrel band light fixtures with faux candle light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.  The three-sided bar was the focal point of the dining space and featured a corrugated tin face under the bar.  High-top tables were along the walls and up toward the front of the restaurant that was also naturally well-lit from the large windows up front.   

We ended up sitting at the bar and were greeted by T.J., a bartender we had run into at other establishments in the Quad Cities over the years.  He was a seasoned barkeep and was somewhat famous for his mixed concoctions.  He was telling us that the street work shutting down 2nd Street was putting a damper on the walk-in business.  "We've done what we can to try to stay open," T.J. was telling us as we settled in.  (As this blog post comes up on June 7, 2024, Dam Taco appears to be temporarily closed down due to the road construction in front of the place.  Road construction is scheduled to continue into July before the roads are reopened.)  

T.J. had given us some menus to look over as he made up a couple margaritas for us.  We decided to try the "Trio" appetizer that gave us the option of picking 3 of the 4 dips or queso in the "starters" part of the menu.  We took the queso, guacamole and the salsa which is made by Lobo's Salsa over in East Moline.  We'd tried some of the Lobo's salsa at the local farmers market, but this was the first time we had more than one little sample scoop.  It was pretty good with a nice fresh taste and a bit of a bite on the back end.  The guacamole was topped with ground black pepper and garlic powder and was very good.  But the queso was the best out of the three.  It was creamy and had a smooth taste with a little spiciness in each bite.  The chips were just OK - I could tell they weren't made in-house and when I went back to the men's room later on to use the facilities I saw that they were just using regular Doritos chips out of a bag.  

Even though I really didn't need one after a couple three high ABV beers at Stompbox, I had T.J. mix up one of his signature margaritas.  It was made similar to the ones I make at home - it started off with Herradura silver tequila, then some Cointreau was mixed in.  I usually add lime juice and some agave syrup along with a splash of water before mixing it up on ice in shaker.  After adding the tequila and Cointreau, T.J. added orange juice and lime juice.  But instead of adding agave syrup as a sweetener, he added raspberry syrup.  "I like the balance raspberry syrup adds to the overall flavor," T.J. explained as I tried a sip of his margarita.  It was good, a bit more complex in overall flavor than what I normally like, but it was definitely drinkable.  It was much better than the soda mix-infused margaritas that most Mexican restaurants around town will make.  

The menu isn't very extensive offering about 10 different types of tacos including a breakfast taco (served between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.), a basic ground beef or chicken taco, a breaded and deep-fried shrimp taco, and a "Philly" taco with a choice of steak or chicken topped with poblano peppers and a queso sauce.  They also had a rice bowl with a choice of chicken or beef, quesadillas, nachos and beef or chicken burritos.  And the prices appeared to be lower than what they were when then first opened.  Most tacos were 8 to 9 dollars for 3 tacos up to $12 for 3 steak or carnitas tacos.   

My wife and I got something similar - the verde tacos.  She got the chicken verde tacos, while I got the carnitas verde tacos.  Dam Tacos does offer a "taco flight" of up to three different types of tacos, but we decided to just go with three of one type.  The tacos were topped with shredded cheese, onions and a chile verde salsa and served in a paper-based deep plate.  My wife thought her chicken tacos were fine, but nothing special.  


The carnitas were dried out and they really needed to have more salsa verde on them.  I asked T.J.  for some more salsa and he brought out a couple small tubs.  The extra salsa helped with the overall taste, but the carnitas were chewy and too dry.  I wasn't impressed.  

I really tried to like Dam Tacos.  It was a little lame that they were using Doritos for their chips with salsas and dips, the carnitas tacos I had were too dry and overcooked, and my wife thought the chicken tacos that she had were just OK.  I did like the margarita that T.J. made me and he was a good bartender/server while we were there.  If Dam Tacos can survive, they need to have a little bit more consistency in the kitchen and stop using off-the-shelf chips to pair with the very good Lobo's Salsa, their great guacamole and their excellent queso dip.   

Grilled Cheese Bar - Davenport, IA

Down in the Village of East Davenport, a small subterranean restaurant with a rudimentary name caught my eye when it first opened in October of 2021.  It was a little place that specialized in grilled cheese sandwiches.  And when I found out that they also had a full bar in the place, I was really wanting to try the place out.  However, my wife has really been trying to limit the amount of cheese intake over the past couple three years and she just wasn't quite as enthused about giving the eatery a try as I was.  I almost had her convinced to give the place a try when a catastrophe on New Years Day in 2023 almost put the place out of business.  But after it came back from what would have been terminal for most businesses, I still couldn't get my wife to give the place a try.  With my wife out of town for a couple days earlier this year and me not wanting to cook for myself one evening, I made the trek down the hill to give Grilled Cheese Bar a long-awaited try.  

Natalia Mulica was a 2020 graduate of St. Ambrose University in Davenport.  Her dream to own a specialty restaurant that served grilled cheese sandwiches.  That dream came to pass in 2021 when she found a spot in the Village Market Place in the Village of East Davenport.  By October of that year, Grilled Cheese Bar opened and became somewhat of a hit with the younger crowd in Davenport.  But older people who loved the assorted styles of grilled cheese sandwiches the little restaurant had to offer, as well.   Before long live music was also a part of the Grilled Cheese Bar on weekends.  

On the morning of January 1st, 2023, my wife and I had gone out to get coffee (I get espresso) from one of our favorite drive-thru coffee places - Coffee Revolution.  We decided to drive through downtown Davenport as it was a nice day and then head back along River Drive to go through the East Village to take us back up the hill to our house.  However, as we tried to turn onto Mound Street, we found it was blocked by City of Davenport utility vehicles.  What appeared to be a main break had water gushing between River Drive and 11th Street on Mound.  "Uh oh," my wife said as we slowly drove past the parking lot at the corner of River Drive and Mound Street.  "This doesn't look good."

And it wasn't.  Mud, sand and water had run down into the restaurant.  Even the concrete floor had buckled under the weight of the mud and water.  The restaurant had to be closed while the clean up from the mess was started.  But in the ensuing days, Mulica found that the insurance on the business didn't cover flooding since it was a fire service line that broke.  And the City of Davenport wasn't liable for the break, nor was the local water company Iowa-American Water.  

Mulica was determined to come back from this and she started a GoFundMe page where she asked for $20,000 in donations to get the restaurant back on its feet.  The local outlet for Raygun - known for their irreverent and sometimes pithy messages on t-shirts - even came out with their own t-shirt which is pictured on the right.  

Within weeks, Mulica had raised the funds and then some.  After a complete makeover of the restaurant, Grilled Cheese Bar reopened on March 4, 2023 - almost two months to the day after she almost saw her dream literally go down the drain.  

It was a Monday evening when I decided to head down to Grilled Cheese Bar and I found plenty of parking in the lot in front of the establishment just north of River Drive on Mound St.  (see map)  It was a few steps down to the patio just outside of the restaurant.  Although it was a rather nice evening for late winter, there were no patrons sitting outside.

And when I went inside, I found just one table filled with people toward the back of the restaurant opposite the bar.  But it was still pretty early - around 5:30 p.m. - and it was a Monday night - not one of the more popular nights to go out to a restaurant.  

But the restaurant was quaint.  It was a long narrow space with spoked light fixtures hanging from the ceiling and a dark hardwood support beam along one wall.  With southern exposed windows, a lot of natural light filtered into the restaurant.  Off to the side in a little nook area were a number of games and coloring utensils that kids could play with while they were there with their parents.  There was a large floor-standing Connect 4 game included with the board games.  

I ended up sitting at the bar that evening.  It featured six low-backed bar stools with a wooden support intersecting the bar.  They had a fully stocked bar and a good selection of craft beers available in cans and bottles.  They had my beer of choice - Kona Big Wave Golden Ale - available and I immediately liked the place.  Music playing in the background was a mix of 60's and 70's classic rock from the likes of Foghat, Iron Butterfly, and Blondie, but also funk tracks from the likes of Rick James and even some blues music from artists such as Lightnin' Hopkins and Koko Taylor were interspersed with the classic rock songs.  

Katelynn was wearing two hats that evening - she was the bartender and the waitress for the restaurant.  She gave me a menu and I ordered up a Big Wave to enjoy.  In addition to different variants of grilled cheese sandwiches with protein added, Grilled Cheese Bar also features macaroni bowls with a choice of chipotle chicken, barbecue pork, steak or a chicken/bacon/ranch combination.  Sides included fries, potato salad, pasta salad, and mac & cheese.  

They had some interesting grilled cheese sandwiches on the menu including a Buffalo chicken grilled sandwich with American and muenster cheese; a pepperoni grilled sandwich with provolone cheese and a red pasta sauce; a bacon with macaroni grilled sandwich with American and muenster cheese; and a grilled sandwich with artichoke spread, tomato slices, fresh spinach and provolone cheese.  I thought my wife would enjoy that sandwich.  And, of course, they had a basic grilled cheese sandwich with American and muenster cheese called "The Monster".  

I ended up getting the Monte - a monte cristo sandwich with ham, provolone cheese, dijon mustard and mayo on egg-dipped fried bread.  Parmesan cheese was sprinkled on top of the sandwich before it was cut in half diagonally.  A tin cup of Cuban fries came with the sandwich.  

The sandwich was pretty good.  The provolone cheese was oozing out of the sandwich with each bite and it had a very good flavor combination with the dijon mustard and the mayo added to the ham and cheese.  The combination of the cheese, ham and condiments were all balanced in taste along with the nice crispy shell of the bread.  The fries were also good with nice crispy snap to them.  

I have to say that I was sort of surprised at how nice the Grilled Cheese Bar was in terms of both decor and the food that I had.  It was a comfortable and cozy little subterranean place and Katelynn's service was friendly and competent.  And their selection of craft beers coupled with a full bar made it appeal to me even more.  I've tried to get my wife to go with me to Grilled Cheese Bar - even for just a Friday night drink at the bar.  But so far she's resisted.  Hopefully after reading this, she'll be a bit more open to try Grilled Cheese Bar with me.  

The Dirty Shirley - Rock Island, IL

My wife and I had been interested in trying a place over in Rock Island since it opened in late 2022.  We wondered if it could be one of our rotational joints where we would go out for bloody Marys and burgers on Sunday.  We just hadn't made it over on a Sunday to try it out.  One recent evening, we didn't feel like cooking at home, so we drove over to The Dirty Shirley to check the place out. 

Steve and Jen Thomas had grown up in Rock Island, but both had been living in Colorado since 2014 working in the hospitality industry.  They had always wanted to run their own restaurant and had come up with a concept of serving "dirty" food - recipes infused with alcohol or beer.  The original "dirty Shirley" is a vodka-added variation to the kiddie cocktail that has lemon-lime soda (7Up or Sprite) with grenadine and with a big red cherry to finish it off.  

Steve and Jen moved back to Rock Island in 2022 and leased a small building that had housed a number of restaurants and/or bars over the years.  They started working on some of the food and drinks they were going to feature in the fall of that year and just before Christmas they opened the doors to the Dirty Shirley.  

It's been a tough year for the Thomas family.  They realized that maybe running their own restaurant wasn't the best thing for them.  In December of 2023, a post on Facebook announced that the Thomas' were looking to sell their restaurant, even helping with the financing if the new owner would put down 50% of the asking price.  The Thomas' still own the Dirty Shirley, but recent social media posts have been dire in trying to keep the place open.  

The Dirty Shirley is located on 16th Avenue at the corner of 41st St. in Rock Island at 41st St. (see map)  When I pulled up in front of the place, I immediately recognized the building as it had been a couple other restaurants where I'd had meals at in the past.   I had a memorable burger there when it was called The Cave a number of years ago.  And later on when it was a breakfast place after that - The 14th Avenue Waffle House - I remember the food being pretty good.  

The restaurant is a very small place with a small bar along the west wall with tables and chairs along the east wall.  Our server that evening was a young lady by the name of Nicole.  She was pretty indifferent to us, at first.  We figured it was because she had to be bartender and waitress at the same time.  But later on in the evening, she came out to serve us our food and she was wearing an arm sling.  She told us that she had torn the labrum in her shoulder and was hoping rest could help mend the tissue rather than getting an operation.  We figured that she had to be in some discomfort adding to her un-sunny disposition.  

And compounded on all that for Nicole and her physical problems, a big infrastructure problem developed later on. After we finished our meal, my wife had gone in to use the restroom before we left.  She used the facilities and washed up in the sink before coming out.  As we were getting ready to leave, we heard a crash coming from the bathroom areas toward the back of the building.  A lady came out and exclaimed, "The sink just fell off the wall!"  She had turned on the faucets and the porcelain sink promptly fell off the wall.  As if Nicole wasn't having a tough enough night...

We started off with getting a couple drinks.  Since I wanted to find out if The Dirty Shirley could be in our rotation of burgers, beers and bloody Marys on Sundays, I got myself a bloody Mary with a pint of the Kona Big Wave they had on tap.  The mix was house-made and was a little thin on both texture and flavor.  It was just OK.  My wife got her usual Tito's and cranberry.  

The menu at The Dirty Shirley wasn't all that long, but had some interesting items.  Appetizers included their signature dirty balls - whiskey-infused ground beef and sausage meat balls; as well as stuffed mushrooms and stuffed jalapeños.  Sandwiches included their pickle wrap grilled cheese - The Dirty Shirley's dill pickle wrap mixture with dill pickles on a grilled cheese sandwich.  The Dirty Pig consisted of beer-braised pulled pork with a choice of a house-made barbecue sauce or a house-made Southern Comfort-infused apricot sauce.  And they had a black bean burger option for vegetarians.  

I was there for the burger and I got their signature Dirty Burger that featured a 1/2 pound patty topped with smoked cheddar cheese and bacon, and topped with whiskey-sauteéd onions.  I had a choice between baked beans and house-made chips on the side and I went with the chips.  I could sort of tell they were on a shoestring budget at The Dirty Shirley as they only provided a basket of ketchup and mustard packs rather than condiment dispensaries.  

My wife got the patty melt.  For her side, she asked Nicole if she could substitute the chicken curry soup they had that night.  Nicole said that there would be an up-charge for the soup as a side, and my wife said that was fine.

My burger was very good.  Juicy, full of flavor and somewhat messy, the burger was top notch.  The chips were very salty, but I concentrated on the burger and sort of forgot about the chips.  My wife tried a couple and even she said they were too salty.  

My wife said her patty melt was also very good.   "For a patty melt, this is above average," she said to me.  We were both impressed with the burgers we got.

We're hoping that The Dirty Shirley hangs on or finds a suitable party for new ownership.  It's a nice little place that has a good burger and some interesting items on their menu.  We knew Nicole was having a tough night coupled with her torn labrum, so we definitely cut her a large amount of slack when she was a little late on getting drinks out or getting more napkins for us.  The Dirty Shirley is a cozy little place that has a nice little vibe going for it and we hope it continues. 

 

El Compita - Davenport, IA

With dozens of good to great places to have Mexican food in and around the Quad Cities, there's three or four that have become our favorites that we put into a rotation when we have a hankering.  However, one that opened near our home in early 2023 has risen to the top of our No.1 go-to for Mexican food - El Compita.  We had been to El Compita a handful of times before I decided to do a Road Tips entry on the place. 

In early 2021, my wife had been hearing from friends who lived out in the Blue Grass/Buffalo area just west of Davenport that a Mexican restaurant had opened in September of 2020 in a spot on a frontage road along Highway 61 near West Lake Park.  (see map)  My wife had suggested going out there a couple three times, but we just never did.  When El Compita (loosely, a Mexican phrase for "buddy") opened along E. Kimberly Road in early 2023, it took us a while before we figured out that it was the second location of the same restaurant we had discussed driving out west to try at some point.  Driving three minutes to get Mexican food was much better than driving 20 minutes.  

The El Compita location at Eastern and Kimberly (see map) has been a number of different things since I first moved to the area in 1991.  There were four businesses in the complex including a Kwik Shop, an audio/video store, an optometrist, and Dudley's Pizza Works.  Full disclosure - I moved to the Quad Cities to be the general manager of the audio/video store and most Monday nights after we would close at 9 p.m., I ended up at the bar at Dudley's conversing with the owner Dudley Burback on a number of occasions about a number of different topics.  Dudley was this bombastic guy, kind of a braggart, but still a likable guy.  He told me that he used to play basketball with legendary college basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian at California State - Fresno (now Fresno State) back in the 50's.  And the first few times he'd drop Tarkanian's name when talking about sports, I figured he was full of shit.  

But it turned out that Dudley DID play with Tarkanian for a couple years in college and they WERE still friends who would converse during Tarkanian's years at Nevada-Las Vegas.  Once I found out that Dudley was telling the truth the whole time, the grain of salt that I had to take when talking to him went away.  Well, plus the fact that his deep-dish pizza - $1.00 slices at the bar on Monday nights - was pretty damned good.

Dudley sold his share in the restaurant sometime in the mid-1990's - after I had moved on from working at the audio store - and it was still a pizza place called Davenport Pizza Works.  But that didn't last long and the owner turned it into Montana Jack's Steakhouse.  After putting in a second location over in Moline near the airport, the Davenport Montana Jack's closed down around the turn of the 21st century.  

Since then, the spot has been a number of restaurants or bars.  An Italian place had opened up in there, but it didn't last long.  It's also been a chicken place, another Mexican restaurant, a couple bars, and a couple other concept restaurants.  A buddy of mine from Iowa City had purchased the building a few years prior and there were two or three times when he would call me up and ask me to go down and check on the property to see if the restaurant or bar was open or looked to still be in business.  It was just a bad location for a restaurant.  

So, when we saw that El Compita was going into the space in late 2022, we were weary that another restaurant would work in that building.  But we also didn't know that it was the same El Compita on the far west side of Davenport that was getting rave reviews.  A buddy of mine who lived out west of Buffalo, IA told me one day last year that the El Compita out on the far west side of Davenport and the one that opened up at Kimberly and Eastern in Davenport were the same people.  And with that information, we decided to give the place a try last summer.  We liked it and went back again.  Suddenly El Compita rose to the top of our list - not only because it was close to our house, but because the food was good and the service was fast and friendly.  

It was about 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday night when we walked into El Compita.  We've been in there enough times over a period of time that we instantly get recognized as returning guests.  This time we were seated in the larger of the two dining areas at El Compita.  This room has a number of high-backed booth with thick pleather backs and seats.  The dining areas at El Compita are well-lit - almost TOO well-lit as it always seems to be overly bright in there from the light fixtures with LED bulbs.  

The smaller of the two dining area features about six booths and a number of tables.  The high-backed chairs at the tables have the El Compita logo on the back.  We had normally sat in the smaller of the two dining rooms on our previous visits.  

The bar area is up front just as you come in.  It was similar, yet very different to the bar that I used to belly up to on Monday nights after work so many years ago.  Three flat-screen televisions hung on the wall behind the bar with accent lighting under the stone-top bar.    

After we sat down, a basket of their complimentary chips and salsa were dropped off.   They have excellent chips and salsa at El Compita, but they also have a killer tomatillo green salsa there.  I always ask for a bowl of that.  It's not too spicy and give the food a different dimension of taste when I use it.  

Our server that night was someone new who we had not seen in there, a lovely lady by the name of Sarahy.  She told us that she was relatively new and was still trying to pick up on the system they had.  She got me a Sol beer in the bottle while my wife just went with water as she'd had a couple drinks at our neighborhood bar previously.  It was our guess that even though Sarahy was a rookie at El Compita, it was evident that she'd had experience as a server before.  

Since we had eaten there a handful of times, we were pretty well-versed in what El Compita had to offer.  I will say that their carnitas platter is outstanding.  I've also gotten al pastor tacos in the past and they are also very good.  The green chile enchiladas with a choice of ground beef, chicken or cheese (I get the ground beef) have also proved to be very delicious.   And the braised pork chili verde is - I think - the best of its kind in the Quad Cities.  

This visit to El Compita, I tried something that I had seen on the menu, but had never tried before - the fish tacos.  I had been kind of eating on the light side trying to lose more weight and these turned out to be the perfect choice.  The tacos featured grilled tilapia topped with fresh cilantro, chopped onions and a house-made pico de gallo.  They were served in street-style small corn tacos with limes, a side of the tomatillo sauce and a spicy pepper salsa that has a bit more of a bite than I usually like, but is still pretty good.  

The grilled tilapia tacos were fresh and not fishy in taste with that wonderful grilled butter taste you get from good Mexican restaurants.  It was just as good as any meal I've had at El Compita in the past.  They were truly delicious and a very nice light meal.

My wife also went with something that she had never had before - the chile relleno.  They had a choice of one or two on the menu and knowing the size of the chile rellenos at other restaurants in the Quad Cities (not big), I figured that my wife would want two.  I tried to talk her into getting two and that's what she ended up ordering.  However, Sarahy came back after we had ordered and said that they only had one chile relleno left.  Since it came with refried beans and rice, my wife thought it would be fine for her.

When Sarahy brought the plates out, my wife's eyes almost jumped out of her head.  "Oh, my GOD," she exclaimed when the were put down in front of her.  "I wouldn't have been able to eat TWO!"  The Poblano pepper they used was very large and filled with cheese.  It was covered with a red sauce and a blend of Mexican cheese was melted on top.  There was more than enough food for two people to eat.  Since I ate light, I did have a couple bites of her chile relleno.  The cheese-stuffed relleno was very good and their red enchilada/relleno sauce was a great complimentary flavor.  

There's little to nothing not to like about the Davenport location for El Compita.  We've not been to the one just west of Davenport, but it's a good guess that it's just as good as the one not far from our house.  Every time we've been there the food has been excellent, as has the service we've had from the friendly and efficient staff there.  Sarahy - who was a newby for the business, but was probably a seasoned restaurant server - was fun and on top of things.  We love the fact that El Compita is so close to our house and given the track record of restaurants/bars that have gone in and out of that location over the years, we can only hope that El Compita sticks around for a long, long time.  

Smash Pizza - Bettendorf, IA

My wife and I didn't grow up in the Quad Cities but became transplants back in the early 90's.  Unlike people who grew up in the Quad's, we have never been fond of Quad City-style pizza.  There are a couple places that make a pseudo-QC-style pizza that we like, but the full blown places like Harris Pizza, we just don't like.  We're spoiled by trips to Chicago to places like Pat's Pizza, Salerno's, Pequod's and Vito and Nick's.  However, over the past few years, some "authentic" pizza places have sprung up around the Quad Cities.  One of them - Crust Wood Fired Pizza - was one of our favorites.  However, Crust closed during the height of the pandemic in 2020.  That really bummed us out, but then we found out in the fall of 2022 that the owner of Crust had started up a new venture in Bettendorf by the name of Smash Pizza.  We've been there a couple of times and it's starting to become our favorite non-Quad City-style of pizza.  

Brian Olsen grew up infatuated with food.  As a young child he would watch re-runs of cooking shows with Julia Child and Graham Kerr.  When he turned 16, he was old enough to work in a restaurant and he got a job working at Gramma's Kitchen just off Interstate 80 in Walcott, IA.  While going to high school, Olsen thought he wanted to study engineering.  However, during the summer after his junior year in high school, he visited Iowa State University to talk with engineering professors and students.   But going back to work at the restaurant, he realized that he would rather be working in a kitchen than being behind a desk working on a computer all day.

Prodded by his parents as to what he was going to do with his life after graduating high school, Olsen decided he wanted to become a chef.  He proposed going through the culinary program at Scott Community College, but they wanted him out of the nest.  He had family up in the Twin Cities and they encouraged him to enroll at (the now-closed) Le Cordon Bleu School for the Culinary Arts in Minneapolis.   

In 2011, Olsen had an opportunity to help start Crust Wood Fired Pizza with developer Mark Roemer.  He later became a part-owner and the managing partner of the restaurant.  In 2017, Olsen had another opportunity to buy into another local restaurant developed by Roemer - Central Standard.  The wood fired ovens at Crust provided the buns that were used at Central Standard.  

In early 2020, just before the pandemic wreaked havoc on a number of restaurants, Olsen was looking to do something new - and on his own.  Just before the pandemic hit, Olsen sold out his interest in both Central Standard and in Crust with Crust eventually closing their doors later that year.  (A couple of other pizza places have gone into the old Crust space over the last couple years.  One lasted about a year or so, but suffered from staffing issues.  The other one opened in the fall of 2023 and we've tried it and didn't care for it.)

Olsen's plan was to open up a new restaurant that focused on New York-style and Sicilian-style pizzas, as well as artisan breads that he would sell at retail from his restaurant.  He had the spot picked out, equipment ordered, and his initial plan was to open in the fall of 2020.  But with the pandemic disrupting supply chains around the world, Olsen's new venture was going to have to hold off for awhile.  In the meantime, he acquired a food truck and began to sell pizzas at various sites around the Quad Cities.  We saw the Smash food truck at Crawford Brew Works in Bettendorf quite a bit and we found out that it was former guy behind Crust and he was going to open up a brick and mortar location in Bettendorf at some point.  We were excited because we liked Crust and couldn't wait to try his new venture.  

Olsen opened the Smash Pizza location in September of 2022.  It was appreciably smaller than Crust and we found that getting into the place even into early 2023 was sometimes impossible without a long wait as they do not take reservations.  We finally made it into Smash last summer.  This particular visit was our second time visiting the pizza place.  

It was after 8 p.m. on a Saturday night when we got into Smash.  It was well past the restaurant's busy time on Saturday night, but it was still well over half-filled with diners.  As I said, it's not a big place and the dining area can get fill up rather quickly.  We took a table in the corner near the small bar just in front of the open-windowed kitchen.  In fact, we were so close to the bar that the bartender ended up being our server.  

It was server by committee that night and one of the three who eventually waited on us was a familiar face from the days of Crust.  My wife remembered her from Crust and I finally recognized her after talking with her for a couple moments.  She told us that they were out of the Sicilian-style dough - a thicker dough that's made into a square, similar to Detroit-style pizza.  The dough is fermented for 5 days before it's ready to cook.  "We usually run out of the Sicilian-style pizza pretty quickly, especially on the weekend," she told us.  "We get a lot of take-out orders for the pizza because it can feed a family of 4 pretty easily."  We had tried the New York-style pizza - a more thin crust - on our previous visit, and had wanted to try the Sicilian-style at some point.  That will have to be down the road.  

Looking through the menu, they have a number of specialty pizzas including the Bee Sting - tomato sauce, cherry peppers, pepperoni, hot sopressata, locally-sourced honey and arugula.  The Alla Vodka featured a vodka-tomato sauce, house-made sausage, garlic, spinach, fried kale, and Mediterranean oregano.  The Meatball Ricotta pizza had a braised tomato sauce, mozzarella, house-made meatballs, ricotta, and Mediterranean oregano.  And the Calabrian has a garlic cream sauce, nduja (a spicy pork sausage), corn, onion, Calabrian chili oil, and topped with fresh basil.  

Smash also features a bread plate as an appetizer, as well as a charcuterie board.  They have dips and drizzles to go with the bread such as a house-made marinara, California olive oil, and the Calabrian spicy oil to choose from.  

Smash has a variety of wines by the glass and a number of craft beers to choose from.  One of the servers came over to take our drink order and I got a hazy IPA from the Stompbox microbrewery in downtown Davenport.  My wife got a glass of the house Malbec.  

My wife always has to have some greens before getting pizza and she ordered up the house salad consisting of chopped fresh romaine lettuce, sliced cucumbers, radishes, and red onions, then topped with toasted bread crumbs and finished with a parmesan buttermilk dressing.  She always liked the salads over at Crust and she likes the salad equally as well at Smash.  

We got our usual sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven.  The pizza was blistered and the cheese was caramelized in places.  The New York-style pizzas come in one size at Smash - 16".  (The Sicilian-style pizzas come in a 14" size.)  The slices are big enough where they can be folded like a traditional New York pizza, but the crust on Smash's pizzas aren't as thin or pliable as a true New York-style pizza.  

The toppings are definitely top notch.  The sausage has a nice spicy taste; the pepperoni is probably a tad too salty, but still good; and the chopped roasted mushrooms they use on their pizzas at Smash are fresh.  They have a great marinara sauce and I asked our server if we could get some marinara on the side to dip some of the crust edges into.  One of the trio of servers brought out a cup of marinara and she said, "We usually charge $2 dollars for the marinara, but I'll give this to you for free tonight.  We're getting low on this batch of marinara, so we have to make more tomorrow."  It was perfect for some crust dipping.  

We ended up being the last ones in the place and they began to move tables and chairs around the dining area and out the door.  We asked one of them what was going on and she said, "We do a Sunday morning yoga class in here.  We used to do it elsewhere, but Chef Brian said that we could do it here."  My wife said that she remembered that the lady who initially waited on us used to have yoga classes.  

We had more than enough pizza left over to take home for a lunch meal or a snack over the next couple of days.  But it's also expensive - our pizza was $28 bucks and the salad was $7.  Add in a glass of wine and a couple craft beers and the tab adds up quickly.  Both times we've gone into Smash, it's a $70 bill by the time tips and taxes are figured in.  But compared to some of the other pizza joints in the area, you can really tell it's a definite step-up in taste and quality.  Smash Pizza isn't going to be a regular stop for us because it is sort of pricey, but we'll definitely be back at some point.  

Coal Creek Inn - Coal Valley, IL

My wife and I have a part-time ritual where we like to go out to a place on some Sundays and get a burger and a bloody mary.  We've found a few places around the Quad Cities that are open on Sundays (which aren't chains) where we can have a good burger and settle back with a bloody mary and a beer or two.  Some places that we had in our rotation suddenly either closed on Sunday after the pandemic, or opened later on Sunday.  But one place we've been to three or four times so far is toward the top of our list - and it doesn't even have to be on a Sunday.  This place is Coal Creek Inn in Coal Valley, IL.

When we first started to do our Sunday bloody mary/burger excursions, we liked going over to Bourbons in Coal Valley, a small town on the far southeast side of the Quad Cities.  However, after the pandemic, Bourbons was one of those places that didn't open until later on Sunday.  Across the park from Bourbons was a small steakhouse/supper club joint called Joe's Place.  We had always wanted to try the place, but it seemed to have sporadic hours and it finally closed during the pandemic.  

Local commercial realtor Pieter Hanson listed the property and he saw a lot of potential in the building that would help the surrounding areas of the small downtown area within Coal Valley thrive.  He turned to Nick Bowes, the managing partner at Bent River Brewing Company in downtown Moline, and Bent River's managing brewer Steve Ratcliff to join him in resurrecting the building and putting in a new restaurant/beer bar.  

The group bought the building in 2021 and renovated the whole building including the two apartments above the restaurant/bar.  New kitchen equipment, new tap lines, new electrical systems - basically a wholesale overhaul of everything was done to the building.  By spring of 2022, everything was in place and Coal Creek Inn opened their doors.  The restaurant/bar was named after the creek that flows behind the property in Coal Valley.  

My wife had a day off not too long ago and I told her that I was sort of hungry around lunch time.  She said she was sort of hungry, too.  "What are you hungry for," she asked me.  I told her that I was hungry for a burger and maybe we should go over to Coal Creek Inn and have lunch.  She was more than agreeable with that.  

It's about a 20 minute drive (sometimes less) from our house across I-74 into Illinois.  Coal Creek Inn is located just off US Highway 150 in Coal Valley.  (see map)  Head in parking on the street in front of the restaurant is usually available with a small side lot reserved for motorcycles in warmer weather.  Coal Creek Inn is situated in a two story building with the top floor as an apartment.  

Walking in the door is the bar area of the restaurant.  The room is small and cozy with bleached barn boards on the walls, corrugated tin facades on the bar with wooden floors and dark wood planked ceiling.  Seating is available at the bar or at high-top tables.  With the lighted signage and the flatscreen televisions, the dark room has a distinctive glow.   

There is a larger back room for dining.  It has some decorative wallpaper with a light blue paint scheme where the decorative wallpaper falls away.  We've sat in the dining room a time or two before, but we prefer to sit at one of the high-top tables in the bar area.   

Our server that day was a familiar face - Aubry who my wife immediately recognized from her waiting on us over at Central Standard in Bettendorf a few times in the past.  She was running the front of house at Coal Creek Inn and doing the hiring for all the help.  And because there's a connection between the bar and the brewery, I ordered up a Bent River IPA while my wife just went with water.  I thought about getting a bloody mary, but we were going to be traveling later in the day and I didn't want to get too far on the drinking before we had to leave.  

The menu at Coal Creek Inn is pretty simple, but features a number of burgers, sandwiches and appetizers.  Sides include cottage cheese, cole slaw, fries, tots, and mac 'n cheese.  They grind their own beef at Coal Creek Inn and it includes a blend of chuck, ribeye and brisket.  All burgers and grilled chicken sandwiches are served on a brioche bun.  

About the only thing that I have gotten when I go to Coal Creek Inn is the portobello mushroom/Swiss cheese double-smashed burger with tots.  It's so good that I see no need to even try anything else on the menu.  The burger patties each have a thick slice of Swiss cheese and large slices of sautéed portobello mushrooms laid on top of the double-smashed patties.  The bunch was spongy, but not thick, and it held together very well with the juicy nature of the burger patties.  Oh, man, is it ever a great burger!  And this one that particular day was no exception.  It was definitely a multi-napkin burger.  

And I don't know what it is about the tots at Coal Creek Inn, but they are some of the best I've ever had.  I'm sure they get them from a food purveyor, but they have such a great crunchiness on the outside with a fluffy inside.  The only thing that they don't have at Coal Creek Inn is Cholula hot sauce, something I love to add to any type of fried or roasted potatoes.  But they do have Tabasco, so I was able to spice the tots up just a bit.  

My wife has tried the chicken breast sandwich and the fish and chips on previous visits to Coal Creek Inn.  They had a lunch special that day that consisted of a single flat-grilled burger with a choice of a side.  And that's what she got on this visit.  For her side, she got the cole slaw after Aubry told her that they made it in house.  The burger came with sliced red onions, a tomato slice, lettuce and pickles.  My wife thought the burger was excellent and she really liked the cole slaw, as well.  "They do make a good burger here," she said after downing a bite.  

And they certainly do make a good burger at Coal Creek Inn.  The place is not fancy, nor is it pretentious.  It is basically a great little neighborhood restaurant with a great beer selection, excellent bloody marys and great burgers, all in a comfortable bar setting that is suitable for youngsters.  It was great to get caught up with Aubry who continued her stellar service with us again.  It's a bit of a drive and a bit hard to find, but once you get to Coal Creek Inn, you'll be glad.   

Oishii Hibachi & Sushi - Moline, IL

My wife had noticed a new sushi place had opened on the Avenue of the Cities on the east end of Moline a couple years ago and mentioned that she wanted to try the place at some point.  We were just getting ready to head out on vacation the next day and I didn't feel like making anything at home that evening.  My wife - in a stroke of genius - suggested that maybe that night was the night we try Oishii Hibachi & Sushi.  

It seems like every town in the Midwest that is big enough to have a sushi place has an "Oishii" or "Oishi" sushi place.  It's not that Oishii Hibachi & Sushi is a chain, it's that "Oishi" mean "delicious" in Japanese.  And I suppose that it would be much better than calling a sushi place "Mazui Sushi" as "mazui" means "tastes bad" or "not palatable" in Japanese.  This particular Oishii restaurant in Moline opened in 2021.  

(As an aside, for years, I used to see Yen Ching Chinese restaurants in many cities where I traveled.  At first, since I was younger and even more dopey than I am now, and it was long before the gift of the translators on the internet, I thought it was a chain of Chinese restaurants.  But it turns out that the phrase "Yen Ching" in Chinese means "wealth and prosperity in the forging of gold".  Or something like that.)

We pulled into Oishii Hibachi & Sushi at the corner of 48th St. and the Avenue of the Cities in Moline, not far from a chiropractor we've gone to for a while.  (see map)   It was obviously a fast food restaurant at one point in time with a drive-up window on the street side of the building.  It was about 6:00 when we got there and the place was far from full.  A young lady greeted us and told us that we could sit anywhere we liked.  We took a booth along the back wall of the restaurant.

The dining area in Oishii was clean and tidy with booths along the wall and comfortable chairs around a number of tables in the middle.  The small sushi bar was off to the side when you come into the restaurant, but there were no seating options.  A young lady came over with menus for us to look over.  My wife got a green tea and I asked for an Asahi beer, but they didn't carry Asahi.  They did, however, have Sapporo in bottles and 22 ounce cans.  I got a large can of Sapporo while we looked through the menu.  

While we were focused on sushi, they also offer teriyaki and tempura entrees at Oishii.  And they have a  number of hibachi combinations which included beef filet, sirloin steak, chicken, calamari, scallops, sword fish, lobster and salmon. They also had rice and noodle dishes on the menu at Oishii.

My wife usually gets the kani salad when we have sushi.  The combination of the spicy crabmeat and masago (smelt roe) in a spicy mayo-based dressing always gets the taste buds rocking before getting into the sushi rolls.  And the crabmeat was fresh and flavorful.  The kani salad at Oishii was a great start to what we hoped would be a good experience for our first time there.     

We got a couple sushi rolls - our usual spicy salmon and spicy tuna rolls.  There were 8 pieces per roll and they were generous with the salmon and tuna wrapped inside the rolls.  The rolls were spicy enough to have a bit of a bite on the tongue, but didn't overpower the overall fresh flavor of the seafood.

After the kani salad and the spicy rolls, I probably over-ordered when it came to the sushi.  I love smoked salmon and salmon sushi, but I can't eat cooked salmon since I got sick on it over in France about 13 years ago.  I got 3 orders of the smoked salmon (2 pieces per order), 1 order of the salmon, 1 order of the tuna and my wife wanted an order of the red snapper.  Each piece of the sushi was very fresh, had great body and consistency, and there was no hint of a fishy taste.  The rice base also held together very well.  And they were generous cuts of the seafood.  After I finished the last piece of sushi, I was more than stuffed.  "That was a lot of food," my wife remarked. 

And it was all very good.  We had really been on the look-out for a good sushi place in the Quad Cities as the one we liked going to has sort of taken a dive over the past few years.  Based on our initial visit, Oishii has become our favorite sushi joint in the area.  The seafood was fresh and very flavorful, the service was friendly and efficient, and the place was clean - something that we've noticed a couple of the other sushi places in the area could improve upon.   While it's a bit of a drive for us, it's worth it as Oishii Hibachi & Sushi is the best place - for now - to get good sushi in the Quad Cities.  

Prime Steakhouse - Hillsdale, IL

For quite some time, we've been hearing of a steakhouse out in the small Illinois town of Hillsdale, about 25 miles (as the crow flies) from the center of the Quad Cities.  I was having a birthday dinner and my wife asked me where I would like to go to celebrate - her treat.  I could have had my pick of a fancy, top-end place we've been to in the past around the Quad Cities, but I wanted to try Prime Steakhouse in the small town of Hillsdale, IL.

And it's not that Prime Steakhouse isn't fancy or top-end, they are one of the best kept secrets in all of the Quad Cities.  It's the quintessential Midwestern supper club destination located in a small town that draws people from a 40 mile radius on a regular basis.  Owner Agim "Jimmy" Saliu is a veteran of a number of family-owned restaurants in Eastern Iowa, primarily in DeWitt and Clinton.  Prime Steakhouse has been open in Hillsdale for nearly 15 years as Saliu took over the former Rustic Inn supper club which originally opened in the late 60's.  

It was about a half-hour drive from our house in Davenport out to Hillsdale to Prime Steakhouse.  (see map)  I have stopped in Hillsdale many times over the years at the Shell service station just off of I-88 to top off my gas tank while heading home from Chicago or to grab a slice of pizza (or two) on my way into the city.  I never knew until just a couple three years ago that a steakhouse/supper club was in the small town of about 500 people.  

Prime Steakhouse is only open 4 nights a week - Thursday (4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.), Friday and Saturday (4 p.m. to 9 p.m.), and Sunday (4 p.m. to 8 p.m.).  We heard that wait times - especially on the weekend - can be upwards of an hour.  We got there right around 5:30 with no reservations and were able to be seated straight away.  Parking was a breeze with plenty of spots open up and down Main Street in Hillsdale, as well as a small parking lot off to the side.

If we would have had to wait to get a table, the small bar area would have been a good place to hang out.  They had a well-stocked back bar and a good selection of beers to choose from.  It was a cozy spot where I would have no problem hanging out having a couple three beers before sitting down for a meal.   

The dining room at Prime Steakhouse was like walking back into the 70's.  Big booths, large tables, and a number of drop-down light fixtures made the room glow, but not oppressively so.  It was a comfortable space - nothing fancy - but not pretentious at all.  

The same young lady who seated us in a booth in the dining room was also going to be our server.  We also found out that she was going to be our bartender, as well.  She worked her butt off all night as she was the only server - and bartender - on the floor that evening.  She held up well as more parties came in for dinner as time went on.  She was cheerful, helpful and on top of everything that we asked for.  

The menu at Prime Steakhouse was what you would find at most Midwestern-style steakhouse.  Prime rib on Friday and Saturday night (it was a Thursday night when we were there), a variety of steak cuts, pork chops, seafood, chicken entrees and pasta dishes.  Potato sides such as fries, hash browns and baked potatoes were available with most entrees.  

And, of course, there was the salad bar which featured all the fixings you'd expect from a Midwestern supper club - fresh greens, assorted veggies for toppings or sides, the pre-requisite Ranch, French or blue cheese dressings.  My wife and I always love finding pickled beets on a salad bar and the ones at Prime Steakhouse were rather unique in that they were mixed with all spice.  We found it to be an interesting combination, something that we'd never encountered before.  They had a garlic dressing that my wife got.  Any time she gets a garlic dressing I have to take a bite of her salad because I wouldn't be able to get 10 feet near her later in the night because she would reek of garlic.  And I LOVE garlic, but it's a bit oppressive to live with her if she has garlic dressing and I don't.  I got the tangy and sweet French dressing on my salad.  I have to say that I thought the garlic dressing was pretty weak, but the French dressing was very good.  

They had a special off the menu that night - a New York strip with a butter garlic topping.  I really thought long and hard about that, but the filet was also interesting.  My wife was also intrigued by the special.  I said, "You get the special and I'll go for the filet.  That way we can both try them."  For her potato side, she got the hash browns topped with cheddar cheese and onions.  

The filet was a 12 to 14 ounce cut and I asked our server to add the mushroom burgundy wine sauce.  I thought I had asked for the sauce to come on the side, but it was slathered over the rare-cooked filet.  But I was fine with that.  For my side, I got the garlic-mashed potatoes.  I asked our server if I could get some of the mushroom burgundy sauce for my mashed potatoes.  She said, "Oh, a lot of people ask for the sauce with the mashed potatoes."  Once again, I thought the sauce would come on the side, but it was liberally spooned over the garlic mashed potatoes.  And I was fine with that, as well.  

I have to say that my filet was cooked perfectly, the beef was tender and the mushroom burgundy sauce did not overpower the flavor of the beef.  I was extremely impressed with the steak that I had.  The mushroom burgundy sauce was a nice complement with both the steak and the garlic mashed potatoes.  It must have been the garlic dressing that I had earlier as I didn't detect much of a garlic flavor in the potatoes.  But, still, they were fine. 

