There are a number of eateries that fit this description well, and doubtless those will be featured at a later date as further subjects of articles in this series, but ultimately only one could ever answer the question of what Iowa City food is to me.

George’s Buffet is an unassuming dive bar sat just off of the one-way, westbound, Market Street. The small structure is saddled between an alley leading back to another side street and a modern imposing building housing The Webster (a high-end feature in Iowa City’s restaurant scene) on the corner of North Linn Street. Further up the road is the Bluebird’s parking lot, and its corresponding classic diner.

On its own, George’s doesn’t seem particularly remarkable. It’s a bar with at best precarious street parking out front. The distinctive black-and-yellow striped awning, amidst a bright building, pairs curiously with the dark front window, a black-painted facade of the buffet itself. One could stand outside and barely see the dark interior through the glass, shrouded behind a myriad of verdant plants and signs of beer brands obscuring the heart of the building.

And even if one chooses to enter this place, there’s little immediately to write home about. It is, to the George’s-virgin’s eyes, exactly the kind of bar it’s exterior eludes it to be. Mostly black furnishing fills the murky space. At any given hour the bartender is serving a variously-sized crowd of locals, occasionally bolstered by a stray party of collegiate bar-crawlers or quieter, studious types, tapping away at laptops over choice beverages. Collages, maps, and beer-branded placards adorn the shady, antiquated walls. These ornaments catch one’s gazing eyes. Behind the counter, amidst the bric-a-brac of liqueur and oddities, hand two old and dimly lit machines. To a modern viewer, they seem nothing more than another bauble in the long line.

The keen reader will recall the full title of this establishment, George’s Buffet. An inquisitive sort might find themselves looking for food within. Without inquiry, this sort of fellow might find themselves deeply disappointed. Chips hang amongst the liquers behind the bar, but little more, and certainly nothing resembling the traditional sense of buffet. I’m certain many people have stopped here expecting that one named part of George’s Buffet, and unsatisfied by its absence sought elsewhere for more overt dining prospects.

But what is there if you pull away the curtain, and look behind the veil? What can we find in searching this place for eatery?

It’s a well-worn, time-honored process: step up to the bar, and order 2 burgers. In my experience, you ask for everything on them, which doesn’t really amount to much. You can add horseradish, but I’ve never been quite fond of it myself. After a few minutes (or longer, depending on how crowded it is), they’ll bring the burgers out to you. They’re wrapped in the classic paper style, not particularly imposing things. George’s burgers are neither big, nor heavy, nor tall. And yet, they are in my own opinion the greatest burgers Iowa City has to offer.

These burgers are rather hard to describe, because they are ultimately so simple. They have pickles and diced onions beneath the fairly austere bun. The cooks put ketchup and mustard on them. What is the secret then, dear reader? What puts these burgers above the average barbecue uncle’s handiwork?

I might be content to call it magic. The truth really isn’t that far from it. In the back of the bar stands an ancient boiler. Longtime George’s regulars speculate, that it was forged by the first peoples to walk the earth, in times long forgotten even in myth and legend, shaped by a thousand hands, each belonging to masters of their craft, suffused with all the awesome power known to the elders of man. It is a keepsake from a time of heroes.

I kid. However, the broiler is in all fairness pretty dang old. I’m not sure exactly when it appeared, but I believe it’s been there since Georges opened more than 8 decades ago, or otherwise shortly after. The burgers made in the thing have almost a century of built up flavor embedded in them. To my memory, the owner of Georges once even tried making a burger the exact same way but in a different broiler, and it wasn’t nearly as good.

That’s the magic, if you’d like to call it that. I certainly would, dear reader.

George’s works as a starting point because it stands for much of the culinary offerings here in Iowa City as a whole.

If you came here as somebody from outside Iowa, what does Iowa City mean to you? We have a football team. We host a number of great academic institutions. You’ve likely heard of our hospital. But isn’t that just the surface level? There are so many wonderful shards of this place hidden beneath the surface, if you only look a little bit closer. I suppose that’s a kind of mission statement for this column: Looking beneath the superficial, gathering fragments to reassemble the whole of this college town. Seeking out the great food in Iowa City, be it obvious to–or obscured from–the surface view.

I only hope I can shed light on new experiences for you, dear readers. To look closer. Dig deeper.

Until the next.

The post Under the Table: George’s Buffet appeared first on KRUI Radio.

This four-course collaborative dinner event was hosted in the red-lit den of St. Burch, and it worked in tandem with the nationalities of four members of The University of Iowa International Writing Program, all of whom read short pieces from their various projects. Inspired by the acclaimed late chef and travel extraordinaire Anthony Bourdain, the evening was a celebration of the power of food and its ability to bring turn strangers into friends. White notecards with quotes from Bourdain adorned the tables, such as the following: “Without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, and moribund.”

I unknowingly took Bourdain’s advice about trying new things (like being a pseudo food critic for the night) when I walked into this event a little before 5 p.m. on Saturday as not only the sole college student, but also the youngest patron by 20 years. I was initially prepared to simply observe the event and not partake in the actual dining since it was a full house, every seat booked.

However, there was a no-show at one table in the corner, and I happily occupied the vacant seat before the second course started (the first course, which I did not taste, was a Fijian dish called Kokoda, served in a coconut while Fijian author Gina Cole read.) My table mates included two couples, one from Des Moines and one from Chicago, and two women flying solo. In the true spirit of the evening, they chatted with me and asked me about school and what brought me to this dinner. Then the second course rolled out.

This Lithuanian dish called Kibinais and Kepta Duona, filled with roasted shiitake mushrooms and creamy potatoes and accompanied by two savory sauces for dipping, reminded me of a refined chicken pot pie. The buttery crust had the same melt-in-your-mouth appeal, and the filling was incredibly flavorful even without the extra sauces. I would have loved one or two more big bites of it, but I had to pace myself for the last two courses. While guests filled their stomachs, Lithuanian writer Aušra Kaziliūnaitė read from her collection of poetry “The Moon is a Pill”.

The real star of the show was the third course, a Venezuelan dish called Asado Negro: a beef roast that’s been prepared in a delectable wine broth and served over a bed of yellow rice, black beans and plantains. Not surprisingly, it beat anything I could whip up in my apartment by a landslide. I feasted on two thinly sliced pieces and all the rice I could take while still being polite to my table-mates. Venezuelan author Jacqueline Goldberg read during this course, both in her native Spanish and English.

To finish out the night, the dessert course and its flavors was unlike anything I had eaten in a long time.

Inspired by Eman AlYousuf, who is from the United Arab Emirates, and her family recipe, this fragrant dessert called Basboussa was a dense sweet cake, garnished with colorful carrot jam and yogurt sauces and candied almonds. AlYousuf was the last of the writers to read, and she expressed her gratitude towards the St. Burch staff, the diners, as well at the IWP. As I said earlier, I was incredibly lucky and grateful to attend this event, to taste dishes from cultures with which I was unfamiliar, and talk with adults who welcomed me into their table.

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