Omakase Sushi at Zipang in Calgary, the chocolate cake at Q Haute Cuisine also in Calgary, and the fried cheese curds at Copper Kettle in Dubuque. What these foods have in common is that they are some of the best things I have ever tasted in my life. I have had a lot of different and expensive foods such as foie gras, $125 dinner at Blackbird in Chicago, $100 dinner at Teatro in Calgary, True A5 Wagyu from Japan costing $240/lb. And while many were interesting experiences there were very few meal experiences where I would say “This is one of the greatest things I have ever eaten.” Oddly enough these simple cheese curds at Copper Kettle offered me one of those experiences.
Insane! How could cheese curds, a dish so lowly and pedestrian stand up to things like perfectly made sushi, or A5 Wagyu?
Firstly, just because something is expensive, or shrouded in hype, mastery, and mysticism like fine sushi or fine dining, does not necessarily mean that these are the best foods in the world. On the old Japanese Iron Chef, after 2000 dishes the chairman’s favorite dish from a sea of Foie gras, truffles, caviar, and lobster was a lowly dish of Szechuan prawns in hot chili paste (using Ketchup) from Iron Chef Chen Kenichi. This is the equivalent of saying that after hundreds of fine dining experiences that your favorite dish was Orange Chicken at one Chinese restaurant. There is no correlation between price and your enjoyment of food.
These cheese curds at the copper kettle are what you imagine the perfect cheese curds ever could be. Starting with the batter which is very light, and crispy with a tempura like texture but has much more browning, which leads to a deeper toasted flavor then tempura. Despite the fact that this is cheese which is partially fat and fried in fat, the batter stays completely free of grease and is not oily at all. The cheese itself advertises as Wisconsin cheese curds and the interesting part is that it actually tastes like an aged sharp cheddar. Most cheese curds lack flavor because they have not been aged for very long, but the yellow cheese curds have a sharp cheddar flavor that leads to a lot of complexity to each of the curds. Combine this with a Sriracha Ranch sauce. which contrasts the fatty rich flavor with a tangy spicy sauce, this dish is perfect. I cannot improve this dish because what it is trying to do it succeeds on every level and thats why it is probably one of the best things I have ever eaten.
The short of it is go to the Copper Kettle, and go order their cheese curds.
By, the way Copper Kettle is also a restaurant that serves things other than cheese curds. You will find it in a small residential part of northern Dubuque on Jackson Street. You would be forgiven to mistake it as some local bar or pub that serves the same beer and burgers that 50 other restaurants serve in the city (a pet peeve of mine). You would not be entirely incorrect, but you would also be missing out one of the best restaurants in the city.
The best way I can describe Copper Kettle is if a chef who worked in big city restaurants serving nuanced dishes like bone marrow and toast, slow roasted short ribs, or whole trout on a smoked cedar board, decided to go back to his home in a small town and open a simple restaurant serving familiar middle America food like burgers, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, and fish and chips. The result is the same familiar dishes, but updated with more modern ingredients, better technique, and modern presentation. The cheese curds being one of those dishes.
The dish we also had next to the cheese curds is the Scotch Egg, which is a soft boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and deep fried.
This dish just has the same attention to detail as the cheese curds, and is arguably equally as excellent. Maintaining the soft boiled egg and runny yolk while frying the whole sausage wrapped egg takes a lot of skill and timing to accomplish and it is executed perfectly as you can see in the picture. Crispy crunchy fried sausage on the outside with its intense seasonings of fennel and salt complement well to the rich runny yolk and mild flavor of the egg white. It is served with a grainy mustard and mayonnaise sauce and spring green salad, which the mustard goes well with the eggs and sausage (no surprise there). I appreciate the choice of grainy mustard which just has a more interesting texture and flavor; perfect for sausage (other than a hot dog which must always use yellow Frenches). Like the cheese curds I really cannot fault this dish because it just works and I would not do anything to improve on it.
An impressive other side to Copper Kettle is the drink menu which takes it’s key from the hipster craft cocktail movement from larger cities.
Unfortunately for me a lot of Vodka based drinks which should appeal to many people (who I personally think just don’t like the taste of alcohol) but not to my tastes. There is one drink that is not Vodka based that I got which is the Bittersweet.
This long drink is much like a Jack and Coke but more complex with the addition of bitters and significantly less sweet with the choice of Rye vs Jack Daniels. This would be the long drink alternative to whiskey drinkers like myself who enjoy the old style sugar and whiskey cocktails like Old Fashioned’s, Manhattan’s, and Sazerac’s. A very enjoyable drink on its own (although I would have a hard time thinking what to pair with it because of its bitter profile.)
For dinner we got two dishes. One which was Fish and Chips with actual potato chips, and the other was bacon wrapped pork tenderloin with red potatoes and vegetables. 