My wife's New York strip with the garlic butter was, well, disappointing.  First of all, the garlic butter was way too salty.  My wife remarked that it was salty after her first bite.  And she salts everything, so if she says it's salty, it's salty.  She cut a piece off of her strip steak for me and I tried a bite.  It was severely over-salted for my taste.  I rarely salt anything either during the cooking process or after it's been served, so I can detect salt content on food almost immediately.  To me, this was almost inedible.  My wife even thought it was way too much salt on the steak.  She pushed the garlic butter topping off her steak and went ahead and ate it that way.  The cut of meat was tender, but the residual flavor of the overly-salted garlic butter sauce was just too overpowering.  

Jimmy Saliu came out to talk with us to see how everything was with our meal.  My wife told him that she likes to salt her food, but the garlic butter on top of her steak had way too much salt on it.  Jimmy apologized profusely and offered to get her another steak.  But she was already 3/4's of the way through the steak at that point.  After we finished up, Jimmy came out with a piece of vanilla cake - on the house.  It was all right - probably a food purveyor type of cake and not made in house.  But it was a nice gesture on his part.

He chatted us up for a moment and asked where we were from.  We told him we were from Davenport and had been hearing and reading about his place from other people, as well as on social media.  He said, "We don't really advertise that much.  We don't have to.  We've been here for years without really having to get the word out.  We leave that up to our customers."  

And I would have to say that I was a convert after visiting Prime Steakhouse.  My beef tenderloin filet was very good - tender, juicy, cooked perfectly rare the way I like my filet cuts.  But my wife was disappointed in her strip steak with the butter garlic topping as it was way too salty.  But that won't deter us from going back out to Hillsdale to eat at Prime Steakhouse again at some point.  The service we had from the young lady who was working not only all the tables in the restaurant, but was also working as the bartender that night.  The owner Jimmy was friendly and personable, and it was nice for him to give us a piece of cake for dessert free of charge.  Prime Steakhouse isn't a fancy, upscale steakhouse.  But the steaks they serve would rival any cuts of beef I've had at some of the big city steakhouses I've visited in the past.  

Great Revialist Brew Lab - Geneseo, IL

One very nice fall Sunday afternoon a couple months ago, my wife wanted to go for a little drive.  I was up for our regular burger and bloody mary Sunday, so we drove over to Geneseo, IL via backroads.  We tried to get into the Geneseo Brewing Company, but we found that they were closed until 3 p.m. on Sundays.  I remembered that a new brewery had taken over the old Lionstone Brewery in Geneseo, so we ended up heading out there. Five minutes later, we pulled up in front of the Great Revivalist Brew Lab.  

Not long after I did the original post on the Lionstone Brewing Company in 2017 (click here to see that post), I received an e-mail from Logan Hamilton who let me know that he was no longer the head brewer at the brewery.  He never told me the reason why, other than he was going to get back into teaching.  

Through the grapevine, I had heard that Lionstone owner Steve Fiers was looking for someone to take over the brewery/brewpub.  In 2019, he was introduced to Seattle native Richard Schwab who began to negotiate the takeover of the Geneseo operation.  

Schwab literally grew up around beer.  He had family members who were all home brewers and Schwab started to help brewing beer when he was in junior high.  He continued his interest in home-brewing beers as he climbed up the corporate ladder in the telecommunications industry traveling across the nation.    

His job brought him to the Quad Cities about 8 years ago and Schwab was impressed with the variety of breweries in the area.  He became friendly with the brewers at Great Bend Brewery in downtown Davenport and Schwab became part of that group who experimented with different styles of beers.  

Leaving the corporate life, Schwab took the leap to buy the Lionstone Brewery in early 2020 and was in the process of rebranding the brewery as the Great Revivalist Brew Lab.  But a day before he was set to take over the Geneseo location on May 1, a tragic natural disaster took place that knocked out his friends at Great Bend Brewery in downtown Davenport.  A Hesco barrier that was holding back the waters of a historic flood on the Mississippi River caved and the onrushing water inundated the Great Bend Brewery with up to 3 feet of water effectively knocking the place out of business.  

After floodwaters subsided, the owners of the Great Bend Brewery decided not to carry on.  In came Schwab to buy that location with plans to revamp the property that included the original brewing operation and a building across the street that he was planning on turning into a small brewpub.  Plans were to have the Davenport location of the Great Revivalist Brewing Company up and going in late 2021, but so far that plan has been pushed back into mid-2022.  

We pulled into the parking lot of the Great Revivalist Brew Lab around 1:30 in the afternoon.  Really not much had changed from when we were in to Lionstone Brewing a couple three previous times.  

We initially sat at a table near one of the floor to ceiling windows in the front of the brewpub.  However, I looked over at the bar and noticed a familiar face behind it.  It was an old friend from working events for the City of Davenport over the years, Neil.  Neil and I had lost contact for a handful of years, but for some reason we kept running into one another at different places around the Quad Cities where he was working for the now closed Crust pizza restaurant, and when he would help out with the Floyd's Burgers food truck when it was parked at various brew pubs around the Quad Cities.  We decided to go up to the bar and have Neil wait on us.

After exchanging pleasantries with Neil - who told us he was wearing various hats for Great Revivalist Brew Lab - we took a look at the list of brews they had on their beer list.  But, of course, I was there for a bloody mary, as well.  Neil promised that he made a great bloody mary and I sent him away to start on that while we looked at the beer list to see if there was anything that caught our eye.

We wanted to try some samplers and we decided upon the Project Hazy IPA and the Mile 19 pale ale (Geneseo is Exit 19 on I-80 in Illinois).  I was also sort of interested in trying the seasonal Pumpkin Eater pumpkin and yam spiced beer and Neil suggested his favorite beer they had at the time - the Ryevolution rye and red ale.  The Ryevolution red ale was pretty good, the Pumpkin Eater was a little too strong on the taste buds, and we liked both the Project Hazy IPA a bit more than the Mile 19 pale ale.  

Neil's bloody mary was more of an artisan bloody mary with a splash of beer added to the mix.  It was a bit more thin in texture than I like for my bloody mary's, but it was still pretty good.  

While we were enjoying our beers and the bloody mary, Neil had dropped off a couple food menus for us to look over.  They still had the big wood fired pizza oven in the corner of the restaurant that was there when we would come out to the Lionstone Brewery.  They still had a number of pizzas and flatbreads on the menu - something that we had said we were going to try at some point, but never did.  Salads, sandwiches, and appetizers such as wings, a spicy tot poutine, and a combo basket of fried pickles and fried Wisconsin cheese curds were also on the menu.  

While I had my heart set on a burger, my eyes wandered over to the mahi mahi grilled tacos - I'm always a sucker for good grilled fish tacos.  Fresh cole slaw, pico-de-gallo, and a cilantro/lime ranch dressing came with the fish tacos that were also available deep fried.  The fish tacos gave me pause, but I still ended up going the burger route.  

They had three different types of burgers on the menu at Great Revivalist - a sharp cheddar and bacon burger; an avocado/queso burger with pico-de-gallo and a Creole aioli; and a traditional burger with a choice of cheddar, Swiss or pepper jack cheese.  I went the traditional route with some pepper jack cheese.  I had a choice of sides which included truffle fries, kettle chips, cottage cheese and a side Caesar's salad.  But they also had tots and I had to go with those.  

My wife saw the blackened grouper sandwich on the menu and she asked Neil if they could hold the bread on the sandwich.  It came with lettuce, tomato, and an onion slice with the Creole aioli on the side.  She got a choice of sides and she went with the house-made cole slaw.  

My burger was on a pretzel bun that was, quite frankly, sort of dried out.  In fact with the vegetable condiments and a little ketchup on the burger, the bun literally disintegrated.  And that was a shame because the burger patty was very good.  I ended up using a fork and knife to finish off the burger.  The tots were excellent, however, especially with some Cholula splashed onto them.  But, it's pretty tough to screw up tots.  

My wife was more than impressed with the grouper.  It was light, flaky and had just enough Cajun spices on it to give it a kick, but not too much where it was too spicy for my wife.  I had a small bite of it and I have to say that it was better than my burger.  And my wife let me share some of her Creole aioli for some of my tots.  That had a wonderful flavor to it and I almost liked it better on the tots than the Cholula sauce.  

After we finished our lunch, Neil invited us to take a look at their back patio where they put in individual greenhouse-style huts that they use for outdoor dining in the winter.  They first started doing this in late 2020 to provide dining space when inside dining restrictions were still in place.  With most restrictions now lifted, the little huts were such a hit with Great Revivalist patrons that they decided to bring them back again for the winter of 2021-22.  The plexiglass huts will seat 4 to 6 people and each have their own heater.  I understand there is a wait list for the huts on the weekends.  

The top of a old silo had been fabricated on one end of the deck to provide another space for dining or drinking outside in the elements.  While it wasn't as nice as the huts, it was kind of a neat rustic touch.  The deck overlooked an open field with a creek and featured chairs and stools to relax on.  It was a little cool that day - definitely cold in the shade - so there weren't many people hanging out on the deck.  

Our first visit to the Great Revivalist Brew Lab was deemed a success with a very good hazy India pale ale, a delicious chunk of blackened grouper, a bloody mary that was pretty good, and a burger that even though the pretzel bun disintegrated, it was still edible.  It was also good to see our friend Neil and to get caught up on the goings and doings of the Geneseo location and the upcoming Davenport location for Great Revivalist.  We have a number of breweries and brewpubs within a 25 mile radius of our home and it's good that Great Revivalist Brew Lab continues on in Geneseo.  

FoodAffair Bistro - Bettendorf, IA

There's been a trend of casual upscale breakfast/lunch bistro-style restaurants that have opened in the Quad Cities over the past couple of years.  One of those is a place that we'd been wanting to try for awhile - FoodAffair Bistro.  My wife had a good friend of hers come into town for a long weekend recently and on the day that she was to leave to head back to her home we decided to take her out for breakfast.  We decided to head over and give FoodAffair Bistro a try.  

Aman Razdan grew up in Mumbai, IN.  While he was a youngster, he worked in his parents restaurant before coming to the U.S. in 1998.  He settled in the Quad Cities and ended up getting into the culinary program at Scott Community College.  While going to school at Scott Community, Razdin got a job at Le Figaro, a now-closed French restaurant in Rock Island run by Rachid Bouchareb.  Learning under Bouchareb, Razdan did a little bit of everything in the kitchen to preparing salad dressings to preparing charcuterie boards and cheese plates.  

After graduating from Scott Community College, Razdan became the pastry and sous chef at the Red Crow Grill in August of 2002.  Razdan worked at Red Crow Grill until March of 2004 when he was hired to be the head regional chef for Holiday Retirement Corporation.  Working out of the Palmer Hills Independent Senior Living facility in Bettendorf, Razdan oversaw the kitchens for 16 Holiday Retirement properties in the Midwest.  

Pictured at right - Aman Razdan.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times. 

After nearly 3 years working with Holiday Retirement, Razdan was hired to be the head chef at the Best Western Steeplegate Inn in Davenport.  Three years later, Razdan went to work as an executive chef at a local hospital.  During his time at the hospital, Razdan - along with his wife, Martina - started to work on a business plan to someday own their own restaurant.

In 2015, the opportunity arose to buy the Red Crow Grill where Razdan got his first job out of culinary school.  Red Crow Grill had been open for 16 years and Razdan wanted to change things up and put his stamp on the restaurant.  Red Crow Grill closed on July 1, 2015 and over the next two months, Razdan spruced up the place and came up with a menu that he classified as "global fusion" focusing on Asian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Latin cuisines.  In early September of 2015, Razdan and his wife opened Hemispheres Bistro.  

A few years back, one of the Quad Cities iconic hotels - Jumer's Castle Lodge - had closed and the property was bought by developers who tore down the structure to make way for a Home2 Suites hotel, a gas station/convenience store, and an out-building that would house a coffee shop and a restaurant.  Dr. Rajiv Mallik - a cardiologist - and his wife, Dr. Namrata Mallik - an internal medicine specialist thought the restaurant spot would be a good location for a bistro.  

The Mallik's approached Aman Razdan and asked if he would supervise the kitchen for them.  Razdan envisioned a restaurant that would focus on eclectic breakfasts and lunches, along with gourmet coffee and tea, smoothies and shakes, and a full bar.  Friends of the Mallik's - Dr. Sanjay Pancholi and his wife Karishma - also became investors in the new restaurant.  FoodAffair Bistro opened for breakfast only on Dec. 21, 2020.  Within the next few weeks, they had added lunch items to their mix.  

To get to FoodAffair Bistro, it's a little tricky if you're not a resident of the area.  From Spruce Hills Drive just east of Interstate 74, you have to go north on Utica Ridge Road.  About 100 yards north of the intersection of Spruce Hills and Utica Ridge is an entry point that takes you to Home2 Suites and a Kwik Star.  Just before you get to Kwik Star, however, the entrance into the parking lot for FoodAffair Bistro is on your left.  FoodAffair Bistro is located on the south side of the building with Milltown Coffee occupying the north end of the building. (see map)

Now, my wife and I had driven through the parking lot a couple times on weekend mornings and found the parking lot to be packed.  We figured that FoodAffair Bistro was also packed so we never stopped in.  But upon entering the restaurant, we found it to be much larger than we imagined from the outside.  It featured a number of booths lined along a half wall that looked into the kitchen area.  More booths and tables were situated along the wall and into the middle of the space.  Orange accents were prominent throughout the restaurant.  

The bar area was off to the left side as you walk in.  FoodAffair Bistro featured a number of craft beers and wines in addition to a full cocktail selection.  Just past the bar area was a separate room that could be used for additional seating, meetings, or receptions.  There was also a small private dining area in the back corner of the main dining room.  

Throughout the restaurant, there are original works of art by local artists who are cancer patients or who have survived cancer.  The owners of FoodAffair Bistro teamed with Living Proof Exhibit, a local non-profit organization that provides therapeutic programs for cancer patients and survivors, for the artwork in the restaurant.  Dr. Namrata Mallik personally picked out a number of original abstract paintings by local cancer survivors to showcase (and sell, if one was inclined to do so) in FoodAffair Bistro.

Our server that day was a young woman by the name of Heather.  We had menus dropped off at our table when we were seated by a hostess and we were going through them when Heather stopped by.  She offered us a choice of still or sparkling water.  After we opted for still water and Heather went away, I said to my wife and her friend, "Well, you certainly don't get your choice of water at Perkins or Village Inn!"  

Since they had gourmet coffees and a full bar, I took full advantage of that.  I ordered one of their bloody mary's, a Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing IPA, and a double espresso - just to get me started for the day.  All three were very good for 9:30 in the morning.  Our friend got a mocha and my wife went with just a regular coffee.  My wife remarked at how good their coffee was.  I thought their espresso was excellent.  

The menu is short, but interesting.  There were the usual omelets, pancakes, scramble skillets, eggs benedict plates, and pastries for the breakfast side.  They had basics like eggs, bacon and hash browns, and they had a special that day which I ended up getting and will describe in a bit.  

On the lunch side - which is served after 11 a.m. and up until 2 p.m. (weekdays only) - they had a number of items including appetizers such as vegetable spring rolls, Indian-style samosas, smoked ceviche, and smoked chicken nachos.  Sandwiches include a prime rib burger, a Cubano sandwich, a bacon/lettuce/tomato/avocado sandwich, and a chicken tikka sandwich served on Indian naan bread.  Soups and salads were also available. 

However, their lunch menu also featured steaks, chicken, seafood, pork and ribs.  They had tandoori chicken available for lunch, as well a flat iron steak with a ginger soy sauce, and lamb chops.  Sides such as sweet potato fries, mashed potatoes, basmati rice, a fruit cup, and vegetables came with the main entrees.  

My wife and our friend went with the basic breakfast - two eggs (your choice), bacon, toast and hash browns.  My wife went with just two eggs over easy, along with whole wheat toast.  She got fresh squeezed orange juice along with her breakfast.  Our friend got scrambled eggs topped with cheddar cheese.  My wife thought her breakfast was fine for what it was.  But she did remark that the hash browns were very good.  

I went with the special they had that day - the corned beef hash eggs benedict.  The corned beef and potatoes were served on toasted rye bread with two poached eggs on the side.  The corned beef hash was topped with a scallion cream sauce.  A side of Boetje's mustard and a sweet chili drizzle completed the plate.  

It was - in a word - outstanding.  The corned beef was juicy and tender.  The scallion cream sauce just heightened the taste sensations with each bite.  Even the poached eggs had a quality taste.  I was more than happy with what I got.

Since this visit, my wife and I have tried to go back to FoodAffair Bistro a couple times for lunch.  We went on New Year's Eve day to get a sandwich or a burger, but we were informed that there would be a 45 minute wait.  There were numerous open tables, but we figured that it probably had more to do with a staffing issue than reservations.  A week later, we went in on a Sunday for a burger and a bloody mary, but we were told that they only do breakfast on Saturday and Sunday.  

Nonetheless, our only visit - so far - to FoodAffair Bistro was a good experience.  I can't say enough about the corned beef hash with the scallion cream sauce and the poached eggs.  My wife felt that her breakfast - as basic as it was - was also very good.  And the bloody mary/double espresso/craft beer starter I had was a spot-hitter.  One of these days we'll make it back to FoodAffair Bistro for lunch because we know that if their lunches are as good as their breakfasts, it will be another good experience. 

Update - February 2023 - We found out on February 21st that Food Affair Bistro closed.  Per their Facebook page, the restaurant announced that "a gut punch from within" made it so the restaurant couldn't continue.  

And I have to sadly say, it didn't surprise me.  They started doing dinner sometime last year and my wife and I went there a couple times - including this previous Friday night.  Their dinner menu was very short with a burger, some sandwiches, some tandoori specialties, and a couple salads.  I had the burger on my first dinner visit and it was pretty good.

This past Friday, the place was pretty packed.  But they continued to have just a short menu for dinner.  We could see into the kitchen that they seemed to have a number of people working back there and I sort of half-joked that they had one cook for the burgers, one to make the tandoori chicken, one to make the tandoori salmon, one to make the prime rib special they had that night, one to make the sandwiches, etc., etc.  

I wasn't that hungry and I got the wedge salad.  My wife ordered the tandoori chicken.  Our server came back and said that the chicken wouldn't be available for another 30 minutes because they ran out at lunch and it needed to marinate.  My wife and I both thought it was odd, so my wife ended up ordering the tandoori salmon.  

My wedge salad was pretty dry, they didn't have any pepper on the table to add to my salad, and they neglected to bring any lemon wedges for the salmon.  (One of my wife's pet peeves with restaurants that serve fish - each seafood entree should automatically come out with lemon wedges.)  Once that was rectified, my wife thought tandoori salmon was just "OK".  My wedge was pretty weak.  

While we were eating another couple came in and sat at a table next to us.  Our server waited on them, as well, and she immediately told them that there was no salmon left on the tandoori menu.  And it was just before 7 p.m.  On a Friday night.  

On top of that, our bill with tip was $80 bucks.  We sort of looked at one another as we were walking out and came to the realization that we would probably never go back for dinner.  "Breakfast, yes," I said as we made our way out into the parking lot.  "But that's it for dinner." 

Well, looks like we won't be going back for breakfast, either.  It's a sad deal when a restaurant like this closes, but I have to say that I'm not all that surprised.

Verde - Bettendorf, IA

A new contemporary Mexican restaurant had opened in a new development in downtown Bettendorf back in May and my wife and I had been wanting to give the place a try.  As we usually do, we wait about 90 days for a restaurant to work out its kinks and it was well past 90 days from when it opened when we finally made the trek to Verde to check the place out.  

Verde is the brainchild of Sid Rognoni who first came on to the culinary scene in Davenport about 10 years ago as a co-owner of the now-closed Bowls Urban Eats.  He also is involved with RAW, an upscale cocktail lounge with esoteric appetizers located in downtown Davenport.  In 2017, Rognoni - along with partner Ruben Garcia - opened Ruby's, a bike shop, craft beer, and brat house in downtown Davenport.  (To read the Road Tips entry on Ruby's, click here.)  

As part of a large revitalization of downtown Bettendorf near where the new I-74 bridges were being built, a multi-function property by the name of The Bridges was proposed for upscale lofts, retail and restaurant space.  Rognoni teamed with local chef Connor Larson - whose previous gig was at Bass Street Chop House - to come up with the eclectic cuisine for Verde.  Innovative seasonal selections with "out-of-box" thinking beyond traditional Mexican food was something Larson was wanting to focus on along with craft cocktails and craft beers.  In early May of this year, Verde opened to the public.  

You can see Verde when you cross over the Mississippi River on the I-74 bridges, but getting there can be a bit confusing.  Well, at least it was for us on our first time.  Verde has a State Street address, but as State Street - the one-way that heads east - curves up under the new approach west of the I-74 Bridge, it becomes Grant Street - which is the one-way that heads west in downtown Bettendorf.  After the approach, the road curves back at 16th Street and becomes State Street again.  (Got that?  We're going to have a test on this tomorrow morning.)  From either direction - west on Grant or east on State - take 16th Street south across State (or is it Grant? - I'm so confused!) and turn right on State street - which is a two-way street in The Bridges complex.  Verde is on the northwest side of one of the buildings at The Bridges with parking in lots west of the building.  (see map)

We were greeted by a young lady upon entering Verde who asked if we had been in before.  When we told her this was our first visit, she said in a sort of surprised tone, "Oh!  OK, well, welcome!"  The restaurant featured artisan hardwood flooring, color-tinted pinewood paneling, along with contemporary industrial lighting and ornamental balls hanging from the ceiling.  A unique portrait of a Mexican sugar skull woman was prominent on the back wall of the space.

The bar was part of the dining room area and featured a small variety of tequilas, draft beers and other liquors.  High-backed chairs lined the wood-topped bar and some flat screen televisions hung high on the wall on the back wall of the bar.   

The hostess ended up seating us in a booth near the back wall.  A young lady by the name of Veronica came over to greet us and we looked through the menus that were dropped off for us.  Veronica wanted to know if we wanted to start off with a drink.  Absolutely!

My wife was in the mood for a good margarita and they had some interesting drinks on their menu.  The watermelon paloma caught her eye, but she ended up she ended up getting the classic margarita.  I ended up getting the same thing.  

She thought Verde's classic margarita could have been a little more sweet, but I was fine with mine.  She likes the margaritas I make at home - 1 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice, 1 oz. Herradura silver, 1 oz. Cointreau (or Grand Marnier), a squeeze of organic blue agave syrup, then shaken with ice vigorously for about 15 to 20 seconds.  All that is then pour through the shaker strainer into a glass on ice.  It's good stuff.   

The menu at Verde that evening was a little sparse.  We were told by Veronica that they would be expanding the menu as time went on with more seasonal offerings.  Small plates such as rice and beans, elote-style grilled cauliflower, and a strawberry and beet salad were on the menu that day.  Large plates included a grilled  pork shoulder 'al pastor', achiote-glazed chicken with a molé sauce, and a traditional carne de res grilled beef dish topped with a black molé.  

They also had some of their signature house-made masa (corn) tacos on the menu and that's the direction we went.  We decided to go with the fish tacos and the barbacoa tacos that they had on the menu that evening.

The fish tacos were basically single thick strips of seared ahi topped with pickled veggies and shaved radish slices.  The tacos were finished with a slightly spicy macha salsa.  The ahi tacos were very good - the house-made corn tortilla shells had a very good flavor and texture.  These were very good tacos.   

The lamb barbacoa tacos were equally as good.  They featured thin strips of barbecue lamb, topped with a thick borracha salsa, a thin slice of onion and an avocado slice.  I had two of the lamb tacos and an ahi taco, while my wife had two fish and one lamb taco.  For a nice light meal, we were very happy with what we had.  

We haven't been back to Verde since our initial visit, but now that the weather is cooling down we're planning on getting back there to try their fall menu.  But the tacos we had on our first visit - the lamb barbacoa and the ahi tacos - were very good.  While my wife thought the margaritas could have been a bit more sweet in taste, I thought they were fine.  It's not necessarily inexpensive at Verde, but then again they bill themselves as a unique Mexican restaurant with a contemporary twist.  If you're looking for a basket of chips and salsa and fishbowl-sized margaritas as the start of your Mexican meal, then Verde isn't your place.  But if you're looking for something different in terms of the preparation and quality of the menu items, then I'd get to Verde as soon as you can.    

tacobar? - Davenport, IA

It's rare for a chef that has a pretty successful restaurant to basically stop and rework the concept in mid-stream.  That's what happened with a place we liked to go to in downtown Davenport from time to time, an upscale casual restaurant by the name of Woodfire Grill.  In October of 2019, owner Toby Christianson decided that he was getting stale as a chef and he wanted to do something fun with a new restaurant concept. He ended up shutting down Woodfire Grill and rebranding it into an eclectic taqueria.  In February of 2020, Christianson reopened the restaurant with the unique name of tacobar?. 

Toby Christiansen grew up outside of Fargo, ND and got into working at restaurants as a teenager.  After graduating from Minnesota State-Moorhead, he started on an odyssey where he worked for a number of upscale restaurants around the Midwest.  He helped open restaurants in Grinnell, IA and in Muscatine, IA before making his way to the Quad Cities over 15 years ago.

In 2004, a restaurant by the name of Centro opened on the ground floor of the historic Redstone Building in downtown Davenport.  Once the flagship store of what eventually became the Von Maur department stores, the building also houses the River Music Experience on the other half of the ground floor and up on the second story of the building.  Centro had signed a three-year lease when they opened in the summer of 2004 and that lease expired in 2007.  The lease was renewed month-by-month as the owners of Centro were helping the River Music Experience find a suitable replacement for their restaurant.  They found it in Christianson who was the managing partner of a small investment group who ended up taking over the location.  

Pictured right - Toby Christianson.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times.   

Christianson's upscale/casual restaurant Woodfire Grill took over the new location in March of 2008 and my wife and I ventured down there less than our usual "three month rule" after a new restaurant opened.  Of course, there were problems and that was the first night we met Toby Christianson who came by our table to profusely apologize for my wife being served the wrong meal.  We told him that we usually wait 90 days after a restaurant opens to allow them to work out the kinks.  Toby said to us, "Well, if everyone did that, new restaurants would be out of business in less than 90 days.  That's why we need people like you guys to help us work out the growing pains."  It was a good point and one that we've thought about since.  But, honestly, we still try to let a restaurant go for 90 days before we give it a shot.  

The Woodfire Grill was a place we had been to a number of times over they years and we really enjoyed the food that Toby and his staff served there.  They always had a good bar and sometimes we'd just hang out with friends for a drink.  

But Christianson was getting burnt out after running Woodfire Grill for nearly 12 years.  As I said, he ended up reimagining his restaurant into a chef-driven eclectic taqueria with a diverse selection of crafted drinks and a couple dozen craft beers to choose from on tap.  I was told that the name "tacobar?" came about as that was the immediate retort people would say to Christianson as he told them that he was turning his popular restaurant into a taco bar.   After closing Woodfire Grill in October of 2019, he had a soft opening of his new restaurant later in December and tacobar? was pretty much open for full business in February of 2020.  

Of course, not long after tacobar? opened last year, they were forced to shut down due to COVID-19 restrictions.  Christianson worked through that by offering carry-out meals and also providing tacos to many of the front line medical workers who were fighting the coronavirus.  

And the continued outbreak of the coronavirus was one of the reasons why it took us so long to finally get down to tacobar? for a meal.  We were out with friends of ours having a couple drinks on a Friday night and the women were wondering where we should go for dinner.  My wife brought up tacobar? and our friends basically said, "Yeah, we haven't gone there yet, either!  Let's go!"  

We found a parking space just down 2nd Street from tacobar? which is located at 2nd and Main.  (see map)  We had actually tried to get into tacobar? on a Friday night during the time when restaurants were still under 50% capacity restrictions sometime late last year, but we were told it would be a 45 minute wait.  Well, there was going to be no problem getting in this particular night - even if there were restrictions in place - as there were just a handful of people in the place.  And with their outdoor patio open during warm weather months, there was plenty of places to sit.  

The inside had changed a bit from the days of Woodfire Grill.  Some of the banquette-style seating and booths had been taken out on one side of the restaurant and small alcove seating was available.  I detest banquette seating, so this was a good change.  

However, on the other side of the restaurant, they kept the banquette seating in the middle of the dining area.  
There was a little lounge area off to the side that replaced a number of tables along the east wall of the restaurant.  It was kind of a neat concept to have comfy sofas for people to relax on while having a drink.  

It was such a nice evening that we decided to sit out on the patio.  The patio overlooks the courtyard for the River Music Experience, and on Friday nights from June until September the organization sponsors "Live @Five" where they showcase local bands from 5 to 7 p.m.  It was around 8 p.m. when we got to tacobar? on that Friday night, so the crowds had pretty gone and the band and production company had already packed up and moved on when we got there. 

There is no waitstaff service at tacobar?.  There are menus available to take to your table and then figure out what you'd like to get.  Then you go inside back by the kitchen and order up your food.  They bring the food out to you once it's ready.  

We ordered the obligatory chips and salsa for our table to enjoy while we looked at the menu.  The chips and salsa are not free at tacobar? and run $2.95.  But we were fine with that.  The chips were fresh and warm, and the salsa had a nice little kick to it with hints of chipotle peppers and cilantro.  It was excellent salsa.      

And since there is no waitstaff, that means you have to go to the bar and order your drinks.  And that means two separate charges.  The bar area hasn't changed at all from the days of Woodfire Grill.  It still had the high-back chairs at the bar, the small tables along the front window and the six flat screen televisions hung above the back bar.

My buddy and I had gone to the bar to order drinks - my wife wanted a strawberry margarita while I saw the unmistakable spigot for Kona Big Wave.  I ordered the drinks and the bartender - a blonde young lady - asked me for my name.  When I said it, she said, "I THOUGHT that was you!"  It turned out it was the ex-wife of a guy that I know and I hadn't seen her since they had gotten divorced a few years back.  It turns out that she had been working at the Woodfire Grill with Toby and stayed on when he went to the tacobar? concept.  

Well, the first hiccup of the evening occurred when the keg for the Kona Big Wave blew as she was pouring it.  "And we don't have a replacement keg," she said looking under the bar.  I decided to get a Sierra Nevada Hazy IPA they had on tap instead.

The second hiccup came when I went to order food.  They touted "puffy tacos" on the menu - made from Navajo-style frybread - and I thought about getting a couple of the pork shoulder puffy tacos.  However, I was told that they were out of the puffy taco shells that evening.  Hmmm....  OK.  Let me look at the menu again.  I decided to go with the pork tacos.  Then someone in the kitchen called up to the girl at the cash register and said they were out of pork that evening.  I was sort of incredulous that they were 0 for 2 on what I wanted to order.  OK - back to the drawing board.  

Usually, they have six proteins to choose from for their tacos at tacobar? - chicken, pork shoulder, ground beef, carne asada (steak), butter-grilled shrimp and a fried tofu for the vegetarians.  Toppings are grouped, such as "main stream" - lettuce, pico de gallo, taco sauce and fresh cheese; "al pastor" - pineapple, cilantro, onion and achiote pepper salsa; "Tex-Mex BBQ" - garlic-cider slaw, pickled onion, a house-made bbq sauce and house-made pickles; and "Korean" - chopped cabbage, chimichurri, sesame seeds, and a spicy "yum-yum" sauce.    

My wife went with the chile lime chicken - three corn tortillas filled with marinated grilled chicken, main-stream style.  She also got jalapeño slices on the top of each tortilla.  The tacos were served in a tin-foil dish - not too fancy of a vessel for an eclectic taco place like tacobar?.   My wife really did enjoy the chile lime chicken, the tin-foil dish, notwithstanding.  

I ended up getting the carne asada tacos - there was a $2.00 upcharge for the carne asada - with the "Mexican OG" toppings which are the traditional cilantro and onions with a choice of sauce.  I got the chile verde salsa to go with my tacos.  And they were fine - not outstanding or earthshaking.  They were just typical carne asada tacos in double corn tortillas.  I really wanted to try the pork al pastor tacos, though.  I guess I'll have to go back again at some point and do that.  

For our first visit to tacobar?, I thought the food was fine.  There were a couple three setbacks (ran out of the beer I ordered, no puffy taco shells, no pork al pastor), but we were able to work around it.  My wife enjoyed her chile lime chicken tacos and I really liked their house-made salsa.  Toby Christianson has said that he doesn't want to compete with the myriad of Mexican restaurants in the area, he just wants to enhance the offerings.  I hope tacobar? is able to make it as the location is a prime spot in downtown Davenport.  But knowing how successful Christianson has been in the past, I'm sure that he'll be able to make it work.

Cabos Cantina and Grill - Eldridge, IA

Good friends of ours were telling us about a Mexican restaurant in the Quad City bedroom community of Eldridge, IA earlier this year.  "The food is great and the portions are huge," my friend gushed.  "You really ought to try it sometime!"  On a recent Sunday evening when we didn't feel like cooking at home, we took a trip out to Eldridge to try Cabos Cantina and Grill.  

Jose Vazquez is originally from the Santa Ana Pacueco neighborhood in Pénjamo, Guanajuato, Mexico.  Vazquez's grandmother always had a busy kitchen making food for her family.  In his teens, Vazquez and members of his family immigrated to the U.S. and some ended up in the Midwest, while Vazquez's family ended up out in Virginia.  

As a 16-year-old, Jose Vazquez was working as a dishwasher at a Mexican restaurant in Blacksburg, VA.  The owners of the restaurant saw his dedication and they soon moved the young Vazquez into a waitstaff position in the restaurant.  They then moved him back into the kitchen where he learned how to cook and to run a kitchen.  He did just about everything in the restaurant including running the day-to-day operations as the restaurant expanded into multiple locations.  It was a great learning experience for Vazquez who ended up moving to Peoria, IL to be with family members there.

It was when Vazquez was in Peoria that he opened his dream restaurant, Los Cabos Cantina and Grill with the help of two of his brothers in 2008.  Many of the recipes Vazquez used at Los Cabos came from his grandmother's kitchen in Guanajuato.  Los Cabos immediately gained a following and became one of the premier Mexican restaurants in the Peoria area.  But Vazquez wanted to expand and he looked west toward the Quad Cities where he had relatives living.

Vazquez's cousins invited him to spend some time in the Quad Cities to get to know the area and to possibly scout for a site where to put a restaurant.   As I've said many times over the years, the Quad Cities - with a solid and longtime Hispanic population in the area - already has a number of very good to outstanding authentic Mexican restaurants.  Undeterred by that fact, Vazquez continued to look for a spot and spied a building in the growing town of Eldridge, just five miles north of the Davenport city limits.  The building had been a number of bars and restaurants over the years, but had been sitting vacant for awhile.  

Vazquez took over the building in early 2017 and by the summer, Cabos Cantina and Grill opened its doors.  Vazquez's brothers Juan and Alfonso, along with his cousin Luis, ran the restaurant while Jose Vazquez came up three times a week from his Peoria restaurant to check in on the operation.  In 2019, a small Mexican restaurant that was in a strip mall near the Walmart on the north side of Davenport closed its doors.  Vazquez took over that spot and opened Cabos Cantina and Grill 2 later that year.  

It was around 6 p.m. when we pulled up to the parking lot at Cabos Cantina and Grill, located just off U.S. Highway 61 at the LeClaire Road exit.  (see map)  There was something going on as a number of vintage and unique sports cars had congregated in the parking lot and the large meeting room they have at Cabos Cantina was filled with the owners of those cars.  When we walked in, we were asked if we were there for the party.  Nope, not us.  But we did notice more people being directed to the party room behind the bar area while we were there.  

Festive and bright colors abound inside Cabos Cantina.  The bar area featured a long bar with a faux brick background with a faux awning over the back bar.  Cabos Cantina features a full bar including domestic and imported beers on tap.   

We were seated in a booth just outside the kitchen entrance to the main dining room.  Booths lined the three walls of the dining area with tables in the center of the area.  There was a small patio area on the front of the restaurant, but it was sort of warm that day and we decided to sit inside.  

As we were seated, we were given menus and it wasn't long before a basket of warm corn chips with a tangy salsa with a hint of cloves and nutmeg was brought to the table.  Surprisingly, my wife didn't order a margarita and stuck with water on this visit.  I got a large Dos Equis Ambar that they had on tap.  

They had an extensive menu at Cabos Cantina - shrimp and seafood dishes, chicken plates, pork and beef entrees were featured on the menu.  Of course, they had the Mexican stand-by's - burritos, fajitas, enchiladas, quesadillas and tacos - to choose from.  Poblano chile peppers stuffed with a choice of ground beef, beef tips, shredded beef or chicken was something that caught my wife's eye right off the bat.  I was sort of interested in the pork chile verde entree they had, as well as the Fiesta Burrito - chunks of pork tenderloin that are simmered in beer and stuffed inside a large flour shell.  The tacos al pastor also got my attention.  

In the end, I went with the chile verde shredded beef enchiladas.  The menu said that it came with two enchiladas, Mexican rice and refried beans.  Since there were only two enchiladas on the plate, I went with a ground beef taco.  Well, imagine my surprise when I found not two, but three shredded beef enchiladas on the plate covered in chihuahua cheese and a tomatillo salsa.  The beef taco was covered with cheese, onions and cilantro.  

My wife got the No. 12 combo - a chile relleno with topped with a beef/tomato sauce (as I said, the stuffed chiles got her attention), a beef burrito, and a beef enchilada covered in a molé sauce.  All three had shredded chihuahua cheese on top.  She exclaimed, "This is a lot of food!"  Well, our friends warned us that the portions were huge.  

My shredded beef enchiladas were very good.  The tomatillo sauce on top wasn't all that salty like you can get with some chile verde sauces.  The shredded beef was moist and easily cut with a fork.  The ground beef taco that I got was also very good.  The beef was slightly seasoned and the freshness of the cheese, cilantro and onions all went well together, flavor-wise.  I was able to finish the taco and put a serious dent in the enchiladas, but I couldn't have finished everything that was in front of me.  

My wife also couldn't come close to finishing everything in front of her.  She said that of the three things on her plate she liked the chihuahua cheese-stuffed chile relleno the best, then the burrito, then the enchilada.  "The molé sauce is a bit too much for me," she said as she pushed her plate away so she wouldn't be tempted to eat any more.  

Our first experience at Cabo Cantina and Grill was a pleasant one.  Service was fast and friendly, the food was very good and there was lots of it, and the atmosphere was festive and inviting.  I thought my shredded beef enchiladas with the tomatillo sauce were very good, as was my beef taco that I really didn't need to get.  My wife really enjoyed the combo platter that she had - a cheese-stuffed chile relleno with a ground beef/tomato sauce, a ground beef burrito with an enchilada sauce, and a ground beef enchilada with a molé sauce.  I was also fixated on the spices in their salsa thinking that I'd like to try to put some crushed cloves or nutmeg in our next homemade salsa just to make it a bit more interesting.  Eldridge is a bit of a drive for us, but we do have a Cabo Cantina and Grill in Davenport that we'll be checking out at some point in the near future.

Double D Diner - Davenport, IA

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.

Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant and Cantina - Davenport, IA

One cool, cloudy and rainy Sunday, my wife and I decided to head out to grab some lunch.  We had had dinner at Fuji Sushi a couple weeks prior (click here to read the Road Tips entry on Fuji Sushi) when we noticed a new Mexican restaurant had opened up in a space across the street.  My wife was intrigued enough about the place - given the number of very good Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities - that she wanted to give it a try that day.  We headed out the door and down the way to Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant and Cantina.  

The building that houses Rio Grande has been some sort of a restaurant off and on for a number of years.  Most recently, it had been a Mediterranean restaurant, but that place shut down a few months prior.  Restaurants on the west end of Davenport - especially west of Marquette Street - haven't had a stellar track record of hanging on for very long.  There are a couple three exceptions - not counting fast food or sandwich chains - but there seems to be a pretty high turnover of locally-owned, family-run restaurants.  That didn't deter Juan Bolanos from opening Rio Grande in October of 2020.  I asked Bolanos if he was affiliated with any of the other Mexican restaurants in the area as there seems to be a connective tissue with a number of Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities.  He said he was not and much of the food on their menu comes from recipes where his family hails from in a city in the Michoacán state of Mexico, a region known for their highly diverse and delectable dishes.  

We pulled into the parking lot of Rio Grande just after 1 p.m. on this particular Sunday.  (see map)  There were a few spots open in the parking lot and the restaurant was half-full when we walked in.  There wasn't much change in the layout from the last time we had been in the place when it was a Mediterranean restaurant.  Booths lined the east and west walls, while tables were in the middle of the restaurant.  Putting some different signage and pictures on the wall was really about the only difference.  

Juan Bolanos sat us in a booth along the wall and left off a couple menus.  The picture on the menu is of the central square in the city of La Piedad, Mexico where the Bolanos family is from.  (Rio Grande is named after a neighborhood in La Piedad which borders the Mexican state of Guanajuato.)  His daughter Mairani then came by with water and to take our drink order.  I ordered a Sol beer while my wife stuck with water for the time being.  

Traditional Mexican foods - tacos, enchiladas, burritos, quesadillas, etc. - were on the menu at Rio Grande.  But they also had some house specialties such as stuffed taquitos (beef and/or chicken), a dish with rib-eye steak, chicken breast and chorizo called La Casuela, and a Hawaiian quesadilla made with grilled chicken and pineapple.  Michoacán cuisine also features seafood (the region goes from the sea to the highlands of central Mexico) and they had a number seafood dishes on the menu at Rio Grande.  Vegetarian options were also available on the menu.  

My wife went pretty basic with the chicken and rice.  It featured about 8 ounces of shredded chicken topped with chihuahua cheese on a bed of Mexican rice.  She thought it was fine for what it was - simple and straight forward.

One of their house specialties was the carnitas in a salsa verde sauce.  It featured slow roasted pork carnitas topped with a very good green salsa with rice and refried beans served on the side.  And as I like to do with new Mexican restaurants we encounter, I got a carne asada taco with cilantro and onions on a corn taco shell.  I've been told by a cook in a Mexican restaurant (who is also my step-son-in-law) that the best way to find out how good a Mexican restaurant is is to get their tacos first.  Well, the taco was certainly very good.  The carne asada was flavorful and the cilantro and onions accompanying the steak meat was very fresh.

But the carnitas in the salsa verde was very good.  The pork was tender and had a great taste to it.  Some flour tacos came with the plate and I made a couple tacos out of the pork, refried beans and rice.  It was tasty.

We have a lot of good to very good Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities and it's difficult to differentiate one from the other sometimes.  But we don't have a lot of Mexican restaurants that specialize in Michoacán food, the diverse cuisine that features seafood and agricultural food products.  Rio Grande finds their own niche in the Mexican food scene in the Quad Cities with their unique style of Mexican favorites.  It's a nice little family-run restaurant and the Bolanos family seem to be the kind of clan that you'd like to support.  I hope they have a long and profitable future at Rio Grande.   

