Blairstown Cafe & Pizzeria

Reviews about Blairstown Cafe & Pizzeria

• 1 / 5

  By Dwayne Fry
  Being from Iowa and growing up in a small town, I have a thing for small Iowa towns. I enjoy looking around and taking photos. This is what I was doing when I first encountered one of the workers at Blairstown Cafe: taking a photo of the window. It's dirty and void of anything imaginative, but there's something about it I like. The man didn't seem to like that I was taking photos of the restaurant (I'm guessing he's the owner) and blocked the door, questioning me about why I took a picture of his little greasy spoon. I was tempted to go eat elsewhere, but went in. I should have gone with my first instinct.
  
  I ordered the gyro and got the salad bar with it. If there is a World's Record for small salad bars, this one is in contention. It becomes even smaller if you discount the inedible things on it. The cole slaw was sour and runny, the cottage cheese tasted dusty and the beans... oh Lord, those beans! I wasn't even sure what they were at first, just a pasty brown mush. I was too curious to pass them up, so I took a small helping. I had three tiny bites: The first confirmed that they were super mushy beans that were probably someone's idea of what baked beans should be like. The second bite confirmed that they had a weird, unhealthy taste to them. I was going to set them aside, but decided to try one more and see if I could identify the bizarre flavor in them. The third bite told me that the beans were rancid. Or the ketchup in them was old and fermented. Or.... who knows? Whatever the problem, they were disgusting and should be removed from Blairstown by HazMat.
  
  I also made a small salad of lettuce, black olives, dressing and croutons. All of which must have been okay as I'm still alive. This was really about the only choices for making a salad.
  
  The gyro was nothing to write home about. Something about it tells me it came from a kit or bought frozen. The meat was bland, the onions were stringy and the tomatoes were falling apart and about as mushy as the beans earlier. Also, it had about three times the tzatziki sauce necessary, blobbed on top of the sandwich instead of inside, making it a real joy to eat.
  
  Believe it or not, they managed to do coffee right and the waitress (who was sweet) kept it coming. I almost want to add another star for her, but those beans.... *shudder*
  
  There wasn't much for decor, unfortunately. The restaurant was purely functional with little to look at. All I saw were some interesting photos of Blairstown on the walls (one of which was of the Blairstown Cafe, and I had to wonder if the photographer got yelled at by the owner for that). The photos might merit another star, but then I looked at the tiles on the ceiling, which were about as clean and appetizing to look at as mud flaps.
  December 29, 2016