I grew up in Iowa City, so I’ve always taken for granted the inclination of Iowa Citians to support local business, particularly restaurants. Jen, being from Bettendorf, does not take it for granted, and often bemoans the lack of good food back in the Quad Cities. Jen and I are always looking for new places to eat around town, especially places we might occasionally go for breakfast. I’ve never understood why Iowa City can’t seem to support more good-yet-basic breakfast places downtown. We’re not hurting for moderate-to-upscale breakfasts: there’s The Motley Cow and Devotay, there’s Hamburg Inn, or, a little east of downtown, Lou Henri. But we’ve always been surprised that there wasn’t another diner-style restaurant downtown, aside from the Hamburg Inn. It seemed like there was room in Iowa City for another one, if it could establish enough of an alternative identity to Hamburg so that it wasn’t really trying to challenge the iconic Hamburg, but just exist comfortably alongside it. I liked Tony’s Grill a lot, but the tornados in the spring of 2006 wiped them out.

So we were excited to see the sign go up for the Bluebird Diner a couple of months ago, in place of the old paint store across from Artifacts, on the corner of Gilbert and Market.

We’ve been there twice now in the last week: last Sunday, for dinner, and then today for breakfast. In short, our experience has been mixed.

Sunday, December 7: Dinner

It’s hard to know what’s intentional and what’s not when you go into a place that’s just opened. The menus, for example, are photocopies on blue paper: one page for breakfast, and one for lunch/dinner. The decoration is relatively sparse, consisting most noticably of mirrors; we wondered if some of them had once adorned Baldy’s (now sadly turned into yet another bar).

From the types of tables and booths, the decor, lighting, and aforementioned menus, I was expecting classic diner food. Not so. After much hemming, I ordered the Grilled Sirloin (medium, please) Marinated in Orange Mojo; Jen went for Ratatouille over Parmesan Polenta. As we waited, at some point during our conversation, the music turned from “World” music (possibly Punjabi) to Air’s Moon Safari. The place was moderately busy, but not crowded, and it didn’t feel like we had to wait a long time for our food.

The steak was cooked well enough. It was pretty rare, but that seemed nobody’s fault; next time I’ll know that their idea of “medium” is rarer than mine. The “orange mojo” was very good. I asked what was in it, and was told (by Emily, our waitress, after she went in the back to ask) that they are very protective of their recipe, but it included “orange juice and a lot of other citrus-y stuff.” Mine came with mashed potatoes, which were thick and very tasty. I’ll let Jen comment, if she wants to, on her ratatouille. It will suffice to say that she liked it. We were both happy with the sizes of the servings, which did not leave us either overstuffed or guilty that we were leaving a lot of food on the table.

We shared a brownie, which was unremarkable, which is to say good (a warm so-so brownie is still a warm brownie), and left feeling awfully good about the Bluebird Diner, where we’d had two good meals and a brownie for a very reasonable price (under forty bucks, tip included).

Sunday, December 14: Breakfast

The Bluebird was busier this morning, but still not so busy that we weren’t seated immediately. There’s not actually that large of a dining area, but it’s deceptive; more people can sit there than it initially looks like. We sat and waited for my dad, who was meeting us there. As we waited, the huge panes of glass that make up the front of the diner were more striking–I suppose because it was daytime–and it occurred to me that this was one of the nicer features of the place.

When we’d been there the previous week, we asked to see a breakfast menu. What caught me right away was that they had biscuits and gravy. Now, I have a strange relationship with biscuits and gravy. I’m not in love with them by default, but I do think that when they’re good, they’re very very good. Unfortunately, when they’re bad, they taste like you just poured lard over a Sausage McMuffin. The latter is what it tastes like at most places, if you can get it at all. (A side note: the best biscuits and gravy I’ve every had was at a hotel buffet in Nashville. What this tells me is that when I am south of the Mason-Dixon line, I should be able to order them anywhere and be okay.)

Anyway. So I ordered the biscuits and gravy, but was also tempted by the pancakes Jen pointed to at an adjacent table, so I ordered a few pancakes too, with strawberries and grilled bananas. I did not immediately understand that the biscuits and gravy were coming with hash browns and two eggs, and by the time I did understand that, I had convinced myself I needed the pancakes. So I wound up with more food than I could reasonably be expected to eat, which was my own fault.

Jen wanted the cinnamon french toast–a cinnamon roll cut in half, and made into french toast–but they were out of cinnamon rolls, so she ordered the belgian waffle and a side of eggs. And here our troubles began.

All of the food seemed to take an awfully long time. This was somewhat foreseeable, as they were busier. But it was one of those situations where the table next to us ordered their food seconds before us, and they had been served, eaten, and had their check in hand while we were still wondering where our food was. A few minutes after that, the food came… except the waffle.

The biscuits and gravy were all right; the sausage was in the form of patties underneath, rather than in the gravy. They seemed to have added something to the sausage, and at the risk of sounding like Tiki “I like bacon” Barber on Iron Chef’s Thanksgiving Special, it wasn’t my thing. The consistency of the gravy was good; sometimes it’s too thick, especially the stuff that comes out of a can at breakfast chains. The biscuits were fine. But the sausage threw the whole thing off, because you really depend on sausage for most of the good flavor of biscuits and gravy. The pancakes were light, fluffy, and a little buttery, and the fruit was fresh, so I enjoyed that part of the meal, but there was nothing to wow me the way I’d been impressed at dinner the week before.

Now back to Jen’s situation. I don’t know how they make their waffles. But it seems like you’d have the batter already there, then put it in the waffle maker, let it cook, then put it on a plate and send it out. We would eventually find out that the first waffle stuck to the waffle maker, or something. The waitress assured us it would be “discounted.” But man, it took forever for that second waffle to come out. Dad and I were done, Jen’s eggs were long history, and the woman who eventually delivered the waffle dropped it off and said, “I’m sorry, we’ll take 50% off the waffle.”

It seems to me that if you’re a new place in town trying to establish a clientele, you try not to piss off your new customers. You want people to tell exclusively good stories about having been there. If the story has to include how something went wrong, you want that story to end with how it was made right immediately. And when you’re talking about a couple of dollars, and you’ve completely screwed up most of one person’s meal at the table, you don’t give them half off with a tepid apology, you give them that item for free. Perkins has this part down, for god’s sake. The flipping Village Inn has this covered. We’re not I’d-like-to-speak-to-the-manager types generally, so we didn’t say anything. Jen ate the waffle, which was very good, but now tainted, and we left somewhat disappointed by the new place we had been all excited about.

This is probably indicative of nothing so much as a new establishment trying to get its feet underneath it, and I do hope that the Bluebird Diner does get the kinks worked out. We’ll probably be back for lunch or dinner, and if those go well, maybe we’ll give breakfast another shot.