 

Combine - East Moline, IL

We had plans to go to an Italian restaurant in Iowa City for my recent birthday dinner, but those plans got way-laid with a late afternoon call that pretty much stopped us in our tracks.  My wife still wanted to go, but the circumstances surrounding the trip had been put on hold and I didn't want to drive an hour over for dinner, then drive an hour back.  Somewhat crestfallen, I then had to choose a local restaurant in the Quad Cities for my birthday dinner.   I sort of had my heart set on Italian food, and while there are a handful of Italian restaurants in the area, they're nowhere as good as the one we were going to in Iowa City.  Finally, my wife came up with an idea.  "Why don't we go over and try Combine in East Moline," she suggested.  "We've always said we wanted to give it a try."  A quick look on-line showed that they were open that evening and I made a reservation on Open Table for a table for two at 6:30 p.m.

Combine is part of the Bass Street group whose primary restaurant is Bass Street Chop House in Moline that closed in 2020 to move to what was the old TGI Friday's location next to the Radisson Hotel in John Deere Commons.  Trying to keep the atmosphere the same as at the original location, managing partner Jeffrey Harrup moved the stately dark wood bar intact from the old Bass Street space just down the street to the new location.  Bass Street Chophouse reopened earlier this spring.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on the original Bass Street Chop House.)  

A little over 3 years ago, a development in East Moline called The Bend came in existence.  On the grounds of what was once the International Harvester plant (later Case-IH) before it closed in 2004, developers put in a park with a bandshell, built a Hyatt House hotel, an event center, and eventually apartments and condos were built on the acreage.  One side of a building that had a reception hall in it had room for a full-fledged restaurant and Jeffrey Harrup became interested in the space.  Harrup saw the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of projected growth at The Bend and jumped at the chance to open a restaurant at The Bend.  And he named it Combine as numerous combine harvesters were built on the site over the years.  The restaurant opened in the summer of 2019.  

We made our way over to Combine and got there about 20 minutes before our reservation.  (see map)  Actually, we didn't need a reservation as it was a weeknight and there were plenty of places to sit in the restaurant.  We were taken to a four-seat table in the center of the restaurant and given a couple menus to look over.  Moments later our server for the evening, Tara, came over to greet us.  To start off, my wife got her usual Tito's vodka and cranberry juice (with a twist of lime), and they had Pseudo Sue from the Toppling Goliath brewery in Decorah, IA on tap.  I got a pint of that.  

The interior of Combine is a spacious, well-lit area with a contemporary decor.  The bar area is just inside the entrance off the hallway that separates the restaurant from a banquet room across the hall.  

There is an outdoor patio at Combine that was just off the main dining area.  It was a small area and a little utilitarian in the choice of furniture for the patio.  There was banquette seating along the wall that featured pads for your butt, but it still didn't look too comfortable.

The open dining space features an open kitchen just beyond the banquette seating along a short wall.  A number of tables were in the center of the dining area with large, comfortable booths along the east wall of the restaurant.  We were told that half of their four-seat tables were taken out due to COVID-19 restrictions and would probably be restored once those restrictions were lifted later this year.  I thought that it was cozy enough with the tables they had in place and wondered how crowded and loud it may be with the full complement of tables back later this year.  

The menu at Combine is more American-centric with a Midwestern twist.  Entrees included a cold smoked/grilled salmon, a prime New York strip with Shiitake mushrooms, a duck dish that is slow-braised in a Decoy cabernet, cold smoked/fried organic chicken, and a 12-ounce premium Iowa ribeye with a parmesan-sweetcorn crust.  Combine also featured sandwiches, burgers, flatbreads, a number of salads and some pretty interesting appetizers.

One of the appetizers that caught my eye were the tuna street tacos.  It featured 3 won-ton taco shells stuffed with blackened sushi-grade tuna and topped with Asian cabbage slaw, pickled ginger and drizzled with a wasabi-soy aioli.  I had a couple while my wife had the other one.  They were fabulous.  I could have easily just eaten a couple orders of the tuna street tacos for my main meal and been very happy.  

After we had ordered our meals for the evening, we both got salads to start out.  I got the basic Caesar's salad (shown above right) and it was fine.  But my wife got what was called the Plantation salad.  A number of years ago, long before I moved to the Quad Cities (I've been a resident for 30 years now), there was a restaurant by the name of the Plantation that was in an old mansion on the south side of Moline.  They were known for their fine food, their Tiki-themed room, and for their Plantation salad dressing.  It was a robust concoction that was sort of a sweet and spicy French/garlic dressing made with mayo and anchovy paste.  Well, Combine had their own Plantation-style dressing and that's what my wife got.  As we always have to do when she had any garlic dressing, I have to have a bite or two of the dressing or I can't stand to be in the same room with her later in the evening.  And the dressing was fabulous - I wished I would have gotten the Plantation salad over the Caesar's, and the Caesar's was very good.  

We had finished our drinks before dinner and my wife was interested in getting some wine.  Tara said, "You're in luck!  It's 2 for 1 glasses of wine up until 7 p.m!"  (It was just past 6:30 at that point.)  I asked if you could order both glasses at the same time and Tara said, "Most people DO order two at the same time!"  My wife was going to get something that would go with a white wine and she ordered 2 glasses of the Pedroncelli sauvignon blanc.  Tara said that since it was chilled, she would just bring one glass to the table at a time.  

My wife ordered a pasta dish that they had on the menu - the Shrimp Rosé.  It featured pan-seared shrimp mixed with fettuccine and a creamy Rosé sauce.  Mixed in with the shrimp, pasta and sauce was chopped lemongrass, basil, heirloom tomatoes, and leafy greens.  My wife declared her dish as delicious.   

Since I had my heart set on Italian food figuring that's what we'd have in Iowa City, they had a dish called "All Day Bolognese" on the menu.  It was a traditional Italian bolognese sauce that is slow-cooked for six hours.  It's then tossed with penne pasta and shaved parmesan cheese.  A couple of grilled pieces of a parsley/garlic bread came on the side.  It was the ultimate Midwestern take on Italian comfort food and it was fabulous.  For my 2 for 1 glasses of wine, I got the Broadside cabernet - a rich and meaty red from the Central Coast of California that I have had a time or two.   The wine was a great compliment with the meaty and hearty bolognese sauce and pasta.  

We considered dessert for a moment, but we were pretty full from our meals.  We were talking with Tara about Combine's affiliation with Bass Street Chop House and wondered when that place would be reopening.  "Oh, we're open now," she said.  "I work at Bass Street during the day for the lunch shift, then I come over here to work evenings."  She told us that they did their best in trying to replicate the atmosphere from the original Bass Street Chop House, and many of the menu items carried over to the new location.  We told her that we were going to definitely check it out.  We asked if they were open on Sundays as we like to go out for burgers and bloody mary's on some Sundays.  "Since we're attached to the Radisson, we are contractually obligated to be open 363 days a year," she told us.  "So, yeah!  Come on over some Sunday!"    

While it was disappointing to me that we couldn't go to an Italian restaurant in Iowa City as we had planned for my birthday dinner, I completely forgot all about it after my meal at Combine in East Moline.  The bolognese/penne pasta dish that I had was excellent and worthy of any Italian restaurant I've been to.  My wife was very happy with her pan-seared shrimp and fettuccine in a creamy Rosé sauce. The won-ton shell tuna street tacos were a great start to the meal, as were our salads including my wife's salad with Combine's take on the original Plantation salad dressing that was so famous years ago in the Quad Cities.  Tara was a great server - outgoing, friendly, and had a great sense of humor.  And it was tough to beat the 2 for 1 glasses of wine that we took full advantage of while we were there that evening.  We had been wanting to try Combine for awhile now and it turned out to be even better than we hoped.  

Links - Davenport, IA

A couple new breakfast/lunch places have opened in the Quad Cities over the past year or so and they've been on our radar to try.  The one we decided to try first was a little place on Utica Ridge Road on the far northeast side of Davenport simply called Links.  One recent Sunday morning, we decided to give the place a try.  

The owner of Links is Kevin Takacs who happens to also own the R Bar, a little wine/cocktail place that my wife and I like to go to from time to time.  Links and R Bar are side projects for Takacs who is the founder and CEO of MedForce, a medical air transport company that services Western Illinois and Eastern Iowa.  Takacs founded the company in 2000 with the company's base of operations in the Quad Cities suburb of Colona, IL, and in 2005 they opened a second operation in Burlington, IA.  

Takacs tabbed James Allen to run the kitchen and to come up with a concept for the breakfast/lunch restaurant.  A Quad City native, Allen started out cutting his teeth in restaurant kitchens at an early age.  He eventually became a pastry chef ending up at the Crow Valley Golf Club in Davenport as their head baker.  While at Crow Valley, Allen became intrigued by artisan butchery which involves whole-animal butchering of local organically-raised farm animals for unique cuts of meat and charcuterie plates.  Allen eventually took courses both at Iowa State University and through the University of Wisconsin to learn the art of artisan butchery.  

We got to first know Allen when he would sell artisan cuts of meat at the Freight House Farmers Market in Davenport.  For awhile, Allen would show up with cuts of meat he cut himself, usually sourced from local farmers such as La Pryor Farms in Ottawa, IL.  We bought a beef tri-tip from him one time and it was one of the best tri-tips I had ever made on the grill.  

When Allen got together with Takacs, he wanted to continue the relationships he had built with local farmers and come up with a restaurant that used locally-sourced ingredients for the foods he would make.  The food served at the new restaurant would be traditional breakfast and lunch fare, only made with a refined twist of better ingredients.  Artisan coffee and a full bar with beers and wine would also be part of the mix.

Links had their soft opening in February of last year, but like every restaurant everywhere they were forced to shut down on March 16 of last year.  Then when restrictions were lifted to allow for restaurants to open at reduced capacity, Links re-opened in June of last year.  

It was a beautiful Sunday morning when my wife and I decided to head over to Links, located on the south end of a new strip mall at the corner of Utica Ridge and E. 56th Ave. that also houses a beauty salon, a financial planner, and a chiropractor.  (see map)  Quite actually, we had gone by the place a couple times in the past on a Sunday where the parking lot was packed and we knew we'd have a wait.  This time, we got there early enough - around 8:30 a.m. - to get in with no problem.  

The dining area was an open room, not all that big, but still comfortable enough.  A line of tables with banquette seating stretched along one wall.  Opposite to the other side was the bar area that also had a barista station.  There was a breakfast bar toward the back of the restaurant that looked into a large window into the kitchen.  The breakfast bar wasn't being used for anything other than to stack items on top when we were there.  The decor and atmosphere was rather drab and somewhat utilitarian.  There is also an outdoor patio on the south side of the restaurant.  Even though it was a nice spring morning, it was still a little too chilly to be seated outside.  

We were greeted when we came in by a lady who turned out to be our server that day - Stacy.  Stacy was friendly and outgoing asking if we had dined at Links previously.  When we told her that it was our first time, she said, "Well, welcome.  We're glad you could make it!"  She showed us to a table in the center of the dining area and dropped off a couple menus.  

Stacy asked us if we wanted anything to drink.  With a full bar and craft beer selections, as well as a barista making coffee drinks, I hit the breakfast trifecta with a bloody mary, an Easy Eddy hazy IPA from the Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City and Solon, IA, and a double espresso.  The bloody mary was loaded with bacon, a celery stalk, sweet pickles and green olives.  It was delicious and a great start for what was going to be a lazy Sunday for us.  

While we were there, Kevin Takacs came in the back door and started to converse with the employees.  Then he sort of took charge on the floor - seating people when they came in, helping bus and clean tables, directing his employees in helpful manner.  When he wasn't doing any of that, he would go around to individual tables and check on the customers.  He seemed like a pretty even-keel, hands-on boss who was probably good to work for.   

The breakfast menu at Links is pretty limited.  I don't know if that's way because of the pandemic, or if they just want to focus on specific items.  They had made-from-scratch sourdough pancakes and waffles, a breakfast sandwich with a choice of bread with two eggs, sausage and cheese, and a basic two eggs, choice of bacon or sausage, and toast breakfast.  Sides included hash browns or fries, bacon, link or patty sausage, and pork belly.  

When I saw the menu, I knew exactly what my wife was going to get.  The root vegetable hash featured roasted root vegetables, with asparagus spears, sautéed kale, and a choice of eggs.  She got scrambled egg whites on top of the hash.  A smoked paprika hollandaise sauce was drizzled on top of the food.  For an upcharge, she could have added sausage, fried chicken or pork belly to the dish.  She wasn't interested in any of those.  She also got a cappuccino to go along with her breakfast.  

My wife was also intrigued enough to get a single sourdough pancake.  It was thin, just like she prefers to make her pancakes at home.  (And my wife makes outstanding pancakes.)  More on the pancakes in a little bit.  

I ended up getting the eggs Benedict - or "Classic Benne" as it was on the menu.  It was pretty straight forward - poached eggs topped with the smoked paprika hollandaise sauce, on top of slices of Canadian bacon and a toasted English muffin.  

I also ordered a side of Links thick-cut bacon figuring that James Allen probably does his own butchering for his cuts of meat at the restaurant.  However, when Stacy brought our breakfasts out to us, she also gave me a single pancake.  I said, "I didn't order a pancake.  I got the bacon."  

Somewhat flustered and embarrassed, Stacy said, "Oh!  I'm sure you probably said bacon and I heard 'cake'. I'll get you your bacon right away."  And she took the single pancake away.  

Moments later, she brought it back.  "It looks like you're going to get a free pancake, today," Stacy said as she set it back down on the table.  "No use letting it go to waste."  I wasn't going to argue.  

The eggs Benedict were good - the eggs were cooked perfectly and they were big.  And the smoked paprika hollandaise sauce was very rich.  Actually, it was a pretty decent breakfast and somewhat filling.

But what was filling was the sourdough pancake that I got as a mistake.  Oh, man!  It was one of the most delicious pancakes I had ever tasted!  And I think my wife's pancakes are world class!  But whatever they do to the pancakes at Links, there's no comparison to anything I've ever had in a restaurant before.  What started out as just a couple bites to give it a try, it quickly turned into a "can't-stop-eating-this-even-though-I'm-full" moment.  The eggs Benedict were filling enough, but the sour dough pancake completely stuffed me.  And my wife thought they were excellent, as well.  

The only bad part of the breakfast was, well, the bacon.  For what I thought would be flavorful, thick-cut bacon turned out to be thin-cut and pretty basic in taste.  It was just two slices and they charged $4.25 for two normal strips of bacon.  That was a big disappointment.  I just sort of felt somewhat ripped-off for what I thought I was getting for a side of bacon and what actually showed up.  

Other than the bacon, I have to say that our breakfast at Links was very good.  My wife thoroughly enjoyed her root vegetable hash dish, and I was happy enough with the eggs Benedict that featured two very large poached eggs with a rich and flavorful hollandaise sauce.  But the sourdough pancakes were the hit of the meal and even the over-advertised bacon couldn't dampen the overall meal.  Well, and it certainly didn't hurt to have a bloody mary, a good craft beer and a double espresso to help get the day going.  My wife and I were so stuffed from the breakfast at Links that we didn't eat a thing the rest of the day.  It was a very good and very filling meal.     

Stompbox Brewing/Kitchen Brigade - Davenport, IA

We have a couple that we like to meet up with for craft beers and libations from time to time on some Sundays.  My wife and the wife in the couple used to work together years ago, while the husband and I just like to drink beer and laugh.  Earlier this year, we met up for beers at a microbrewery over on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities.  After a couple three beers there, we decided to head over to a newer microbrewery/brewpub in downtown Davenport called Stompbox Brewing.  We hadn't been there before and looked forward to giving it a try.  It turns out that they also had a kitchen on the premises - the Kitchen Brigade -  and while we didn't have food on that visit, we did go back there a few weeks later to meet up with the same couple to have more beers and food at Stompbox Brewing and the Kitchen Brigade.  

Stompbox Brewing grew out of the tragic circumstances that forced the original tenants of the new built-out restaurant space, Roam, to close less than a year after they opened in December of 2018.  

Brothers Dylan and Griffin Steil envisioned Roam as a combination bistro/motorcycle repair shop - something that is found in places in Europe where people on motorbikes roam the countryside and may need a little food and drink while getting their rides serviced.  It was a bold initiative for the Steil brothers and I openly questioned how a motorcycle repair shop in the back of a European-style bistro would go over with patrons trying to enjoy innovative foods and drinks.  

During the spring of 2019, the Mississippi River rose to record heights in the Quad Cities.  A series of HESCO barriers were put up along River Drive to help keep the river at bay.  However, at approximately 3:30 on the afternoon of April 30th, the rising flood waters pushed through the barriers just east of Roam causing the flood waters to rush in and inundate parts of downtown Davenport.  The video below is from Roam's security camera and shows the moment the barrier was breached with people inside Roam running out to move their vehicles out of the parking lot.  

Businesses in a wide area of downtown Davenport were impacted for weeks that turned into months.  It was a tragic turn of events for the Steil brothers who put just about every penny they had between them into Roam.  It became apparent that financial relief would not be coming quickly enough - nor would it be enough to recoup their investment in the bistro/motorbike repair shop - and the brothers announced in September of 2019 that they would not reopen.  They were forced to sell off equipment and fixtures to help pay for the losses incurred from the flood.  

In December of 2019, a group of investors announced that they would be taking over the space that housed Roam and put in a brewery.  When I first heard that a brewery was going into the old Roam building, I was sort of taken aback as it was right next to arguably the most established brewpub in the Quad Cities - Front Street Brewery.  But, so far, they seem to cohabitate pretty well.   

The group of investors - which include local music enthusiast/photographer Matt Erickson and James Prickett, a cost analyst at the Rock Island Arsenal who is also a musician and homebrewer - took over 6 months to renovate the space putting in a micro-brewery in the back where the motorbike repair shop was, and put in a kitchen area for food to be served in the space.  They started to brew and can beer in June of 2020 and officially opened their doors in early July of last year.  They called their new brewery "Stompbox" after a switching device a guitarist uses to control volume and tone that they step on with their feet.  

To run their kitchen, the group turned to an established food truck entrepreneur who has been around the Quad Cities food scene for a number of years.  Chad Cushman started his culinary journey at the age of 15 working in a number of restaurants over the years before becoming an executive chef, restaurant manager and consultant.  For the past 10 plus years, Cushman has been known locally as "The Crepe Guy" who would offer his services for coffee houses, outdoor markets, private parties and local events as a pop-up restaurant making sweet and savory crepes.  Cushman's distinctive red "Cushman's Food & Engine" box van is a staple at the Freight House Farmers Market in downtown Davenport from May to October.  

(Pictured left - Chad Cushman.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times)

When he's not doing the food truck thing, Cushman runs Kitchen Brigade with a European-inspired menu of snacks and shared plates, as well as a short list of main entree items such as a burger, chicken and green chile grits, a pork tomahawk schnitzel chop, and mussels that are steamed with a Stompbox beer and served in a unami broth.  You can find Cushman and his Kitchen Brigade staff at Stompbox Wednesday and Thursday from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., on Friday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

We got to Stompbox not long after noon on a recent Sunday.  There is ample parking in the area including a parking lot in front of Stompbox that is open for public use after 5 p.m. through the week and all day on Saturday and Sunday.  (see map)  The long bar sits in the middle of the space with a number of tables that are spaced throughout the place with a couple community-style tables near the bar.  I would call the decor with dark walls, exposed duct work and a polished concrete floor as contemporary industrial.  They also have a patio in front of Stompbox, but very few people were out there as it was sunny, but a bit cool.  

The bar area features seating on one side. The beer tap spigots all have "stomp boxes" as their handle tops.  A flat-screen television on the south end of the bar lists the beers currently on tap at Stompbox.  Another flat-screen on the opposite end of the bar usually has a sporting event being shown on it.  Just past the bar area are more tables and some booths with half-circle bench seating.  On the wall behind the booths was a large 3-piece colorful medieval-style mural. 

Our friends showed up not long after we got there.  My wife and I had settled in at a high-top table near the seating side of the bar.  Just off the bar was the open window with a "Kitchen Brigade" neon sign above it.  

Beers can be ordered at the bar, but they also have servers who can take beer and food orders at Stompbox.  Alexa was our server that day and I was dismayed to find that they don't have a full bar at Stompbox - just beer only.  "For now," one of the bartenders told me when I asked if they had bloody mary's.  "We may do a full bar sometime later on."

Since this was just our second visit, I remembered a beer that I had on my previous stop into Stompbox - a wonderful hazy IPA that they called "Chilly Nelson".  I ordered up one of those and my wife got the same.  But in talking with James Prickett who came out to our table later during our visit, he said that the Chilly Nelson was going away as they're trying a number of different types of beers from recipes they've garnered over the years.  I was sad to hear the Chilly Nelson was going away.  "We may bring it back at some point," Prickett said.  "In fact, we probably will and make it a seasonal beer."   I hope they do bring it back - it's excellent.  

As we were talking for awhile, my wife said that she was a little peckish and wanted to get something to piece on.  Our friends suggested the cheese curd plate, but my wife isn't big on fried cheese all that much as it gives her indigestion.  While our friends got the cheese curd plate to munch on, my wife got a bowl of the roasted olives.  "That's perfect," the wife of our friends said. "You can't handle fried cheese and we don't like olives all that much."  The olives were a mixture of green and black slightly roasted olives served in a bowl topped with a citrus oil and whipped feta cheese.  Some toasted country bread came with the bowl of roasted olives.  

I was looking for something a little extra.  The chicken and green chile grits were intriguing to me, but I didn't want that big of a meal.  At one of the booths near where we were seated, a couple of the Kitchen Brigade burgers were placed in front of the people seated there.  I told my wife, "That looks good.  But if I get one of those, I probably won't have dinner tonight."  She assured me that she could rustle something up on her own if I wasn't hungry later on.  

The burger featured a 1/2-pound beef patty from cattle that were initially grass-fed, but were fed corn before they were processed.  It was topped with butterkäse cheese - a German/Austrian butter cheese that is rich and creamy - and a house-made sauce.  The burger was served on a bun topped with black and white sesame seeds.  The burger came with julienne-chopped romaine lettuce, butter-pickle slices and an onion spread.  And a generous portion of their thin cut fries came with the burger on the side.  

The burger was very good.  The burger patty was cooked to a pink center and maintained its juicy taste throughout.  The butterkäse cheese didn't overpower the taste of the beef patty and helped enhance the overall taste of the burger.  The bun was spongy and there may have been a little too much of it as I was peeling off parts of the bun as I ate.  But the bun stayed together very well with all the toppings on the burger coupled with its juiciness.  It was a big burger and I was definitely full after I finished what I could.

The fries became community fries for the table as there was going to be no way that I was going to be able to finish them.  My wife especially liked the fries that gave her some salty flavor to counteract the tart and sharp taste of the olives.  We still had some left over by the time Alexa came to clean our plates and she wanted to know if I wanted to take them home.  I declined because I knew there would be no way they would be better heated up later on.  But my wife did end up taking more than half of her roasted olives home.  Shared among two or more people, there would have been enough.  But for one person, well, it was a lot of olives.  

My wife and I like to go out to brewpubs around the area from time to time and Stompbox has entered our rotation. And coupled with having a good burger from the Kitchen Brigade, we'll probably be there sometime in the near future for our semi-regular Sunday afternoon burger and beer.  The only problem is that I can't get a bloody mary to go along with the beer and burger at Stompbox/Kitchen Brigade.  It's a nice, laid-back atmosphere there, the staff is friendly, and the beer we've had in our visits there is very good.  I used to think we were getting too many brewpubs/microbreweries around the Quad Cities.  But if they all offer something a little different - and many of them do, like Stompbox - then I have no problem with more of them popping up.  Stompbox is a very good choice if you're looking for a tasty craft beer with some interesting food.  

Captain's Table - Moline, IL

When I first moved to the Quad Cities nearly 30 years ago, I had a friend and his wife coming into town and I wanted to take them out for a nice meal.  Not fully knowing the landscape of restaurants in the area at the time, I asked a handful of locals who were in the know with the local dining scene to give me recommendations.  Nearly everyone mentioned the Captain's Table along the Mississippi River in Moline.  We went there that evening, the food was wonderful, the service was great and it was tough to beat the views of the Mississippi River.  It became my go-to place to take people who were in town or for special occasion dinners.  However, changes in ownership over the years meant changes in the quality of the food and service, and in January of 2018 a massive fire destroyed the Captain's Table.  We didn't know if it would be back in business, but the group who own the restaurant worked with the City of Moline on getting a new building built.  Last summer, the restaurant reopened and on a recent Friday evening where my wife and I were out and about, she suggested heading over to the "new" Captain's Table to give it a try.  

Now, I have previously written about the Captain's Table (you can click here to see that entry), but a lot of things have changed over the last 11 years since I wrote about the place.   The Captain's Table had ceased to be our restaurant of choice for special occasion meals, but they had a great Bloody Mary bar and $3 off their gourmet burgers on Sundays.  We found ourselves over there a number of times meeting or running into friends who we had turned on to the Sunday specials at the Captain's Table.  

The hey-day of the restaurant stretched over a nearly 25-year period starting in 1974 when Jim Sweet founded the Marquis Harbor marina and with the help of the City of Moline built an adjoining steakhouse/seafood restaurant and called it the Captain's Table.  A gregarious guy and gracious host, Jim Sweet was larger than life.  He and his wife, JoAnn, along with their children Dave and Lori, could be found at the Captain's Table at various times of the day.  The place was cozy, had great views of the river, and the Sweet family were all so very friendly and made us feel welcome each time we went to the restaurant.  My wife fell in love with the restaurant the first time I took her there when we first started to date.  We got to know the Sweet family through our visits to the Captain's Table and at their sister restaurant over in Davenport, The Boat House.  

In 1998, the Sweet family sold the restaurant and marina to the Heart of America restaurant group, the company that oversees Johnny's Italian Steakhouse, The Machine Shed and a number of other restaurants and hotels around the Midwest.  That's when we noticed that the level and quality of the food began to suffer.  The menu had changed drastically, the welcoming feeling that we always felt with the Sweet's in charge was gone, and the Captain's Table became a soulless shell of its original self.  

After Heart of America's five-year lease on the building ended in 2003, the chef in charge of the restaurant for the Captain's Table - Mark Luciani - bought the restaurant outright.  (At the time, Heart of America also sold the marina operation to American Marine based out of LaCrosse, WI.)  Luciani tweaked the menu and made some positive changes to the restaurant.  But the tailspin the restaurant began to go into during the Heart of America period still weighed heavy on the business and coupled with two floods and an economic downturn with the Great Recession in 2008, Luciani wasn't able to make the restaurant work.  He closed the doors in February of 2009.  

It was not long after that when three friends from Blue Grass, IA - Rod Teel, Jeff Delf and Casey Dolbin - came in to resurrect the Captain's Table.  The group then contracted with Peter Harman - a.k.a. The Food Guru - to come in and help run the restaurant as a consultant.  Harman owned or managed a number of restaurants including the Davenport location of Graze.  Harman was in the midst of closing down Graze and he moved a handful of his employees across the river to the Captain's Table.  (The Iowa City Graze location is still open.)  

The partnership with the investment group and Harman didn't last long - I want to say Harman was pretty much out of the picture in a little over a year - and a number of chefs and managers revolved through the door over the years before Rob Eggers, who used to own the old Paddle Wheel restaurant/bar in Bettendorf, was brought on board in 2017 to run the Captain's Table for the group.  

Then in the late evening of January 15, 2018, disaster struck in the form of a devastating fire that fully consumed the building.  A passerby saw flames coming from the building (the restaurant was closed on Monday nights) and alerted authorities.  By the time the fire department was on the scene, the whole building was fully engulfed.  Because of the abnormal lay-out of the building due to additions that were made over the years, the fire department had no choice but to let the fire burn and employ a defensive strategy to keep the fire from spreading to the marina.  No cause was found for the fire as state fire marshals said the building sustained so much fire and water damage that there would have been no way to pinpoint what started the fire.  (Photo courtesy Todd Mizener - Rock Island Dispatch-Argus.)

The City of Moline still owned the building that housed the Captain's Table and after clearing the rubble from the fire they decided to work on putting a new building in place.  Working with an architect, the city came up with a new design that would have an upper deck bar that would allow for sweeping views of the Mississippi River with a new dining area with outdoor seating on the main level.  (That design is shown below at right.  Graphic courtesy Rock Island Disptach-Argus)

However, it turned out that particular design would be too costly for the city to bear for the replacement building.  A second design that took off the upper floor bar, but kept outdoor seating along the river front was approved.  Work began on the new Captain's Table in 2019 and it opened for business in August of last year. (Shown above left is the final design of the "new" Captain's Table.  Graphic courtesy Rock Island Dispatch-Argus)  

It was just after 7:30 when we pulled into the parking lot at the Captain's Table back at its original location at 4801 River Drive in Moline.  (see map)  One thing that they did during the construction of the new building was to add more parking.  The parking lot is probably one-third bigger than the parking lot that they had before.  Still there were a lot of cars in the parking lot and we weren't certain we were going to be able to get in right away.  

As we went inside (a distinctive porthole window was near the front door - a nod to the five porthole windows the old Captain's Table had in their bar area), we went up some steps and were greeted by Rob Eggers working the front desk that evening.  We were told that it would be probably a 15 to 20 minute wait, so we decided to stay.  The bar was full, but there were bench seats up near the front stand. On a ledge above the seats in the waiting area were four large aquariums - a nice touch for a nautical-themed restaurant.  

The bar used to be in a back corner of the Captain's Table, but with the new design in the restaurant it's in the middle between two dining areas.  The three-sided bar had high-backed chairs with an ornate back-bar area with dark wood accents.  Flat screen televisions were on the walls behind the bar.  

The two dining areas at the new Captain's Table were on opposite ends of the building.  There was a smaller area up front with high-backed booths that were situated just below the aquariums.  Short four-seater tables were on the floor up toward the windows that looked out onto the deck.  It was a little cool that evening so there was no one seated out on the deck.  

There was a larger dining space on the opposite end past the bar area.  It featured more booths under a mural of the Mississippi River where it runs east-west through the Quad Cities.  The river bends from the north just up-river from the Captain's Table - the bend is easily viewed from the restaurant - and continues west to Muscatine where it bends back to its usual north-south direction.  Yes, you actually drive south into Illinois from Iowa in the Quad Cities.  My wife's directions were screwed up the first few years she lived in Davenport as she learned growing up in Cedar Rapids that the Mississippi runs north-south.  She always thought she was looking east into Illinois from the Iowa side when she was looking south the whole time.  

We were seated in the back dining area and we were giving menus by one of the young ladies working at the front desk that evening.  Our server that night was a young lady by the name of Amber.  Even with Amber wearing her mask, my wife recognized her, but she didn't say anything.  Turns out that she's the girlfriend of a friend of ours.  She didn't recognize us - we had only been around her a couple three times with our friend - or if she did recognize us, she didn't say anything.  Amber asked if we wanted anything to drink and my wife ordered her usual Tito's Vodka and cranberry juice.  They had a handful of craft beers on the menu including some specialty beers from four or five local breweries.  But I ended up ordering a Deschutes Fresh Haze IPA. 

The food selections at the Captain's Table featured steaks, seafood and some combo dishes.  Sandwiches including burgers, pork tenderloins, chicken and catfish were on the menu - many of which were featured on the menu from the old Paddle Wheel that Eggers brought over when he came to the Captain's Table.  Appetizers included fried calamari, bacon-wrapped scallops, shrimp and crab dip, and chicken wings.  One of the things they also had on the menu was clam chowder.  

Now, when I first moved to the Quad Cities years ago, there were a handful of places that had wonderful clam chowder - restaurants such as the original Captain's Table, the Dock, the Belgian Village and a couple three other places in the area.  In fact, the guy who I worked for before I moved to the area in 1991 told me one time that the best clam chowder he ever had outside of New England was in the Quad Cities. Unfortunately, those restaurants - in their original forms - are all gone and it's been tough to find good clam chowder in the area.   

But I was intrigued enough to try the clam chowder at the Captain's Table.  It was a thick creamy base with chunks of potatoes and clams mixed in.  Chopped green onions came on the top of the chowder.  I asked Amber for some Tabasco and it reminded me of the time when I put Tabasco in my clam chowder in front of JoAnn Sweet at the original Captain's Table years ago and she went ballistic.  "You're ruining the taste of our clam chowder," she said in a raised voice.  "It's made to not have anything put in it!"  But I've been putting Tabasco in my clam chowder ever since I first had it back in the early 80's and I like a little zip to the taste. 

Now, I can't say that the Tabasco hindered the taste of the clam chowder at the present day Captain's Table.  In fact, it probably helped it.  The clam chowder was pretty bland and somewhat lifeless for my taste, but I'm sure some people probably like it that way.  

While I had my clam chowder, my wife got a dinner salad.  It came with mixed greens and chopped veggies, and was topped with house-made croutons then drizzle with a creamy garlic dressing.  My wife thought it was fine for what it was, just a basic dinner salad.

Along with the clam chowder and the dinner salad, a small loaf of warm house-made bread came with the starters.  The bread was crusty on the outside, but spongy on the inside.  It was a small loaf and we were able to each have two pieces of the bread with our salad and chowder.  

Quite actually, I really didn't know what to get that evening.  I wasn't certain I wanted a steak, and I wasn't certain I wanted seafood.  I thought about getting one of their burgers, but I didn't want my first meal at the new Captain's Table to be a burger.  They had crab cakes on the menu and I was just about to settle on those when my wife looked at a flap inside the menu.  "Oh," she exclaimed.  "They have prime rib tonight!"  On Friday and Saturday evenings starting at 4 p.m., the Captain's Table has a 12 ounce or 16 ounce prime rib for $27.00 or $30.00 respectively.  I hadn't had prime rib for long time, either, and I decided to get that.

However, when Amber came to the table to take our order, I ordered up the 12 ounce prime rib.  "Oh!  I'm sorry," she said apologetically.  "I guess I forgot to tell you guys that we had run out of prime rib."  It was around 8 p.m. - they're only open until 9 - and I'm sure the early birds came in droves to run them out of the prime rib.  Somewhat crestfallen, I went with the crab cakes.  

The crab cakes entree featured two thick patties that were overcooked and topped with a remoulade sauce.  A side came with the meal and I went with the fries because someone at a table next us got the fries with a burger and they looked good.  But, looks can be deceiving as the fries were lukewarm and limp.  It was like they had made them up 20 minutes prior and left them in a bin for the cooks to pull from when needed.   The crab cake was rich, but it was dry and rather unappealing.  Overall, my meal was disappointing.  

My wife went the seafood route and ordered the 8 ounce grilled salmon.  She got a side of their potatoes-au-gratin.  Well, if I was disappointed with my meal, my wife was appalled at what she was served.  The piece of salmon - and a strong emphasis on "piece" - was nowhere near 8 ounces.  My wife remarked, "This looks like a piece of salmon you get in one of the big bags of frozen salmon filets from Costco!"  She thought the taste of it was fine, there just wasn't a lot of it.  

And she was even more upset with the potatoes-au-gratin.  It was like they had dumped two cups of cheese on a handful of cube-cut potatoes.  "My god, this is like cheese soup with a little bit of potatoes mixed in," she said as she stirred the concoction in its dish.  We counted 11 small chunks of potatoes in the dish - the rest was cheese.  

The crab cakes were so over-cooked and so rich that I couldn't finish them.  And I really didn't care if I finished them.  And I hardly made a dent in my fries.  Our meals were simply disappointing.

Amber tried to coax us into some dessert, but we were done.  We'd had enough and were ready to get out of there.  I just couldn't believe that the food didn't live up to the new and improved architecture of the Captain's Table. 

A couple days later, we met up with friends of ours, one of whom works for a food distributor in the Quad Cities.  "We went there for their soft opening," he said.  "We didn't think much of the food."  His wife agreed that she was disappointed in the food, as well.  My wife said, "Disappointed.  Yep, that sums up how we felt."  We all agreed that it would be a nice place to go to on an afternoon or evening and have a drink and some appetizers on the outdoor patio overlooking the river.  But going there for a special occasion, that was probably out of the question.

We were so hoping that the new Captain's Table would be a cut above the pre-fire Captain's Table.  But I can't say that it was.  And it may have even gone downhill from that era.  For people like us who remember the Captain's Table when the Sweet family owned the place years ago, the bar was set so incredibly high that any other incarnation of the Captain's Table would be difficult to match. For now, the Captain's Table is only open Wednesday through Sunday from 4 to 9.  We asked before we left if they were going to start doing lunch on the weekends and they said they hoped to during the upcoming boating season.  I would come back to try a burger some Sunday afternoon if they were to re-open during the day through the weekends.  Or I'd come back to sit on the deck on a nice summer afternoon to watch the river go by.  But as a destination for special event dinners, I'd have to give the new Captain's Table a hard pass.

Costa Del Mar Mariscos - Davenport, IA

A couple three weeks ago, my wife and I had the chance to get out and try a new restaurant in Davenport, one that specialized in seafood with a Mexican twist.  The place had been open since last summer, but with COVID-19 protocols in place we just didn't feel comfortable going out to restaurants like we normally do.  Now that things have settled down a bit, we decided to do a date night and have dinner at Costa del Mar Mariscos.

The corner of N. Brady St. and E. Kimberly Road in Davenport (see map) has always been a busy intersection in the city.  I've lived in the Quad Cities for nearly 30 years and the building on the southwest corner of the intersection has been a series of restaurants over the years.  The first one I remember was a Ground Round, a casual American-style dining restaurant chain that was popular in the 80's and 90's.  It has housed a number of Mexican restaurants over the years, most recently it was the home of a place by the name of Casa Maguey, and before that it was a Los Agaves location.  None of the restaurants were bad - in fact, nearly all of them have been very popular over the years.  But none of them have ever lasted more than a few years.  

In 2019, Casa Maguey closed its doors with the promise of a new and improved Mexican restaurant taking over the spot.  A large semi-trailer had been sitting in the parking lot for quite some time and I could tell there was construction going on in and around the building.  It looked like things were coming along nicely for a springtime 2020 opening, but then that little thing called COVID-19 came around.  Restaurants were shut down for a number of weeks before the State of Iowa allowed some to reopen at reduced capacity.  Costa del Mar Mariscos (which roughly translates into "Seacoast Seafood") opened in July of last year.  

Since Brady Street is a one-way northbound, and there's no left turn access off of westbound E. Kimberly Road, there's only two access points into the parking lot at Costa del Mar Mariscos - a left turn from northbound N. Brady or a right turn off of eastbound E. Kimberly Road.  We were sort of surprised to see a number of cars in the parking lot when we pulled in, but we knew the restaurant was large enough to have people spread out for seating.  

There's two dining areas in Costa del Mar - the original dining area that dated back to the Ground Round days is to your right as you walk in.  It still has the atrium seating up front that was a signature of Ground Round restaurants in the past.  To the left is the cantina area that features a number of high-backed booths along with wooden tables and chairs, similar to the other dining area on the other side of the restaurant.  A large mural of the sea was on the wall on the far end of the cantina.  I have to say that the decor in previous restaurants probably hadn't been spruced up for a number of years and I remember remarking to my wife not long before Cafe Maguey closed in 2019 that the place looked rather tired.  But the remodeling project by Costa del Mar Mariscos management really sparked some life into the restaurant.  

The cantina area was completely redesigned from the previous bar/cantina area in previous restaurants.  Before, the bar was rectangular situated in the middle of the room with seating on all four sides.  The new design moved the bar back into a corner of the cantina area taking away two sides of seating.  I've been noticing that some of the newer Mexican restaurants that have bar areas have a number of flatscreen televisions around the bar.  Costa del Mar was no exception.

We were seated in one of the high-back booths in the cantina and were given a couple menus to look over.  My wife decided she didn't want to get a margarita that evening, but I ended up getting a Sol.  Later on, she decided that she wanted a Sol along with her dinner which was surprising since she very rarely drinks beer any more.   

Chips and a red salsa, the prerequisite for any Mexican meal served in a restaurant like Costa del Mar, came out to the table.  I asked our server if she had any of the green chile salsa.  She brought out a large bowl of the salsa verde not long after.  It was actually very good - not as salty as we've found many green chile salsas to be - and it had a bit of a spicy bite on the back end.  

The menu at Costa del Mar Mariscos featured the usual Mexican favorites - burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, fajitas and chimichangas.  But the back part of the menu featured a number of seafood dishes along with steaks.  They had oysters on the half shell, shrimp and octopus cocktails, ceviche, seafood soups, and entrees with fish, shrimp or lobster.  They also had a number of shareable platters with various seafood offerings consisting of shrimp, octopus, mussels, oysters, crab legs and scallops.  The Paella del Mar featured both peeled and head-on shrimp, mussels, octopus, clams, and scallops all sautéed and mixed in with crab legs and rice.  You could get most of the sharable plates as single dinner selections, as well.  

My wife wasn't all that hungry and I wasn't either for some reason.  I can't remember if we had a big lunch earlier in the day, but I just remember that I didn't feel like getting much.  I ended up getting the pork chile verde - slow-roasted pork sautéed in a green chile salsa and spices, then served with Mexican rice and refried  beans.  Tortillas came with the pork chile verde.  The pork was tender and flavorful with the green chile salsa. I just love good salsa verde and what they had at Costa del Mar was very good.  

My wife went with the carne asada quesadilla - chunks of flank steak folded in a flour tortilla shell with cheese, grilled onions and cilantro, then lightly grilled. Mexican rice and refried beans came on the side along with pico de gallo and sour cream served in a tortilla bowl.  The was worried that the quesadilla would be big, but she was happy to see that it was manageable for her.  While she didn't eat the whole thing, she was very happy with her choice.  

For our first foray into the menu at Costa del Mar Mariscos, we were pretty impressed with what they had to offer and with what we ordered that evening.  My pork chile verde was very good and my wife really liked her carne asada quesadilla.  Our server that evening was attentive and friendly, and the decor was very nice after an extensive sprucing up that new management did before opening last year.  While we didn't try any of Costa del Mar's seafood offerings on our first trip, we made mental notes of what they offered for seafood dishes and made plans to go back at some point and try some of their shrimp dishes, the grilled octopus and some of their oysters-on-the-halfshell.  

Indigo Grill (Cafe Indigo) - Davenport, IA

My wife and I were out for drinks one late afternoon on a recent Saturday when we decided we better make up our minds as to where to have dinner.  Across the parking lot from the little wine bar that we like to go to from time to time is a restaurant that my wife has always liked, but I've not been too enamored with.  It had been a long time since I was last there, but my wife insisted that they had evolved and had a more interesting menu than the previous time I had been in there.  She talked me into walking across the parking lot to have dinner at Indigo Grill.  

Now, there's some confusion for me as to the real name of the place.  If you do a search for the restaurant on Google, it comes up Cafe Indigo.  However, if you go to their Facebook page, they call themselves Indigo Grill.  Their webpage features a nondescript logo of an "I" and a "G", and the sign on the front of their business says, "Indigo Grill".  I asked my wife when they changed the name and she said she hadn't noticed that they had.  

