If you are in Dubuque for a business trip to meet with an A big company like IBM, Hartig, or Cottingham Butler, you are likely from some other larger city and you will likely end up in the Julien Hotel. The hotel clearly tries to be the highest end hotel in Dubuque, primarily catering to tourists, and business executives from much larger cities. Catering to that kind of audience can be difficult, as many business travelers likely have a low opinion of the food in small “cities” like Dubuque compared to a Chicago, New York, or even Minneapolis. Caroline’s restaurant which is attached to the hotel tries very hard to cater towards the tastes of big city diners. While Caroline’s tries very hard to replicate the big city fine dining experience, it does not fully replicate the process, but at the same time does it without big city prices.
I do not normally make note of service in restaurants unless there is a problem with it, but in the category of “fine dining” it becomes part of the experience and part of the reason why you pay high prices on a particular menu. My personal experience for top end service has been 1 Michelin Star restaurant Blackbird in Chicago, as well as Q Haute Cuisine, and Teatro, both of which are in Calgary. All 3 restaurants are of the style that you pay around $100 USD per person for 5-8 course dinner tasting menu. This kind of service also applies to fine steakhouses to which my only context is Vintage Chophouse in Calgary (about $50 a person.) It is important to note that Caroline’s waitstaff tries very hard to emulate this kind of high end service that you see in these kinds of restaurants.
The things that separates this fine dining service from casual waiter service from a place like Hy-Vee market café, your local diner, or Barrel House is an unrushed waiter who is willing to take a few extra steps, or say a few extra sentences before, during, or after your meal to ensure that you are properly informed and enjoying your dining experience. The waiter will usually welcome you to the establishment, pour you and your partner a glass of ice water, tell you about the daily specials, the soups of the day, and what you would like to drink all without you asking a single question. Caroline’s follows this script very tightly, and it is meant to make you feel that your waiter is personally yours, and not a waiter for the 5 other customers around you. The other big difference is how knowledgeable the wait staff is, fine dining waitstaff should be able to describe every dish on the menu with the same details of how the chef designed it, what specific vegetables are used, how the dish is prepared, right down to which herbs and seasonings are used, bonus if they explain how they are supposed to enhance the dish.
Example: “The dish is a pan seared duck breast, seasoned with smoked paprika, served with sautéed asparagus, and carrot puree with a red wine reduction that brings a sweet acidity to the richness and delicate fat of the duck breast.”
Some may find this pretentious, fussy, or excessive and not worth the money. But keep in mind that marketing, words, and advertising affects how you enjoy and experience products. As Don Draper would say, “Advertising is about one thing. Happiness. It is a billboard that says ‘whatever you are doing, it’s okay.'” So as diners are told their bottle of wine is from Northern California they love the wine, and if it was from North Dakota they hated it. If you are being told a dish is great because a friend told you so, or wrote a convincing review, then you are also likely to believe as you are tasting the dish that it is great as well regardless of objectivity. We all would like to believe we are not as fallible and psychologically vulnerable as we actually are, but we wouldn’t spend millions of dollars on Ford Mustangs, Apple products, or Dyson vacuums, if we didn’t believe in the happiness it would sell us. So take in the experience and the words, as they are both figurative and literal seasonings to the dishes that will make it taste better.
Like many fine dining restaurants, Caroline’s starts with complementary bread made in house. A basket of freshly baked bread is a statement or prelude for things to come for many restaurants competing in this space. Chef Marco Pierre White states that the bread is the most important food in the restaurant since it is the first things the guest will eat.
The bread is more akin to a sandwich bread which is very different from many big city restaurants which will give a French style baguette or Italian Focaccia depending on the style of food. It’s a sweet, very tender, and almost cake like but with a much more substantial crust and irregular interior compared to a supermarket white sandwich bread. This isn’t my preferred style of bread which is a French Parisian Baguette but it definitely shows a different kind of taste Dubuque has, which prefers the bread in the sweet tender dinner roll style. Still it is fresh bread, to which I have a particular weakness for and its great to have it at the table on its own or to sop up juices or sauces from your main dishes. With the bread is a fine extra virgin olive oil and the server will ask if you would like freshly cracked black pepper on the oil.
