{"id":1197,"date":"2018-02-06T07:52:55","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T13:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/?p=1197"},"modified":"2018-02-06T07:52:55","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T13:52:55","slug":"ive-been-everywhere-and-then-i-had-dinner-davenport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/ive-been-everywhere-and-then-i-had-dinner-davenport\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve Been Everywhere, and Then I Had Dinner, Davenport"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1198\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1198\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img class=\"wp-image-1198 size-full lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" data-src=\"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/dads-hat.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1198\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><noscript><img class=\"wp-image-1198 size-full lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/dads-hat.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/noscript> Entering Davenport for another I&#8217;ve Been Everywhere &amp; Then I Had Dinner adventure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>No, that is not my hat. It belongs to my father. He\u2019s a man who goes on epic motorcycle trips, likes <a href=\"http:\/\/loreenamckennitt.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Loreena McKennitt<\/a>, and stops at the gun factory on his way back to Kansas.\u00a0 (Side note, gun factory\u2019s have really fancy spa-like lady\u2019s restrooms.\u00a0 Weird, right? And Dad says it\u2019s not a factory, but he\u2019s not writing this story, so um yeah\u2026 it\u2019s a factory.) It\u2019s Friday morning, October 21, 2016 and we\u2019re on the last day of our first road-trip together in well over a decade. I know I\u2019m pushing the rules of my <a href=\"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/jessicaconoley\/the-ive-been-everywhere-and-then-i-had-dinner-project\/\">IBE&amp;TIHD experiment<\/a> because I have to eat either lunch or dinner in each of the cities, and we pull into Davenport around 10:00 a.m., which is dangerously in breakfast territory\u2014but sometimes you\u2019ve got to do the best with what you\u2019ve got. Caf\u00e9 d\u2019Marie (614 W. 5<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0St, Davenport, IA) doesn\u2019t open until 10:30, and since Dad has an innate compulsion that causes him to materialize anywhere early, we\u2019ve got some time to kill. I\u2019ve picked a restaurant for us based upon random Internet searches and a yelp review or two.<\/p>\n<p>Mostly I picked it because in the picture, the building looks old and weird, like it\u2019s covered in ivy and the building used to be a mill or something. Davenport\u2019s on a river\u2014a river that must flood often enough to be of immediate concern because there are sandbags that show up every couple of blocks. We drive around the historic district of the old downtown.\u00a0 Well we don\u2019t drive as much as bump, because the brick streets in the historic district cover hills that make the car rock from side to side.\u00a0 Not nice gentle slopes either. Hills that make us say, \u201cThis would be terrible in the winter,\u201d because they\u2019re seventy-five degree inclines of terror. \u00a0But the historic streets are neat and old and make you want to explore.\u00a0 There\u2019s a mix of derelict property with massively gigantic Victorian houses with wrap-around porches, and shingled exterior walls that are pastel purple or pink or green.\u00a0 These were once the homes of bootleggers and politicians\u2014back in my grandparent\u2019s youth, but now I\u2019m pretty sure there\u2019s a guy who would come out with a shotgun from at least one or two of those places.\u00a0 The houses have windowpanes with weird old ripply ghost glass that was blown a billion years ago and makes it always look like it\u2019s always raining outside. One out of every six houses is in good repair, some are livable but then next door you\u2019ll find a boarded up shadow-of-a-place that surely comes with it\u2019s own ghost.\u00a0 I wonder what it would be like to own a house like that.\u00a0 Start with something all broken and decrepit where you could dig through weird rooms and find old stuff and fancy bannisters.\u00a0 Dad says it\u2019d bankrupt you and it\u2019d be a ton of work.<\/p>\n<p>After thirty minutes of bumping about Dad parks on the brick street in front of one of those crazy houses, but it\u2019s one of the not- scary ones and it has ivy growing on the side.\u00a0 We\u2019ve arrived at the IBE&amp;TIHD part of the trip. Two guys are waiting out front on a miniscule square wooden porch.\u00a0 The neon open sign over the front door comes on, but the guys just stay outside chatting.\u00a0 I tell Dad, \u201cCome on,\u201d and we crowd onto the porch.\u00a0 Turns out the front door was just stuck, and after we pry it open everyone\u2019s a gentlemen and my uterus gets me to the front of the line.\u00a0 I walk on polished wooden floors into the restaurant\/house, past a staircase on the right and down a hall to enter the restaurant. The owner combined a drawing room and parlor into the dining space. The kitchen was opened up into the space and is full of people slicing and cleaning and prepping for the day\u2019s business.\u00a0 When you go to the restroom there\u2019s a sign to speak softly so you don\u2019t wake the baby, and a kids\u2019 playroom is around the corner.\u00a0 There\u2019s a shower in the bathroom, and you know this really is somebody\u2019s house.\u00a0 The floors are still wet from the morning mopping, and the owner tells us to sit in the front room because those floors are dry. Even though the entire place is empty she seats the two guys at the table directly next to us. Which is awkward because they\u2019re so close we could touch them and Dad\u2019s predisposed to talking to strangers, while my goal is to put as much space between me and a stranger as possible and heaven forbid I have to talk to them.