Nevertheless, Cafe Indigo/Indigo Grill (I'll refer to them as Indigo Grill for this entry) is owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Andy and Tammie Gruenhagen, long-time restaurant veterans in both Des Moines and the Quad Cities.  The Gruenhagen's moved back to Quad Cities in 2006 after working at Centro in Des Moines.   They were a little perplexed as to what to call their restaurant at first.  But after Tammie found some china for the cafe called Indigo, it all came together.  The Gruenhagen's opened Cafe Indigo in January of 2007 and styled it after a Mediterranean bistro.

(The Gruenhagen's were also involved for a time with a restaurant in Moline called Steel Head Tavern.  It closed after a nearly five year run in 2018.  And while the Gruenhagen's still own and operate Indigo Grill, Tammie is also the general manager at The Tangled Wood in Bettendorf.  Click here to see the Road Tips entry on The Tangled Wood.)

Indigo Grill is open at 8 a.m. Wednesday thru Sunday for breakfast and closes most evenings at 8 p.m.  (They are open just for breakfast on Sundays until noon.)  It was about 7:00 when we ventured across the parking lot from R Bar, the little wine/cocktail place that we like to hang out from time to time.  Indigo Grill isn't all that big - they have two sections of their front dining area which had every other table closed off for social distancing protocols.  They also have a larger room in the back for banquets, meetings and catered events.  A group of five people came in not long after we had got there and were seated back at one of the larger tables in the banquet room.  The place is not fancy, but cozy and comfortable.  

We were seated at a four-seat table on what would be the north side of the restaurant.  Our server for the evening was a pleasant young lady by the name of Morgan.  She dropped off a couple dinner menus for us to look over.  I also ordered a Stone IPA and my wife got a glass of Indigo Grill's pinot grigio.  That usually means she's going to get seafood or pasta with a cream sauce.  

The menu changes seasonally at Indigo Grill and usually features sandwiches, pasta dishes, and meat entrees with beef or chicken selections.  They had seafood entrees including a parmesan encrusted walleye and a fennel & black pepper salmon dish.  Pasta dishes included a fettuccine alfredo, Cajun mac & cheese, and a chicken & cheese tortellini.  

As I said, it had been some time since I'd been to Cafe Indigo - Indigo Grill and, quite frankly, I don't remember having this diverse of a menu.  I remember they had sandwiches and a few other things, but they seemed to have a nice mix of different styles of foods to choose from.  

My wife was looking at a couple things - the fettuccine alfredo being one and the chicken piccata being another.  But it turns out that some of the items that are available on their lunch menu are also available along with the dinner menu.  My wife found out that she could get one of the lunch entree salads, too.  She was in a quandary as to which direction to go.  

I was intrigued by many things on the menu - the Muffaletta sandwich was interesting to me, as was their reuben sandwich.  I was this close to ordering Andy's Famous Meatloaf, but I'm usually disappointed in meat loaf at a restaurant, even it was "famous".  (I make a great meat loaf at home and I'm sort of particular about my meat loaf.)  And the pot roast was sounding good, too.  

But there was something else that really caught my eye.  When I told my wife it was down to two choices, one being the meat loaf.  The other was the Cajun grouper - a pan-seared grouper filet served on asiago risotto and topped with a green olive/red pepper tapenade.  Steamed broccoli came on the side.  I asked Morgan to tell the chef to "stomp on" the grouper with Cajun seasoning.   

My wife went with one of the salad entrees - the beet salad with grilled salmon.  It featured chopped beets and lettuce greens mixed with chopped red onions, chopped cucumbers and pecans.  It came with a lemon vinaigrette dressing.  After a few bites, my wife said, "This is perfect.  The salmon is cooked perfectly and everything in the salad tastes great and fresh."  

I was sort of apprehensive about my Cajun grouper, until I took the first bite.  It was delicious!  The chef had definitely stomped on the Cajun seasonings for me.  I was thinking of getting a glass of white wine with my meal, but after a bite or two of the Cajun grouper I was glad I had the Stone IPA.  The fish was spicy, but in a very good way for me.  

OK, so I was pleasantly surprised with my meal at Cafe Indigo, excuse me, Indigo Grill.  I remember years ago that I didn't really care for it all that much, even turning up my nose many times at the suggestion of going there for a meal.  But my Cajun grouper was very good.  And my wife was very happy with her grilled salmon beet salad.   The menu was interesting and diverse - it would be tough not to find something that you didn't like on the menu.  OK, I'm sold. Indigo Grill is back in our rotation.    

Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza - Eldridge, IA

My wife and I have a friend who had a home in the small town of Long Grove, about a 20 minute drive north of the Quad Cities.  Had is the correct tense here as she just moved back to West Virginia to be closer to family while her husband works overseas as a government contractor.  A couple weeks before she moved, she invited us out to her place to help her make heads or tails of some electronics equipment her husband said to go ahead and sell in the upcoming garage sale.  I jumped on the chance to see if there was something that was appealing to me.  (There was - I got a vintage Yamaha cassette tape deck player.  I haven't had a cassette tape deck player in my system since my Nakamichi LX-3 died - for the third time - a few years back and I didn't want to keep putting money into the thing.  And - yes - I still have hundreds of cassette tapes in my music collection.)  To further entice us to come out, our friend said that she wanted to go to a new pizza place in Eldridge, the town just to the south of Long Grove.  We thought that would be a fun night, so after spending some time going through things at her house, we ventured down the road to Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Kitchen.

Now, I was somewhat familiar with Tony Sacco's and knew that it was a franchise.  About 10 years ago, I stayed at a hotel in the northwest Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect.  The hotel was part of an entertainment/shopping destination called Randhurst Village that had a Tony Sacco's pizza joint in it.  That Tony Sacco's location didn't last too long - maybe two or three years - and I never did try it.  

The original Tony Sacco's dates back nearly 15 years ago when three Florida friends - all Michigan natives - decided to open a coal-fired pizza place, similar to old-world wood-fired Italian pizza places they had in their youths.  Only one - Tony Sacco - had any restaurant experience, while the other two - Chuck Senatore and George Kurajian - were an engineer and a former food service equipment executive, respectively.  They decided upon using Sacco's name since it sounded the most Italian of the bunch, but Sacco left the venture before they opened their first Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza in Estero, FL in 2008.  The group decided on coal over the old world wood ovens because coal burned hotter - and faster - than wood.  

Now, opening a restaurant in the midst of a recession probably isn't the smartest thing to do, but Senatore and Kurajian stuck it out and Tony Sacco's started to get a following.  They initially had plans to open 10 of the Tony Sacco's locations in the southwest Florida area on their own, but then the co-owners were approached by a handful of people looking to open franchised restaurants in the Midwest and southern states.  Senatore and Kurajian soon started the TSP Management Group to oversee franchising the Tony Sacco restaurants.  At one point, there were over a dozen Tony Sacco's in states from Illinois and Michigan down through Indiana and Ohio, and on south all the way to a handful in southwest Florida.  

It turned out that the Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza concept didn't work out well for a lot of franchisees as there are now just four other locations outside of the original one in Estero, FL.  And the confounding things is that the remaining locations are located in peculiar areas - there's one in northwest Indiana, one in a small city outside of Cleveland, one in a small town between Detroit and Lansing, MI, and the newest one in Eldridge, a bedroom community/agriculture-centric area just north of the Quad Cities.  

In 2017, the Whitty family - whose father, Joe, founded Happy Joe's Pizza - sold their interests in Happy Joe's to a newly formed company called Dynamic Restaurant Holdings.  At the same time, Dynamic Restaurant Holdings acquired majority interest in Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza.  Ironically, Dynamic Restaurant Holdings named industry veteran Tom Sacco (formerly with Bonanza and Ponderosa Steakhouse, Red Robin and BJ's Brewhouse) as their new CEO in October of last year.  Sacco - who has no family connection to the original Tony Sacco - announced last fall that they would put in a Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza in what was the old Lancers, then Grille 350 location in Eldridge.  

The Eldridge Tony's Sacco location is attached to the Happy Joe's restaurant, and because of that it has a different menu than the other locations.  From Day 1, Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza never had fryers, microwave ovens, or stove tops.  Everything was made in the coal-fired ovens.  But while the Eldridge location still has a coal-fired oven, the attached kitchen from Happy Joe's allows for an expansion of food offerings such as burgers, sandwiches, Italian entrees and appetizers such as Buffalo chicken dip and Italian nachos featuring crostini bread instead of corn chips.  

Our friend had eaten there with other friends a few nights before, but she said, "The service was just so bad.  I  thought the food was good, but the service was horrible."  It could be that the service is bad because Tony Sacco's is having trouble getting employees to work there.  In a recent article in the Quad City Times, Tom Sacco lamented that he was struggling to find full-time employees - even paying more than the going rate of most other restaurants in the area.  He said that many of the potential employees indicated that they didn't want to make the drive from the Quad Cities up to Eldridge - just 15 minutes north of downtown Davenport.  Sacco said that he only had 12 employees at one point when he ideally would like to have 30 to 35 people on staff.   Sacco said that he had to move a couple employees over to Eldridge from the Tony Sacco's operation just outside of South Bend, IN.  

This past late fall, we lost one of our favorite pizza places in the Quad Cities, Crust Pizza.  (Click here to see the entry on Crust.)  We liked the variety Crust offered (Chicago-deep dish, wood-fired Neapolitan, and tavern-cut thin crust pizzas) and they had a great selection of craft beer, wine and a full bar menu.  So, when we heard that a Tony Sacco's was opening in the area, we were hoping that it would, at the very least, fill some of the hole that the closing of Crust put into our regular rotation of non-Quad City-style pizza establishments that we like to go to.  

We pulled into the parking lot at Tony Sacco's just after 6 p.m. on a Friday night.  (see map)  We think that getting employees was still a problem for Tony Sacco's because we were told it would be a 30 minute wait for a table.  Even with social distancing guidelines in place, there appeared to be a number of open tables and booths in the restaurant.  It was a very large space.  We had eaten at the old Lancers Grille a couple of times years and years ago, but I didn't remember it being this big of a place.  We just figured they didn't have enough wait staff to take care of people if they sat everyone as they came in.  

After we put our name in, the hostess asked for a phone number to contact us when our table was ready.  I looked over and saw a small bar area with a corrugated tin facade.  I asked if we could get a drink while we waited.  The hostess flatly said, "No, you cannot."  We sort of stood by the front door and she finally said, "And you can't even be in here waiting for your table.  You'll have to go to your car."  I asked if we could stand in the vestibule and she said, "No, I'm sorry."  

So we did.  We sat in our car waiting for just over 30 minutes before my phone buzzed with a text that our table was ready.  While we were sitting there talking, our friend kept peering over at the front door.  "There's people standing in the entry way," she said with a disgusted tone.  We told her that it was fine to wait in the car.  I'd rather be hanging in an area away from people in the dead of winter in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.  

We went back inside and were greeted by another young lady who took us to a booth just past the hostess stand.  We were given menus and it wasn't too long after that when our server for the evening, an energetic and fun young lady by the name of Pam came over to greet us.  The first dilemma we had was what to drink.  They had a couple IPA's on tap - one of 12 beers they had on tap - one, the Space Dust from the Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle, Washington, and the other the Surf Zombie IPA from the Iowa Brewing Company in Cedar Rapids.  I started out with a Space Dust, then switched to a Surf Zombie for my second beer.  

Drinks for the women were tough.  My wife wanted a vodka and cranberry, but all they had were cans of cranberry lemonade.  She ended up taking a Space Dust IPA.  Our friend loves lagers and she's a big fan of Samuel Adams beer.  Well, they had no lagers on tap, no Sam Adams in bottles and the only full-bodied lager they had was Budweiser in bottles.  She reluctantly took one of those.  Pam apologized for them not having Samuel Adams.  "We get requests for that beer all the time," she said.  "I need to let the owner know that we may need to bring some in."  

(I saw Tom Sacco sitting up at the bar later in the evening, recognizing him from his picture in the paper.)

We figured that we'd get a pizza - our friend was completely good with our standard Italian sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.  At Tony Sacco's, they offer two kinds of pepperoni - the regular cut and the "cupped" pepperoni that curls up and is a little more crisp than the regular pepperoni.  We ordered a large (16") pizza with the regular pepperoni.  

My wife also wanted to get a salad and she was able to talk our friend into sharing the Italian chop salad they had on the menu.  It featured chopped romaine lettuce mixed in with pepperoni, sliced ham and salami, red onions, chopped tomatoes, banana pepper rings, chopped celery with green and Kalamata olives.  Shredded provolone cheese topped the salad.   

We sat there for quite sometime waiting for the salad to show up.  It finally came to the table and not more than 30 seconds later while the women were divvying up the salad, our pizza came.  "Oh, geez," my wife said.  "I would have liked to have gotten the salad long before the pizza."  

Pam came over to check on us after the pizza made it to the table and I said, "I think they would have liked to have gotten the salad a lot sooner than just 30 seconds before the pizza showed up."   

She immediately apologized.  "That's on me, you guys," she said.  "I should have asked if you wanted it before the pizza because we consider our salads as regular entrees."  Quite honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal and it was another learning experience for us as patrons and Pam as a server at a new restaurant.  

The pizza looked pretty good.  It featured chunks of sausage, large discs of pepperoni, and a bunch of sliced fresh mushrooms.  The only thing that I could see was that it seemed that they concentrated much of the toppings in the center of the pizza.  

And I have to say that the pizza was very good.  The crust was puffy, but not too thick.  The mozzarella cheese was fresh and creamy.  And the sausage and pepperoni were slight spicy.  The earthiness of the fresh mushrooms rounded the overall flavor of the pizza into a very favorable taste.  

The women concentrated more on their salad - which was served in a large bowl and put on two plates that they had brought out - than they did the pizza.  I had three pieces before I threw in the towel.  My wife and our friend both had one piece each.  The remaining 3 pieces we put into a box and let our friend take them back to her house.    

Since Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza had been open less than 6 weeks when we went there for our first visit, we completely broke our rule of waiting 3 months after a restaurant opens to give it a try.  While there were a couple hiccups along the way on this visit, we wrote them off to growing pains of a new restaurant trying to find itself on a short staff.  Our friend said that the service on this visit was markedly better than the service she experienced on her first visit just a few days before.  I was pleased with our pizza - the cheese and toppings were fresh and full of flavor.  It's one of the better ones that I've had in the greater Quad Cities area.  We're not averse to taking the drive out to Eldridge and I'm sure we'll find ourselves out at Tony Sacco's Coal Fire Oven every once in a while to enjoy a good non-Quad City-style pizza.  

Monarch Kitchen + Bar - Davenport, IA

 My wife has a December birthday close to       Christmas.  When it falls on or near a weekend, we usually go into Chicago to celebrate.  (Well, even if it's in mid-week, we'll still go into Chicago for a couple three days to celebrate.)  But, of course, not this year.  And being that her birthday was on a Saturday this year, it was difficult to find a local restaurant that was A) a nice place; and B) had seats available for dining in the evening.  With restrictions in place, most of the good restaurants in the Quad Cities were either closed (Illinois side) or down to 50% capacity (Iowa side).  

We decided to sort of wing it on dinner that night and we started out with mid-afternoon drinks at R Bar, a small wine bar/martini bar that my wife likes to go to from time to time.  We were talking with Rochelle, one one of the bartenders there, and she was coming up with different ideas of where we could go to dinner.  Then she said, "Have you guys tried Monarch yet?"  We said, no - in fact, we had never heard of the place.  She said, "Oh, it's this great place that just opened near the Davenport/Bettendorf border on E. 53rd."  The more she got to talking about the place, the more we wanted to go.  

I called to make reservations, but I was told by the person at Monarch Kitchen + Bar that they were sold out for seating in the restaurant for the evening.  "But, we have high-top tables in the bar area and you can sit at the bar and have dinner, if you like," she explained.  "It's first-come, first-serve in the bar area."   It was getting to be just past 5 p.m. when we decided to head over to Monarch and check the place out.  

Monarch Kitchen + Bar is just north of 53rd near Falcon Ave. and you have to take one of the side streets off 53rd to get into their parking lot.  (see map)  The building sort of sits at an angle and people driving eastbound on 53rd have a better view of the front of the restaurant than those heading west.  We had just driven by the place - heading westbound - the night before and realized that we had probably driven past Monarch at least a half-dozen times since it had a soft-opening in October.  And they were still in their soft-opening phase the night we were there so we were able to snag a high-top table in the bar area.  

The bar area is sort of tucked back in a corner of the restaurant and features a three-sided bar with a full bar back.  Martini's seemed to be their specialty and the 3 bartenders were scurrying around mixing drinks for patrons.  Above the bar area was a floral-patterned acoustic tile that hung down from the ceiling.  They had a couple three more around the restaurant to really keep the noise in Monarch to a dull roar.  It wasn't obtrusive, but the background noise was still notable.   

The highlight of the bar area is the infinity fireplace that stands between the bar and the dining area of Monarch.  Only it's not a real fireplace - it's cool water vapor that comes up from the grates and is illuminated by 3 different colors of LED lights.  The stone facade held a shelf for people to stand near the vapor "flames" and have a drink.  It was actually kind of cool looking.  

Our server that evening was a personable and fun young lady by the name of Jamie.  Dressed in the Monarch Kitchen + Bar's staff's standard mode o' day navy blue and white gingham shirt, Jamie was also one of the bartenders at Monarch.  She asked us if we had been to Monarch before.  "I hadn't even heard of the place until about an hour ago," I told her.

We had our menus in place and she was going through the menu to talk about some of the items.  Many of the foods they serve are locally-sourced and everything is made from scratch in the kitchen.  She pointed out the burger they had on the menu and I said, "Oh, yeah.  I saw one go by our table a few moments ago.  It looked good!"

"It's great," Jamie said excitedly.  "When our chef was in Arizona, he got a Top 5 national award for his burger..."

I said, "Hold it.  The chef is from Arizona?"

"Yeah," she said.  "He came here a few years back because his wife was from here."

"And he was going to open a restaurant down at the Freight House or the old depot in downtown Davenport," I said in a questioning manner.

"That's him," Jamie replied.  "Do you know the chef?"

Well, no - we didn't know the chef, but we definitely knew of him from a conversation I had with one of my sisters over four years ago.  And here's that back story -

My two oldest sisters live in the Phoenix area.  My oldest sister and her husband are fine food enthusiasts like my wife and I, but my brother-in-law's world travels have taken them to some very fine restaurants.  When I was at their house in Scottsdale in December of last year, they were showing me the collection of menus from some of the more memorable restaurants that they had matted and framed to hang on their wall in a hallway between two bedrooms.  I was immediately jealous and also smacking my head thinking of some of the more memorable places we had been to over the past 25 years where we could have easily asked for a menu to do exactly the same thing my sister and brother-in-law had done.  

One of their favorite restaurants in Phoenix is a little bistro/tavern/wine store by the name of Tarbell's on E. Camelback Road.   They casually knew Tarbell's chef/food and beverage manager Matt Fenton from their visits there after they had moved down a few years ago from Louisville.  One day a little over four years ago, Fenton told my sister and brother-in-law that he was moving to the Quad Cities to open up a restaurant in an old train depot in downtown Davenport.  As I said, his wife was from Bettendorf and they wanted to be closer to her family back in Iowa.  My sister was excited to tell me about Matt Fenton's new venture in the Quad Cities and we had to check it out when he opened.  

The problem was, however, he never opened.  In the summer of 2017, there was talk of two new restaurants going into the old Union Station building across the tracks from LeClaire Park in downtown Davenport.  However, a few days before work was to begin on the project, Fenton pulled out of the venture.  (One of the spaces eventually became the home to Taste of Ethiopia.  Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Taste of Ethiopia.)  

My sister had asked me a couple years ago if anything ever came about with Fenton's restaurant in Davenport.  I told her that I don't know what happened and I didn't know if he even stuck around the Quad Cities.  But, as it turned out, Matt Fenton was, indeed, the chef/proprietor of Monarch.  

Matt Fenton was always fascinated by cooking.  As a young boy, he took cooking classes at a local public library, then continued to learn how to cook through his high school years.  Working through an organization called Careers Through Culinary Arts Program, Fenton earned a scholarship at Johnson & Wales University, a college known for their culinary arts program.  After graduating with a degree in Food Management Service, Fenton worked in restaurants in the Denver area before moving to Phoenix to work with chef Mark Tarbell who Fenton considers his biggest mentor.  Tarbell, a Paris-trained chef, moved to Phoenix when he was 23 and was the youngest food and beverage director at any 5-diamond resort in the world.  In 2007, Tarbell also gained notoriety as the champion chef on the Food Network's Iron Chef America show.  While working with Tarbell, Fenton had the opportunity to prepare a meal at the James Beard Foundation house in New York City, an honor for any chef or restaurant.

While working at Tarbell's, Fenton also became an accredited sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers, a Napa Valley-based organization that focuses on educating members on the intricacies of wine.  Fenton found that he had as much a passion with wine as he did with food from his years of culinary studies and mentorships.  

Pictured right - Matt Fenton.  Photo courtesy Monarch Kitchen + Bar Facebook page

After the restaurant venture at the old Union Station in Davenport fell through, Fenton kept busy doing a number of different things in the Quad Cities.  He did catered events for private parties and organizations, he helped out as a brewer's assistant at Bent River Brewing Company over in Moline, and he worked on Sundays as an omelet chef at the Hyatt Place hotel part of The Bend complex in East Moline.  Things started to come together on his dream of opening his own restaurant late last year and finishing touches were put on the restaurant in early October.  There's been no mention locally in the press or on TV about Monarch's opening and all of their business so far has come from social media or word-of-mouth - sort of how we found out about the place.  

Well, all hell broke lose when we told Jamie that we knew of Matt Fenton's work at Tarbell's in Phoenix.  It wasn't more than about five minutes later that Fenton appeared at our table and said, "I heard you've eaten at Tarbell's in Phoenix."  I had to explain to him that we hadn't, but my two sisters and my brother-in-law had and had told us that he was moving to the Quad's over four years ago.  "Yeah, that was supposed to be two restaurants in the old depot downtown," he said.  "Sort of glad that it never happened down there with all the flooding they've had the past couple of years."  

I jokingly said, "And instead, you decide to open during a pandemic."  

He sort of laughed and said, "Yeah, well, the wheels were turning with this place long before we knew there was going to be a pandemic."  He looked around at the rapidly filling restaurant and said, "But it hasn't turned out too bad..."

After Matt thanked us for coming in, he went back to the kitchen.  On the hallway to the restrooms, you could look through glass plate windows directly into the open kitchen area.  It was a beehive of activity with Matt Fenton and his kitchen crew cranking out meals for patrons on a Saturday evening.   

The main dining area isn't all that large, but it features a handful of booths including three large booths with curved high-backs along the far end of the restaurant.  Tables with banquette seating were along the other window wall with tables and booths finishing out the dining area.  It was sort of chic modern decor with some interesting artwork on display in the bar and dining area.  There is also a private dining room off to the side of the main dining room at Monarch.  Streamline Architects of East Moline - who is quickly getting a reputation for some unique designs in restaurants in the area - were the designers of the lay-out of Monarch Kitchen + Bar.   

My wife and I ordered drinks while we checked out the menu.  She had had a couple three martinis at the R Bar before we came over and she was feeling no pain.  She ordered a cosmopolitan from Jamie while I ordered up a Pseudo Sue from the Toppling Goliath brewery up in Decorah, IA.  

The menu wasn't vast, and I was sort of happy to see that.  They had a number of interesting items including some pasta dishes, a roasted chicken entrée, grilled salmon, pan-roasted walleye, and a Ramen-style bowl of noodles that featured assorted pickled vegetables, sliced soft-boiled eggs and a house-made ponzu sauce.  You could also add grilled chicken, shrimp, or salmon to the noodles for an uncharge.  In addition to the main entrees, Monarch also featured a few salads - protein could be added to the salads - and a beef Wellington for 2 could be ordered with a two-day notice.  And they even had caviar on the menu!  Don't know if I've seen caviar on a menu in the Quad Cities area before.  And nearly all the items on the menu were listed as gluten free.  

They also had a number of interesting shareable appetizers on the menu at Monarch Kitchen + Bar.  My wife was interested in the house-made hummus, while the "Better Than Prime Beef" carpaccio caught my eye.  Spicy Thai chicken lettuce wraps and hand-pulled mozzarella stuffed with lemon ricotta, cured tomato and pesto, and served with pieces of crostini.  

But there was one thing on the appetizer part of the menu that I had to try - the spicy tuna tartar.  It was made with sushi grade tuna placed on top of a piece of deep-fried sticky rice, then topped with an apple ponzu sauce and seaweed salad with a spicy aioli drizzled around it.  Oh - my - GOD!!  It was unbelievably tasty.  The tuna was tender and flavorful, and the spicy aioli wasn't all that spicy to my taste.  I told my wife that I could eat three of the spicy tuna tartar and I'd be a happy guy for dinner.  

For our entrées that evening, my wife was torn between three things - two of which were the lobster and gnocchi that came with locally-grown oyster mushrooms; and the roast leg of lamb which came with garlic mashed potatoes and roasted locally-grown root vegetables.  At first, she did order the lamb, but then had a change of heart because she wanted steak for her birthday dinner.  She changed her mind to the filet and crab - a six ounce Iowa tender beef filet with fresh lump crab meat.  Buttermilk-mashed potatoes with demi-glace and creamed spinach came with the steak and crab meat.  

I was torn between the pork and beef ragu with house-made Pappardelle pasta, or the oyster mushroom Tagliatelle in a garlic cream sauce.  Jamie said, "Oh, the ragu is excellent.  I would take that over the Tagliatelle.  I took her recommendation.  

I also wanted to get a glass of cabernet for dinner.  They had two - the Broadside cabernet and the Justin cab, both from the Paso Robles area in California.  Jamie said, "The Broadside is five dollars cheaper by the glass, but I like the body and richness in the Broadside better."  Since I wasn't overly familiar with either one, I took her recommendation once again.  My wife got a glass of the Pascual Toso reserva malbec from Argentina.  

Another waiter brought our meals out and they looked delicious.  As we were getting settled, my wife realized that she didn't have a steak knife.  She was just turning to see if she could get someone's attention, Jamie came over to the table with a silver platter of assorted steak knives on a napkin.  "We offer our customers their choice of steak knives," she said.  "It's kind of a neat little thing we do here at Monarch."  My wife picked out a pearl-handled steak knife.  Jamie remarked, "It sort of reminds me of a French folding knife."  I've been presented with steak knives in wooden boxes at restaurants before, but nearly all the steak knives were different at Monarch.  It was a nice little touch in presentation, I thought.  

My wife was a bit apprehensive when she cut into the steak.  She had ordered the steak medium, but the first bite was well overdone.   However, I took a look at the steak and it was misshapen, and she had cut into the tip of the steak.  "I'm guessing that once you get to the other end, it will be fine"  She turned her plate to cut into the fatter end of the steak and it turned out to be a perfect medium, still pink and juicy in the middle.  

The steak came with five or six chunks of crab meat that swam in the demi-glace.  The steak rested on a bed of spinach and my wife remarked that there were a lot of excellent flavors going on all at once with each bite.  "This is perfect," she said, fully happy with what she ordered.

My beef and pork ragu turned out to be a hearty and wonderful Italian comfort meal.  Jamie told me when she came over to check on us that the meal normally didn't come with crostini bread, but she had them put some on the plate because "that's how I like it," she explained.  "I like to clean the sauce out of the bottom of the bowl with bread."  She had been spot on with her recommendations all night long and the bread sopping up the thick and meaty ragu after the wide-cut Pappardelle noodles were gone was a perfect ending to the meal.  

And she was spot on with our wine, as well.  The Broadside cabernet was bold, full-bodied, sort of a spicy black pepper to the taste, and went great with my meal.  This is what could have easily been called an Italian comfort meal.  My wife was happy with her malbec, as well.  A few of the wines on the wine list I was familiar with, but there were some interesting red blends and some New Zealand sauvignon blancs that I wanted to learn about.  I made a mental note to try and find some of the Broadside cabernet for our home collection.  

The meals we had featured generous portions, but not enough where we felt completely full or bloated after we finished.  And since it was my wife's birthday, we had to get dessert for her.  Jamie gave us a dessert menu and they also had their whiskey and cordial menu on it.  I took a look at their single malt scotch list and sort of cringed at some of the prices.  I told Jamie when she came back to take our dessert order that I was thinking of getting a scotch, but I was sort of alarmed at the prices.  The cheapest scotch was 15 bucks.  "That's five dollars higher than what I can get the same drink for at a lot of places around town."

Jamie said, "OK, well, we pour a generous drink here.  Most places will pour two fingers, we go two-and-a-half to three fingers."  She still couldn't convince me, and besides, we were going for a nightcap at a new bar and restaurant in downtown Davenport that was having a soft opening that night and we were told by friends of ours who are co-owners of the place to go check it out.  

Just like the food menu, the dessert menu at Monarch Kitchen + Bar is pretty compact.  They had a crème brûlée that immediately caught our attention.  There was a "decadent" chocolate mousse on the menu, as well an apple crisp served with cinnamon ice cream.  My wife was waffling between the chocolate mousse and something called "Chef Emma's EVOO Cake" that came with whipped lemon curd.  

Jamie came back and we told her of my wife's quandary.  "She can't decide between the extra virgin olive oil cake or the chocolate mousse."  

Jamie perked up and said, "Hey, that's good!  Most people don't know that EVOO stands for extra virgin olive oil.  I've had people order the 'EEE-vuuu' cake before."  We got a laugh out of that one.  

My wife first ordered the chocolate mousse, but ended up changing her mind to the EVOO cake with the whipped lemon curd after I had ordered my dessert.  She was happy with it, but she said she wished she would have gotten the chocolate mousse instead.  I tried a bite of the cake with some of the lemon curd and I thought it was delicious.  I told her that we could always come back and get the chocolate mousse on our next visit.  

All night long, Jamie had been giving me excellent recommendations and I said, "Well, you haven't gone wrong on the beef and pork ragu, and you certainly didn't go wrong with the win.  What do you recommend for dessert."  She immediately said to get the cheesecake with the salted caramel sauce.  They make the cheesecake in-house at Monarch and she said it was her favorite dessert on the menu.  And, once again, she didn't steer me wrong.  The cheesecake was rich and savory, and the salted caramel sauce gave it even more of a sweet and succulent taste.  It wasn't a big piece of cheesecake, but it didn't need to be.  It was so filling and sinfully good, even in a small portion.  

For completely winging it on my wife's birthday this year, we were amazed at how well things turned out by going to Monarch Kitchen + Bar on a whim from a recommendation we got earlier in the day.  And it was rather serendipitous that chef Matt Fenton was the guy my sister and brother-in-law knew in Phoenix who they told us was moving to the Quad Cities over four years ago and to be on the lookout for his new restaurant.  It took some time for him to settle in to get his new restaurant, but the wait was worth it.  I'd have to say that we loved everything about our first visit to Monarch - the food was excellent, the staff was very friendly and accommodating, Jamie did a great job with her food and wine recommendations, and we got a chance to meet Matt Fenton who came out to our table to talk with us.  The burger at Monarch Kitchen + Bar intrigues me very much and I can't wait to get back out there to give it a try in the very near future.  But Monarch has just jumped to the top of our list for special occasion meals in our family.  

Miss Phay Cafe - Davenport, IA

A year ago this past summer, we had heard that a new restaurant was going to open in the space of a former Mexican restaurant in a space just north of the downtown area of Davenport on Brady Street hill.  We would drive past the place for the next few months and we saw little to no work going on in the space.  Suddenly, earlier this spring we noticed that work was starting on the space.  Things started to take shape and we could see that they were putting some nice touches on the place.  It turned out that it was going to be a new Asian restaurant called Miss Phay Cafe.  One recent night when I didn't feel like cooking, my wife and I made the trek down to Miss Phay Cafe to check the place out.  

Mun Luangruang grew up in Thailand and knew her way around a kitchen at a very early age.  She would help her grandmother cook food for customers of her fathers rice mill who came far and wide to have their rice processed.  Luangruang eventually immigrated to the United States 1996 to join her family in Los Angeles.  Her father had opened a Thai restaurant in Los Angeles and Mun and other family members helped out.  She knew very little English when she came to the U.S., but working in the restaurant helped her learn the language. 

While in Los Angeles, Luangruang met a man whom she eventually married.  Her husband got a job at John Deere in the Quad Cities and the two moved to the area in 2000.  In 2001, a new Japanese steakhouse was opening in Davenport and Mun got a job working there.  It was at the restaurant where she met she met Kevin Zhang, a fellow Thai immigrant who was culinary-trained in China and Switzerland before moving to the U.S.  At the time, there was only one Thai restaurant in the Quad Cities and the two felt there was a need for another good Thai restaurant in the area.  In 2002 they opened Exotic Thai on E. 53rd St. in Davenport.  

Zhang soon left the endeavor and opened Crazy Wok - later renamed Tantra Asian Bistro - a competing Thai restaurant in Davenport.  Luangruang then partnered with her father and brother to open a second Exotic Thai in Moline in 2004, then they opened the LemonGrass Cafe, a combination Thai/Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Moline.  

Initially, they announced that they would open a second LemonGrass Cafe in Davenport last year.  But they decided to rename it Miss Phay Cafe instead.  Miss Phay is an imaginary character who grew up in Bangkok and has cultural backgrounds from Thailand, China and Vietnam.  The fictional Miss Phay immigrated to the United States and is said to tell stories of her homeland through her foods and traditions.  By enthusiastically presenting her cuisine, culture and beliefs, Miss Phay brings part of her life to people in the Quad Cities.  

Or something like that...

We were able to find parking just in front of Miss Phay on Brady Street, the main northbound street out of downtown Davenport.  (see map)  The building that houses Miss Phay has seen a number of businesses and restaurants come and go out of the location over the years.  Most recently, it was the home to a Mexican restaurant that closed up about two years ago.  

Stepping inside Miss Phay, you go directly into the bar area.  It's rather nice in there with hard wood floors, a small bar, some booths, and a subdued lighting scheme.  Miss Phay also has coffee and Asian-style breakfast items that are served in the bar area from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.  

We were greeted by a young lady and taken into the main dining area through an opening from the bar side.   The room had a large floral print on the wall with a two level dining area.  There was a small alcove on one side that had banquette seating on either side of a fireplace.  Asian art and bamboo basket light shades were very noticeable throughout the room.  

The young lady gave us a couple menus and we took a quick look at their drink menu.  They have a handful of specialty cocktails at Miss Phay Cafe including a signature drink called Passion Project - Malibu rum, guava liqueur, passion fruit juice, lemon and lime juice, and finished with fresh basil and mint leaves.  Wine and beer were also available from the bar.  My wife got a glass of the Forest Glen merlot and I got a pint of the Easy Eddy hazy pale from Big Grove Brewery, one of the rotating tap beer they have at Miss Phay.

The menu tilted more toward Vietnamese cuisine, but there was definitely an emphasis on Southeast Asian specialties.  There was a lemongrass pork chop on the menu, Asian barbecued pork, a bok choy stir fry with a choice of chicken, shrimp or pork belly, and a Cambodian-style rice/noodle soup, ground pork, Vietnamese ham, pork belly, shrimp and a fish ball.   It was all pretty interesting.  

I wanted to try one of their spring rolls, so I ordered up a couple of the shrimp spring rolls for my wife and me.  A small tub of peanut hoisin sauce came on the side.  It was actually pretty good.  I thought that I probably could've had a couple orders just for myself for dinner and I would have been happy.      

But I ended up going with a bowl of pho - chunks of steak and brisket with meat balls and the regular pho ingredients including bean sprouts, chopped basil, green onions and ginger.  Fresh basil leaves and a spicy hoisin sauce came on the side.  The base of the pho is a hearty beef broth that's rich in taste as it's simmered for 8 hours.  Rice noodles are added to the pho just before serving.  It was very good.  I did my best to finish what I could, but it was a lot of food. 

My wife likes the chicken dishes over at LemonGrass Cafe, so on this visit to Miss Phay she went with the vermicelli with a grilled lemongrass and turmeric chicken breast.   It came with chopped lettuce, sprouts, cucumbers, and fresh herbs.  Chopped peanuts and crispy shallots were sprinkled on the top of the chicken breast.  A bowl of Nuoc Cham, a sort of sweet and sour dipping sauce, came on the side.  My wife thought her meal was absolutely delicious.  However, like me, she found the portion to be a little too much.  When our waitress came back to check on us toward the end of our meal, she asked my wife if she wanted a to-go box. But my wife declined saying that it could never be as good re-heated as it was in the restaurant.  

Our dinner was made even more interesting as a man dining alone was obviously hitting on our waitress.  He was seated at a table near us, but still spaced enough for social distancing.  He asked her out twice and she rebuffed him both times.  But she was still friendly to him and it was obvious this guy was smitten with her.  We try not to listen to conversations at other tables, but this guy was pretty easy to hear.  

We found Miss Phay Cafe to be a nice little place to get an Asian-inspired meal.  We immediately decided that we would add Miss Phay to our rotation of Southeast Asian food restaurants that we'll go to in the Quad Cities.  It had everything that we like in a restaurant - a nice atmosphere with a friendly and accommodating staff.  They had very good food and having beer, wine and specialty drinks is a plus.  As I said, I could go back just to have a drink and some spring rolls.  We really enjoyed our visit.  

Taste of Ethiopia - Davenport, IA

A new Ethiopian restaurant opened in downtown Davenport about a year and a half ago and my wife and I had been thinking about going there to check it out, but never made the time to do so.  One recent weekend, a friend of ours who used to work with my wife years ago came back for the weekend.  She and her husband are pretty adventurous when it comes to their tastes of cuisine and it turned out that they eat quite regularly at Ethiopian restaurants in their hometown of Indianapolis.  My wife had mentioned something about the new Ethiopian restaurant we had and since our friend knew about the food, we decided to have her accompany us for our first visit to Taste of Ethiopia.  

Genet Moraetes grew up in Ethiopia when a civil war broke when she was a teenager.  The strife between the junta government and anti-government rebels continued for a number of years before Genet decided that she needed to flee the war-torn country for her own safety.  She got a student visa for a college in the Washington D.C. area and left Ethiopia at the age of 25.  

After landing in the Washington area and entering school, Genet worked in a restaurant as a waitress.  It was at this restaurant where she met George Moraetes, a native of Davenport who was stationed at a nearby Army base.  The two started a romance and eventually were married, then moved back to the Quad Cities where George worked as a telecommunications technician.  

In the Quad Cities, Genet Moraetes found two other ladies who grew up in Ethiopia - Tigist Anberger and Saba Gebresilassie - and the three ladies began to make foods that they grew up with.  Friends and family were impressed with their Ethiopian foods that the three decided to open a food tent on the deck of the Freight House Farmers Market in 2016.  Open every Saturday from May thru October, their Ethiopian specialties were such a hit that it gave George and Genet Moraetes an idea.  Why not open their own brick and mortar restaurant?  

A space that had been vacated by the Mississippi Valley Blues Society opened up at the old Union Station building just across the street from the Freight House Farmers Market.  The Moraetes petitioned the city to lease the space for 5 years, and in October of 2018 that request was granted by the city.  The couple and family members spent the next few months renovating the space and hoped to be open by the spring of 2019.

However, the Flood of 2019 made them change their plans.  The area around the building was inundated with flood waters and the Moraetes had to push back their opening by a few months.  Construction workers putting the finishing touches on the interior of the restaurant had to wade through flood waters to get into the place.  But by July of 2019, floodwaters had receded and Taste of Ethiopia opened up for business soon thereafter.   

We parked in the lot on the north side of the building just south of River Drive and just north of LeClaire Park in downtown Davenport.  (see map)  The front door to Taste of Ethiopia is on the south side of the building and we walked around the building and up the ramp to go in.  

We were pleasantly surprised with the dining area at Taste of Ethiopia.  Hard wood floors, dark-red table tops, a well-lit atmosphere, and a very clean environment is what we found.  A young lady by the name of Sonia came out to greet us as we came in and told us we could sit about anywhere.  There was an outdoor patio, but it was a little cool in the later part of the day/early evening, so we sat at a high-top table inside.  Sonia dropped off menus for us and I was pleasantly surprised to see they had beer and wine available behind the little bar area.  My wife got a glass of Barricas Malbec, our friend got a glass of Bricco Riella Moscato d'Asti, and I got a pint of the Goose Island IPA they had on tap.  

Looking through the menu, our friend guided us through the unfamiliar terrain of Ethiopian food.  They had primarily beef dishes, but there was a spicy chicken entree - Ye'Doro Kay Wot - and a fried pollack fish feature, as well.  There were a handful of vegetarian options on the menu, as well.   And Taste of Ethiopia had a number of items that could be shared as an appetizer or as a stand alone meal.  The Ye'Siga Sambusa featured hand-wrapped shells of pastry filled with steak, green peppers and onions.  The Loaded Tib Fries sounded interesting as they featured beef cooked with ginger and garlic and served on fries and topped with scallions.  They also had Ethiopian-style tacos - a beef taco plate (spicy or non-spicy beef) and a fried fish taco plate.  For the less adventurous, Taste of Ethiopia had chicken strips, catfish nuggets, and chicken wings (boneless or bone-in).  

After she explained many of the items on the menu, our friend suggested getting two of the combination plates for 2 people - a meat combo and a vegetarian combo.  With the meat combo, if came with 4 sides and the vegetarian combo came with 6 choices of sides.  

With the meat combo, we ordered the spicy chicken and the Ye'Siga Kay Wot, a spicy beef simmered with onions, garlic and spices.  Our sides with the meat combo included spicy lentils, regular lentils, cabbage and green beans with carrots.  

Our vegetarian combo consisted of a beet salad, gomen (Ethiopian collard greens), spicy lentils, cabbage, potatoes with carrots, and a chickpea stew called shiro.  The items on both combo plates came on a bed of Ethiopian flat bread called injera.  And rolled up injera bread came on the side.  

From there, our friend basically showed us how to eat the food.  The injera bread could be unrolled or torn off the plate to dip into the sauces or vegetable dishes.  She took some of the spicy beef and put some on the injera before eating it, similar to dressing a tortilla in a Mexican restaurant.  The injera had an interesting flavor and had sort of a spongy consistency.  My wife and I both liked it.  

As for the overall meal, well, it was very interesting, to say the least.  For Ethiopian food newbies, I would have to say we liked the spicy beef and the spicy chicken selections.  I'm not big on lentils, but I really enjoyed the spicy lentils that our friend picked out.  My wife enjoyed the beet salad a lot, and she seemed to like the chickpea stew, too.  

After we finished dinner, our friend said that her husband always likes to get an Ethiopian coffee after he finishes his meal.  She said that it was more like espresso and I like to have a large espresso a couple times a week.  I usually don't like to have espresso at night, but it was a Saturday night and I figured I'd be up later than usual anyhow.  

Well, the Ethiopian coffee just about knocked me on my ass!   The caffeine kick completely zipped me up.  It was sweet and similar to espresso in taste, but it was a bit more watery.  I joked to my wife and friend that it was like drinking liquid meth.  Wow!  I think I was up until about midnight that night and it was around 6:30 p.m. when I finished the coffee.  