At Caroline’s our main dishes of a grilled ribeye steak and pork tenderloin both came with an option of soup or salad. My boyfriend opted for a garden salad, and I went for the white bean chicken chili which has been on the menu for likely since this restaurant ever existed. My boyfriend had some trouble getting a salad dressing of his choice since all the dressings were made in house, and were not the typical bottled ranch, French, or 100 islands you come across, but rather balsamic vinaigrette, or a raspberry dressing.
No iceberg, carrots or even romaine lettuces here, but instead a spring mix of arugula, red onion, cucumber and cherry tomatoes with a raspberry dressing. Good salad execution, fresh crisp greens, with the nice crisp cucumber and the sweet spiciness of the crunchy red onion balances out the salad which is the important part. Sweet raspberry dressing is good combination of the oil, sweet, and tartness of the fruit to mix with the salad.
I personally went for the soup which was the white bean chicken chili (no photo of unfortunately.) Get it! It’s fantastic, it has been on the menu forever and for good reason. It is a great cross between a cream of chicken soup with chili spices and creamy white beans. Its very filling on its own with large pieces of chicken and whole beans; if it was a larger bowl rather than a cup I could see it as its own lunch option on its own.
The only complaint I have which is nothing to do with the soup, but the soup was served with packaged crackers, ones wrapped in plastic. While soup service this way is typical across 90% of diners and casual restaurants, it feels out of place at Caroline’s and a typical higher end restaurant would go out of its way to make its own crackers or crostini’s by oiling and grilling its own bread and serving the soup with it. It wouldn’t be that much effort for Caroline’s to take its own bread and simply brush its great olive oil on it and throw it on the grill, so it seems a little out of place to serve it with commercial crackers. I might be in the wrong with this like places that serve home made ketchup vs. Heinz but it does seem out of place.
The main entree’s were a Pork Tenderloin spice rubbed, and served with cherries, fingerling potatoes, and broccoli. 
The good news is that the vegetables are all very good, and I very much like the included cherries. A dried fruit and vegetables are a very underrated combination since the sweet and bitter flavors contrast really nicely as in this case with the broccoli. I think that the fingerling potatoes could be executed a bit better since its hard for the potatoes to be anything but bland or under-seasoned in this whole form. Since the skin protects the potato while it is cooking, any salts, oils or flavorings do not get into the center of the potato and you are left with the equivalent of a plain baked or steamed potato. I think much heavier seasoning or sautéing the fingerlings in butter, or simply peeling them before pan frying them in a little olive oil, salt, and parsley would be a better execution of dealing with these mini potatoes. The broccoli is sautéed which gives it a great smokey and rich meaty flavor, and nicely seasoned with salt, pepper and olive oil.
The pork tenderloin while well seasoned with great spices is unfortunately dry and overcooked. Which is a shame since it carries great flavor. I understand that cooking pork tenderloin is extremely difficult to prevent it from getting dry, even against other challenging cuts like chicken breast, but other restaurants (even in Dubuque) can get this cut right. A few weeks ago at the Copper Kettle restaurant I also had a similar pork tenderloin dish that was very juicy and perfectly cooked, so it is possible to cook this piece of meat well. The low fat nature of this meat makes it a challenge for restaurants to execute it well, so many times salt brining is used to increase the pork’s moisture content or Sous Vide cooking which I do at home is a guaranteed way to get a perfect product. There is an issue with the public that Pork products must be served well-done to avoid any parasites, and unfortunately that is only recently in the past 10 years that attitude is changing, that even the USDA has changed its guidelines from 160f (Well done) to 145(Medium). Unfortunately i can understand many guests at the hotel would be alarmed to be served a medium cooked piece of pork, but I do believe there is a responsibility to offer the proper temperature of pork at any fine restaurant serving it, much like a beef steak.