\u00a0 Then Dad stands up to look at the room behind him.\u00a0 Grand archways neat woodwork, all the stuff that makes an old house cool and the lady tells him to sit down and it\u2019s awkward because she seems bossy in a non-normal way for a proprietress.\u00a0 She brings over the menu and chats with dad while I notice her chiropractor degree on the wall because I\u2019m sitting next to a big wooden desk, and there\u2019s a printer on it, like this is the home office in the night, when all the tables are pushed into the corner.<\/p>\n<p>I order a chai latte. Dad asks about cake, and it\u2019s only 10:30 but we\u2019re grown ups and if he wants to get cake for lunch all the power to him.\u00a0 The chocolate cake sits on the counter five tiers tall with fluffy smears of icing, but when she tells him there\u2019s coffee in the icing Dad balks.\u00a0 She insists you can just eat the cake, leave the icing and I think my Dad may have a heart attack right there\u2014complete madness cake without icing.\u00a0 So he orders the lemon cake instead, with a glass of milk. I order a chai latte-they\u2019ve got about fifty kinds of tea.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t remember what kind I got, maybe a rooibos and it comes out in a great big glass cup with an inch of foam on the top and it\u2019s sweet and frothy and hot and the perfect we\u2019re-just-on-this-side-of-autumn-drink. The cake arrives and is tall and yellow, and not as lemony as I prefer, but I am way more prone to lemon than the average individual, and Dad\u2019s very pleased with it. I\u2019m sitting in a patch of sunlight and dad\u2019s lit up like some kind of divine painting, and it\u2019s all going pretty well\u2014but then we have to decide what to eat for reals.<\/p>\n<p>What I really want is the grilled cheese Panini, it\u2019s got a handful of delish cheeses that rock my face off\u2014but grilled cheese is pretty hard to get wrong and I can get it almost anywhere so I look at the specialties and land on the quiche.\u00a0 The bacon, cheese, and spinach looks good.\u00a0 But then Marie has also added the cherry, goat cheese, and spinach option. (The special of the day was blueberry instead of cherry, but I learned from the time I made all-purple dinner to steer clear of putting blueberries in odd things because it can give the most appetizing of dishes a decidedly cadaverous hue.) \u00a0Any one of those things individually, or even a combo of two of the three, and I\u2019m a super fan, but there\u2019s something about the idea of baking all three into an egg pie that\u2019s too weird not to try it.<\/p>\n<p>Now the proprietress spent quite a while telling us about her cream of Brussels sprouts and cream of asparagus soups.\u00a0 She says people who\u00a0<em>hate\u00a0<\/em>Brussels sprouts (i.e. my father) love her soup.\u00a0 She has had forty-one haters try it and forty-one of them told her they like her soup.\u00a0 I wonder if everyone has told her it was good because they\u2019re scared of her, because she\u2019s got this really authoritarian-don\u2019t-challenge-me kind of vibe about her. I order a cup to go with my quiche, because while I\u2019m not a proponent of Brussels sprouts I don\u2019t abhor them (not like god-awful melons) and think I should check it out.\u00a0 When Dad orders a cup for himself I know it\u2019s a sign of the apocalypse.<\/p>\n<p>The restaurant starts filling up and the awkwardness of being six inches away from the men at the next table diminishes.\u00a0 Our food comes, and it looks pretty but as we\u2019re eating neither Dad nor I can find quite the right words, and it\u2019s a very quiet lunch.\u00a0 I offer Dad a bite of my cherry\/goat cheese\/spinach pie and oddly enough he\u2019s not interested. The crust on the quiche is flaky and buttery and yummy.\u00a0 The texture of the eggs is almost too fluffy and I think that has to do with the goat cheese? I expected chunks of goat cheese so you could get a molten lava bite of goat cheese tang, but I think she folded it into the eggs somehow which gave it a weird weepy rubbery-ness.\u00a0 Then you come across a super sweet hot cherry and the green damp leaf of spinach and your mouth gets confused about what in the hell is happening. The soup is cream based with carrots and halves of Brussels sprouts, a thick greenish goo holding it all together.\u00a0 It was hot and nice, but nothing I can remember with any clarity four days later.\u00a0 Dad tells the lady \u201cit was very good soup.\u00a0 Excellent.\u00a0 But, I wouldn\u2019t order it again.\u201d We get outside and I dig in my purse for some gum. Dad throws his hat on the dashboard and starts the engine. \u201cSo what\u2019d you think?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I ponder the cherry\/goat cheese\/spinach nonsense as we bump up the hill to get back to the highway and finally say, \u201cYou know just because you can do something doesn\u2019t mean you should.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dad laughed and we headed off to the gun factory, because it\u2019d be a shame for us not to stop.\u00a0 After all it was right on the way home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, that is not my hat. It belongs to my father. He\u2019s a man who goes on epic motorcycle trips, likes Loreena McKennitt, and stops at the gun factory on his way back to Kansas.\u00a0 (Side note, gun factory\u2019s have really fancy spa-like lady\u2019s restrooms.\u00a0 Weird, right? And Dad says it\u2019s not a factory, but&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,22],"tags":[178,21,23,24,179],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.12 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I\u2019ve Been Everywhere, and Then I Had Dinner, Davenport - Jessica Conoley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Another stop on an epic food treasure hunt. 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