I'd always wondered about Ethiopian food and now we finally had the chance to try it at the somewhat new Taste of Ethiopia in downtown Davenport.  I don't know if there was anything we disliked about the place - the food was fascinating, the service was friendly, the place was clean and comfortable, and the overall vibe was pleasant.  The food was akin to Indian food, but only in the sense that it was sort of an eclectic comfort food.   George Moraetes dropped by the table to chat after dinner and we told him that it our first visit and that my wife and I would be back.  Even if you're skeptical of Ethiopian food, you should at least give the Taste of Ethiopia a try if you're a rookie at Ethiopian cuisine. 

Floyd's Burgers & Sliders @ Wake Brewing - Rock Island, IL

For some time, I've had philosophical issues with food trucks.  When the food truck craze first hit four or five years ago, there just seemed to be this aimless attitude that food truck owners - and even municipalities - had in regard to where they could do business.  When owners of established brick-and-mortar restaurants complained - and rightly so - to local municipalities about the seemingly arbitrary regulations governing food trucks, local governments and health departments knew they had to reign in what was turning into a quickly growing - and a very unorganized - kitchen economy.  Some food trucks eventually fell by the wayside when rules, regulations, and permits came into play helping to level out the playing field.  But others began to prosper when they discovered a whole new venue where they could set up - the fast growing microbrewery sector.  While I have had a somewhat cynical approach to food trucks over the years, when they team up with local breweries to provide food while you can enjoy a craft beer - well, I'm all for that.  And one of the food trucks that we've discovered at one of our local breweries is Floyd's Burgers & Sliders.  And we went to have a burger at Floyd's one recent evening over at Wake Brewing in Rock Island.  

Austin Mills was one of those who saw an opportunity in the growing business of food trucks and started renovating his parents' 1978 Winnebago in the spring of 2016.  His main job was working at a Jimmy John's and he wasn't in any hurry to turn the camper into a burger joint on wheels.  However, in the summer of that year, the city of Davenport announced that they would sponsor a trial program for food trucks to congregate on evenings once a week for the month of September in public lots in the downtown area.  (A lot of downtown restaurants were, understandably, upset with this - and, at the time, I sided with the restaurants on this issue.)  But the trial was more of an experiment by the city to find out what they needed to do to regulate and weed out the ones that wouldn't comply with rules and regulations.

When Austin Mills found out the city was going to do this pilot program for food trucks, he quickly dove into the complete renovation of the camper into a food truck.  He missed the first week of the program, but was open for the second week.  Mills served his first burger as Floyd's Burgers and Sliders on September 13, 2016.  Over the years, Mills has expanded his menu to include vegan burgers and some interesting sandwich options.  Floyd's Burgers & Sliders has built up a loyal following in the community and Mills regularly posts his schedule and specials on their Facebook page.  

My wife had been to one of the local breweries with a friend when Floyd's was serving burgers.  She told me about it and pointed out to me that Floyd's would be at Wake Brewing that Friday evening between 5 and 8 p.m. - they're normally at Wake on Friday evenings through the spring, summer and fall.  We decided to head over to Wake - a place that we have been to many times to have a beer.  

Wake Brewing has been around since November of 2017 and is owned by the brother team of Jason and Justen Parris.  Jason had been working at Rock Island Brewing Company (RIBCO) as the events and booking coordinator, while Justen was an engineer at the Exelon nuclear power plant near Cordova, IL.   I know of both brothers through mutual friends, and Justen used to come to pool parties at our neighbor's house in the past.  

The brothers were musicians who started playing together in various bands about 25 years ago.  They toured with a couple bands, playing mainly on the East Coast, and also backed various hip-hop artists long before groups like The Roots were doing that type of thing.  While on tour one time, the brothers walked into a bar/pizza place in Athens, GA and innocently asked for a pitcher of Guinness for them to share.  The girl behind the bar looked at them funny and said that they didn't have Guinness, that the bar only specialized in craft beers.  The young lady suggested a beer they should try - a Grant's Perfect Porter from the new defunct Yakima Brewing Company in Yakima, WA.  The brothers immediately loved the beer and started to find more craft brews on their tour up and down the East Coast.  

After getting off the road and getting back to the Quad Cities, Justen Parris started to fiddle around with making his own beer at home.  About a year later, Jason got involved with his brother's hobby and the two networked with other home-brewers in the area.  They decided that the Quad Cities needed another craft brewery - there were only 3 at the time - and opened Wake in the fall of 2017.   Today, there is something like 15 craft breweries within a 30-mile radius of the Quad Cities.  And for a beer aficionado like myself, that's a good thing.  

Wake Brewing is located where Illinois 92 splits just east of downtown Rock Island, across from the Quad City Botanical Center and the QCCA Expo Center.  (see map)  Parking is available on the side of the building that houses Wake, but that night with Floyd's make-shift camper/kitchen in the lot, the only parking available was behind Wake.  

My wife and I went in to get a beer and they always have a lively selection of music playing at Wake.  A diverse selection of artists such as Ben Howard and Hippo Campus were playing that evening on the microbrewery's modest sound system that also pipes music outside to their beer garden in front of the building.  My wife and I got a double dry-hopped pale ale that they had on tap, one of the many rotating styles of craft beer Wake features.  

The tap room at Wake is pretty small - it doesn't seat many more than probably 30 people, and now less than that with COVID-19 restrictions in place - so we ended up seated at one of the all-weather picnic tables outside.  There had been a threat of rain earlier in the day, but by the time the line of storms came to the Quad Cities it had pretty much squeezed out all the rain, save for a few sprinkles that fell on us at Wake.  The cool air behind the front that came through was a welcome relief from the hot and humid weather we had been having.  

The Floyd's food truck has a colorful mural on the back side, but has a minimalist logo on the side where the order window is.  The logo is similar to the artwork Gerald Scarfe did for Pink Floyd's epic album "The Wall" over 40 years ago.  I immediately caught the "Floyd's Burgers & Sliders" and the "Pink Floyd" connection with the logo.  

The menu is located on blackboards on the ground next to the food truck.   Austin Mills has come a long way over the past four years as his initial menu only featured two items.  He has six different variations of burgers on the menu - including a veggie burger - as well as five different types of sliders (four per order).  The "Rhythm and Bleu" burger features bleu cheese, bacon and a chili garlic sauce; the "I'm Yer Huckleberry" is topped with cheese, crispy onions, jalapeños, bacon and a barbecue sauce; and the "Dyin' for Hawaiian" sliders consist of ham, cheese, bacon, pineapple, and Thousand Island dressing on four slider buns.  Floyd's also has grilled sandwiches including the "Foghorn" consisting of a roasted chicken breast, cheese, bacon and barbecue sauce; the "Basket Case" that features ham, cheese, bacon, a fried egg, and their garlic/chili sauce; as well as a classic grilled reuben sandwich.  

On this particular visit, they also had a special that evening - the Birria burger.  It consisted of slow roasted birria beef - a staple in authentic Mexico cuisine - on top of two burger patties finished with chihuahua cheese, a honey/hibiscus sauce, and came with a side of chipotle sauce.  I paused for a moment as I looked that over and thought that sounded really good.  

As I was waiting in line to order, I heard a voice call my name from inside the Floyd's food truck.  It was an old acquaintance who I used to work with at outdoor concert events in downtown Davenport a number of years ago.  Actually, we had come across one another just a week before when my wife, her sister and I went out to Crust to have some pizza one evening.  We hadn't seen each other for a long time and here he was back in my life working for both Crust and helping out Austin Mills from time to time in the Floyd's food truck.  

I almost got the Birria burger, but for the first time eating at Floyd's I wanted to go with the regular ol' cheeseburger - the "Royale with Cheese".  My wife said she wanted the same thing.  I also got a small order of Floyd's hand-cut fries for us to share.  About 15 minutes later, I went over to the food truck and picked up our order from my long-lost friend.

The burgers and fries were served in small paper food boats and condiments (mustard, ketchup, mayo) were available in packets next to the napkins.  The American cheese was oozing out from under a soft egg bun on top of the two flat-grilled burger patties.  The taste of the burger was fantastic.  The beef had the crispy edge that you get from mashing down the meat and having it cook in its own juices.  My wife had already experienced a burger from Floyd's and she said, "I knew you'd like their burgers."  I did - a lot.  They were juicy, flavorful and had a great flat-grilled beef taste.  And the fries were also very good.  They had a bit of a seasoning on them that didn't overpower the taste.  They were crunchy on the outside, but had that great flaky potato consistency on the inside.  

We had a recent experience with Floyd's again.  My wife and I had taken a few days off to travel for vacation and we got home on a Sunday afternoon.  Not really wanting to go to the store and find food to make at home that night, my wife suggested we look up where Floyd's Burgers & Sliders would be that evening.  It turned out that they were at one of our other favorite breweries in the Quad Cities, Crawford Brew Works over in Bettendorf.  (see map)  Crawford has been around since May of 2018 and features a number of very good beers that we like including their "Kinda-Kolsch" German-style summer beer, and their "Get Off My Lawn" IPA.  

Floyd's had set up their food truck there and we went out to have some food and a couple beers.  This time, their special was a cherry-smoked beef brisket topped with Boetje's mustard, pickled cucumbers and onions, and fresh dill.  I really wanted to get a burger from Floyd's, but I had to pull the trigger on this sandwich.

The sandwich was served on grilled rye bread and featured thick chunks of brisket that had a hint of a smoky flavor to it.  The Boetje's mustard gave the sandwich a nice kick, but the pickled onions and cucumbers helped balance out the spiciness of the stone ground mustard.  The fresh dill was hardly noticeable with all the other taste sensations that were going on.

My wife got the "Royale with Cheese" burger again and it smelled so good as it came off the grill.  We just got the sandwich and burger this time - no fries.  So, after I finished my sandwich, I determined that the smell of burger was too overpowering for me.  I had to go get one.  I got it to go, but it turned out that my wife wasn't quite ready to leave Crawford Brew Works.  So I ate the burger while having another beer.  It was a great ending to what had been a great vacation for us.  

I'm starting to come over to the side of the food trucks - especially when they camp out at any one of the microbreweries we have in the Quad Cities.  But I'll put Floyd's "Royale with Cheese" up against any cheeseburger I've had in the area.  It was a great burger and I'm sure that we'll be looking up on their Facebook page to see where they're parked some future evening.

La Herradura - Le Claire, IA

At the little neighborhood bar that we like to go to from time to time, one of the bartenders lives out in Le Claire, just up the Mississippi River from the Quad Cities.  Just before the pandemic caused bars and restaurants to close down across the state of Iowa, she was telling us of a new Mexican restaurant in Le Claire that had just opened up.  She said the food was delicious.  Recently, my wife and I made our way out to Le Claire for a Saturday afternoon getaway and we ended up at La Herradura for a late lunch.   

For years, I've said that we're very blessed to have a number of very good Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities area.  Since the 1920's migrant workers from Mexico came to the area to work on the railroad and in farm fields in the valley along the Mississippi River.  And many of them stayed in places like East Moline, Silvis and Muscatine.  There are easily a dozen great - and authentic - Mexican restaurants between Muscatine and the Quad Cities.  So when we found out that one was opening in Le Claire - and it was reportedly very good - we were eager to give it a try.  

The owners of La Herradura had hoped to open sometime in February of this year, but like any new venture there were some delays involved.  They finally opened on March 2, but were forced to close two weeks later when Iowa shut down all bars and restaurants because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  La Herradura reopened for to-go food orders in April and re-opened for inside dining earlier this summer.  

After an afternoon of visiting a couple three local watering holes in Le Claire, I turned the car north along Cody Road and found La Herradura just north of the downtown area.  (see map)  The building that houses La Herradura was once a small grocery store before it closed down.  A restaurant by the name of Tasty Cafe took over part of the space of the old grocery store, but it was replaced by a place called Destyni's Cafe.  That restaurant was in the spot until last fall when it closed down.  Hopefully, La Herradura breaks that streak of restaurants in that location going out of business.

La Herradura is named after the wonderful Herradura tequila which my wife and I prefer for our homemade margaritas.  La Herradura has a wide open floor plan with tables in the middle of the room and booths ringing the perimeter.  It's brightly lit and has a number of Mexican artwork and artifacts on the walls.  There's also a small outdoor seating area in front of the building.   

We sat down in a booth by one of the front windows and were given menus to look over.  La Herradura doesn't have a bar, per se, but a small shelving unit near the kitchen window on which to make drinks.  They had margaritas, sangria and wine, as well as a number of domestic and imported beers to choose from.  

Their signature margarita is made with, of course, Herradura tequila.  We had a choice of either the Herradura reposado or the silver.  We got the silver for these margaritas.  The Herradura is mixed with Cointreau, orange and lime juices.  It was served in a huge glass and it cost $14 per drink.  Now, at this point in the afternoon, we weren't certain that we needed a margarita, let alone a $14 margarita.  But it was very smooth, refreshing and flavorful.

We started off getting a basket of their house-made chips and salsa.  The salsa was sweet and tangy, and had a very good flavor.  I asked our server if I could get some of the salsa verde to go with the chips.  She brought over a bowl of their salsa verde and it was served warm.  Most salsa verdes that we've had are usually a little too salty for our tastes, but the salsa verde at La Herradura wasn't salty at all.  There was a hint of saltiness, but nothing really noticeable.  The salsa verde was excellent, in my book.

Most of the food items on the menu were your typical Mexican fare - tacos, enchiladas, burritos, and combo plates.  But they also had a number of seafood items on the menu including grilled tilapia tacos, a handful of shrimp dishes, and both shrimp and fish ceviche.  I was really keen on the seafood items on the menu, but I also had my eye on the pork chile verde dish, as well as the carnitas platter.  In fact, they had about six or seven items on the menu that I was really interested in.  

My wife thought the fajitas sounded good to her and she ordered up the chicken fajitas.  Since it was still a bit before 3 p.m. when we ordered, she was still able to get the fajitas in the lower priced lunch-sized platter. The fajitas were served with grilled onions and peppers along with a side of shredded lettuce and pico de gallo.  Mexican rice and refried beans came with the grilled chicken and veggies.  Flour shell tacos completed her meal.  

Torn between too many choices that sounded good to me on the menu, I ended up ordering the beef enchiladas verde.  But the carnitas also sounded good to me and I asked if I could get a single carnitas taco.  Normally, you would get three enchiladas on the platter, but the lunch portion only served two.  And that was fine with me.  Refried beans and rice came with the enchiladas.  

The beef enchilada verde was very good.  Once again, the chile verde sauce was not salty and had a wonderful natural taste that went well with the enchiladas.  The rice was also good and the refried beans were decent.  But, then again, refried beans are not my favorite thing in a Mexican restaurant.  

The carnitas taco was topped with chihuahua cheese, pico de gallo and a slice of avocado.  The carnitas were simmered, then grilled for a crunchy taste.  I poured a bit of the salsa verde on top of the taco to give it a bit more of a pizazz in taste, although it really didn't need it.  

My wife was sort of disappointed in her chicken fajitas, however.  She said they were too salty.  She offered me a bite and I got some on my fork to try.  And they were very salty.  My wife is the salt eater in the family and if she says something is too salty, well, it's very salty to me.  She thought the overall taste of her chicken would have been much better had it not been so salty.  

My wife's disappointment aside, we decided that we would come back to La Herradura at some point because they had so many things on their menu that we really wanted to try. We probably went a little overboard ordering up a couple of their signature margaritas - we decided that would could have shared one - but they were outstanding in taste and quality.  I especially enjoyed my beef enchilada verde and the single carnitas taco that I got was also very good.  Other than my wife's chicken fajitas being too salty, she seemed to like the place very much.  It was comfortable and the service was prompt and friendly.  Compared to other noteworthy Mexican restaurants in the area, I felt that La Herradura held their own.  We figured we could go back to La Herradura a number of times and try something new on each visit, the menu was just that interesting to us. 

Jennie's Boxcar - East Moline, IL

Earlier this year, my wife and I took a drive over to East Moline to try a new coffee place by the name of Iron + Grain Coffee House.  At the opposite end of the building from the coffee place was a new Mexican taqueria that had opened late in 2019 that we had heard about and always wanted to try - Jennie's Boxcar.   We had made mental plans to come over to Jennie's Boxcar, but less than a couple weeks later the COVID-19 outbreak pretty much stopped life as we knew it.  And along with that, Jennie's Boxcar shut down for the time being, opening only for take-out service at some point.  However, with many Illinois restaurants re-opening in late June with restrictions on dining in, we found out that Jennie's Boxcar was once again open.  On a recent weeknight, my wife and I decided to take the trek over to East Moline to try the place out.  

Jennie's Boxcar is part of a number of businesses in what was the old Moline Pressed Steel Company, a metal manufacturing firm that started in 1910.  The company stared out making fenders and body parts for automobiles made at the Moline-Knight Automobile Company located next door before making parts for local farm implement manufacturers.   Founder and owner Fred Lundahl noticed that a lot of his son's toys just didn't hold up very well and came up with an idea to make small toys for his son out of the scrap sheet metal that he was basically throwing out.  He named the company Buddy L after his only son, Arthur.  

In 1921, Lundahl started making the toy trucks and cars in his home in Moline before he moved the operation back to Moline Pressed Steel.  The Buddy L toys were expensive, but they were much more durable compared to other toys of the day.  Soon, he had worked out deals to sell his toys at some of the more prestigious department stores in the Midwest.  By 1925, Buddy L trucks and cars were among the most coveted toys of the day.  Unfortunately, Lundahl died in 1930 due to complications from surgery and his widow sold the Buddy L company.  

The building that housed Moline Pressed Steel eventually became a large warehouse before it was closed down a number of years ago.  In 2017, a group headed by local businessman Larry Anderson bought the 40 acre property on which the old buildings were standing and developed them into a multi-faceted entertainment, restaurant and commercial complex called The Rust Belt that includes a 4000-person capacity live music venue.

One of the first tenants in the converted warehouse was an architectural/furniture design company by the name of Streamline Architects.  Owner Andrew "Drew" Dasso not only designs buildings, but his company designs interiors for commercial office spaces, restaurants, residential and retail shops.  And Streamline Artisans is an off-shoot of Streamline Architects that designs and fabricates high-quality furnishings for offices, restaurants and retail shops.  Dasso saw a need for a coffee shop in the East Moline area and he started Iron + Grain Coffee House in the fall of 2019.  

A few other businesses were going into the complex, but the property owners also saw a need for a restaurant that would complement both the Rust Belt music venue and the new Midwest Ale Works microbrewery.  Unable to find a restaurant that would be willing to move into the space, Dasso told the landlords that he may have an idea.  That's when he turned to his wife, Marguerite, who was a teacher in the Davenport School District.  

Marguerite came from a family that liked to cook.  Mexican specialties that were handed down from her grandmother Jennie Sandoval Garcia were passed through the family.  Jennie Garcia was also a long time manager for Adolph's, a local Mexican chain started by Adolph and Louisa Perez back in the early 50's, and she garnered a number of recipes from her work there.  Drew Dasso suggested that his wife take some of the recipes from her grandmother and open a restaurant at the facility.  At first, Marguerite resisted the overtures from her husband to start a restaurant, but she finally consulted with her sister Crystal Reickard who had experience working in restaurants for nearly 20 years.  

At first, the two sisters thought the restaurant would be something akin to a food court - three or four different restaurants where people would order at the window and use the dining room, courtyard or microbrewery next door as seating areas.  But they found that concept as unfeasible and decided to stick to one thing.  Using their grandmother's recipes as an inspiration and consulting both the Internet and a local chef who worked for a food purveyor, they decided upon eclectic tacos for the bulk of their food items.  

Marguerite Dasso and Crystal Reickard had to come up with a name for the place and it was purely simple that they would pay homage to their grandmother and call it Jennie's Boxcar.  The "Boxcar" part of the name comes from the fact that Jennie Sandoval was born in a boxcar in the freight yards of Silvis, IL in 1922.  Back in the day, immigrant workers from Mexico were given boxcars to use for housing for their families since conventional housing wasn't readily available at the time.  Jennie and her family lived in the freight yards for the first 10 years of her life before her parents moved the family to 2nd Street in Silvis.  Jennie was one of 10 children and all six of her brothers went off to serve in World War II.  Two of her brothers - Joe and Frank - were killed in action and are immortalized as part of the Hero Street USA memorial in Silvis.   

Jennie eventually met and married Charley Garcia.  In 1941 the two eloped to Horton, KS where Charley had a line on a job.  When World War II came, the job in Kansas fell through and the couple moved back to the Quad Cities to find work there.  He got a job with the Rock Island Railroad in 1942 and the couple lived - once again - in a boxcar in the freight yards that the young couple shared with Charley's brother and his wife.  Jennie and Charley lived in the boxcar for a year and moved into an apartment just as their oldest child Irene was born.  The Garcia's eventually moved into a home in East Moline in the late 1940's and raised five daughters in total including Bonnie, the mother of Marguerite Dasso and Crystal Reickard.  

We pulled up in front of Jennie's Boxcar around 6:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night.  (see map)  Since live venues have been shutdown during the pandemic, there was a lot of parking available in the main lot of the complex.  Only one entrance from the outside was open at Jennie's Boxcar and we went inside some doors just off of the courtyard area.

Once inside, we found a large open space in what could be categorized as a modernized industrialized space.  Streamline Architects and Streamline Artisans had a hand in the design and manufacturing of the floor plan and furnishings.  There weren't many people in the place - actually, there was just one other couple - and a young lady showed us to a table near a long mural on the east wall of the dining area.

My wife and I learned on a culinary tour to the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago about five years ago that Mexican murals tell a story about an event, a family, or a neighborhood.  We admired the mural and our waiter came over to greet us.  His name was Jamie and he said that he was Marguerite and Crystal's brother.  "Yes, this mural tells the story of my grandparents," he said as he began to point things out.  

Jamie explained about the boxcar and the fact that his grandparents and great-grandparents lived in boxcars in the rail yards in nearby Silvis.  The Hero Street USA part of the mural paid tribute to the neighborhood his grandmother grew up in and to her two brothers who gave their lives in World War II.  The musical notes meant that his grandparents loved music and I was able to pick out the Día de Muertos musicians and celebrants playing in the mural.  The Rock Island Railroad switch engine paid tribute to his grandfather who worked there for 35 years before he retired in 1977.  And then Jamie pointed out the picture of Charley and Jennie sitting at a table.  "My grandfather loved his Swisher Sweets cigars, and my grandmother loved her Hot Sex," he said chuckling pointing out the bottle of the liqueur sitting on top of the checkered table cloth in the mural.  

The bar area wasn't all that big, but featured an array of colorful stools in front.  The beer and cocktail menu at Jennie's Boxcar featured nearly 20 types of domestic, craft and imported beers, along with nearly 40 different selections of tequila and mezcal.  Wine and a selection of specialty margaritas and cocktails were also available.  

As you walk in from the courtyard, you can see right into the kitchen.  It was a large and open space, very clean and orderly.  Food selections that can be taken to other parts of the Rust Belt complex can be ordered at the window.  You can take food to any other part of the complex, but you can't take alcohol from place to place.  That said, you can't take a Jennie's margarita into Midwest Ale Works, and you can't bring a beer from Midwest Ale Works into Jennie's.  

We both got a couple menus from the young lady who seated us and Jamie asked us what we wanted to start out with.  Their house margarita consisted of Corazon blanco tequila, Cointreau, lime juice and blue agave syrup on the rocks - the exact same way we make our margaritas at home.  We ordered up a couple of those from him and my wife wanted to start out with some of their house-made chips with their house guacamole.  

The chips and guac came out first and were served on a half-sized cookie sheet with wax paper covering the tray.  The chips were warm and had a light, yet crunchy texture.  The guacamole was fresh with large chunks of avocado mixed in with diced tomatoes and onions with a hint of a garlic taste to it.  The guacamole was good, but it was a tad expensive ($8 bucks) for the size of bowl that we got.  You can also get the chips with salsa ($5), pico de gallo ($8) and a black bean/corn salsa ($8).  Other appetizers include beef barbacoa nachos, chicken nachos, a quesadilla (with or without chicken), and a shrimp cocktail served with a spicy salsa cocktail sauce.  

Most of the main items on the menu consist of tacos, but they also have torta sandwiches with a choice of chicken, pulled pork, beef barbacoa or vegetables.  And they have a handful of salads including one with pulled pork, black bean/corn salsa, sliced avocados, and diced fresh onions and tomatoes. 

But we were there for the main event - the tacos.  It wasn't an extensive selection of tacos - and you couldn't get combinations to try a couple three different ones - but they were pretty interesting in their own right.  The Hot Swine tacos featured cubed pork belly with red cabbage and diced apples with a sriracha drizzle; the Safe Bet featured seasoned grilled chicken with red cabbage, sliced avocado and their black bean/corn salsa; the Fresca had pulled pork with red cabbage and a grilled pineapple salsa, and they had a couple of vegan tacos including the El Camote with sweet potatoes, black beans, avocado slices, topped with diced onions and fresh cilantro.  And for the very unadventurous, The Gringo consists of ground beef and chorizo, topped with lettuce, cheddar cheese and diced tomatoes.  I'm sure it would be better than going to Taco Bell.  

My wife went with the Bait and Hook - baked cod filets served with red cabbage, the black bean/corn salsa, pickled radish, pico de gallo and a cream sauce topping.  They were served on small flour tortillas.  My wife was very impressed with the taste of the baked cod tacos.  We exchanged bites of our tacos and I thought her fish tacos were very good.  (I was a little leery of the "baked" and not "grilled" cod, but there was not much of a fishy taste to the tacos.)

I was torn between a couple different ones they had on the menu.  The Pipsqueak consisted of sweet ancho chile-rubbed grilled shrimp with sliced avocados, chopped cilantro and pickled onion topped with a lime sauce.  But I ended up getting the barbacoa tacos.  For an uncharge of something like $3 bucks, I was able to get a 4th one because I knew they were street taco-sized.  

The description on the menu said the barbacoa was spicy shredded beef, but I didn't think it was all that spicy.  The barbacoa was topped with a pico de gallo, queso fresco (but not a lot of it), their crema sauce and chopped fresh cilantro that was VERY fresh.  A side of a spicy salsa came on the side.  And somewhat curiously, lime wedges came with each of my tacos.  I didn't mind that, but my wife - and I do, too - likes to have limes for fish tacos.  We didn't quite understand how I got limes for barbacoa tacos and she didn't get any for her fish tacos.  

The barbacoa tacos were, well, they were just all right in my book.  As I said, I didn't think the barbacoa was all that spicy, but the salsa that came on the side had a zippy taste to it and helped kick the spiciness up a notch.  But really, other than the fresh cilantro and the salsa, they seemed rather bland to me.  I've had barbacoa tacos around the Quad Cities that I felt were better than the ones I had at Jennie's Boxcar.  I was kicking myself for not getting the Pipsqueak tacos.  Well, next time, I said to myself.

And it turned out that next time was just two nights later when we went with friends of ours over to Midwest Ale Works, located next door to Jennie's.  They have a connecting door between the two places and my wife and I checked out the microbrewery after we had dinner at Jennie's on our first visit.  I really enjoyed their BAMF hazy pale ale when we were there on our first visit, so I ordered one of those again when we went back.  

We sat outside in the courtyard area as it was a warm night, but not oppressive.  My wife wanted to get some of the chips and guac again, and even though I wasn't hungry, I thought this would be a good time to try the Pipsqueak tacos.  I ordered a set of 3 and they brought them out to us from the kitchen.  As underwhelmed I was with the barbacoa tacos the other night, the Pipsqueak tacos really made my taste buds jump.  It was a combination of spicy and cool with some extraordinary flavors that really popped out.  I gave my wife a bite of one of my tacos and she even said that she thought they were so much better than the barbacoa tacos.  

About the only drawback to Jennie's Boxcar is that it was a pretty expensive meal.  3 margaritas in smallish glasses were $24 bucks, my tacos were $14 bucks, my wife's fish tacos were $10.  Add on the $8 for chips and guac, and our meal was sitting at $56 bucks before tax and tip.  But - the one thing about Jennie's Boxcar is that you can tell that everything is top-notch and very fresh.  Even though I was somewhat disappointed with my barbacoa tacos, the shrimp tacos I had on my next visit more than made up for it.  My wife really enjoys their chips and guacamole - the chips are not greasy at all - and the guac was very fresh and full of flavor.  And I know that a margarita consisting of Corazon tequila and Cointreau is not gonna be cheap.  Finally, the service was excellent both times we were there.  If you're expecting to go to Jennie's Boxcar to get free chips and salsa, or meals with enchiladas or burritos, refried beans and rice, you'll be disappointed.  But if you want top notch ingredients both in the food and drinks - and are willing to pay for it - you'll enjoy Jennie's Boxcar.  It's a nice addition to a number of good to great Mexican restaurants in the Quad Cities.  

Twin Span Brewing - Bettendorf, IA

My wife and I have been cooped up in our house for the past 3 months doing a lot of cooking at home and occasionally getting some food from curb-side pick-up to bring back home.  However, the state of Iowa has been slowly opening up lately and a couple weeks ago most of the restaurants and bars had been allowed to re-open following social distancing regulations.  We had our eye on a place that just opened up a little over a month ago next to the TBK Bank Sports Complex on the northern edge of Bettendorf, Twin Span Brewing.  Last Saturday night, we decided to give the place a try.

Actually, we tried to head out to Twin Span Brewing a couple Friday nights ago - the first day that restaurants were allowed to fully open in the state.  However, on our way out, we were stopped by a road block thrown up by Bettendorf police for a "Black Lives Matter" rally that was getting ready to begin.  We decided to just turn around and head down to the Village of East Davenport and go to Rudy's Cantina for a quick bite that evening.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Rudy's Cantina.) 

After having a couple of drinks at our favorite neighborhood watering hole last Saturday, my wife and I took off to go north to I-80 and on east to the Middle Road exit (Exit 301) a few miles down the road.  The TBK Bank Sports Complex - known as the "Bett Plex" to the locals - is tough to miss as you're traveling along I-80 in that area.  There have been a number of businesses - restaurants, retail stores, convenience stores - that have sprung up around the complex since it opened a little over two years.  Parking was plentiful around Twin Spans when we pulled in off of Forest Grove Rd. just before 6:30 that evening.  (see map) 

Twin Span has actually been open since the second weekend in May when they began to allow "to-go" sales of their beers.  A couple weeks later they opened their carry-out or patio-seating food service under the guidance of Juan Hernandez, a native of Mexico City who is known around the Quad Cities for his work with Steventon's and the Blue Iguana in Le Claire, IA.  Our visit was the second weekend of full seating in the restaurant.  It went against our usual rule of thumb of allowing a new restaurant to work out the kinks for the first three months before we would visit.  

It turns out that the restaurant manager at Twin Span is the girlfriend of a guy my wife works with.  He was telling us when we visited him a couple three weeks ago that the place was "really nice".  He is a beer drinker and he said he thought their beers were very good.  He said he had been part of a soft-opening the ownership group had in May and he was impressed with everything.  

And it was his girlfriend who greeted us at the hostess stand when we first came in.  My wife re-introduced herself to her and we stood and chatted for a few moments.  A storm was brewing off in the distance and she said, "We have a large group in here, so we're slammed in the kitchen for a moment.  And I'm certain you guys probably don't want to sit outside with the storm coming at us."  I saw a four-seat table off to the side and asked if we could sit there.  "Absolutely," she exclaimed as she grabbed a couple menus and escorted us to the table.  

The inside of Twin Span Brewing featured a very open floor plan with a sort of contemporary/industrial decor.  Globe lighting hung from the ceiling and wooden accents and booths were prominent throughout.  A series of high-top tables - all pulled together for the large group eating there that night - were in the center of the dining area.  

Off to the far end of the building was the brewing room featuring a number of large glistening tanks.  Adam Ross - who is a Cicerone Level 2 certified professional; and Glenn Cole - who helped put the Geneseo Brewing Company on the map - head up the brewing team at Twin Span.  We were told that there were a number of investors - up to 15 - who have a stake in Twin Span Brewing, but the manager we talked with didn't divulge who the managing partner was in the group.  

The patio area featured a large expanse of area off to the side of the indoor-outdoor bar.  We were told that they would normally have more tables on both the patio and in the dining area, but due to social distancing restrictions they have cut back the number of tables available.  The outdoor patio was very nice - and it never did rain while we were there.  

Our server for the evening was a young lady by the name of Hayley.  With all the ambient noise in the place, plus the fact that she was speaking to us through a mask, we thought her name was Kaylie.  And I think that's what we kept calling her.  But when we got the bill later in the evening, we saw that her name was Hayley.  We apologized to her when we realized we got her name wrong right off the bat.  

She explained to us that the large group of 20 to our right had thrown the kitchen into a tizzy and it would probably be another 20 to 30 minutes before she could take our food order.  Baseball and softball tournaments at the TBK Bank Sports Complex had started up again and there were a number of people in there from out of town.  We immediately recognized the fact that we probably shouldn't have come here on a weekend evening - especially a Saturday night - with tournaments starting up at the Bett Plex again.  And couple that with the fact that the kitchen and wait staff were trying to work out the kinks.  But, not to worry - we wanted to drink some beer.  

We took a quick look at the beer menu for Twin Span and saw that they had six or seven beers to choose from that evening.  The Ten-Forty was a traditional German lager that was unfiltered.  The Liffey was a combination English ale and Pre-Prohibition American lager that is more of an Irish heritage beer.  The Steel Beam was a traditional Irish stout, while The Gold was a traditional English golden ale.  We've been really getting into hazy India Pale Ales as of late and we both ended up getting a 13-ounce tulip of the 80 East, a wonderful concoction that featured Ariana, Citra and Mosaic hops.  From the first taste, we immediately liked the beer.  

We were told the food menu at Twin Span was evolving, but there seemed to be some interesting items to choose from.  Their appetizers featured blistered shishito peppers served with a sriracha sauce.  There were beer-brined chicken wings tossed with a choice of sauce that included a buffalo sauce, a sweet Thai chile sauce, and a mango/serrano pepper/honey sauce.  And they had barbecued pork nachos, as well as a signature appetizer called The Gift of Bacon which featured hand-breaded fried buffalo mozzarella that was wrapped in bacon and served with a house sauce.  There was a seared tuna salad on the menu that caught the eye of my wife, as well as flatbreads, burgers, and sandwiches including a Nashville hot chicken sandwich and a mahi mahi "poor-boy" sandwich.

Since we had plenty of time to look over the menu, we pretty much were set on a couple three things that we wanted to try.  After a second 80 East for me, Hayley came over and said that the kitchen was no longer overwhelmed and we could order up some food.  One of the first things we ordered was the beer mussels appetizer.  They sautéed mussels in a combination beer and garlic sauce. Fresh parsley and chopped tomatoes came with the mussels with a couple small pieces of garlic bread on the side.  

The mussels were fresh tasting, meaty and all opened up in the sautéing process.  Chunks of tomatoes and fresh parsley added to the flavor of the garlic/beer sauce the mussels were swimming in.  The sauce was absolutely outstanding - so much so that we asked the manager for more garlic bread to sop up the sauce when she came over to check on us.  (Note to Twin Span staff - you can't just serve two small pieces of bread with the mussels.  You need to serve at least six, if not eight pieces.)

One of the other things we got off the appetizer menu was the tuna poké.  It featured sashimi-grade tuna mixed with chopped mango, red and green onions, avocado, and a sesame seed sauce. All of that was placed on a bed of lettuce greens, then topped with cilantro, wonton chips and a sriracha aioli.  The poké was simply outstanding.  We made very short work of the tuna poké.  

My wife was very interested in the moho tacos.  It was a choice of grilled or fried/breaded ancho-seasoned mahi mahi - we ordered grilled - that was topped with a citrus slaw, sliced avocado, and a sriracha aioli.  It came with a side of house-made tortilla chips and a beer cheese dipping sauce.  When I first glanced at the mahi mahi after it was served to us, it had a golden brown covering on it like they were breaded and deep-fried.  

When the manager came over and asked if everything was fine, I said that we had ordered grilled and not the deep-fried mahi mahi.  She immediately ran to the kitchen to get us another order.  But then my wife - who is much more observant than I am - realized that the ancho-seasoning gave the fish a breaded and deep-fried look to them.  We waved Hayley down and told her to tell her manager that we got the right order and not to make us a second one.  We were somewhat embarrassed when the manager came back and we told her that we were fine with what we had ordered.  Rookie mistake at a new restaurant, I'm calling it.  But the mahi mahi tacos were also very good.  

But everything we had was also very expensive.  When Hayley came by to present us with our bill - which was not on paper, but on the screen of a handheld point-of-sale device - I about jumped out of my seat when she said we owed $73 before tip and tax.  I was incredulous, but it was true.  My wife and I had 5 total glasses of the 80 East at $7 a glass, the mussels were $13 bucks, the tuna poke was $12 bucks, and the moho tacos were $13.  I sort of shuddered a bit, but paid it - along with a nice tip for Hayley who had a great attitude while working her butt off the whole time we were there.  Plus, the fact that we kept calling her "Kaylie".  But, as my wife said, "It IS Bettendorf, and it IS next to the sports plex.  They have a captive audience out here and food is going to be more expensive out here than most other places."  

So, be forewarned - if you go out to Twin Span or stop by the place as you're driving by the Quad Cities on I-80 - expect to spend some money.  But I have to say that everything we had - from the 80 East hazy IPA, to the moho tacos, to the tuna poke, to the excellent sautéed mussels - was very good.  We could tell there were some kinks that needed to be worked out in terms of the overall operations, but we sort of expected that going in.  As the menu continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see what they add to the choices of food in the future.  But for right now, they've hit a home run at Twin Span in terms of their food, beer and ambiance.  

 

Boozie's Bar & Grill - Davenport, IA

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a halt to dine-in options for restaurants and bars across the nation.  Travel has also been curtailed as social distancing practices have become the new norm for the time being.  If you've noticed a slowdown in my posts, that's pretty much why.  My wife and I have tried to do our best to support some of the local restaurants by getting food or craft beers to-go during the crisis, but we do miss having the option of heading out for dinner and relaxing with a couple drinks or beers with the meal in a restaurant.  

The night before the mandatory shutdown of restaurants and bars for dining in was to take effect in Iowa, my wife and I decided we had better go out somewhere and get something to eat.  Actually, I was to meet a couple three friends for burgers and beers that evening over in Iowa City, but that was canceled at the last moment.  I had been craving a good burger all day long and with that rug pulled out from underneath me, I still wanted a burger.  My wife suggested we give a place in downtown Davenport another try - a place we had not been back to in over 20 years before of, well, slow and indifferent service.  However, they stayed in business in spite of that - and I heard that they still had a pretty good burger - so we ended up going to Boozie's Bar & Grill that evening.  

Boozie's has been a staple in downtown Davenport since 1979.  Evidently, the first owner of Boozie's had a cat by the name of "Boozie".  That's why there's a cat on the logo.  I've never been able to find who the original owner of Boozie's was, but I do know that Mark McClintock became the owner of the place in 2007.  

Friends of mine who knew McClintock said that he was a gregarious and fun-loving person.  And he transformed Boozie's into a fun place and away from its former "upscale dive-bar" reputation that included slow service and an aloof waitstaff.  

Unfortunately, Mark McClintock is no longer with us.  A couple days after Christmas in 2018, McClintock was driving home at 2:30 in the morning after closing Boozie's for the night.  He veered off the road and struck a telephone pole.  He was found unresponsive by first responders.  Investigators surmised that he may have had a medical condition that caused the crash.

The Boozie's staff, clientele and McClintock's family were devastated by his death.  However, Boozie's was open again the next day because the staff knew that's what McClintock would want them to do.  Soon after his death, his sister Monica McKown took over the ownership of Boozie's.    

When I first moved to the Quad Cities in 1991, I heard from many of the locals that Boozie's had the best burger in town.  They certainly won their fair share of "Reader's Choice" awards from local publications, but I had learned years before that usually means the owner is having employees, friends and family stuff the ballot box.  My wife and I finally did try a burger at Boozie's around 1994 - it was during a lunch break and we met at Boozie's and each ordered a burger almost as soon as we sat down.  The place was not very busy as it was after the noon lunch rush, but it took forever for the burgers to get to our table - as in nearly a half-hour after we had placed our order.  And my wife only had a had a half-hour for her lunch.  She had to end up taking hers back to her office to eat it.  She wasn't happy as she caught some grief from her boss for coming back 15 minutes late from lunch, PLUS having to eat her lunch at her desk.  

We thought we'd try them out again one evening a few months after.  The waiter we had was dressed in a snap-button tuxedo shirt with a crisp black vest - that's how they used to dress their waiters at Boozie's over 25 years ago as the owner at the time somehow tried to "class up" the joint.  Once again, we both ordered their signature "Boozie Burger" and, once again, it took nearly 30 minutes for the burgers to show up to the table.  The waiter was sort of condescending when we inquired about our burger order, intimating that they were busy in the kitchen.  Looking around the dining area, there weren't that many people in the place.  The burger was good, but the experience left a sour taste in our mouth.  

Our final visit to Boozie's occurred in 1998 on a drunken outing with friends on a Friday night.  We didn't eat there that night - we probably should have - but the place was packed with people of all ages enjoying the start of the weekend.  Since then, we just never thought about giving Boozie's a try.  Until this particular evening.  

We were able to find a parking spot in front of Boozie's on the north side of W. 3rd St. - the eastbound one-way street in downtown Davenport.  (see map)  Boozie's is easy to spot with their large awning out front and stairs that lead up to their front door.  

The building that Boozie's is in dates back to 1899 when it was initially used as the offices of the Davenport Water Company and a doctor's office on the street level entrance.  A livery stable and a brothel may - or may not - have been housed in the property at some point in time.  A construction company used the space for their offices a number of years ago and it also housed the Trio Restaurant.  By the 60's, the space was converted to a retail boutique, then it became an antique store.  In the mid-70's, the-then owner put in a tavern - the Ballister Pub - before the original owner of Boozie's bought the business and named his bar after his cat.  

It was pretty sparse in terms of people in Boozie's that evening - Monday nights are usually not a hot time for many restaurants.  And coupled with the growing uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, not a lot of people were out and about.  Boozie's main floor dining/bar area was festooned with St. Patrick's Day banners and bling for the annual celebration that happened to be the next day.  However, the announcements that all bars and restaurants would be closed came the next morning and very few revelers were out and about before the bars were shut down at noon.  

We took a table on the walk-up level close to the front of the building.  Boozie's also has an upstairs dining/party area and I understand that they also have a small outdoor patio area attached to their building.  It has to be in back because Boozie's is locked in by other buildings on either side.  

Our server that evening was a young lady by the name of Kelly.  She gave us a couple menus to look over and also said they had $3.00 23-ounce domestic draws that evening as part of their happy hour.  Not one to pass up a good bargain, I took one of those.  My wife went with her usual Tito's Vodka and cranberry juice.  

