Fair Grounds Coffeehouse’s new menu reflects the cafe’s culture.
By Denise Cheeseman
The best menus are always fresh: made with quality ingredients and continually reviewed and improved.
Fair Grounds Coffeehouse, 345 S. Dubuque St., recently redid its vegan and vegetarian-friendly menu. The Daily Iowan sat down with owner Steve Pernetti and cafe manager J.D. Nobel on Monday to discuss how the menu reflects the cafe’s changing history.
When Fair Grounds opened, it served only vegan dishes.
“To be honest with you, market-wise, it’s a small niche,” Nobel said. Even with Iowa City’s sizable vegan and vegetarian population, it was hard to fill the large space when Pernetti bought the business.
Surprisingly, Pernetti had worked in aerospace technology before he became Fair Ground’s owner in 2011. One day, when his wife was driving him to the airport for yet another work trip, she began crying because she would miss him, he said. He told her, “That’s just the gig,” but he realized it did not have to be.
So, he bought a restaurant.
Interacting with customers from all over has been an eye-opening experience for him.
“When you’re working in aerospace, you’re working with a very, very small fraction of the population, so you start to build your worldview around a small fraction of the population,” he said.
Six years later, Pernetti and Nobel have re-envisioned the menu to better reflect the coffee shop’s culture.
“One of the things that Steve’s been really good about is that we’re really inclusive with the community, and that’s not just the food — it’s the people, too,” Nobel said. “With the different artists we have in here, the different musicians, the people that we have doing readings and that kind of stuff, it’s just a great place to exchange ideas.”
Nobel said redoing the menu is an effort to provide a more integrated experience, regardless of one’s dietary restrictions.
“We’ve made it more inclusive, so when people are looking at it, it’s not like we’ve segregated the vegan stuff here and the vegetarian stuff and the other stuff here,” he said.
A particular favorite of Nobel’s is the Deli Reuben.
“It’s very popular, and it’s just a classic,” he said. “We do the corned beef in-house, and it’s on a nice marble rye … but we also can make you one that’s healthier for you with turkey, and that’s the Rachel, or if you’re vegan, you can have it with our marinated tempeh.”
Nobel also recommends the Virgin Bananas Foster Pancakes with house-made caramel sauce and the My Blue Feta French toast, a vegetarian option made with blueberries and sharp feta cheese.
The new menu will appeal to a wider audience of vegans and nonvegans alike as downtown Iowa City expands to incorporate Fair Grounds.
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Nobel said the current location of Fairgrounds isn’t ideal because it is located about a block south of Burlington Street, where the downtown essentially ends.
“Initially, I would say this was not a great location,” Nobel said. “Routinely, things over on this side of town — especially if you went down to Linn Street — didn’t do very well.”
Soon, that will change as new buildings are constructed.
City planner Karen Howard said downtown is already expanding south of Burlington Street, meaning it will eventually encompass the Fair Grounds location and make it part of the Downtown District.
“As you can see from the cranes in the air, we’ve got two new hotels going up and fairly large apartment buildings going up,” she said. “All that new residential development will help support downtown businesses.”
Nobel believes that Fair Grounds is ready to handle the changing atmosphere of downtown.
“I think this fall’s probably going to be our best fall ever,” Nobel said. “With the new menu and everything moving forward, it’s just starting to gel together in a way that I didn’t see it doing in the past, and it’s nice. I think we’ve got the right mix of people, with the right menu, right now.”