Fish and Chips was no surprise excellent as Copper Kettle has some excellent batter. Fish is cooked moist and perfectly; bonus points for made in-house coleslaw and tarter sauce, and potato chips also made in house. If you want a well executed Fish and Chip dish, then Copper Kettle has it, which as a Calgarian I really appreciate since back in Calgary, there was literally no restaurant I found could do a proper fish and chip dish. Either the batter would be greasy, the fish would be dry, or the batter was not crisp, or overly crisp and bready. Many things could go wrong with Fish and Chips and Copper Kettle just never hits any of those problems. (Don’t also get me started about French Fries which I wrote a whole post about how many restaurants would be better off using frozen.)
My dish was the bacon wrapped pork tenderloin which I wanted to get to test how well can the cooks handle a very easily overcooked piece of meat. If you read my review on Caroline’s you already know that this is an example of pork tenderloin done right. It does not have to be dry, as this was cooked perfectly with it being very juicy. As for the concept of the dish, I understand that bacon wrapped tenderloin is a common dish, I just never understood it, maybe because I am one of those people who enjoy bacon being on the super crispy end of the scale rather than on the meaty end.
The side of “stir fried-ish” vegetables of bell peppers and onions is nice, and also perfectly cooked as to still have some snap and texture to them, and the potatoes are nicley seasoned. Although I am confused as to what they are supposed to be, as in are they steamed, sauteed, or roasted? I think the potatoes could be slightly improved if they decided on the route of pan frying them till slightly crispy on the edges like hashbrowns, but as they stand, they are just well seasoned tender steamed potatoes with a little oil tossed with them.
I am not sure about the presentation of the tenderloin dish because its kind of a dated approach of taking 3 dishes and making sure each food is separate and not touching. This might be the trendy “big city” person in me vs. the old American kids way of serving food, that the trend today is to “assemble” your dishes usually with your meat on a puree (like mashed potatoes) served with a side of whole vegetables like stir fried bell peppers. The idea being if the food does not taste good together then they should not be sitting next to each other. So in more modern restaurants you would see a steak on mashed potatoes, rather than sitting next to it. It’s a subjective criticism and it really shouldn’t mark Copper Kettle against it, because it might keep Copper Kettle sensibly Midwestern to keep presentation this way.
Entree also comes with a side of spring greens, which is also the mark of a more modern restaurant that replaces the house salad of iceberg, carrots, and red cabbage; for arugula, frisee, cucumber, and tomato. To be honest, I have a weak spot for Iceberg lettuce thinking is very underrated, and find spring mix to be too spicy and delicate to be my salad green of choice, but I am in the minority on that.
I might be being nitpicky but that is really all I have at the Copper Kettle for their food. It really came down to more personal preferences rather than any technique or execution problems for the dish I ordered. The food at this restaurant is excellent and really shows how good simple dishes can be when the effort is put into them to find better ingredients and techniques to cook familiar dishes. These kinds of dishes are actually quite a rarity in a city like Calgary, since many restaurants either are incompetent at making the simple dishes like fish and chips or a burgers properly, or take the simple dishes like burgers too far and start “deconstructing” them, or serving them with fancy french bread, imported italian cheeses that don’t melt properly. Copper kettle is wholly successful at straddling that thin line of trying to take simple dishes like cheese curds, and making it better, without taking it too far.
Prices range quite wildly. the Pork Tenderloin will run you about $25 but fish and chips will only run you $15 and a burger will only cost you $10. So it can be up to you however your meal will cost. I definitely recommend getting one appetizer per person, but that’s mostly because they are the best dishes on the menu. The interior is representative of a modern restaurant, a lot of dark wood furniture and a semi-open kitchen where you can see chefs work. I always enjoyed an open kitchen since it gives you an appreciation of the hard work chefs do, and keeps things transparent between guests and staff. The staff is great, very professional and knowledgeable about the menu.* (see update below)
If you are out of town, and from a bigger more “foodie” city like San Francisco, New York, or Chicago. Take a trip a little out of the ways to the Copper Kettle, and you will find what Dubuque is really capable of.
*Update: We made another visit (with a party of 7) on a Friday night and had some trouble getting a table. I think one of the hosts was giving us a hard time even though we were willing to wait for a table, but the waiters were super accommodating to try to make it possible. I am not complaining that we could not get a table, (it’s Friday night on one of the best restaurants in town. duh.) The host wanted to shoot us down that it was not possible but there was a bar with 7 seats open so we took that over, but the bartender’s informed us that they would get us a table as soon as one opened up and transferred our whole bill there. Super awesome for the waitstaff to pull that off for us, we wish the host was not giving us the hard time when the staff disagreed. It was a long wait for our food (1hr) but was excellent as always. (broasted chicken is great and so are the mashed potatoes)
Yin's Beige Box 