As I said, Boozie's is famous for their eponymous burger which starts with a grilled 1/3 pound beef patty that's topped with three different types of cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, mayo and a house-made sauce.  It's served on a sesame seeded bun with a side of your choice.  But Boozie's also has a number of other sandwiches on the menu including a reuben, either a grilled or breaded pork tenderloin sandwich, a cheesesteak sandwich, and a BLT.  They also have wraps and salads on the menu.  Appetizers such as chicken wings, fried pickles, mozzarella cheese sticks, nachos and Santa Fe-style egg rolls stuffed with smoked chicken, black beans, corn, and pepper jack cheese were available, as well.  

My wife was thinking about getting an appetizer and she proposed getting a basket of the fried cauliflower.  But, quite frankly, I didn't really want any deep-fried appetizers that evening.  She ended up ordering a cup of Boozie's baked potato soup.  It was a creamy concoction with chunks of potatoes in a thick butter/cream base.  Chopped green onions, bacon bits and shredded cheddar cheese garnished the top of the soup.  She thought it was very good.  In fact, my wife raved about how good the soup was.  After a bit, she ended up offering me a bite.  And I will say that it was pretty good - rich and hearty with that creamy/butter taste.  She seemed to like it better than I did, however.

We both ended up going with the Boozie Burger.  My wife got the pasta salad that she thought was very good.  She offered me a bite of the pasta salad and I sort of recoiled at the taste.  It had somewhat of a fishy taste to it - at least it did to me.  My wife thought I was nuts as she thought it was some of the best pasta salad she had ever tasted at a restaurant.  It did nothing for me and I'm glad I didn't order it for my side.  

My Boozie Burger came with basic crinkle-cut fries.  (Cottage cheese, sweet potato fries and cole slaw were the other options.  A few more sides were available for an upcharge.)  I knew I wouldn't be interested in the fries when I first saw them. Like my wife's burger, American cheese was melted over the top of the patty.  The sesame seeded bun was lightly grilled and the crown was slathered with mayo.  A pile of veggies came on the side of the burger platter.  

By the time I was finished putting on the veggies and some condiments, the burger was piled high.  And my first bite told me that this was a pretty good burger.  The patty was juicy and had a robust beef taste that wasn't overpowered with everything on top of it.  Multiple napkins were needed as the juice and cheese oozed with each bite.  The bun wasn't really up for the rigors of the juicy and cheesy nature of the burger - especially with the mayo and the house sauce (which I really couldn't taste) adding to the mess.  The bun sort of disintegrated about 3/4's of the way through me eating it.  It didn't hold up well.  

On this visit, our service was impeccable.  The burger was served to us less than 20 minutes after we ordered, and that may have been because my wife had ordered a cup of soup to start out giving her some time to enjoy the soup without the burger coming out way too early.  Nonetheless, Kelly's service was friendly and prompt.  

Since it had been over 20 years since the last time we'd been to Boozie's some things changed and others didn't.  The biggest change we noticed was that service was much more quick and friendly than the previous times we'd been there (and chose not to go back because of it).  But what stayed the same was the atmosphere and the taste of the Boozie Burger.  I can't call it the best burger in the Quad Cities - things like that are all so subjective - but I did think it was very good.  My wife raved about the house-made pasta salad and the baked potato soup.  Either my taster was off that evening or her tastes are vastly different from mine as I felt the pasta salad had a fishy taste to it and the potato soup was good, but not as good as she thought it was.  Nonetheless, for our first visit back to Boozie's in over 20 years, we decided that we could put them back into our rotation for weekend afternoon burger joints that we like to visit.  

Draft Day Sports Lounge - Davenport, IA

My wife and I were invited to a gathering at the Rhythm City Casino on the north side of Davenport about a year ago for a going away party for one of her co-workers.  The party was being held in the casino's sports bar area - the Draft Day Sports Lounge.  While we didn't eat food out there that evening, I saw some of the things that other people had to eat and I always had it in the back of my head that I would like to try the place out at some point.  I went out one afternoon last summer to get something to eat, but found out that they open at 3 p.m. on weekdays.  However, one recent night when I was home and my wife was hosting a small gathering of women at our house, I was able to head out to the casino to have something to eat at the Draft Day Sports Lounge.  

When the Rhythm City Casino moved from its original home along the Davenport riverfront to the north side of the city near the intersection of Interstate 80 and Interstate 74 in June of 2016, it became a much larger facility along with a hotel and dining options.  I casually know the general manager out there and he's told me on more than one occasion to come out and he'd give me a tour of the hotel, restaurants and gaming areas.  I never took him up on the offer as I know he's much too busy to stop what he's doing during the course of the day to give me a tour, but my wife and I have gone out to look around at the place a couple times.  

A couple summers ago, my sister and her fiancé were in town and they took us out to Ruthie's, the casino/hotel's fine dining steak & seafood restaurant located on the top floor of the restaurant that offers wonderful views at sunset.  We thought the food and service were excellent.  (One of these days, we'll go back to Ruthie's for an in-depth look at the place.)  Ruthie's quickly became one of the top dining spots in the Quad Cities once it opened.  

But this time, I wanted to go try the Draft Day Sports Lounge.  It's almost a straight shot up Jersey Ridge Road for me all the way out to just south of Interstate 80 before turning right onto Elmore Ave. and the entrance of the casino/hotel.  (see map)  Here's a tip from Road Tips if you're going to the Draft Day Sports Lounge - or even to the casino.  Go around the west side of building to a smaller parking lot in back next to the Interstate.  There's a door back there and it takes you down a wide hallway to the front of the sports bar.  

There was a lady at the hostess stand and the place was about a third full when I walked up.  There was no one seated at the bar and I just told her that I'd sit at the bar.  However, it turned out there were no bartenders around, either.  After sitting there for a couple minutes, I went back to the hostess stand and told her that I'd take a table in front of one of the large flatscreen televisions along the wall that were showing different basketball games.  She took me to a table and dropped off a menu for me to look through.  My server for the evening was a young lady by the name of Piper who was being shadowed by another young lady who was experiencing her first day on the job.  I knew that they had Kona Big Wave Golden Ale on tap at Draft Day from my previous visit, so I ordered one of those.   

The center piece of Draft Day Sports Lounge is their 360° television monitor that hangs from the ceiling in the middle of the sports bar.  18 other monitors hang from the walls in the sports bar including four behind the bar and individual ones at the booths along the north wall.  The lighting is subdued for maximum viewing enjoyment, and along with yellow, orange and red accent lighting, it gives the sports bar sort of a colorful and somewhat mellow glow.  About any type of sporting event - including all the big pay-per-view events - are available at the Draft Day Sports Lounge.  

Off to the side when you come into the sports bar, the Elite Sportsbook has a small area to place bets on sports.  Now, I used to gamble on sports a long, long time ago.  But I learned that it's a lot nicer to enjoy a sporting event either live or on television without the worry whether or not one team is going to cover the spread or if both teams are going to hit the over when you bet the under.  And with sports betting now a reality in Iowa since last August, they're making it much more easy to bet games.  But I have resisted, thank you very much.   Compared to sportsbooks that I've been to in Las Vegas, the sportsbook next to Draft Day is a closet.    

The menu at Draft Day consists of your typical sports bar fare - burgers, sandwiches, a slew of appetizers and sharable, salads and flat breads round out the bulk of the menu.  Entrees such as "build-your-own" mac & cheese, and fish & chips are available, as well.  They have a number of specials through the week at Draft Day including 50 cent bone-in wings on Mondays, and $2 bucks off on burgers on Thursdays.  Monthly, weekly and game-day specials are also available.  

I saw how good their burgers were on our visit to Draft Day about a year ago, but I was sort of burned out on burgers from traveling the previous couple of weeks.  I thought about the French dip for a moment, then the Buffalo chicken sandwich caught my eye.  But in the long run, I ended up getting their reuben sandwich.  Piper talked me into getting the onion rings for my side choice that evening.  

The reuben featured thick slices of corned beef that was grilled on a flat grill, then piled high on swirled rye bread with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and 1000 Island dressing.  The sandwich was then lightly grilled before being served.  It was a very good sandwich, to say the least.

The onion rings were just OK.  They were the frozen, food-purveyor type of onion rings and not freshly battered and fried.  But they were still edible.  

Now, I had been talking to some people about wanting to go out to Draft Day Sports Lounge over the past few months, but I had heard mixed reviews - mainly on the service.  But I have to say that the service I got from Piper and her shadow helper that evening was very good.  She was quick to get me another beer when my glass was low, when I asked for more napkins for the very good - and messy - reuben, she was there with more than I really needed.  It wasn't all that busy in the place that night, so that may have helped with the level of service.  But it was still very good.

I know sports bars aren't for everyone, but it you're looking for a place to watch a game and grab a pretty good sandwich in the greater Quad Cities, I would have to say that you have to give the Draft Day Sports Lounge a try.  The atmosphere is one of an upscale sports bar, the food - I thought - was very good, and the service was a lot better than I'd heard from other people who had been there at times in the past.  If you're into sports and want to enjoy some good food along with a good list of craft beers or specialty cocktails, it's tough to be the Draft Day Sports Lounge.   

Geneseo Brewing Company - Geneseo, IL

My wife and I had no plans on a recent Sunday and I suggested a "Sunday Fun-day!" that entailed bar-hopping to brew pubs and distilleries in the area around the Quad Cities.  One of the places that I wanted to go to was the Geneseo Brewing Company in the small town of Geneseo, IL about 20 miles to the east of the Quad Cities.  We had been there once before, but that was before they were serving food.  I thought it would be nice to head over for lunch to start our "Sunday Fun-day!"  

We had actually been to the Geneseo Brewing Company once before about 3 years ago.  We had been down the road at the Lionstone Brewing Company for lunch and decided to stop in to GBC on the advice of a buddy of mine.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Lionstone Brewing.)  I don't remember much about that visit other than they had a pretty good IPA and that they didn't serve food.    Friends of ours also like to go to brewpubs around the Quad Cities and we met up with them one Sunday afternoon about a year after we had been to Geneseo Brewing Company and they told us that GBC started to serve food just a few months after we were there.  

That was after owners Jerrod and Andrea Minnaert built a kitchen in the lower level of the brewpub and hired local chef Lisa Dixon to run the kitchen and come up with a menu that focused on "farm-to-fork" selections.  And it was only natural that the Minnaerts wanted to only serve locally grown foods as Jerrod Minnaert runs his family's farm located just north of Geneseo.  But it was Andrea Minnaert who got the family into the bar and restaurant business.

In early 2010, Andrea Minnaert was running into Geneseo to do an errand and she happened to drive by a recently closed bar by the name of Christy's and Cat's on the north end of downtown Geneseo.  She saw that the building and its contents were up for auction and the next thing she knew the Minnaerts were in the bar business.  It took about nine months of renovations and updates to the place before she got the place ready to open.  Raelyn's Pub and Eatery opened for business over the Thanksgiving weekend later that year.  

Raelyn's quickly became a popular place with the locals and the Minnaert's were forced to expand to a building next door for their kitchen creating more space in their small tavern.  They opened up the backroom of the place for community groups to come in and have meetings.  

One of the groups that took the Minnaert's up on their offer for a meeting space was a local home-brewing group.  Jerrod Minnaert was in Raelyn's one evening and decided to sit in on the meeting.  He found that he was very interested in becoming a home-brewer, so he ended up joining the group. 

Over a short period of time, Jerrod Minnaert's interest in brewing beer heightened and he wondered about not just brewing beer at home, but having his own brewpub in Geneseo.  He got to talking with one of the other members of the group, Scott Welch, who had a number of interesting brews that Minnaert really liked.  Welch agreed to come on board if Minnaert started up his own brewpub.  

In 2014, the Minnaert's took over a historical building in downtown Geneseo that had most recently housed a meat shop.  Renovations started including a glass-enclosed brewing room in the back.  Getting the brewing process up and running took some time and in August of 2015 Geneseo Brewing Company opened their doors.  Scott Welch was instrumental in the early success of the brewery, but he ended up leaving the brewpub about two years later.  But waiting in the wings was a young guy by the name of Glenn Cole who had worked part-time at Bent River Brewing Company in Moline.  Minnaert hired Cole to take over the brewery at Geneseo Brewing Company in late 2017 and continues to be the head brewer today.  

We timed it so we would pull up to the Geneseo Brewing Company right at noon when they open on Sundays.  We found a parking spot in front of the place located on S. State Street in the heart of downtown Geneseo.  (see map)   As you come into the GBC, there's an area with chairs, couches and tables where people can congregate in a laid-back and casual area.  Some evenings, they move the furniture around and they have live music performances.  Beyond the lounge area up front is a line of high-backed booths opposite the small bar.  

In the far back of the brewpub was the brewery operation situated behind glass walls.  Antique tin ceilings were throughout the main floor of the building with tile walls in the brewery.  Old maps and photos of the Geneseo area hung from the walls in the dining area of the brewpub.  A framed article from a local newspaper gave information on the original Geneseo Brewing Company that started in the mid-1860's and grew to be a regional favorite in the early 1880's.  A fire in December of 1884 destroyed the brewery and the owners decided not to rebuild.  (Curiously, the Geneseo Brewing Company's website states that the original GBC started in 1884 and was in business for a little over 10 years.)  

We took a seat at one of the booths opposite the bar.  A young lady by the name of Tiffany came over to greet us.  She brought us a couple of food menus and pointed out the current beer list which was on a flat-screen television in the corner behind the bar, as well as on a chalk board on a wall near the bar.  They have three beers that they keep on tap most of the time - the Geneseo blonde ale, the Viking's Beard amber ale, and the Yep Yep pale ale.  

They also had a handful of other beers available - most of them were fruit-based.  They had a cherry ale - the Scarlet Witch; a sweet Orange ale - Orange You Glad; a hazy pineapple IPA; and the Bananarama, which was a banana and mixed fruit beer.  We generally stay away from most fruit beers, but my wife was sort of intrigued about the Ope - an IPA made with Wisconsin-grown hops.  She got a sampler of that along with a sampler of the hazy pineapple IPA.  She thought the Ope was just OK and was not liking the hazy pineapple at all.  I tried a bit of the hazy pineapple and I had to agree with her.  I like pineapple and I like beer, but I didn't like GBC's pineapple beer.  

But they do have a full bar at Geneseo Brewing Company, so my wife got her regular Tito's vodka and cranberry juice.  I had enjoyed the Yep Yep IPA on my previous visit, so I got one of those.  But I also got a bloody mary to go along with it.  Tiffany asked me to let her know what I thought about the bloody mary when she served it to me.  She came back later on to check on us before we ordered food.  "How's that bloody mary," she asked.  A spot hitter, I told her.  In fact, the combination of the Yep Yep IPA and the bloody mary were a winning combination for me on that early Sunday afternoon.  

The food menu at GBC features a number of sharable appetizers such as a stuffed portobello mushroom, spinach artichoke dip served with tortilla chips, and mussels sautéed in Geneseo Brewing Company's Chonky Boi imperial stout.  They had a wide variety of sandwiches and wraps, as well as burgers and sliders, as well as flatbreads.  Entrees such as spicy shrimp tacos, chicken cordon bleu, and macaroni with smoked gouda cheese were also available.  

My wife was wanting to eat somewhat light this day and she ended up getting the Apple Pecan Chicken salad made with both romaine and iceberg lettuce.  A vinaigrette dressing was supposed to come on the salad, but the first couple of bites pretty much told my wife that the salad was served dry.  She got the attention of Tiffany who ran back to the kitchen to get some dressing for her.  After the dressing was applied, my wife declared the salad as being very tasty.  

I went with the cheddar bacon burger with a side of the home fries.  I had a choice of mayo or chipotle mayo to go on the burger and I asked if I could get the spicy mayo on the side.  I also asked for sautéed mushrooms on the burger - sautéed mushrooms were available on another burger, so I thought it would be no problem.  Well, while Tiffany said that if would be no problem, the person making the burger got the message crossed up and put sautéed onions on the burger.  Now, I like the taste of sautéed onions - and these were sweet from the sauce they used to sauté them in.  But my stomach usually tells me later on that I'm not supposed to order sautéed onions.  However, I wasn't going to complain.  It would have taken too long for her to get sautéed mushrooms for me and I was hungry.

The burger was actually pretty good.  It had a nice flavor to it (the beef came from a local farm) and was cooked to a nice pink inner core.  The cheddar cheese was mild and didn't overpower the burger.  The burger came on a pretzel bun that was soft, chewy and flavorful.  I didn't put any of the chipotle mayo on the burger - instead, I dipped the home fries into it.  That was a great combination in taste.  

We lingered in Geneseo Brewing Company for another beer.  My wife contemplated getting another drink until I reminded her that it was "Sunday-Funday!" and we were going to head to another place to get something to drink.  

Within a 25 mile radius of our house, we have something like 15 different brewpubs/craft breweries to choose from around the Quad Cities.  Some we like a lot - others not as much.  However, one of our favorites has become Geneseo Brewing Company for a number of reasons.  My wife and I were happy enough with the lunch items we had during this visit to the Geneseo Brewing Company.  It was a comfortable setting and their beer was very good, as was the bloody mary that I had.  Other than putting sautéed onions on my burger instead of sautéed mushrooms like I ordered, there wasn't anything wrong with our visit.  

LoPiez - Davenport, IA

Anytime a new pizza place opens in the Quad Cities - and it isn't Quad Cities-style pizza - my wife and I are anxious to give it a try.  When we found out from good friends of ours that a new pizza place would be opening up in downtown Davenport that would be a "by-the-slice" establishment with craft beers and margaritas available, we were even more excited.  However, the record setting flood of last spring sort of derailed their opening day plans pushing their official opening back nearly two months as they cleaned up flood waters in and around their building.  On a Friday night with really nothing to do last fall, we decided to head down to LoPiez to check the place out.  

Andrew and Peter Lopez grew up in Davenport and got into the service industry at an early age.  (As an aside, their cousin is Colby Lopez, better known as Seth Rollins, one of the superstar wrestlers under the World Wrestling Entertainment banner.  Lopez/Rollins is a Davenport native and still maintains a residence here.)  In their early 20's, the brothers moved to Colorado and Andrew got a job at Mellow Mushroom, an Atlanta-based pizza chain that was just starting up in Denver.  But he soon found himself working for a Denver-based band as their tour manager and traveled across the nation.  His love for pizza never declined, however, and he was able to try different types of pizza all over the U.S.  His favorite - by far - was the "by-the-slice" style of pizza New York City is known for.

A couple three years ago, the brothers had moved back to the Quad Cites and had been working for the Great River Brewing Company when something just clicked in their heads.  Why not do a New York-style pizza joint in the Quad Cities?  But they also wanted their place to have a rock and roll vibe to it.  And they needed a place for their venture and one came open in late 2018.  

Pictured at right - Peter and Andrew Lopez.  Photo courtesy LoPiez Facebook page.

An establishment called "Panini and Friends", a small restaurant attached to Ruby's, a combination bike shop/bar/restaurant that was profiled on Road Tips here, closed up in late December of 2018 after being open for just over one year.  The small shop was open for breakfast and lunch, but never really caught on the way the owners had hoped.  When that space became available, the Lopez brothers jumped at the chance to take it over.  The lease was signed in early 2018 and they set about turning the spot into a pizza joint with a little bar.  Things were going along pretty well until the nearby Mississippi River started to flood and that caused drains to back up into the restaurant.  They had hoped to by open by the end of April of last year, but on April 30, the HESCO barriers that had been erected to keep flood waters out of the downtown area gave way and the building was surrounded by water.

It took the Lopez brothers another nearly two months before they could get back in to get the mess cleaned up.  Compared to other businesses in the downtown area, they were spared much of the damage that caused some places to stay closed for months on end.  LoPiez finally opened for business toward the end of June of last year.  

We went down to LoPiez just after 7:30 on a Friday night.  Our friends had been touting LoPiez, mainly because their son grew up with the Lopez brothers.  Actually, I had a couple pieces of LoPiez pizza last summer as they sent some to the backstage area at the annual Mississippi Valley Blues Festival that I again helped out with.  But it was delivered more than a half hour after it had been taken out of the oven, so I don't think I really had what I would call a true representation of their pizza.  So we were eager to try Lopiez that evening last fall as we found a parking space in the lot next to the building located at E. 3rd and LeClaire Street in downtown Davenport.  (see map)  

Upon entering the building we found a lively and well-lit place that had a small L-shaped bar upfront with counter service for ordering food.  True to form, rock music was playing in the background, but it wasn't loud or obnoxious.  Decorations were minimal in the space, save for large posters done by local artist/musician Johnnie Cluney that hung on the wall above some banquette seats.  (Cluney is also responsible for the "Welcome to Downtown Davenport" mural the Lopez brothers are standing in front of in the photo above.)  The place was packed and we were surprised to see all different age groups in there.  As we walked in, a couple got up from one of the tables and my wife parked herself there while I went to get us a menu to look over.  It turned out we were pretty lucky.

Pizzas can be ordered by-the-slice, or whole in either 10 inch or 20 inch sizes.  Calzones are also available at LoPiez.  Bread knots topped with an agave garlic butter and parmesan cheese are also available along with a choice of a marinara sauce or LoPiez's El Rancho sauce.   All the standard pizza toppings are available with premium toppings such as fresh mozzarella, chicken, artichoke hearts, bacon and vegan meatballs available for a slight upcharge.  

As I said, it's counter service at LoPiez and the line kept growing with both eat-in and carry-out orders.  We were amazed at the number of large 20" pizzas they sold for carry-out.  It gave me time to kind of figure out the lay of the land with how and what to order.  My wife had heard from our friends that they make a pretty good margarita.  When I went up to order a couple slices for us, I also found that they had Kona Big Wave in 16 ounce cans.  Another score for me!  

Our first pizza slices we ordered was a slice of their Margherita pizza for both my wife and I, and a slice of the Italian sausage, pepperoni and mushroom for me.  After about 10 minutes, one of the kitchen workers came out with slices on paper plates, calling my name.  The slices were large and my wife said she was happy with getting just one slice.  The Margherita pizza was topped with fresh mozzarella, chopped basil and sprinkled parmesan cheese in a tangy sweet tomato sauce.  The thin crust of the slice was especially tasty.  We couldn't figure it out.  Was it garlic in the crust?  Was it butter?  Was it herbs?  Was it all of the above?  I'm not usually that much into the crust of the pizza, but LoPiez pizza crust was very good.

But if you click on the above picture to take a closer look at the sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza slice on the right, well, it just didn't taste like I thought it should.  It had fresh sliced mushrooms and pepperoni on the pizza, but it didn't seem to have any outward sign of any sausage.  I thought that possibly the sausage was fine crumbled sausage - like they do for Quad City-style pizza - but after a couple bites I determined that there was little to no sausage on the slice.  

I decided to get another beer and a slice of the sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.  When I finally got to the register to order (the line was seven people deep when I got in line), I asked the guy at the counter if their sausage was ground fine or in large chunks.  "About in the middle of that, I'd say," he replied.  I said I didn't think that I got any sausage on my first slice.  

One of the guys in the kitchen came out and he had a slice that had sausage on it.  "It's like that," the guy behind the counter told me pointing at the slice.  The chunks were noticeable - not large, but not crumbly as the guy said.  I said that I just had a slice that was supposed to have sausage on it, but it didn't have any on it.  When I ordered a second slice with another Big Wave, he said, "I'll give you a beer on the house for that one."  I thought it was a magnanimous gesture on his part.  And he said he would personally make sure that I had Italian sausage on my pizza this time.  

The second slice definitely had sausage on it this time.  And the crust was just as wonderful as the first two slices I'd had.  Now THIS was my perfect slice of pizza.  The mushrooms were fresh and earthy, the pepperoni slices had a salty and spicy taste, and the Italian sausage had that great fennel seasoning to it.  The pizza at LoPiez easily passed my, "Does it taste good with beer?" test.  

Only we had one other problem while we were there.  When the guy from the kitchen came out with my slice, he asked if he could clean up the empty's from the table.  I had drank about a 1/3 of my 16 ounce can of Big Wave and after he picked some stuff up and took off toward the garbage can, I didn't realize until it was too late that he had picked up the rest of the beer that I had not drank.  I was incredulous!  I know it was a free beer, but it was still a lot of beer that I didn't get to drink.

Much to the embarrassment of my wife, I went up to the bar to tell the bartender that the guy had taken my well over half-full beer.  The bartender asked me which guy it was.  I pointed him out standing over near the other end of the bar near the kitchen and the bartender yelled to him, "Hey, did you take this guy's beer?"  

The other guy yelled back, "I asked if I could take the empties and he said, 'Yeah!' " 

"Well, there was nearly a full beer that you took," the bartender said back.  The guy just sort of shrugged and said he was sorry.  The bartender - the same guy who gave me the free Big Wave to begin with - gave me another one on the house.  I pulled three one dollar bills out of my pocket and laid them on the bar.  My wife thought it was a nice thing to do.

Things had settled down by the time we were finished and getting ready to leave.  I walked up to the guy behind the bar who I had been dealing with and thanked him for making things right on the mistakes.  He apologized profusely for the errors and I told him not to worry as it was a crazy night in there.  "We will be back," we told him just before we turned to walk out of the place.  

And since I wrote this entry, we have been back.  We went back on a Friday night and it was packed, as usual.  This time we sat at the bar and had a slice of the sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza - this time they didn't forget to put the sausage on it - and a slice of the Margherita pizza.  The Big Wave was cold and tasty with the pizza, and my wife had a cranberry and Tito's with a very generous pour of the vodka.  Actually, they did make a mistake, but it was a good mistake - they made an extra slice of the sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.  The guy came out from the kitchen with it and said, "Hey, we made this one by mistake.  You guys want it at no charge?"  Sure!  

The pizza we had at LoPiez was very good.  The little problems and errors on our first visit notwithstanding, we were more than impressed with every aspect of LoPiez.  The only other quibble I had with the place is that four slices of pizza came to $27.50.  That's a lot for just four pieces of pizza in my book.  We told our friends the next day that we had gone to LoPiez and the first thing they asked was if we were able to get in.  Yeah, it was busy and my friend told me that it was busy all the time.  Well, I can see why - the pizza is wonderful.  Expensive, but very good.  If LoPiez can cut down on the errors, it would still be a good place to go.  But don't forget to take your wallet. 

The Foundry - Bettendorf, IA

A little less than two years ago, a huge sports complex opened near the intersection of Middle Road and Interstate 80 on the far north side of Bettendorf.  The TBK Bank Sports Complex features indoor and outdoor soccer fields, basketball courts, baseball and softball fields, a bowling alley, volleyball courts, as well as exercise areas and running tracks.  The $50 million dollar project was designed to bring people in from all over the Midwest for tournaments and events.  The only problem was that when it opened, there was really nothing else out there other than the hulking building that was visible for miles as you traveled past it on the interstate.  However, over the past year, a number of developments have taken shape around the complex to add hotels, restaurants, convenience stores and other places to service the people who have driven in from wherever to watch or play sports at TBK Bank Sports Complex.  One of the restaurants that opened last year is a place by the name of The Foundry.  We had been wanting to check the place out at some point, and one weeknight when I didn't feel like cooking, my wife and I headed out there to get something to eat.  

Michael DeWitte is the man behind The Foundry.  DeWitte also runs The Barrel House which has four locations around the Quad Cities.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on The Barrel House.)   When the opportunity to put a restaurant near the sports complex came about, DeWitte thought that a family friendly place with a large and varied menu for any appetite, large or small, along with a full bar with craft beers for the adults would be the ticket.  Ground was broke on the building that houses The Foundry late in 2018 and the restaurant opened in June of last year.  

The Foundry is located just off Middle Road on the aptly named Competition Drive next to the sports complex.  (see map)  There's parking in front of the building, but even though it was a weekday night, it was somewhat tough to find an open spot.  We took a parking spot after someone backed out of one just down the way from the restaurant.  

We went inside and were met by a young lady at the hostess stand just inside the bar area.  There was a three-sided bar with large flat-screen televisions on the walls around the room.  The bar area had high top tables and banquette seating along one wall.  The hostess asked us if we'd like to sit in the bar, but I wanted to take a look at the dining room.

The main dining room at The Foundry had a number of booths and tables in the floor plan.  There was a smaller dining room off to the side that could be used for groups or gatherings.  The dining room also had a number of flat-screen televisions on the wall and the tables were regular height.  For some reason the hostess kept pushing us to sit in the bar area, but my wife doesn't like to sit at a high-top if a regular table or booth is available.  When my wife asked if we could sit in the dining room, the hostess curiously gave out a bit of a huff, handed menus to another girl and told her to take us "in there."  My wife and I sort of looked at one another with a quizzical look on our faces as we walked to the table.  "That was odd," my wife said after we were seated.  "I guess I don't know what the deal is about sitting in the bar.  She acted like she was pissed off we wanted to sit in (the dining room)."

Our server for the evening was a pleasant young lady by the name of Rachinda.  She asked if we wanted anything to drink and I saw that they had the Big Grove Easy Eddy IPA on their beer list.  My wife was fine with water for the time being, so Rachinda went off to fetch my beer.  She came back a moment later and said, "I'm sorry, but we're out of that beer."  Plan B was an easy one - they had the Toppling Goliath Pseudo Sue on tap, as well.  They did have that one.  

The menu at The Foundry is vast and varied, something that I have a bit of trepidation with because I've found in my travels that restaurants that have extensive menus geared to satisfy all ages and tastes usually does everything just all right - not great, but OK.  The menu at The Barrel House is sort of similar, but I like their burgers at The Barrel House.  My wife has sort of soured on The Barrel House mainly because she thinks the food selection there is nothing more than glorified bar food.  I could tell as she thumbed through the menu at The Foundry that she thought it was nothing more than a Barrel House - only with even more food to choose from.    

The appetizers were sort of interesting - they had poutine with crumbled Italian sausage mixed in with the cheese curds, fries and gravy.  There was ahi poké on the menu - that's something you normally don't see at a sports bar.  My wife sort of raised her eyebrows when she saw the honey Sriracha Brussels sprouts on the menu.  She loves Brussels sprouts and she thought about getting those.  Avocado egg rolls, mussels steamed in and India pale ale, and fried portobello mushroom planks were other things that caught our eye on the appetizer part of the menu.  

On the main part of the menu, The Foundry featured steaks, seafood, fajitas, pasta dishes and a number of burgers and sandwiches.  They also had a selection of flat bread pizzas as well as pork chops and Korean-style baby back ribs.  Prime rib is available after 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and all day on Sunday.  

My wife was having trouble figuring out what she wanted to get.  I sensed that by the description of some of the food on the menu that she was intrigued, but still somewhat fearful that the food would be just "OK".  A couple things caught her eye - the garlic-infused flat iron steak and the lobster and pea cavateppi.  The pasta dish came with chunks of Maine lobster mixed with English peas, sliced portobello mushrooms with cavateppi pasta noodles in a lobster cream sauce.  "That sounds good," she said with a bit of hesitation in her voice.  "But I don't know if it will be."  

I had sort of had my eye on another pasta dish - the four meat cavateppi bake.  It had beef, sausage, pepperoni and ham mixed in a combination of cavateppi pasta and a marinara sauce, then topped with shredded mozzarella and baked.  That sounded really interesting, but I also deemed that I wasn't quite that hungry.

In the long run, I went with the portobello mushroom/Swiss cheese burger.  I asked Rachinda if the kitchen could put some bacon on it, too.  The burger featured two quarter-pound patties topped with Swiss cheese and copious amounts of sautéed sliced portobello mushrooms.  A couple strips of bacon topped the burger.  It was served on a toasted brioche bun and came with a side of fries.  

My wife also decided that the lobster and pea cavateppi would be a lot of food, as well.  Plus she wasn't certain that it would be as good as it sounded.  She ended up going with the Memphis-style pulled pork sandwich.  The pulled pork was mixed with a honey barbecue sauce and a dollop of cole slaw came on top of the meat.  Instead of fries, my wife was so intrigued by the lobster and pea cavateppi that she got a side of The Foundry's lobster mac & cheese.  But she didn't think the lobster in the mac & cheese was real, only imitation lobster.   

My burger was fine - I didn't think it was as good as the mushroom/Swiss burger served at The Barrel House.  The fries were pretty "blah", but I was just concentrating on the burger.  When my wife asked how my burger was, I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and said, "Yeah, it's all right.  Nothing special."  

She sort of thought the same thing about her pulled pork sandwich.  She had removed the top of the brioche bun that it came on and ate the cole slaw and pulled pork without the bun alternating bites with the lobster mac & cheese.  "Ahh, it's all right," she said sort of dismissively of her pulled pork and side.  "But I still don't think that's real lobster in the mac & cheese."  

The other thing was that we thought it was sort of expensive for what we got.  $14 bucks for the burger plus a couple bucks for the small amount of bacon was sort of a wallet hitter, as was my wife's $12 dollar pulled pork sandwich.  I think we were charged $4 bucks for the upcharge on the mac & cheese.  Add in a couple beers for me and one for my wife, and it came to about $50 bucks before tip and tax.  I said to my wife, "Well, when you get a bunch of people out here from out of town and it's right next to the sports complex, they've got a captive audience.  They can pretty much charge what they want."

Our first visit to The Foundry gave us both mixed feelings.  The place was nice, there's no doubt about that.  The craft beer list was more than adequate, and they did have a lot to choose from on the menu.  And the service we had that evening was friendly and prompt.  But the food was just all right in our book.  And we were still sort of perplexed with the attitude we got from the hostess who kept trying to push us to sit in the bar area when we clearly wanted to sit in the dining room.  We'll probably end up going out to The Foundry again at some point, but we won't make it part of our rotation of restaurants we like to go to.  

Bourbons Bar & Grill - Coal Valley, IL

For awhile now, my wife and I have been on a quest to find a place that has a good burger along with a good selection of craft beers in the Quad Cities.  She had mentioned a place clear over in Coal Valley, a small community on the far southeast side of the Quad City area.  I read up on it and on a Sunday afternoon we headed over to Bourbons Bar & Grill.  

Troy and Shelly Shehorn lived in the Coal Valley area and loved to go to a neighborhood bar there called Headquarters.   Shelly was an accountant by trade and Troy was self-employed.  A few years ago, Headquarters went up for sale and the Shehorn's thought it would be fun to own the bar.  However, after weeks of negotiations, the deal fell through.  

But the Shehorn's always kept an eye on the property and when it became available for sale in the fall of October 2016, they didn't hesitate this time.  They knew they could do something with the little neighborhood bar in terms of food and drink, focusing on Troy's love for barbecue and bourbon.  But first they had to do some renovations.

The building, itself, dates back to the 1890's with the original tin ceiling still intact.  The Shehorn's brought in over 10 tons of stone for walls and accents, and they installed cedar panels for walls and trim around the stone walls.  They renovated the kitchen and bar area, a meat smoker was installed in the back, and they put up about a half-dozen large screen flat panel televisions around the place.  By March of 2018, Bourbons Bar & Grill was ready to open to the public.  

It was around 2 p.m. when we pulled up to Bourbons which is located near the corner of 1st Street and E. 22nd Ave. A in Coal Valley.  (see map)  We parked in front of the building, but there's ample parking off to the side.   From the outside, the building is pretty nondescript with a couple beer signs in the window.  But upon entering Bourbons, we found a cozy and inviting space that featured a number of tables in the center of the bar with a nice three-sided bar off to the side.  The combination of the lights from beer signs and the glow of the televisions with some accent lighting along the walls gave the bar a colorful glow.

We took a seat at a table toward the back of the dining area of the bar.  Our server that day - a pleasant and helpful lady by the name of Jane - came over to greet us and to drop off a couple menus.  They had a pretty good craft beer list and I saw that they had Kona Big Wave.  I asked Jane if their bloody mary's were good and she said, "Oh, yeah.  We load 'em up."  I ordered a Big Wave and a bloody mary.  The "packed" bloody mary featured a thick and zesty mix served in a salt-rimmed glass.  A skewer of green olives, pickles, salami and cubed cheese came on top of the bloody mary glass.  And it was a very good bloody mary.  My wife got her usual cranberry juice and Tito's vodka - light on the cranberry juice.  

The menu at Bourbons wasn't all that large, but most of the items they had sounded pretty interesting.  Appetizers included jalapeño poppers, fried portobello mushrooms, and fried avocado wedges which caught the eye of my wife.  They had sandwiches such as grilled or breaded pork tenderloins, and a grilled chicken sandwich topped with bacon and a house-made bourbon barbecue sauce.  They had four different burgers on the menu, along with fish and chips, chicken strips, and a four-piece broasted chicken dinner.  Pizzas (I understand they're Quad City-style, which we don't care for) and calzones are also available.  On Thursday night, they have barbecued rib dinners as a special.  

My wife wanted to try their pulled pork sandwich.  They smoke the pork shoulders at Bourbons with hickory and it's slow-cooked and shredded.   The barbecue pork is placed on a toasted brioche bun and topped with their house-made bourbon barbecue sauce, cole slaw and an onion ring.  She had a choice of sides that came with the sandwich which included French fries, seasoned waffle fries, bourbon baked beans, or cottage cheese.  She ended up getting the macaroni salad.  She thought the barbecue pulled pork sandwich was very good.  

Of course, I was looking to try one of their burgers and I ended up getting their mushroom burger.  For some reason, I thought that I would be getting sautéed mushrooms, but the menu said the burger was topped with fried mushrooms.  They were portobello mushroom strips, similar to the ones they serve as appetizers.  The burger patty was topped with provolone cheese and an aioli sauce.  I asked Jane if I could get some bacon on my burger and she said that it was no problem.  I also got a side of onion rings for a $1 dollar upcharge.  

I ended up taking the mushroom strips off the burger and just having it with the bacon and cheese. The burger was very good.  It was juicy and flavorful, and the bun held together well for what turned out to be a multiple-napkin burger.  The onion rings were pretty good as well.  They had an abundance of beer-batter on them - almost too much, even if you like beer-battered onion rings - and I found them to be a little too salty for my taste.  

A few weeks after our first trip to Bourbons, my wife's son came to visit us on a Sunday.  He had just come back from Cincinnati for a factory training session he took part in, and he was telling us that the factory guys took the group out to a couple bourbon bars in Newport, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati.  We were telling him about Bourbons in Coal Valley and he is much more into bourbons than my wife and I are.  But he was intrigued enough that we took him over there for lunch.  

On this visit, he got to look at the over 120 different bourbons that they offer at Bourbons Bar & Grill.  In fact, we had a nice conversation with Shelly Shehorn about her husband's love for bourbon, the trips they have taken that have centered on bourbon-centric bars and restaurants, and she compared notes with my step-son on the more expensive bourbons that are out there.  Once again, I'm not well-versed on bourbons at all, but my step-son was telling her about a Pappy Van Winkle bourbon that one of the places across the river from Cincinnati he went to had for $500 a shot.  Shelly Shehorn said that she was familiar with that bourbon, but they didn't have that particular liquor at their bar.  "We're working up to it, though," she told us.  "We're slowly getting the reputation for good bourbons and we're starting to become a destination for some bourbon lovers."  She said that the highest priced bourbon they have is about $80 bucks a shot.

We've found some pretty good places over in the Illinois Quad Cities over the past few months that have good burgers, a good craft beer list, and good bloody mary's.  I'd have to put Bourbons Bar & Grill toward the top of that list.  The only problem is that it's about a 20 minute drive for us, and with the I-74 bridge work going on, it's even longer to cross the river to go back home.   But to us, it's worth the drive.  The atmosphere is cozy and comfortable, the service that we've experienced on our visits has alway been friendly and folksy, and the food is interesting and a step or two above your typical bar food in taste and quality.  I wish Bourbons was a lot closer to our house because it would be the kind of place where I'd like to hang out.   

The Half Nelson - Davenport, IA

Earlier this year, downtown Davenport was ravaged when a flood barrier broke and the Mississippi River - which reached its highest level in history - poured through into the streets of the lower downtown area.   A number of businesses were affected and it's taken some time for some to reopen.  One of those businesses - a new restaurant by the name of The Half Nelson - was scheduled to open for the first time the evening the HESCO barriers failed.  Instead, flood waters rushed in ruining fixtures and food delaying the opening until later in the summer.  I had been traveling in early September and I got home on a Sunday afternoon about 2 p.m. and we decided to go get something to eat.  My wife suggested going down to The Half Nelson to see if they were open.  We pulled up in front of the place and they were, indeed, open.  We parked out front and went in to get a late lunch.  

You can say Matthew Osborn grew up in the restaurant business.  His parents, Mike and Carla Osborn, own two popular Quad City-area restaurants - Miss Mamie's in Moline and Mo Brady's Steakhouse in Davenport.  The younger Osborn started working in his parent's restaurants as a youngster and about the only thing he knows about life outside of family is the restaurant business.  Both restaurants are toward the outskirts of both cities, but the younger Osborn saw an opportunity in a building in downtown Davenport that was built back in the 1920's.  

The N.O. Nelson Manufacturing Company was an Illinois-based manufacturer of plumbing supplies that was founded in St. Louis in 1877 by Nils Olas Nelson who initially wholesaled, then manufactured faucets, commodes, valves and hydrants.  The company built a facility in downtown Davenport, the same year that Nelson passed away.   Nelson Manufacturing sold the building in 1934 to a local seed store who built a three-story addition on the back to clean grain.  After the seed store closed in the 1960's, a number of businesses occupied the space, the last of which was an antique store that had been in business for 22 years before closing in 2016.  

A couple of local developers bought the building later that year and renovated the upper floors into apartments, while turning the ground floor space into two separate areas that could be used for restaurant or retail opportunities.  It caught the attention of Matthew Osborn who had spent nearly 4 years planning a restaurant which would feature more contemporary American fare found in larger cities.  In the fall of 2018, Matthew Osborn took the space on the east side half of the Nelson building - Bootleg Hill Honey Meads took the other side - and he came up with the clever name of The Half Nelson. 

Pictured right - Matthew Osborn.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times.  

The Osborn's had hoped to be open by mid-March, but like many new restaurants there were delays that pushed back the opening date by six weeks.  After everything was in place and training the staff was completed, Osborn set April 30 as the opening date.

As he was getting ready for opening night, Osborn was standing toward the back of the building when he noticed the alley filling up with water.  The HESCO barriers positioned along River Drive a block to the south had been breached.  Instead of serving food and drinks on opening night, Osborn and his staff spent the evening trying to salvage what they could.  

The Half Nelson sustained an estimated quarter of a million dollars in damage and the "true" opening night was pushed back nearly two months.  The restaurant celebrated their opening night on the first day of summer, June 21.  

My wife and I have a rule - actually, more of a guideline - to not visit restaurants that have not been open for at least 3 months.  So, we sort of disregarded that ground rule when we pulled up to The Half Nelson on that Sunday afternoon.  (see map)  The Bootleg Hill meadary next door had a "closed" sign in the window, but there were people in there.  The large sign in the front window The Half Nelson indicated it was open, but when we went in there no one else was in there.  We were greeted by a young man by the name of Ry and we inquired if they were open.  He said that, yes, they were open. 

I have to say that the interior of The Half Nelson was pretty nice.  It was sort of a mix of contemporary and art deco with a bit of urban industrial mixed in.  A long section of banquette seating was along the east wall opposite the bar, as well as along the north wall in front of the large windows that look out onto 2nd Street.

They have a spacious outdoor seating area at The Half Nelson.   It was a bit sterile with not a lot of decorations or amenities, but I'm sure they'll figure it out once they have an outdoor eating season under their belt.   