Speaking of Beef Steak, the other dish we had was a 14 Oz rib eye… 
This rib eye is grilled, and served with the same broccoli and smashed potatoes, and perfectly cooked to medium rare which is how I ordered it. To which this is a “great” steak but it is not an “exceptional steak.”
(Before I get side tracked, the smashed potatoes are well seasoned, and has a “reasonable” amount of butter and cream, but not in the “literally 25% of these potatoes is butter” super luxury camp that top chefs like)
I had a hard time justifying my critique of Caroline because there is “what Caroline’s is trying to be” which is a fine dining restaurant that matches the expectations of big city guests and tastes, and the price of which it actually charges which is about $25 a person. I usually leave prices for the end, but this steak and its price has to be talked about because its a strong difference in what its trying to be and what it kind of steak it is.
$20-$30 is not cheap especially around Dubuque, but specialty steak houses would typically charge about $40-$70 for a 14oz steak and not even include sides to go with it. What is the difference? USDA prime beef is where the money goes towards, which means beef that is naturally higher quality, with higher fat content. Caroline’s is likely serving USDA choice beef which has less fat content, and will be naturally less expensive. A diner or some chain restaurant like Applebee’s selling steak for $10 would likely be using USDA Select beef which is the lowest of the ratings with much less fat and be much less juicy. Also specialty steak houses and restaurants would be using broilers that are about 1500f which allows them to get medium rare doneness while getting an exceptional crust. Below is a picture of a steak from NYC Porterhouse.
See the difference between the deep dark brown charring? That is only possible by using extremely hot broilers or extremely hot specialty grills, both of which are expensive pieces of specialty equipment that a normal grill just will not achieve this kind of caramelization without overcooking the meat. Caroline’s cooked my steak to a perfect medium rare, but the grill is simply not hot enough to get the level of caramelization that these steakhouses can do it at.
But these things I am complaining about, are criticisms for a much higher price range than what is billed to you at the restaurant. Typically I evaluate a restaurant on what it is “trying to be” which lets me be fair between a burrito joint and a restaurant I dropped $100 a person for an 8 course dinner. But at Caroline’s I run into a conflict that it falls short at what it is trying to be, which is a fine dining restaurant, but the price it charges is so far off what a real fine dining restaurant actually would be. As it stands the steak at Caroline’s is the best steak you can make if you got a great 14 oz Choice grade Rib Eye from the supermarket, and grilled it on a propane grill you bought at Wal-Mart. Which by no means is a “Bad Steak” and it very well may be for some people “the best steak they ever had.” But this is not the absolute best a steak could be. For the price? It very well could be the best steak for the moderate sum of $30 with included sides. But if Caroline’s invested in getting top quality dry aged beef, and high price broilers, and charged big city prices, no one in Dubuque would eat there because its too expensive. So in a way Caroline’s gives affordable fine dining to the masses that can experience very similar levels of hospitality and service but a much more accessible price.
There are some execution flaws like the pork tenderloin which prevents Caroline’s from getting top marks even at it’s price point. But even though Caroline’s misses it mark at trying to match up the standards of a big city restaurant, it leaves a restaurant that serves fine dining levels of service, with affordable versions of expensive meals. Just don’t have expectations that it will be a match for spending $100 at a Ritz Carlton restaurant, or $50 for a steak at a top end steakhouse.
P.S: I was at this restaurant after a wedding that had drinks and appetizers on the reception floor. The wedding bar had a bartender named Vince, and I asked for an Old Fashioned cocktail. They smoke the glass with a burning piece of cedar, give it a flaming orange twist, and make it with the whiskey of your choice. While the food questionably can live up to the big city high end standards, the cocktails I have no doubt are on the same level as the Craft Cocktail scene in big cities. It is definitely worth a look especially if you enjoy old style cocktails like an Old Fashioned.
Yin's Beige Box 