Orchard Green

Gilbert St., just north of Prentiss
Iowa City

The Old Capitol Brew Works used to have a restaurant attached (with the worst service in the world) and the brewery was downstairs. We used to go down there and get yeast from Paul, the brewer. It is interesting now to be in that same space, that was filled with brewing equipment, offices and bathrooms which are now a fancy bar, seating area with a fireplace and (the same) bathrooms. The restaurant part is upstairs, which I have not been to but I have heard it is pretty expensive. I've been to the bar area twice now.

They have a decent selection of beer on tap, and apparently there is a connection to John's Grocery, but it's the same decent beer that other decent bars have in town. We were hoping for something a little more unique, especially with the John's connection.
The beer on tap is also ridiculously expensive. $6 for a pint of Millstream IPA. Come on, you can get Millstream all over town and the brewery is local! John's White is the cheapest thing on tap, at $5. Oh, I'm wrong about that. PBR is the cheapest thing on tap. I did get a really good beer for $6, from an old brewery in Germany. I can't remember what it was called. I think it's pretty funny that they have a neon sign hanging on the wall that says "Budweiser" on top and has their logo underneath it (which happens to look like a majorly wind-blown tree with a pair of balls hanging from the crotch of the tree). If you are going to pride yourself on having great beer, don't hang up a big sign with your logo and a domestic beer. That's my advice.

We went on a Sunday afternoon, and they didn't have any specials on anything. When we went after work awhile back, they had the Millstream IPA on special for $2 a pint. Now that's something worth coming back for!
We had cheeseburgers- mine with swiss, his with cheddar. The waitress brought us a bottle of ketchup with some old ketchup smears all over the lid. The salt shaker she brought to the table had what looked like miniature pubic hairs all over the top. The burgers came with a lot of meat- I remember when a quarter pounder was a big hamburger. Then everyone started offering 1/3 lb. burgers. Now, I have seen 1/2 lb. burgers almost everywhere I go. This gradual change in serving size is starting to get ridiculous- I don't know how much meat was in my burger, but I couldn't eat it all. I don't eat meat often enough to be able to eat that much in one sitting. That being said, the burger came with about 11 french fries. You shouldn't finish eating your french fries before you aren't even half done with your burger! The burger also came with tomato, red onion and sprouts, and instead of a bun there was a sort of focaccia bread with black olives in it. It tasted pretty strange with the other ingredients of the burger and it really soaked up the grease from the meat which was kind of nasty.

After bringing us some fancy glasses of water with lemon wedges with stripes across the rinds, our waitress asked us if we wanted anything else, and we said no. We then waited for about 10 minutes and when she didn't come back, we started counting up the bill- $11 for the 2 beers and $9.50 for each burger=$30+tax+tip. We had enough cash, so we left it on the table and walked out, without ever seeing the waitress again.

Environmentally- reusable plates, cloth napkins. Paper napkins for use as coasters, which always sucks. The bathroom had a paper towel dispenser and an air dryer, but I couldn't get the paper towel dispenser to work so I used the old wipe 'em on the jeans method.