Ry took us to the tables along the north wall in front of the windows with the banquette seats.  I thoroughly detest banquette seating.  But, given that no one else was in the restaurant, I didn't mind us sitting there.  Actually, my wife thought the bench seats were rather comfortable.  Ry dropped off a couple menus for us to look over.  I saw that they had Kona Big Wave available and I immediately signed up for one of those.  My wife got a cranberry and vodka for her drink.  

Chef Zach Donovan has come up with a pretty interesting menu featuring interpretations of traditional American cuisine featuring steaks, seafood, pork chops, and pasta dishes.  The Scallops Fettucelle featured seared scallops served on a bed of fettuccine in a lemon butter sauce.   They had a Jim Beam barbecue-glazed pork chop, as well as a prime strip steak with chimichurri.  My wife spied the Lobster risotto and was interested in that.  The Duck Honsho featured a seared duck breast in a soy-ginger-pineapple glaze served with cilantro-lime rice.  The menu wasn't extensive, but what they had was sure interesting.

My wife and I decided to go with burgers that day.  She got the basic Bucktown Burger - a blended-beef patty topped with sharp cheddar cheese and served with steak fries.  But Ry told me of a special burger they had that day - the pimento bacon cheeseburger.  I had to have that.  It came with the same steak fries along with lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced red onions and dill pickles.  

The burger was very good.  The creamy pimento cheese really enhanced the taste of the blended beef.  The burger was juicy and very tasty.  It was a pretty messy burger, but it was messy in a very good way. 

We went pretty basic on our first visit to The Half Nelson, but given the eclectic and interesting items on their menu I know that we'll be back at some point to try some of their dinner items.  The burgers we had were both very good, the service from Ry was friendly and professional, and the decor and atmosphere at The Half Nelson was both pleasant and comfortable.  The Half Nelson is a welcome addition to a growing number of interesting restaurants in the Quad Cities.   

Huckleberry's - Rock Island, IL

A place that my wife and I have been over to in downtown Rock Island in the past - but not for awhile - is a pizza place called Huckleberry's.  They had gone through a devastating fire a few years back, but they rebuilt and reopened less than four months later.  We hadn't been there since they had reopened and it sort of dawned on us one Friday night that we needed to go try the place out again.

Huckleberry's owner, Jon Keim, and his then-girlfriend at the time - now wife - were asleep in their apartment above Huckleberry's when a fire broke out on an early Saturday morning in a building a couple doors from Huckleberry's that used to a cafe.  The building had been slated to be torn down at some point, and had been vacant for some time.  Keim and his girlfriend woke up when they smelled smoke and saw flames in the building next to them.  They were able to make it out, but Huckleberry's sustained heavy water and smoke damage, along with 8 other buildings.  Some of them had to be razed after the fire was put out.   Keim cleaned up the damage and rebuilt one of the two dining rooms at Huckleberry's and, miraculously, they reopened in early 2015.  Keim has now owned Huckleberry's for over 25 years.  

Huckleberry's is located on 18th Street in the heart of the Arts and Entertainment District of Rock Island, known locally as "The District".  (see map)  We were able to find a parking spot on the street in front of Huckleberry's, which is usually tough to do on a weekend evening given all the bars and restaurants in the immediate area.  

The main dining area as you go in to Huckleberry's looks pretty much the same as it was when we were last in there.  Knotty pine wooden booths were along the brick walls with tables on either side of a half wall in the center of the room.  The open kitchen area in the back was bustling with workers keeping up with pizza and calzone orders that were coming in for dine in and take out.  

The dining area off to the side that sustained considerable damage in the fire had a nice comfortable vibe to it.  This room is used for overflow or for events, primarily.  Surprisingly, no one was seated in the room that Friday evening.  

We were seated at one of the booths in the main dining area and given a couple menus to look over.  Our server for the evening, Jessica, came over to greet us and to take our drinks order.  They had a handful of craft beers on tap and in bottles including a number of Samuel Adams selections.  They had a lot of fruit beers available and the only IPA they had was a New Belgium Voodoo Ranger, but I've never really been a fan of the New Belgium beers.  I just sucked it up and got a domestic bottle.  My wife got a glass of the house chianti.  

Pizza and calzones are the main items Huckleberry's is most well-known for, but they also have a handful of pasta entrees including a bucatini pasta in a carbonara sauce with prosciutto ham and bacon, a shrimp and cheese tortellini with a basil pesto sauce, and an oven-baked pasta with penne pasta, in a spicy marinara with ground sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, onions and green peppers layer with a combination of cheddar and mozzarella cheese.  Sandwiches such as a meatball sub or an Italian beef hoagie were also available on Huckleberry's menu, as well as a number of appetizers and salads.  We split a Caesar's salad to start off with because my wife felt she needed some greens in her if we were going to be eating dough, cheese and greasy meats.  It was actually a pretty good salad. 

Since it had been awhile from our last visit, we remembered the calzones were pretty good.  But my wife was sort of thinking we needed to try their pizza, too.  We ordered both a small calzone and a 7" hand-tossed pizza - both with sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms - to share between the two of us.  The calzone came out in a big mound stuffed full of the Italian meats and mushrooms with a mixture of ricotta and mozzarella cheeses.  It was served with a side of their sweet marinara sauce to dip the calzone crust in.  The calzone was good, not great, but it was certainly fine for us.    

The pizza was loaded mozzarella cheese on the top and had a bit of caramelization of the cheese and crust around the edges.  It was far from a Quad City-style pizza - which my wife and don't care for - with four triangle cuts with generous amounts of the toppings under the thick and gooey mozzarella.  It wasn't the best pizza we've had, nor was it the worst.  But, like the calzone, it worked for what we were looking for that evening.  

The service was a little sketchy as our server would disappear for long periods of time after our food was served.  I wanted another beer and my wife had to flag down another server who took my beer order.  Jessica finally brought the bottle back to me and asked how things were going.  By that time, we were pretty much done with our meals leaving pieces of the pizza and calzone crusts on the plates.  

But other than our server sort of disappearing after our meal was served and not checking with us to see if we needed anything else - like another beer - we had little to no problems at Huckleberry's.  Well, we also thought it was a little pricey, however - for all we got with an individual sized pizza and a calzone with three toppings or ingredients, a Caesar's salad, domestic beers and a glass of wine - the bill came to just a shade over $50 bucks before tip and tax.   The calzone and the pizza we had were good - not great, but good.  I was a little crestfallen for the lack of a good selection of craft beers, and the majority of the craft beers were fruit-based which I don't care for.  The place is clean, cozy and comfortable, to say the least.  We decided that Huckleberry's was worthy of future visits and I especially want to try their oven-baked pasta entree at some point in the future.  If you're looking for a good and serviceable calzone or pizza - and don't mind paying a little more than other places in the area - I don't think you'll be disappointed in the ones at Huckleberry's.  

Portillo's - Davenport, IA

Over the past year, I have been able to maintain my significant weight loss - although I haven't hit my overall goal, yet.  But I'm keeping it in sight.  But the momentum to keep the weight off has been seriously challenged by the opening of the first Portillo's location in Iowa about a five minute drive from my house.  Now, I've joked (well, worried, more likely) that if they ever opened a Portillo's in the Quad Cities that I'd balloon to over 400 pounds because I love the Chicago-based chain so much for their jumbo hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches.  When they opened in June of this year, my wife and I purposely stayed away from the place as it was a zoo to get in and out of the parking lot for the first few months they were open.  However, on a recent Sunday night where I didn't feel like cooking, my wife and I made the short trek up to 53rd St. in Davenport to Portillo's.  (see map).  

I first wrote about Portillo's on Road Tips nearly 13 years ago.  (You can click here to see the post.)  It was long before I found a voice or a style-substance, or had a camera phone.  In my many trips to Chicago for business - and for pleasure - over the past 20 years, I've always had to stop at a Portillo's to satiate my jones for their food at least once during my visit.  It's far from healthy, but who said that great tasting food has to be healthy?  And while there may be other hot dog and/or Italian beef joints in Chicago that may be better in some eyes, I like the consistency and quality of the food at the Portillo's locations in Chicago. 

Dick Portillo grew up in poverty what would eventually become the Cabrini-Green projects of Chciago.  His father was an immigrant from Mexico, while his mother was an immigrant from Greece.  The family was so poor that his mother had to steal shoes from a nearby department store for one of her three children.  When young Richard Portillo was just five years old, the family was forced to sell his tricycle to help pay for food.  

Pictured right - Dick Portillo in front of a replica of the original "Dog House".  Photo courtesy Portillo's.

Although he was never tested as a child - probably because there wasn't such a test in the late 40's or early 50's - Portillo concluded later in life that he probably had ADHD.  He had trouble focusing in school, he preferred to get in fights rather than learn, and he was a very hyperactive child into his teens.  Barely graduating high school, a week later Portillo joined the U.S. Marines where he served a two-year stint.  

As a Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, Portillo showed his entrepreneurial moxie by working with a friend to transport other Marines to and from Tijuana for a $20 fee.  One time, he ran a stop sign in Tijuana and hit another car.  Knowing that he was in trouble, Portillo high-tailed it to the border, but was stopped by Mexican border guards and arrested.  He tried to bribe the jailer with $50 bucks to release him and his impounded car, but eventually had to spend a day and a half in jail.  That probably wasn't a good feeling for a guy under the age of 21 to have to spend even 10 minutes in a Mexican jail.  

Upon getting out of the Marines, Portillo - who by then was married to his high school sweetheart, Sharon - went through a series of jobs - 14 of them over an 18-month period.  Not happy with any of the jobs he had taken, he saw a business opportunity to open his own hot dog stand.  He asked his wife if he could take the $1100 dollars they had in their savings that would go toward being a small wagon that he could turn into a hot dog stand.   But Sharon was not happy about it - the Portillo's were living in a cramped apartment and she had hoped the $1100 in savings would go toward the down payment on a house for their growing family of a baby boy and another on the way.  However, Sharon's mother encouraged her to let Dick follow his dreams and Sharon finally relented.

Pictured left - Sharon Portillo standing outside of the original "Dog House".  Photo courtesy Crain's Chicago Business

Dick turned to his older brother who was managing a handful of Brown's Chicken restaurants for an additional loan to help get his business off the ground.  With money from savings and a loan from his brother, Dick bought a small trailer - 6 foot by 12 foot - and outfitted it with a peaked roof, a small kitchen and signage.   It had no bathroom or running water.  He got permission to park the trailer in a parking lot of a discount store along North Ave. in the Chicago suburb of Villa Park.  He ran water via a hose from an outdoor water spigot attached to the building.   Knowing that he would literally be in the dog house with Sharon if this all-or-nothing venture didn't work out, it gave his new business "The Dog House" a significant double meaning.  

The only problem was that Portillo didn't know who to make hot dogs.  His hot dogs were overcooked and his steamed buns were dried out.  And he also nearly ran himself out of business on top of that because all the Coca-Cola's he served were coming out green.  It turned out that he had neglected to clean out the water holding tanks after they were installed in the trailer.  

He finally went to a well known hot dog shop nearby - the venerable Gene and Jude's which had been open for 17 years - where Portillo sort of hung out watching their cooking techniques and took note of how they steamed the buns.  (He even snuck into the back room to see what kind of condiments they were buying.)   After figuring out how to get the hang of things, the Dog House was up and running on full steam.  

By 1967, Portillo had decided that The Dog House needed an upgrade and he replaced the original trailer with a new one.  But by 1969, he felt it was time to step up to the plate.   Portillo had felt The Dog House pretty outlived its usefulness as a trailer and a name and he was ready to move to a permanent location.  The first Portillo's location opened later that year and they expanded the menu into burgers and Italian beef sandwiches.  A second location opened in a mall owned by a man who partnered with Portillo to help him expand his business.  

Other concepts followed - Barney's was a barbecue place that was developed by Portillo, and Barnelli's was an Italian-themed place that served pasta and salads.  Some of the Barney's and Barnelli's were stand alone places, but Portillo came up with the idea to combine the two in with Portillo's locations.  It turned out to be a hit with many families who liked the idea where Dad could get an Italian beef sandwich, Mom could get a salad, and the kids could get either a hot dog or a hamburger, all under one roof.  

Not all of Portillo's ideas were successes, however.  In the mid-1990's, he came up with the Key Wester Fish and Pasta House concept in Naples, Florida .  He tried to model it after the fast casual style of Portillo's, and he put a second location in Naperville, IL in 1996.  The restaurants had their ups and downs as patrons didn't like the concept as much as they liked Portillo's.  He closed the Key Wester in 2011.  

Over the years, Dick Portillo became a larger than life figure as the face of Portillo's.  He counted a number of local and national celebrities as friends including Chicago natives Joe Mantegna, Jim Belushi, and Vince Vaughn.  In fact, Mantegna was said to be the one who suggested Portillo put a restaurant in Southern California to answer the cravings former Chicagoans living there had by missing Portillo's.  The first Portillo's location outside of Illinois opened in Buena Park, CA in 2005.  It wasn't long after that Portillo's expanded to the Phoenix area, a second location in Southern California, into Milwaukee and into Northwest Indiana.  The most unique aspect of Portillo's business was that the company owned all the buildings and real estate that their restaurants stood on.  Dick Portillo was a modern day success story taking $1100 out of his family's savings and procuring a small loan from his brother to start his hot dog business in 1963 into one day becoming a multi-millionaire.  

In 2014, Portillo announced that he was interested in slowing down to enjoy life and that he would be selling his restaurants.  He wanted to expand more Portillo's across the nation, but at the age of 74, he just didn't feel like he had it in him to make the significant plunge with his plans.  A large number of suitors lined up for the chance to buy the now-over 40 Portillo's locations and Portillo weeded out many of them after interviewing their ideas for the future of his company.  Finally, he found a worthy buyer - Berkshire Partners of Boston - who he felt encompassed his vision of what he saw Portillo's being in 20 years as the company hoped to expand Portillo's at the rate of five to seven locations annually.  Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but industry analysts guesstimated that it may have been in the ballpark of $1 billion dollars.  

With Portillo stepping down after he sold the company to Berkshire Partners, the first CEO of the new Portillo's was a man by the name of Keith Kinsey.  Kinsey was a native of Moline, IL and attended the University of Illinois getting a degree in accounting.  Kinsey had previous executive experience with Chipotle and Noodles and Company before getting tabbed by Berkshire Partners as the new CEO of Portillo's in 2015.   Kinsey took a hands-on approach with Portillo's learning from the ground up working along side line workers at some of the Portillo's locations in the Chicagoland area.  And he seemed to work well with Portillo who would still show up at some of the grand openings of Portillo locations which were soon found in Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Florida.

Almost since Kinsey was hired, rumors abounded in the Quad Cities that a Portillo's would be coming soon to the area.  Kinsey did put a Portillo's in the Champaign-Urbana area near the University of Illinois campus, but it seemed like the plans of putting a Portillo's in the Quad Cities were taken off the table when Kinsey retired in 2018.  

Kinsey was replaced by Michael Osanloo, a Chicago area-native who remarked that probably the first place he drove to when he got his driver's license as a teen was to a Portillo's.  Osanloo had previously been at P.F. Chang's as their CEO after earlier stints working for Kraft Foods and Caesars Entertainment.  (My sister does some part-time work for P.F. Chang's corporate office and she said that Osanloo was a delightful man and she was sorry to see him leave the company.)

Well, it turned out that the Quad Cities had been on Portillo's expansion list for quite sometime and it wasn't long after Osanloo was named CEO that they officially announced in August of last year that a Portillo's would open in Davenport along the very busy 53rd Avenue corridor sometime in the Spring of 2019.  Actually, the news about Portillo's had come out a couple months earlier during a zoning board meeting for a plot of land across from the new Costco which had been bought by a developer which would be used for a number of businesses including a Portillo's.  

While a number of houses were demolished for the new Portillo's and other businesses, residents living near the new site complained that the area couldn't handle the traffic or rainwater run-off that was already evident from Costco opening earlier in 2018.  However, things got sorted out with the nearby neighborhood including a new drainage system with holding tanks that would gradually release rainwater into the storm sewers.  The Davenport Portillo's started a soft opening in late April and it officially opened for business with a grand opening on June 13th of this year.  

Each of the Chicago area Portillo's has a theme to them - some of them have a Prohibition-era theme with signage and pictures from the Roaring 20's.  Some of them have a 50's theme with the decor reminiscent of a 1950's era soda shop along with music from the early days of rock and roll playing in the background.  And you'll also find Portillo's with a 30's theme complete with gangster photos and memorabilia.  The one in Davenport is sort of theme-less.  Oh, it has some old signs that may have been in a car dealership or garage from the 1950's.  It features a painting that gives a nod to Iowa's Field of Dreams.  But most of the signage touts they type of food they sell at Portillo's.   

There's an outdoor seating area at the Davenport Portillo's.  It was a cool night and there weren't many people taking advantage of the patio.  There was also a smaller dining room off to the side of the main dining room that could probably be used as a party room, if needed.  

Just like the other Portillo's, it's counter service where you place your orders, get a number, then head down to a pick-up window where a person yells out whimsical rhymes with the number they're calling.  "Number 32, this one is for you!  Number 48, no more wait!"  The menu consists of, of course, hot dogs, Polish sausage, Italian beef sandwiches, Italian beef and Polish sausage combo sandwiches, grilled or breaded chicken sandwiches, burgers, salads, grilled tuna sandwiches, and a meatball sandwich.  

My wife wanted to try one of Portillo's salads and she got the grilled chicken Caesar's salad.  Served in a standard issue Portillo's plastic bowl (they don't have to wash many dishes at Portillo's), it consisted of five or six strips of grilled chicken on a bed of romaine lettuce topped with croutons, parmesan cheese and a Caesar's dressing.  Cucumber slices and a sliced hard-boiled egg was also mixed in with the salad.  My wife thought it was fine, nothing special.  But she's had the salad at Portillo's in the Chicago area before so she knew what she was getting into.

My standard order at Portillo's is this - "Jumbo hot dog with everything, yes to sport peppers.  An Italian beef with mozzarella with both kinds of peppers, dipped.  And a bottle of water."  I order it so often that I had no trouble sitting here and remembering my usual order.   A jumbo hot dog is just that - a 1/4 lob. Vienna Beef hot dog.  And everything is yellow mustard, chopped onions and tomatoes, with a fluorescent green relish.  A couple of spicy sport peppers and a dill pickle spear finishes off the hot dog which is served on a poppy-seed bun.  I usually take the pickle spear off when I eat the hot dog at Portillo's and nosh on it in between bites.  I didn't expect the hot dog at the Davenport Portillo's to be any different than the ones that are in Chicago.  It had that great "snap" with each bite with that wonderful beef flavor that comes out with all the toppings.  

On the Italian beef at Portillo's, the both kinds of peppers are mild marinated sweet pepper slices, while the other is good ol' Chicago-style giardiniera - sliced carrots, cauliflower, and celery with sliced sport peppers that are all pickled together.  It has a wonderful spicy kick to the taste.  Some native Chicagoans will say it's blasphemous to put cheese of any kind on an Italian beef sandwich, but I don't live in Chicago.  The meat is sliced thin and kept in a warm bath of broth until the sandwiches are made up.  The bread was the typical Portillo's soft Italian bread that is dipped in the meat broth making it more messy, but - oh! - so good.  Like the hot dog, the taste and quality of the Italian beef sandwich at the new Portillo's in Davenport was very similar - if not the same - as the ones I've had in the Chicago area for over 20 years.  It's always an eight napkin meal when I have a hot dog and an Italian beef sandwich at any Portillo's.  And this was no exception.

My wife was sort of proud of herself for ordering the chicken Caesar's salad and for not finishing it all so she could take some home and have it for lunch the next day.  And she said, "I think I'd like a piece of their chocolate cake."  I asked if I could have a bite - I really didn't need any more food after the Italian beef sandwich and hot dog - and she said I could.  That is, if I went up and ordered it for her.  

Portillo's is famous for their chocolate cake and, quite honestly, this was the first time I'd ever tried it.  It's a fluffy two-layered cake made with, reportedly, mayo in the mixture.  The frosting is a lovely thick and rich tasting chocolate spread that is as sinful as is it good.  I realized about half-way through eating the cake that I had forgotten to get a picture of the slice we were served, so I grabbed this one off of Portillo's web site.  It's a big slice of cake and even we had trouble finishing it between the two of us.  

Since they've opened in the Quad Cities, I've been able to hold off going to Portillo's only a couple times now.  Actually, I'm sort of happy and somewhat proud of myself that I haven't been tempted into going to Portillo's any more than I have, or I would probably be well on my way to gaining back all - if not more - of the weight I was able to lose previously.  The one thing that I like about Portillo's is that the food is exactly the same at every one I've been to.  I know some will say that's boring, and with over 50 locations in seven states they are probably classified as a chain - something that I try to steer clear of when I'm on the road.  But it's tough to beat the food at a Portillo's and the one in Davenport is definitely no exception.   

La Rosa de Michoacan - East Moline, IL

If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you've seen me say a number of times that the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois are blessed with the number of very good - and authentic - Mexican restaurants we have in the area.  50, 60 and over 70 years ago, Mexican migrant workers came to the Mississippi River valley to work in the melon fields.  Many stayed, raised families and became part of the community.   There's a large Hispanic community in the Quad Cities and East Moline is one of those areas where there's a sizable Mexican population.  My wife had heard about a place over there that supposedly had good Mexican food.  It was a place that I was not familiar with, but had probably driven by a handful of times in the past - La Rosa de Michoacan.  

Hugo and Rosa Hernandez had something in common before they were married 30 years ago in Mexico - they both could cook.  After exchanging vows, the couple immigrated to the U.S. with the hopes of starting their own Mexican restaurant.  They moved to the Quad Cities area and Hugo worked various jobs in and around the area until while Rosa stayed at home to raise her two children.  Rosa made some side money of her own making tamales and selling them to locals.  By 2006, they had saved up enough money to open their own little taqueria in East Moline.  The menu was limited with just tacos at the beginning, but if someone came in and said, "Boy, a burrito would be great," Rosa would whip one up.  

The couple soon found that more people were interested in their expertise of Michoacan-style foods - Michoacan is a Mexican state that hugs the Pacific Ocean, but also has a of streams and rivers that thread through hills and mountains further inland.  Michoacan has possibly the most diverse cultures in Mexico, and because of that many different styles of food are found in the area.  Michoacan cooking is seafood, chicken, pork and beef dishes, soups, tamales, and foods made with grains and foraged fruits.  It's often referred to as the "soul-food" of Mexico.  

We drove through Moline on 5th Ave./Illinois Highway 92 where it turns into 18th Ave. when you get into East Moline.  My GPS took us right to the corner of 18th Ave. and 19th St., but we were having trouble finding La Rosa de Michoacan.  Finally, my wife said, "Oh, there it is!"  She pointed to the bright orange building just south of the intersection. (see map)  Had it been a snake - as the old saying goes - it would have bit me.  (My wife often says that I'm not very observant.)

We went inside La Rosa de Michoacan and immediately faced the open kitchen behind the front counter.  The young lady behind the counter was doing something and she looked up and said with a smile on her face, "You guys can sit anywhere.  We'll be out in a moment, OK?"  

Walking into the dining room, we found a bright room with a number of tables, chairs and booths throughout.  Some Mexican artwork hung on the faux stone walls that had been painted a subtle blue hue.  A couple flat screen televisions were hung in the corners and tuned into a soccer match from Mexico. 

We took a seat in a booth next to a window.  She soon brought out a basket of chips with salsa and dropped off a couple menus.  She took our drink orders - they had a handful of Mexican beers, but the two I asked for - Sol and Dos Equis Ambar - they didn't stock.  They did have the Modelo Especial beer and I got one of those.  

They had margaritas at La Rosa de Michoacan and that's what my wife ordered.  (They also have soft drinks such as Mexican Coca-Cola and Jarritos available, as well.)   However, my wife thought the margarita was too sweet and syrupy.  "I'm sure they just use a commercial mix for their margaritas," said my wife who knows her margaritas and can be rather particular about them.    

As I said, the menu expanded tremendously since the place opened over 13 years ago.  Burritos, enchiladas, soups, salads and, of course, tacos were the main items on the menu.  La Rosa de Michoacan opens at 8 a.m. Tuesday thru Saturday and they have a number of Mexican-style breakfast items as well.  

One of the signature items is the La Rosa burrito.  It comes in three sizes - small, large and extra-large.  I got the large and it covered the whole plate.  (I could only imagine how large the EXTRA-large burrito was!)  It was filled with refried beans, rice, cilantro and onions.  I had a choice of sauce that I could put on top of the burrito and I got pork salsa verde - large chunks of pork in a green sauce.  Cheese was melted on top of the burrito which was covered with the sauce.  

My wife wanted to try a little bit of everything.  Her daughter is married to a Mexican native who knows his way around a kitchen very well.  He has told us that you can tell how good any Mexican restaurant is just by having a couple of their tacos.  My wife went with a carne asada taco, a Nopales (cactus) taco and a chile relleno.  She got them Mexican-style on soft corn tortillas with chopped onions and cilantro.  Our server also brought out a salsa verde sauce (without the pork) and a red salsa that was different from the one that she served us with our chips.  

The pork salsa verde had a wonderful taste and it mixed well with the contents of the burrito.  I found myself adding even more of the salsa verde she brought out with the meal, but the red sauce she brought out was ¡muy caliente!  I had to get another beer to help take the sting off my tongue.  

I thought my large burrito was delicious.  It was way too much food - a small burrito with a taco on the side would have probably sufficed.  But it was so good that I was having trouble stopping and I found myself staring at the last two bites and becoming immediately embarrassed that I nearly ate the whole thing.   My wife said, "Well, you may as well finish it off.  This will probably be your own meal of the day."  So, I did...

My wife was very happy with her Nopales taco, but she thought the steak on the carne asada taco was a little overcooked and crispy.  And she thought the chile relleno was good, but a little too spicy for her.  But I think she was happy with her food, although I caught her eyeing my burrito from time to time.  

You can tell when Mexican food is made from scratch with fresh ingredients, and that's exactly how the food at La Rosa de Michocan is.  I thoroughly enjoyed - and overate - the La Rosa burrito with the pork salsa verde sauce slathered on top.  My wife was happy enough with her two tacos (although she thought the steak was a bit overcooked) and her chile relleno (but she also thought it was a little too spicy for her).  The service was prompt and friendly, the place was bright and clean, and it was a pleasant experience all the way around.  We've been back since our initial visit and now, and we were more than happy with the food experience and the friendly atmosphere at La Rosa de Michoacan.    

City Limits - Rock Island, IL

My wife and I have been on a search for bars in and around the greater Quad Cities area that have good burgers and sandwiches.  A place I had been to a number of years ago, but I hadn't been to with my wife is City Limits Saloon & Grill in Rock Island.  On a warm Saturday afternoon earlier this summer, we made the trek over to City Limits so I could reacquaint myself with the place.  

The origins of City Limits date back to World War II when the Green Forest Tavern opened on the far south side of Rock Island, just north of Milan, IL.  The restaurant went through an ownership change - as well as a name change to "Dickie Joe's" - in the 50's before brothers Bob and Carl Anderson bought the place in 1961.  The Anderson brothers changed the name back to the original Green Forest Tavern and the two brothers co-ran the small bar until Bob bought out Carl in 1972.  

Bob Anderson, Jr. joined his father in the business in 1979, and a year later the Anderson's petitioned the state of Illinois to change the name to City Limits Saloon.  Up until then, it was against Illinois law to have the term "saloon" in the title of a business that sold alcoholic beverages.  But the place looked like an old west saloon, complete with swinging doors and deer heads mounted on the walls.  A year later, they put in a small grill and added that to the name to become City Limits Saloon and Grill.  

Bob Anderson, Jr. eventually bought the business from his father in 1993, but just two years later a fire destroyed much of the interior of the bar & grill.  Determined to keep the business going, Anderson rebuilt and renovated the interior of the place and added a full kitchen to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days a week.  A 600 square foot addition added more than four times the original seating in 1999, but a kitchen renovation along with  large addition including a back porch in 2011 gave City Limits its current 132 seat capacity inside with an additional 32 seats on the outdoor porch.   

City Limits is sort of set back behind a gas station just off Highway 67 near its intersection with Illinois Highway 5 on Rock Island's southwest side.  (see map)  There's a large parking lot on three sides of the building and we parked in what I deemed is the back of the building.  Going in the doors off the porch, we encountered the large dining area that was added about 8 years ago.  I had not been in the place since this room had been added on.  It was a nice room, nothing fancy.  But it was well-lit and had an openness to the room.

The bar area is just past the back dining room and features more of a cozy, club-like atmosphere.  There was a small after-lunch crowd in the place and we were greeted in the bar area by a server who asked where we would like to sit.

It was really the first warm and sunny weekend of the summer when we were at City Limits that day and my wife said she thought she'd like to sit out back on the porch.  The server - a very pleasant and friendly young lady by the name of Aleah - said, "Sure!  I love to serve people out on the patio!"  She led us back out to the back porch and dropped off a couple menus for us to look through.  She was a very accommodating server and gave us some good recommendations during our visit.  My wife liked her very much.

They had a number of craft beers listed on a chalk board in the bar area and I made a mental note of some of them.  I told Aleah that I'd take a pale ale they had listed, but she came out a little later to say that they were out of that beer.  She came out with a beer list and I saw another one that I'd like to have.  She went in to get that for me and came back out moments later with a forlorn look on her face.  "We're out of that, too," she said apologetically.  I just decided to cut my losses and ordered a light domestic as I figured that they had to have that.  

My wife was looking through the appetizers on the menu and she saw something that really caught her eye - the portabella mushroom planks.  They took large portobello mushrooms and cut them in strips, then they were breaded and deep-fried.  A half-pound came in a basket and were served with a side of ranch dressing.  Oh, man!  Were they great!  And they were also very rich.  But I was a little shocked with the cost - $12 bucks!  I didn't realize they were that expensive until I went to pay the bill.  My wife felt bad about it because she didn't really notice the price before she ordered them, either.   And because they were so rich, we left a number of planks in the basket.  Three or four people could easily share the portobello mushroom planks. 

They have a number of burgers on the menu at City Limits including a number of specialty burgers made from chopped steak.  The Green Bay burger was topped with cheese, beer-caramelized onions and sauerkraut, then finished off with cheese curds.   The Brooklyn burger consisted of their chopped steak burger on grilled rye bread, topped with Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, corned beef and a Thousand Island dressing.  And for the big appetite, the Viking burger featured two chopped steak patties topped with both cheddar and Swiss cheese, a honey mustard dressing, and finished off on top with onion rings and bacon on a pretzel bun.

My wife was looking at the sandwiches and wraps section of the menu more than the burgers.  They had a number of your typical sandwiches - a reuben, a breaded pork tenderloin, and a turkey club.  They also had their "Ultimate" grilled cheese sandwich featuring three different types of cheese along with bacon strips and sautéed tomato slices on parmesan-encrusted bread.  City Limits signature sandwich is the "Outer Limits" - an unbreaded pork loin that is liberally seasoned with an in-house blend of spices, then grilled and topped with bacon strips and cheddar cheese.  

My wife opted for the spinach artichoke grilled chicken sandwich without the bun.  It was topped with Swiss cheese, a tomato slice and a spinach artichoke sauce.  It was served on a bed of lettuce and, somewhat surprisingly to me, my wife got a side of the tater tots.  She rarely orders tater tots when we're out.  Fries, seasoned chips, potato salad, cole slaw and onion rings were also available for some of their sides.

On my initial visit to City Limits a number of years ago, I got the tuna melt sandwich which I thought was very good.  However, on this visit I decided to build my own burger and I went with my usual bacon, mushroom and cheese burger.  Only on this burger I got pepper jack cheese instead of my normal choice of Swiss cheese, and they had sautéed portobello mushrooms instead of the regular sliced mushrooms.  After asking Aleah about the onion rings (she said she thought the tater tots were better), I also got a side of the tots and I asked Aleah if she could bring out some Cholula hot sauce to put on the tots.  

My wife thought her grilled chicken breast was very good.  It was cooked perfectly and was juicy and flavorful.  She was happy she got it without the bun considering she was still munching on the portobello planks.  Along with a few tots, she was pretty full after finishing most of the breast.  

My burger was, in a word, outstanding.  It was juicy and gooey - a multi-napkin burger in its grandest form.  The pepper jack cheese wasn't overpowering, the bacon was a nice complement, but the sautéed portobello mushrooms were a great taste combination with the burger.  The lettuce leaf and a slice of red onion helped round out the wonderful taste of the burger.  The bun was lightly grilled and never was in danger of falling apart from all the juice coming from the beef patty.  

We may have a new leader in the clubhouse in our quest to find a great bar burger in the greater Quad Cities area.  The burger at City Limits was one of the better ones I've experienced in the area and my wife was impressed with the taste and quality of her grilled chicken breast.  Two quibbles, however.  We thought it was a tad expensive - especially the $12 portobello planks appetizer.  And I was a little miffed by the lack of the craft beers that they showed on the menu, but didn't actually have.  But the food, the great service, and the comfort of eating on the back porch on a warm day more than made up for those minor transgressions.  We really liked City Limits, but we also wished it wasn't so far of a drive from our home.  

Big Swing Brewing Co. - Rock Island, IL

In the time I've been doing Road Tips (nearly 14 years now) there have been instances where I have been accused of not going to a place where I gave a so-so or bad review to for a second chance to possibly redeem themselves.  I know that professional food critics will go to a restaurant two or three times before they write their reviews, but I don't quite have that luxury in my travels to different areas around the Midwest.  However, this is a tale of two visits to the relatively new Big Swing Brewing Company in downtown Rock Island, IL.  And both visits were diametrically opposite.  In this case, the first visit was an eye-opener, the second was a large disappointment.  

Last summer, the owners of the Blue Cat Brew Pub - siblings Dan and Martha Cleaveland - decided to sell the place after 24 years of being in business.  Wanting to keep the legacy of the Blue Cat going, John Timmer, Shane Scott and Jon McAtee joined forces to purchase the business but decided to change the name of the place to Big Swing Brewing Co.  They retained Dan Cleaveland as the brewmaster and Martha Cleaveland effectively retired from the business.  Even though everything was basically in place for the brew pub, I understand they were having problems with getting the proper licensing and permits.  Big Swing Brewing Co. finally opened in March of this year. 

It was a Saturday night when we first went to Big Swing Brewing Company earlier this summer.  We had been talking about going over there and we found ourselves across the river in Rock Island.  We were able to find a parking spot in front of Big Swing Brewing Co. which was always tough when Blue Cat was open.  Over the front windows, the neon sign of the Blue Cat Brewing Company was still attached to the facade of the building.  A Big Swing logo sign was in one of the front windows, however.

The inside of Big Swing doesn't look much different from the old Blue Cat.  The tanks were still behind windows behind the bar.  There was the same booths along the south wall, the same tables were on the main floor and the walk-up dining area.  Other than the Big Swing logos, it looked pretty much the same to us. 

It wasn't long that our server for the evening - a young lady with the unique name of Raven - came over to greet us.  She handed us a couple food menus and, very curiously, she asked if we wanted to start out with any appetizers just seconds after giving us our menus.  She explained later on that it was only her second day on the job at Big Swing.  She was friendly and outgoing, but service was a little choppy during our visit.  

One of our favorite beers at the old Blue Cat was the Off the Rail pale ale.  Knowing that Dan Cleaveland was still in charge of the brewing process, I was hoping to get one of those.  Unfortunately, the Off the Rail was not one of the beers that they were offering.  In fact, they only had 4 in-house beers on tap - none of which appealed to me.  They did have other breweries beers in cans and bottles - they even had domestic beers from larger breweries, something that Blue Cat never had - and I ended up getting a Five Cities hazy IPA.  I've had Five Cities beers from their brewery in Bettendorf and I haven't been very impressed with them.  Their hazy IPA didn't trip my trigger, either.  

The menu was heavy on sandwiches and burgers, but their entrees were rather interesting.  The porter meat loaf is, I believe, a holdover from the old Blue Kat menu - or some variation of that.  The hot beef sandwich and the pot roast also got my attention.  Something on the appetizer part of the menu - the poutine - also caught my eye.  And my wife noticed the fried dill pickle chips.  She really likes deep fried pickles.  

We placed our orders for our food and instead of getting a salad to start off, we both decided to try the soups at Big Swing.  My wife ordered the soup of the day which was a chicken vegetable soup.  It featured large chunks of carrots, potatoes and onions with tender chicken in a rich broth.  She thought the soup was very good.

For some reason, the chili sounded good that evening.  Now, I grew up in Newton, IA and everyone who went though the school system there remembers the chili they would serve once or twice a month that came with a big gooey cinnamon roll.  A few years after I moved to Davenport nearly 30 years ago, we had a Super Bowl party at our house complete with chili and cinnamon rolls.  My new friends from the area had never heard of such a thing, but my friends who grew up in Newton who I reconnected with in the Quad Cities knew exactly what I was doing.  I'm proud to say that I've converted some people who grew up in the Quad's to the chili and cinnamon roll combination.

The Newton school chili had a distinct flavor with finely ground beef along with big chili beans.  My first bite of Big Swing's chili caused a flashback - it tasted exactly like Newton schools chili!  I was almost ecstatic as I tried another bite.  I was telling my wife, "I've never had chili like the kind I had in school when I was growing up.  This is the closest thing to that chili!"  I even remarked to Raven and a couple other of the servers about the chili and how they needed to include a small cinnamon roll with it.  I think they thought I was sort of nuts.  I was so blown away by the chili that I texted two of my friends who grew up in Newton but were now living in Davenport - "They have Newton school chili at Big Swing Brewing!"  

For our main dinner that evening, my wife got the grilled chicken sandwich, only without the brioche bun.  A side of applesauce and cole slaw came with the chicken breast.  She was worried at first glance that it would be overcooked and dried out from the grill markings on the chicken, but it turned out that it was tender and juicy.  She was happy with her choice.

I went with the Kentucky Hot Brown sandwich.  I knew that it couldn't be as good as the hot brown's I've had in my travels to Louisville over the years, but I thought it was interesting enough to give it a shot.   Big Swing's variation of the hot brown was similar to what I'd had in Louisville - sliced turkey, bacon and a roasted tomato slice on a thick-cut slice of sourdough bread.  A flavorful mornay sauce topped the sandwich and the mashed potatoes side.  The hot brown was very good - a spot hitter, for me.  It was a nice deviation from having a burger or a grilled sandwich.  

We were impressed with our first visit to Big Swing that we decided to head back over a few weeks later on to have dinner.  My taste buds were doing jumping jacks thinking of the chili and I had already made up my mind that I was going to get a bowl instead of a cup of the chili this time.  

My wife and I walked in and we sort of found things a little disjointed in the place.  The dining room off to the side had boxes and paperwork on top of the tables and booths.  We thought that was pretty strange considering the place seemed to be packed and they had to turn away a large group because they couldn't accommodate them while we were there.  

We were seated in the dining area near the bar that night and I wondered why no one was seated in the large  corner booth.  Upon further investigation, the table didn't have a stand and was sitting on the bench seats.  It looked very strange and made me wonder what was going on.  

But things went even worse after that.  They still just had four of the Big Swing beers on tap - once again, none of them I was interested in - and I wasn't impressed with the offerings from other breweries on tap.  I ended up getting a Founders All Day IPA that they had in a 20 ounce can.  

But the big disappointment came with the menu.  We noticed that they had about 75 percent of the menu highlighted by a yellow marker.  When I asked the waitress what that meant when she brought back my beer she said, "Oh, the ones highlighted are what we have available."  Notably to me, the chili, the Hot Brown sandwich, the poutine appetizer, the French dip sandwich, and the hot beef sandwich were the most glaring omissions.  She said, "We lost the cook who was responsible for many of the items that we no longer offer."  I immediately wanted to know where that cook went to so I could follow him there for his chili.  

I was completely crestfallen - the place looked like shambles, they knocked a lot of good items off the menu, they still didn't have the Big Swing variation of the Off the Rail pale ale available.  Quite seriously, if I hadn't had a beer in front of me, I think I would have gotten up and left.  We ended up eating there that night - I had the reuben and my wife had one of Big Swing's grilled cheese sandwiches with grilled chicken added.  We both thought our sandwiches were all right, but psychologically, I'm not certain anything was going to taste good to us that evening.    

Our first visit to Big Swing Brewing Company was so promising to us that when we went back for our second visit a few weeks later we were completely deflated with our experience.  They had taken many of the interesting food items we found during our first visit of the menu by the time we had gone back.  Their beer selection is still iffy with only four in-house beers available on tap.  The one dining area was messy like they were using it as an office or storage area.  And they had a broken table sitting on the bench seats in the corner booth in the bar dining area.  The food we had on our first visit was good to very good - it was tough to beat the chili that brought back memories of the chili we had in school growing up.  But the sandwiches we had on our second visit were just "all right".  Service both times was good, even though the service we experienced on our first visit was a little choppy from an unexperienced server.  We were just so disappointed with our second visit and the revelations that a number of things we either liked or wanted to try were removed from the menu that it gave us pause about coming back to Big Swing any time soon.  

The Depot - Donahue, IA

The lady who cuts my hair has been telling me about a place up in the small town of Donahue (population approximately 350 - and that may be stretching it) located north and west of Davenport that has some pretty good food.  Her daughter has been a server there off and on during her years at North Scott High School and she always talked glowingly about the food out there.  On a rainy Sunday earlier this year, my wife and I set out to go out the this place called The Depot.  

The building that houses The Depot was exactly that at one time.  The building served as Donahue's train depot in the late 1800's into the early 1900's.  It was then when the Keppy family - who had been running the general store in Donahue since 1883 - took over the building for their business.  The Keppy General Store was the central gathering place for people in and around Donahue for years.  The place sold everything from leather shoes and rubber galoshes, smoked cod and penny candy, and bicycles and shotgun shells.  People could buy coal from the basement in Keppy's General Store.  The original Donahue Savings Bank was located in the front of the store back in the 1930's, and up until a few months before third generation owners David and Charlotte "Chuck" Keppy closed the store in 1992, they ran a regular egg route for people around northern Scott County.  

Sam Fentress and his wife, Penny Callison, always liked to cook.  Fentress cooked for the Davenport Fire Department for years, while Penny was a wonderful cook on her own.  Both liked to use locally grown produce for their dishes and they thought they could translate their love for cooking into a restaurant.  They found that the former depot/general store in Donahue was available and there wasn't really a sit-down eatery for miles around.  They didn't necessarily want to have a bar that served bar food, but more of a fresh ingredient restaurant that just happened to have a bar.  Fentress and Callison bought the building in 2013, and after some renovations they opened The Depot in 2014.  In one of the corners of the restaurant, they added home supplies, snacks and treats as a nod to the original Keppy General Store.  

It was just starting to rain heavily when we pulled up to The Depot in Donahue.  (see map)  We walked into the place to find a combination bar area/dining room that featured a number of railroad-type paraphernalia with nearly a dozen flat screen televisions around the room.  There were a number of low-top tables with banquette seating along the wall with high-top tables in the middle.  

