Bier Stube Bar & Grill

mynie

Indiana

3.48/5  rDev 0%
vibe: 3.5 | quality: 3.5 | service: 3 | selection: 3.5 | food: 4.5 | $$

Think of LeClaire as a southern Galena. It's pretty and expensive and almost saccharine sweet. Some antique places are nice, if overpriced. Others are like the front of a Cracker Barrel. The locals are... strange. Hillbillies, mostly. For decades they lived lived their quiet, smalltown lives in the shadow of biggish metro area up the way (the QCA, here). And then just recently they've been turned into a halfassed vacation spot. Part of them wants to thank you for your tourist dollars. Another part of them still holds onto that smalltown distrust of the interloper, the desire to summon Malachi from the cornfield so that he may eliminate the outlander.

And, hey, they just got themselves a Bierstube. Fancy. Like the ones in Davenport and Moline only prettier, more wooden. It's in the middle of a strip mall but the decor is still homey.

The bartenders don't know shit about shit but they're nice, nice people. They had about a dozen good German taps and another dozen bottles. Nothing remarkable, but a good selection for the Quad Cities and easily, by far the best selection for miles around. The beer alone is well worth the drive from Port Byron, Clinton, or even Savanna.

Where it really shines, and I mean it blows you away because you're absolutely not expecting it, is the food. It's *much* better than the food at the other bierstubes, and those places got pretty good food.

There are other restaurants in LeClaire. Two of them are supposed to be fancy. They got very high prices and desert carts and pianos and thick carpet. But the food ain't great. It's good, but not great. This--this is great. It's pub fare perfected. The food might not contain obscure cheeses and it might not be outrageously priced, but good god it is tasty.

07-17-2009 06:25:40 | More by mynie