The bar area featured a wood and mirrored back wall with five flat screen televisions mounted at the top.  I immediately thought this would be a great place to come to for a football or basketball Saturday or Sunday with multiple games going on at the same time.  The place was clean and very comfortable.  

Behind the dining area was an addition that is used for parties or overflow dining.  It featured both wood and brick walls with pine supports in the middle of the room.  A large garage door opened to the outside for larger gatherings.  It appeared that there had been a party in there the night before as there were still remnants of cookers, party tables and a few decorations left over.  But it was still a pretty nice area for a reception or gathering.  

My wife and I sat at a high-top table in the center of the main dining area and one of the young ladies who were serving that day gave us a couple menus to look over.  They had a small selection of craft beers on tap, but they did have the Big Grove Easy Eddie Hazy IPA that I've grown fond of over the past few months.  

As I said, owners Fentress and Callison are into fresh ingredients for their food and they try to source many of the items locally.  Main entrees include a pot roast dinner, a meat loaf plate, and a country fried steak meal.  They have a number of sandwiches and burgers on the menu - or you can "build-your-own" if you like.  Appetizers include the regulars - chicken wings (bone-in or boneless), nachos, beer-battered mushrooms, and something called "Railroad Ties" that are potato wedges topped with bacon bits and a cheese sauce.  They serve a full breakfast at The Depot on Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m., and they also have a Hispanic lady by the name of Sofia who works in the kitchen who has come up with special Mexican food entrees on some nights.  (The lady who cuts my hair says the Mexican nights at The Depot are "to die for".)  

I had pretty much zoned in on one thing - the "build-your-own" burger.  I went with my standard burger with sautéed mushrooms, pepper jack cheese and bacon.  They have onion rolls available with the burgers at The Depot, so I put the burger on that.  The burger featured a 1/3 pound flat-grilled patty and the onion roll was lightly toasted.  I also got a side of their onion rings to go along with the burger. 

My wife ended up getting the cilantro lime sandwich without the bun.  The chicken sandwich came with two slices of bacon, pepper jack cheese, deep-fried avocado slices and was topped with a chipotle mayo sauce.   For her side she got The Depot's unique deviled egg that they've become somewhat famous for.  I gave her one of my onion rings so she could try it out.  She absolutely loved her grilled chicken breast.  She especially loved the fried avocado slices on top.  It was a lot for her to eat and it was a pretty large and rich-tasting serving.  

I really enjoyed my burger.  It was juicy and flavorful, and the beef was good enough that the toppings didn't mask the full taste of the beef patty.  The onion bun held together with all that was going on with the burger.  It was nice and soft, just as I like my burger buns.  The onion rings also weren't that bad.  I don't think they were made in-house, but they were still pretty good.  I think one of the reasons why my wife had trouble finishing her grilled chicken breast was that she ate about half of my onion rings.  But I was fine with that - I was concentrating on the burger. 

We lingered a little longer than we wanted because there were torrential rains coming down outside.  That was no problem with us as I grabbed another Big Grove Easy Eddie and we watched baseball on one of the televisions while we waited for the rain to let up.  On the way home, we ran into areas where creeks had overflowed into farm fields from the heavy rains.  But that was the story of our spring in Eastern Iowa - we had a lot of rain and the fields were pretty much saturated by that time.  

My wife and I love finding little places out in the middle of nowhere like The Depot.  It's a bit of a haul from out house - about a 25 minute drive - but it was worth it to finally get out there to try the place out.  I enjoyed my burger and my wife thoroughly liked her cilantro lime chicken breast with the fried avocados.  They seemed to have an extensive enough menu for anyone to find something they liked, but their craft beer selection was pretty limited.  The service was good and friendly, the place was clean and welcoming, and this is a place that we'll definitely be back to at some point.  We really want to try their Mexican nights sometime and we've subscribed to their Facebook page so we can find out when they'll have them.  

The Tangled Wood - Bettendorf, IA

Earlier this year, one of the restaurants that we would go to from time to time - Governor's in Bettendorf - closed their doors and moved to a new location with a new concept and a new name called The Tangled Wood.  We were eager to try the place a couple months after they opened, but each time we would go there the place was packed.  My wife had a Monday off recently and I suggested that we go out for lunch somewhere.  Then I remembered that we hadn't been to The Tangled Wood as of yet, so we ventured out there.

Governor's in Bettendorf had been a main-stay for over 40 years before they closed their location late last year at the corner of Middle Road and Devil's Glen to make way for a Hy-Vee Fast and Fresh convenience store.  The ownership group - headed by Craig Wagner who also owns Steventon's and Blue Iguana out in LeClaire, IA - had announced nearly 2 years ago that they had outgrown the purpose for Governor's and were looking to put a new re-branded restaurant somewhere in Bettendorf.  They had already closed the Governor's over in Moline in 2016 (personal note - that was the place my wife and I had our first official lunch date in 1993), and were focusing their efforts on the new Bettendorf location.  They built a building just up the road from the old Governor's location at Devil's Glen and Tanglewood Road in Bettendorf (see map) and opened in January of this year.   

It was around 1:30 p.m. when we made it into The Tangled Wood.  We immediately were impressed with the dining area which featured a mixture of contemporary industrial fixtures and frames with some beautiful wood and brick accents.  It was definitely a step-up from the decor at Governor's which had grown tired over the years.  The atmosphere at The Tangled Wood was much more bright and lively compared to the dark wood accents and low lighting that people experienced at Governor's.  

We should have realized something was amiss from the start when two young ladies were standing at the hostess stand for a couple minutes before they even acknowledged our presence.  We had been sort of wandering around looking into the dining area and in the bar area before my wife went up to them and said, "Can we get seated for lunch?"  One of the young ladies said, "Oh!  I'm sorry.  I thought you were looking for someone."  No - we just wanted to check the place out since it was our first visit.

We had our choice of the bar or the dining room and we opted for a booth in the bar.  The brick walls featured a number of flat screen televisions hanging from them, a number of high-top tables in the middle, booths on one wall and low-top tables along the other wall.  A large outdoor patio/bar area - which was still under construction when we were there (but is open now) - was just beyond the large windows past the bar.  Even if the patio was open, we wouldn't have sat out there as we were having an extremely cold late spring in the Midwest.  And this day was no exception.

The bar, itself, featured three sides of seating with a large island of liquor shelves and taps in the middle.  Their beer menu featured 44 beers on tap, as well as another 30 cans and bottles to choose from.  Governor's always had a good beer selection, but nothing like the selection The Tangled Wood has.

After we were seated in the booth in the bar area, we were given food menus to look over.  A couple young ladies who were servers came over to greet us.  One explained that the other one was new and was in shadow training.  (Turned out the "new" waitress was a seasoned veteran server from other restaurants whose first day at The Tangled Wood was that day and probably could have shown the other one a thing or two about waitressing.)  I noticed that they had Kona Big Wave Golden Ale on tap and I ordered a pint of that.  My wife just went with water for the time being.  It was great they had the Big Wave on tap, but I was disappointed as it tasted sort of flat.      

It's basically a whole new menu from the one they had at Governor's - well, sort of.  They still have a number of sandwiches, appetizers, burgers and salads on the menu - many that were available at Governor's only with a new name.  The Tangled Wood also features barbecued entrees such as ribs and brisket, they have 12" pizzas with a hand-tossed or tavern-thin crust, and they have some of Governor's old favorites like fish and chips, and their classic nachos on the menu.  

My wife went with the grilled chicken sandwich.  She asked for it without the brioche bun, but they put the house spread in a bowl on the side.  (Don't exactly know what the house spread was, sort of like a mayo/dijon mustard, I guess.)  She got the tomato-braised kale for her side.  

I ordered the mushroom-Swiss burger with bacon on it.  I also saw that they had onion straws for some of their sandwiches and I asked our waitress if I could get a side of those.  The onion straws turned out to be nothing like I would classify as onion straws but more like thin cut food purveyor-style frozen onion rings.  

On the menu, the grilled chicken sandwich was called "Tastes Like Chicken".  My wife said it did not.  It was overcooked, rubbery and void of flavor.  She surmised the reason they had the house-made sauce with it was to at least give it some flavor.  She was highly disappointed in the grilled chicken.  But she did say that she very much liked the tomato-braised kale.  

I had asked for some "pink" in my burger when the waitress asked how I wanted my burger cooked.  Pink went out the window long before this burger was served to me.  It was over-cooked and well-done.  It didn't help that the bun that came with it was also dry - and there was too much of it.  The grilled mushrooms were all right, and they slathered a lot of Swiss cheese on top of the burger to help give it some flavor.  But the bacon was too crispy and crumbled apart like bacon bits.  The onion rings were as I feared they would be - pretty dull.  We were not happy with the quality of our meal.

And our waitresses literally left us.  I like to be checked on, but not hovered over, during our meal and I really wanted another pint of Big Wave to help wash the dry food down.  But they never came back.  Finally, I was able to flag down the "new" waitress and she came over.  She thought the other waitress had been back to check on us, but we hadn't seen her.  She got me another flat tasting Big Wave, mainly because I didn't have their beer list and I wasn't going to go up to the bar to check out their tap handles.  

We had hoped that our first visit to The Tangled Wood was an anomaly and that we would like to go back again at some point to try one of their tavern-style pizzas.  But we've heard from a handful of friends who have gone out there since that they, too, were sort of disappointed in the food and service.  It's a nice place, don't get me wrong.  And I understand the outdoor patio/bar area is always packed during these summer months.  But the chicken breast and the burger patty we had were both woefully overcooked.  I really hoped The Tangled Wood would become part of our rotation of restaurants to visit when we'd go out on weekends with friends, but we're going to have to give it more time to figure things out before we'll go there again. 

Kavanaugh's Hilltop Tap - Rock Island, IL

My wife and I have been venturing out on weekends trying to find some places that have a good burger around the Quad Cities.  We were familiar with Kavanaugh's Hilltop Tap just up the hill from Augustana College in Rock Island and we had heard from some other people that they had a pretty good burger.  One chilly and rainy Saturday afternoon in early Spring, we headed over to Kavanaugh's for lunch.  

In 1984, Mike Kavanaugh, a union electrician whose experience with bars was having an occasional drink in one, bought the little bar in the College Hill neighborhood of Rock Island along with his wife, Diane, and a couple of other partners.  The area was a little seedy when they bought the place and the couple did their best in helping clean up the neighborhood and helping attract more reputable businesses to the area.  In 1991, the Kavanaugh's bought out their partners to become sole owners of the establishment.  Their sons, Tim and Mike, Jr. helped run the place, as well.  

Each year, the Kavanaugh's reinvested profits into their little bar helping expand the floor plan of the place.  In 2013, just in time for their first annual Shamrockin' Paddy O'Pardy on St. Patrick's Day, they expanded their deck in the back and added a covered area that has also served as a live music venue and an overflow dining area with a bar.  And earlier this year, Mike and Diane Kavanaugh retired and sold the bar and grill to their son, Tim, and two of Tim's friends.

It was around 1:30 p.m. when my wife and I pulled into Kavanaugh's parking lot along 30th Street in Rock Island.  (see map)  The outside of the building features a light stone facade with a matching stone wall on the parking lot side.  It's a long and narrow structure with a peaked roof. 

The back annex area was about half full when we walked in to the place.  The Mississippi Valley Blues Society has sponsored a number of shows over the past couple three years that have been held in the covered deck area.  For a cool and rainy day, the place was buttoned up and it was sort of cozy in there.  An event was being held down at Augustana College that day and a handful of people were coming up the hill and into Kavanaugh's to get out of the rain.  The back bar in the deck area was closed.

My wife and I ended up going out to the original front bar area.  It featured a traditional long bar on one side with a number of flat screen televisions throughout the room.  Short tables were located in the center of the bar room with high top tables along the far wall opposite the bar.  It had a low ceiling and had a great little neighborhood bar vibe to the place.  

There were a couple ladies working behind the bar as my wife and I took a seat at one of the high-top tables along the wall.  One of them, Tracy, shouted out, "You guys hang on and I'll be over in a minute to take your drink order."  We took a look at a couple menus that were on the table to get an idea of what to get while we waited for her to come over.  She eventually made it over, apologized for being too busy (which we quickly dismissed as being fine with us), and asked what we wanted to drink.  I got a bloody mary and a bottle of beer to chase it back.  Unfortunately, the bottle of beer was warm.  

Tracy came back over and I said, "I don't know if you have a problem with the cooler, but this beer is nearly room temperature."  She put her hand around the bottle and said, "Oh, my gosh!  They must have just filled the cooler before I came in."  She was going to go get me another bottle, but I had noticed that they had the Leave It to Henry American Pale Ale from the Five Cities Brewery over in Bettendorf on tap.  We hadn't been to Five Cities yet and I was intrigued enough to want to give it a try.  I told Tracey that I'd get that.  After she brought the pint over, I knew something wasn't right from the first sip.  It tasted flat.  But I still drank it.  (Turned out that it probably wasn't flat - I've had another one since then and it tasted the same way at another establishment that had it.)  My wife got a bottle of the Lagunitas IPA.  Later on, I got a Lagunitas to go along with my lunch.  It took three beers before I got a good one.  At least the bloody mary was good.  

The menu at Kavanaugh's isn't all that long with a number of your typical appetizers - wings, nachos, deep-fried breaded cauliflower with cheese, and something they call "Drunken Mushrooms".  They soak their mushrooms in Jameson whiskey before they're breaded and deep-fried.  They also had three or four wraps, as well as sandwiches and burgers.   The special they had that day was an Italian beef sandwich that someone at a table adjacent to us got.  It looked as good as any Italian beef sandwich I've had in Chicago.

My wife and I ended up going the burger route - she got a single (1/4 lb.) burger topped with American cheese.  A choice of house-made French fries or house chips came with the burger.  

I got the double burger topped with pepper jack cheese, mushrooms and bacon.  Pickles, lettuce, tomato and onion are available on request with the burger, I asked Tracy I'd take all that too, but that didn't get done.  But that was fine - there was enough of the other stuff on the burger the way I'd ordered it. 

The burgers at Kavanaugh's are chargrilled and I'm getting to the point where I like a good flat-top-grilled burger over a chargrilled one.  Nonetheless, it had a lot of good flavor to the burger.  The mushrooms were fresh and sautéed, the pepper jack cheese was oozing out from under the bun top, and the bacon was cooked the way I like it - not too crisp and could easily curl up in between the burger patties.  

About the only quibble that I had with the burger at Kavanaugh's was that it was too salty for my taste.  My wife thought her burger was a little salty, as well.  She uses salt on her food a lot more than I do and if she detects an abundance of salt in her food, well, then there's a lot of salt in the food.  The fries were good, but the burger was so big that I concentrated more on that than I did the fries.   

I have mixed feelings about Kavanaugh's Hilltop Tap - more positive than negative.  I liked the atmosphere of the place, it had a nice neighborhood feeling.  The service was good, but the first beer was warm and they forgot my requested veggies for my burger.  While the burger was too salty for my tastes, it was still pretty good.  We'll put Kavanaugh's on  our rotation for food because I want to try their reuben at some point and it appears that they have some interesting appetizers, as well.  

Brew in the Village - Davenport, IA

The Village of East Davenport is not far from where my wife and I live and we find ourselves down there quite a bit - going to the cleaners, picking up bird feed, having a meal at one of the restaurants, or hanging out having a cold one at one of the bars.  One place that has turned into one of our favorite spots is a small restaurant/bar by the name of Brew in the Village.  It's quietly turned into one of the more popular places to have breakfast on the weekends - mainly because they start serving Bloody Mary's on Saturday and Sunday mornings before 11 a.m., one of the few places that do that in the Quad Cities.  

The entity of Brew has been around since 2011, but the building that houses the little bistro dates back to around 1860 toward the beginning of the city of Davenport's existence.  The building was built as a blacksmith shop on one side and a hotel/saloon on the other side.  In the early 1900's, a gentleman by the name of Frank Boyler bought the blacksmith shop and changed the name to Boyler's Blacksmith Shop.  But Frank did a lot more than make horseshoes.  He eventually expanded the building to the north to put in a horse wagon and buggy shop where each one was handmade.  Boyler lived in the old rooming house upstairs and the basement of the building was a notorious speakeasy during Prohibition.  When cars began to become popular and people weren't needing horseshoes or buggies, Frank put in a gas pump with a holding tank beside the building and put a lift in the old wagon shop making it the first full service gas station in Davenport.  On top of all this, the colorful Frank Boyler was also the mayor for the Village of East Davenport for over 20 years.  

Frank Boyler passed away in 1949 and the business passed along to his son, Richard.  With all the blacksmithing equipment in place and the lack of need for a service station since a number of free standing gas stations had been built around Davenport over the years, Richard decided that he'd turn the business into a fabricated metal shop and eventually renamed it Boyler's Ornamental Iron.  Richard grew the business so well over the first few years that it had to expand into the old service garage next door.  By 1975, he had to move the whole business to a facility on State Street in Bettendorf.  

Richard Boyler used the original location in the East Village as a display showroom for a number of years after moving the bulk of the operations to Bettendorf.  Boyler's sons - Mike, Bruce and Doug - took over the business when Richard retired in 1983 and continue to run Boyler's Ornamental Iron today along with the help from their respective children making it 4 generations of Boyler's in the business.  The Boyler family still owns the original East Village building with a large "Frank W. Boyler" painted on the brick facade and they lease out the spot in which Brew is located, as well as Pete Peterson's Wild Bird Shop (where we get our feed for our bird feeders) and a hairdressing shop where the old service garage was located.  The former Boots country bar (it was called Bootleggers up to about year and a half ago before permanently closing earlier this year) was located on the west side of the building and there are still apartments on the upper floor of the building.  

I don't quite remember exactly when there started to be a bar/restaurant in the spot.  I remember seeing the Boyler truck there quite a bit moving things out of their showroom starting about 10 years ago.  The space eventually became a small coffee shop by the name of Brew that eventually expanded into being a wine bar with a convection oven to make pizza.  Quite actually, their pizza was very good, and my wife and I would get one of their pizzas to take home from time to time.  

The gentleman who owned the coffee shop and small bar in the East Village was also the general manager at another restaurant in the Davenport area called Pepperjacks.   But both Brew and Pepperjacks abruptly closed in late December of 2013 when he moved his family out of state.  We were sort of crestfallen as Brew was a great place to grab a coffee or espresso on weekend mornings.  The building stood empty for awhile before Bill Sheeder happened to walk by the place with one of the Boyler's standing out front one morning a few months after the original Brew closed down.  

Sheeder was the owner of a commercial cleaning company, but his partner, Stephanie Sellers, was running a small bakery out in LeClaire by the name of The Sweet Life.  We first got to know her when she was selling her gourmet cupcakes at the Freight House Farmer's Market in downtown Davenport a few years ago.  They had talked about running their own little bistro-style restaurant that specialized in craft beers and Sheeder saw an opportunity in the old Brew location.  Virtually everything was in place for Sheeder and Sellers to take over the spot, and by that evening they had signed the lease to reopen Brew.  And they did so in early 2014.  

There's no room for a full kitchen at Brew and Sheeder and Sellers felt constricted with what they could do with a menu at the restaurant.  They immediately got rid of the convection oven for the pizza, and they de-emphasized the coffee offerings to the point that the "Brew" in the name quickly became more associated with beer than coffee.  But Sheeder had his eyes on another building a couple blocks to the west that he could gut and shape into a restaurant/brew pub of his own design.  

Sheeder and Sellers bought that building in 2015 and ended up selling Brew to nearby neighborhood residents Tim and Jennifer Chen.  Tim Chen was the International Business Development Manager for HON Industries in Muscatine at the time while Jennifer ran The Plaid Rabbit, a small stationary/gift store in the East Village.  After gutting their new building and renovating it into a brewpub/restaurant/bakery/live music venue, Sheeder and Sellers opened Baked Beer and Bread Company in 2016.  (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Baked.)  

Since Tim Chen was traveling quite a bit overseas and Jennifer was deeply involved with The Plaid Rabbit, the Chen's turned to a neighborhood friend, Tracy Cameron, who had a background working as a bar manager at some more upscale restaurants around the Quad Cities area.  (My wife and I first met Tracy and her husband, Ed, when we moved into our house nearly 17 years ago as they lived just down the street from us for a couple of years before moving to the McClellan Heights neighborhood just up the hill to the east of the East Village.)  Tracy had stepped back from the restaurant business for awhile to focus on raising her two boys and was happy not to worry about the day-to-day operations associated with being a bar manager.  When Tim Chen approached her to manage Brew for them, she initially turned them down.  But the Chen's eventually got Tracy to agree to run the place for them and she continues to run Brew in the Village today.  

Brew in the Village is located at the corner of Jersey Ridge and 11th St. in the East Village.  (see map)  We got there early enough on this particular Sunday morning that we were able to park in front of the place on the street.  (Brew opens at 8 a.m. on the weekends and 11 a.m. throughout the week.)  There's a small patio area in front of the place that's popular for al fresco dining on warm days.  A small smoker where they make their own bacon out of pork belly sits in the corner of the patio.  Some days when I'm driving by or stopping by the bird shop, the smell of the smoking bacon can be somewhat intoxicating.  

It was sort of cool, but partly cloudy the day we were there that Sunday and we decided to sit inside the restaurant.   It's a cozy space with a long bar and a long, narrow space filled with high-top tables.  One of the regular servers at Brew, Jessica, came over to greet us and drop off menus for us to look over.  She clearly recognized us from earlier visits.  Not long after we sat down, Tracy Cameron came in to drop off some supplies and she stopped at our table for a "getting-caught-up" chat with us.    

In the corner of the restaurant next to the bar, there's a display of former items that were made at Frank Boyler's original blacksmith shop.  Horseshoes, harnesses and blacksmithing tools hang from the exposed brick walls in the corner at Brew.  On the menu is a small history of Frank Boyler and his business that was once in the same spot over 100 years before.  

One of the first things that I had to get was one of their Bloody Mary's.  I always like getting a beer to go along with my Bloody Mary's - even at 8:30 in the morning.  They have a number of Quad City-area and Iowa craft beers on their menu and I ended up getting a Raygun IPA from the Backpocket Brewing Company over in Coralville.  They load up the Bloody Mary at Brew by putting a pickle spear and green olives on a spear with a strip of their wonderful house-made bacon.  One of my neighbors and I have been known to stealthily roll down the hill to Brew from time to time on Saturday or Sunday mornings to have a quick Bloody Mary and a beer.  Or two.  

On the weekends, they have bottomless mimosas available until 2 p.m. for $14.95.  My wife likes a mimosa from time to time, but she isn't one to sit there for a long spell drinking them down.  They will just charge you for one mimosa at a time if you like and that's exactly what my wife ordered from Jessica. 

As I said, there's really not a lot of room for a kitchen at Brew in the Village, so their menu is pretty limited.  They don't have a fryer or a grill top, so if you're looking for a burger and fries, Brew ain't the place.  But they do have sandwiches, flatbreads and salads available.  Appetizers such as a charcuterie board of cured meats and local cheese, stuffed mushrooms, and red pepper hummus served with fresh vegetables or crostini bread for dipping are also available.  

I have to tell you, though - I've never been there for anything but breakfast since the Chen's and Tracy Cameron have been running the place.  My wife has met friends there for wine and appetizers in the evenings, but I've only been there for breakfast.  And their breakfast items are rather unique.  Once again, you won't find omelets, French Toast or pancakes on the menu.  But they do have breakfast sandwiches - big enough that my wife and I can usually split one - breakfast tacos, and biscuits and gravy.  On the weekends, they also bring in a waffle iron and make their variation of a cinnamon roll waffle that's served with cinnamon butter and a cream cheese icing.  

What my wife and I usually get, however, is one of the Brew breakfast bowls - a concoction of scrambled eggs and a varied choice of cheese, vegetables and meat to add into it.  They call this the Hulk Smash and it's served with a biscuit and honey on the side.  This morning we got the bowl with smoked gouda cheese (that appeared to be cheddar, but the chef at the bar swore to us when we asked about it that it was, indeed, gouda), spinach, ham, and avocado chunks.  Also on the weekend, Brew serves Tracy's wonderful cheesy potatoes.  We'd been trying to eat smart in the previous weeks, but the oven-baked cheesy potatoes are too good to pass up at Brew.   And we usually get a side of bacon with our breakfast, but for some reason I didn't order any on this visit.  

My wife and I usually split the breakfast bowl at Brew passing it on between us to nibble on for a bit before passing it back.  The cheesy potatoes - well, that's a free for all.  We try to position them where we both can reach them with a fork.  There's more than enough food in the breakfast bowl for us to easily split one.  And when you add in the cheese breakfast potatoes, we usually don't have to eat lunch that day.  

Brew in the Village isn't the restaurant you're looking for if you're thinking about getting a burger, some fried appetizers, or an omelet.  But for the space they have to work with, their small kitchen area behind the bar is efficient enough to offer a number of interesting items for breakfast and sandwiches.  They have a number of craft beers available, as well as wines and mixed drinks.  Their Bloody Mary's that they serve are usually spot-hitters for me on Saturday or Sunday mornings.  It's a quaint little space housed in a building that dates back to pre-Civil War days.  Brew in the Village is one of the best out-in-the-open hidden secrets in the Quad Cities.     

Hy-Vee Market Grille - Davenport, IA

I've been sort of intrigued by these Hy-Vee Market Grille locations that have been popping up around the Upper Midwest over the last few years.  It's kind of an interesting concept - having a sit-down restaurant in a grocery store.  OK - it makes sense.  They can get the freshest ingredients from their meat and produce department.  But they also have a full bar with craft beers and specialty cocktails.  Now, I don't think of Hy-Vee as being a place where I'd go for dinner or to hang out for a beer or three.  But I'd heard that they had a very good burger at the Hy-Vee Market Grille.  And no matter how many times I'd suggested to my wife that we needed to go out to the Hy-Vee at 53rd and Utica Ridge on the northeast side of Davenport to try one of their burgers, she was less than enthusiastic with my proposal.  Finally, one weekday when I was home, I decided to head out there to try one of their burgers.  Without my wife.  

If you live in the states of Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin and South Dakota, you're very familiar with Hy-Vee grocery stores.  They are the largest grocery store chain in the Midwest with nearly 250 locations employing over 85,000 people with a combined annual sales total of over $10 billion.  The genesis of Hy-Vee began in the small town of Beaconsfield, IA in 1930 by Charles Hyde and David Vredenburg, two men who owned a handful of small dry goods outlets in southern Iowa and northern Missouri.  The two combined over a dozen individually owned stores after the Great Depression into Supply Store locations with the town's name preceding the Supply Store title.  

In 1952, the company changed its name to Hy-Vee - a combination of the Hyde and Vredenburg names - and started a gradual expansion of both stores and services.  By the late 60's, under the leadership of co-founder David Vredenburg's son Dwight, Hy-Vee had grown to nearly 70 locations in Iowa and southern Minnesota.  But the company's serious growth spurt happened under President/CEO/Chairman of the Board Ron Pearson.  Pearson oversaw the operations of the grocery chain as they had expanded into more states and became the second largest employee-owned company in the U.S.  Stores of over 70,000 square feet became the standard footprint of new Hy-Vee stores just before and after the turn of the century.  

Hy-Vee has expanded their brand into gas stations, health and nutrition products, clothing boutiques, on-line grocery shopping, and partnering with actor/entertainer Mark Wahlberg on a line of sports nutrition products, as well as working with Wahlberg's brothers Donnie and Paul in franchising over two dozen Wahlburger locations in the Upper Midwest.  And just last year, Hy-Vee opened the first Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh convenience store not far from where I live in Davenport, IA.  Fast & Fresh offers many "ready-to-eat" meals-on-the-go including made to order wood-fired pizza, sushi, a craft beer station, full liquor and beer store, and a Starbucks on premises.  Unlike the main Hy-Vee grocery stores that are open 24 hours, 7 days a week, the Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh stores are open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m.  (Look for an upcoming Road Tips blog post on the wood-fired pizza from Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh.)  

About 8 years ago, current Hy-Vee CEO Randy Edeker spearheaded an effort to bring full service restaurants to select Hy-Vee stores in the chain.  These would be sit-down establishments serving a variety of breakfast, lunch and dinner entrees, sandwiches, burgers and appetizers featuring craft beers, mixed drinks and a Sunday brunch spread that rivaled many other brunch places in certain cities.  The first Hy-Vee Market Grille opened in 2012 and it was met with a lot of skepticism from people.  Many of the locations floundered for the first couple three years they were open and in 2017 Hy-Vee scaled back a number of the Market Grille locations into Market Grille Express concepts with an reduced menu and counter-ordering only.  Today, there are nearly 50 Market Grille locations and another 75 Market Grille Express locations.  

My wife and I have also been a little leery of the Market Grille restaurants that we would see around the Quad Cities.  But a little over a year ago a friend told me that the Market Grille up on 53rd Ave. and Utica Ridge Road in northeast Davenport had pretty good food - including a great burger.  As I said earlier, I wanted to go try the burger there, but each time I suggested it to my wife, she wasn't too thrilled with the idea.  That's how I ended up going alone to the Market Grille location inside Davenport Hy-Vee #4 one afternoon for lunch.  (see map)

Walking into the Market Grille, I lingered up front by the bar area for a moment as I was waiting for someone to come to the hostess stand.  With a number of flat screen televisions hanging all over the place, it sort of looked somewhat like an upscale sports bar.  The space was well lit with natural light coming in from the wall of windows along the south side of the room.  

I greeted by a young lady who showed me to a booth back in the corner of the restaurant.  It was a spacious area with a combination of booths and tables, as well as banquette seating in the center of the Market Grille.  

I was given a menu and it wasn't long before my server, a pleasant young lady by the name of Bethanie, came over to greet me.  I got a light beer that was on tap - she asked me if I wanted a 16 or a 25 ounce beer. I got the 16 ounce beer because I needed to get back to my home office and do some work later in the afternoon.  

Even though I was there for the burger that day, I have to say that I was somewhat surprised at the food options available at the Market Grille.  They had pasta dishes including chicken parm and a chicken & asparagus carbonara, sushi rolls, Asian/Thai dishes, seafood items such as grilled salmon and blackened shrimp tacos (the Baja fish tacos really caught my eye - I may have to go back and try those some day), as well as steaks and pork chops. Sandwiches such as a reuben, a classic club sandwich, a spicy Buffalo chicken sandwich, and a gourmet BLT were also available.  A number of interesting appetizers including pepperoni pinwheels, and bacon/jalapeno won-tons, as well as flatbreads and a selection of salads rounded out the menu.  

They had seven or eight burgers on the menu including a California burger topped with guacamole, bacon and a sriracha honey sauce, a mac & cheese burger, a gourmet three-cheese patty melt, and a peanut butter burger (uh, no thanks).  For my first trip in to try a burger at the Market Grille, I went with their regular cheeseburger.  Six different types of cheese are available and I got the smoked gouda on mine.  I also asked Bethanie to put some bacon and some sautéed mushrooms on the burger.  

The burgers at the Market Grille are all cooked to order and my medium burger came out with a nice pink tint in the middle.  It was served on a toasted bun with a side of fries.  One thing that I noticed is that the only condiment they offered was a small metal container of ketchup.  (I suppose I could have asked for mustard or more ketchup if I wanted.  But I was happy with the burger the way it was.  

And the burger was... good.  Actually, it was surprisingly good.  In fact, it was astonishingly very good.  It was a multiple napkin burger because of the combination of juiciness and the toppings on the burger.  The smoked gouda oozed off the patty with nearly each bite, the bacon was thick cut and a delicious added flavor to the burger, and the sautéed mushrooms were fresh and earthy.  The bun even held together very well with all that was going on with the burger.  

The fries were more of an afterthought for me, but I thought they were pretty good.  Except they were too salty for my taste.  I only had a few of the fries because I was concentrating on finishing the burger.  Which I did.     

I have to say that any misconceptions or misgivings I had about eating at a Hy-Vee Market Grille sort of went away after this visit.  The burger was surprisingly very good, the restaurant, itself, was bright, clean, and comfortable, and I was more than happy with the cheerful and friendly service I received.  And there were some other interesting items I found on the menu that makes me want to go back and try at some point.  But what I really have to do is convince my wife that the burger is actually THAT good at the Hy-Vee Market Grille so she'll go there with me.   

Judy's Barge Inn - Buffalo, IA

There's a number of little towns up and down the Mississippi River that always seem to have one or two places that have good views of the river along with a serviceable food menu along with cold adult beverages.  My wife and I went out to Buffalo, west of Davenport, last summer to go have lunch at Judy's Barge Inn.  A buddy of mine lives out near Buffalo and he mentioned that we should meet out at Judy's for lunch sometime.  We finally got around to doing that during the holiday season late last year.  

Judy Van Blaracom and her husband, J.D., characterize themselves as "river people".  For years, the couple has lived on Enchanted Island, a small housing development that is right next to - and sometimes in - the Mississippi River on the southwest side of Davenport.  When a longtime restaurant in Buffalo became available a little over three years ago, Judy decided to jump in with both feet and buy the place.  She convinced her sister Terry Ruth to join her in the venture, and Judy's daughter Michelle soon joined up with her mom and aunt.  J.D. Van Blaracom is also involved in the business as sort of a "jack-of-all-trades".  Judy and her sister came up with the food menu with the same philosophy they had while growing up - make food that is good because they like to eat.  

I met my buddy at the bar around 1 p.m. on a weekday.  (Judy's is closed on Monday's.)  Judy's is housed in an old river house along Iowa Highway 22 that was originally built back in 1856.  (see map) There were a handful of locals milling about the bar area and into the attached dining area off to the side.  There's a back patio area that's open in the warmer months that also has a small stage for live music in the summer months.  There's also a smoker in the back patio area for barbecue specials Judy's runs from time to time.  During the summer months, Judy has a small produce garden in the back that she tends to for fresh vegetables and herbs, but also relies upon local growers to supply her with fresh produce year round.   

Judy's daughter Michelle was tending bar that day and recognized my buddy who is a semi-regular in the place.  She gave us a couple menus to look over and we both ordered a couple beers.  Judy's has mostly domestics, but they did have a few of the local Quad City-area craft beers to choose from, as well.  

It's not an extensive menu at Judy's - they feature a couple of burgers, a grilled chicken sandwich, a pork tenderloin sandwich and a sliced turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.  Appetizers are your usual fare - chicken wings and tenders, spinach and artichoke dip with chips, pulled pork nachos, and house-made pretzel sticks.  Soups and salads are also available daily.  

When my wife and I first made the pilgrimage to Judy's last summer, I had the Judy's Barge Burger - a 1/2 pound Wagyu beef patty topped with onion straws, a fried egg, bacon, and American cheese served on a butter brioche bun.  Lettuce, sliced tomatoes, dill pickles and a slice of red onion also came on the burger.  When it was brought out to me, I was blown away by the size.  But the one thing that I remember was that the onion straws were outstanding.  I prefer onion straws over regular onion rings more times than not and Judy's are very good.

Except this time, I asked Michelle if I could also get a side of the onion straws.  Well, that was a mistake.  Not because they weren't very good - there was just a ton of them!  And there was no way that I could have eaten both the huge burger and the onion straws.  I got a side of Judy's house-made barbecue sauce on the side.

The burger was just as good as I remember it was when I first went to Judy's.  I took a lot of the onion straws off the burger and asked that the fried egg be made hard as I don't like a messy burger with a soft egg on it.  There was a hint of pink inside the burger patty and it was juicy with a great beef flavor.  Judy sources her Wagyu beef from nearby Geest Farms in Blue Grass, IA.  Geest Farms raise their beef naturally without inducing hormones or antibiotics into their cattle.  (My wife and I will get some of their frozen beef from time to time at the Freight House Farmers Market in downtown Davenport during the spring and summer months.)  

My buddy ended up getting the chicken quesadilla that was part of the appetizer menu.  A side salsa and guacamole came with the quesadilla.  It was stuffed with goat cheese and chunks of chicken, then pan-fried to melt everything together.  His eyes got huge when Michelle set it down in front of him.  "Damn," he exclaimed.  "This is going to be two meals for me."  He ate about half of what he was served and had Michelle box up the rest for him to take home.  

While we were eating, Judy Van Blaracom came into the restaurant.  She came over to my buddy and gave him a big hug.  He introduced me to Judy, who I had seen before not only in her place, but at events around the Quad Cities.  Judy's blonde hair is hard to miss and she has a bright smile with eyes that seem to dance when she talks to people.  She seems like a person who would be hard not to like.

Judy's Barge Inn doesn't have an extensive menu, but what they have seems to be very good, very fresh, and served in large portions.  Their motto - "Come in Empty, Leave Full" - is certainly an apt phrase for Judy's.  Both times I've gotten the Barge Burger from Judy's Barge Inn I've been more than happy with the quality and taste, as well as the size of the thing.  I've never been able to fully finish one in a single sitting.  Judy's Barge Inn is a friendly place where people can be comfortable just whiling away their time either in the bar area or out in back patio area in the warmer months.  One thing that I want to go back to Judy's and try is their bloody mary which is over the top like many of the food portion sizes they serve.  

Abarrotes Carrillo - Davenport, IA

My wife and I happened to be over at Wake Brewing in Rock Island, IL one recent Friday evening, a nano-brewery that we like to go to from time to time.  As we were seated at the bar, a guy and a lady came into the place with some Mexican food they picked up earlier.  The bartender inquired as to where they got the food and the guy said that it was from a small Mexican grocery store over in Davenport.  "La Finca," I asked as I turned to him standing next to me.  He said, no, it was from another place on 3rd St. on a corner on the west edge of downtown Davenport.  He couldn't remember the name of the place, but he said they had excellent Mexican food.  My wife said she knew where the place was and that we should go there sometime.  

That sometime came less than 24 hours later as we tried to get into Los Primos, one of our favorite little Mexican places in the Quad Cities, for some lunchtime tacos.  But the place was packed and they changed the way you ordered food where instead of ordering at the counter, it was now wait service.  The only problem was that they didn't have enough staff on hand to wait on tables or to clear the tables off from previous diners.  We sat there for nearly 15 minutes with a half-cleaned table before we decided to cut our losses and leave.  Disappointed, we took off toward downtown Davenport and pulled up to the corner of W. 3rd and Warren Streets to go have lunch at Abarrotes Carrillo.  (see map)

Adrian Carrillo grew up in Guanajuato, Mexico and immigrated to Muscatine a number of years ago.  He and his wife, Rosa, raised a large family - six boys and five girls.  Seeing an opportunity to open a grocery store/taqueria on downtown Davenport's west side, the Carrillo's opened Abarrotes Carrillo (basically translated as Carrillo's Groceries) in 2014.  Many of their children help out in the grocery/meat market/restaurant.  

Entering the building, you walk right into the grocery store.  There's a large emphasis on vegetables and fruits at Abarottes Carrillo finding everything from tomatillos to sapodilla in the bins.  The meat counter in the back featured pork and beef cuts, and we also saw that they had fresh ceviche in the meat case.  The young man behind the counter told us that they make their ceviche each Friday.  Canned foods, spices, and other Mexican food items were found on shelves along the narrow aisles of the tienda. 

To the left of the grocery store as you're facing toward the back when you come in is the small restaurant.  Colorful and interesting piñatas hung from the ceiling in the dining area.  We especially got a small kick out of the piñata shaped like a minion from the Despicable Me movie franchise.   

The restaurant isn't all that large - it features four or five booths along the wall with a handful of tables in the center of the room and along a half wall on the side.  Some of the Carrillo children and a few of their friends were hanging out in the back booth of the dining area as it was Saturday when we were in there.  

To order at Abarottes Carrillo, there's a window that looks into the kitchen manned by one of the Carrillo sons. There were three women working in the kitchen preparing food, which my wife says is a great sign that this was going to be some outstanding and authentic home-style Mexican cooking.  Carne Asada platters, menudo soup, tortas, pork dishes, enchiladas, and chile rellenos were part of the menu at Abarottes Carrillo.  Breakfast is also available during the mornings on weekends.  I'm pretty sure you can't get a margarita there, but imported Mexican beers were available in a cooler near the front counter of the grocery store.  We ended up just getting water on our initial visit.

After ordering at the window, we took a seat along the half wall.  Not long after we sat down, we were given a basket of chips along with a bowl of salsa and a small bowl of a creamy avocado concoction.  We asked if they had any type of a salsa verde and the young man brought out two bottles.  "The salsa verde is kind of spicy," he explained.  "But the other sauce is muy caliente."  And he said that with an impish smile on his face.   The chips were fresh, thin and crisp.  The salsa in the bowl was thick and zesty with a great tomato, onion, garlic and cilantro flavor.  It was some of the better salsa we'd experienced in the Quad Cities.  

The salsa verde in the bottle was a bit more than we bargained for.  It was VERY spicy.  Well, not at first, but it had a deep spicy kick on the backside.  But it was very good.  We found that if we tried a chip with the green salsa, then had a chip with the cool and creamy avocado dip, it helped cut down on the overall spiciness. We were too chicken to try the red sauce in the other bottle.  We figured if he said that if the green sauce was categorized as "kind of spicy" - and it turned out to be more than that - then the red sauce had to be burn-your-face-off hot.  

My wife's daughter is married to a Mexican national who knows his way around a kitchen very well.  He told us a long time ago that you can tell if a Mexican restaurant is good just by ordering the tacos.  And that's what we did on our first visit to Abarottes Cabrillo.  I went with a couple shredded pork tacos and a steak taco.  My wife went with a shredded chicken taco and a steak taco.  We figured that since they cut, then cooked their meat in-house, the tacos should be pretty good.  

The tacos were served on soft corn shells, Mexican-style with chopped onions and cilantro.  A half-slice of lime came on the side along with roasted onions and a roasted jalapeño.  The pork was more like shredded carnitas with sort of a citrus taste and a crispy edge to it.  It was a little tough, but still tasted good.  But the carne asada (steak) taco was absolutely outstanding.  I don't know what they did with the cut of beef or how they cooked it, but the meat was tender with a wonderful steak flavor.  Coupled with the fresh cilantro and onion, along with a dollop of the creamy avocado dip and a quick squirt of the spicy salsa verde, there were a lot of outstanding flavors going on with the tacos.  

My wife very much enjoyed her shredded chicken taco - the meat was moist and tender.  Like me, she really liked the carne asada taco, as well.  And for funsies, we decided to take a bite of the roasted jalapeños that we both had on our plate.  It had a great grilled taste, but - man - the spiciness hit me and it almost took my breath away!  It was back to the cool and creamy avocado dip to quell the burning in my mouth.  

I've said many times that we're blessed living the Quad Cities with all the excellent and authentic Mexican restaurants at our disposal.  And Abarottes Cabrillo is one of those places.  The menu isn't all that extensive, you can't get a margarita there, and the place is not all that fancy.  But if you can get past all of that, you'll find good to excellent authentic Mexican food there.  The combination grocery store/meat market/restaurant is family-owned and operated, and we found everything we tasted to be fresh and authentic.  Oh, yeah - we'll be going back for more food, as well as produce, meats and especially the ceviche at Abarottes Cabrillo.