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Downtown
Iowa City is home to more than 30 bars all located within a six-block
radius. In a college town business environment that competes for
a finite market share, many bar owners turn to promotions and drink
specials to bring customers in the door.
Not Jack Piper.
But then again, Piper’s downtown Iowa City bar, Atlas World
Grill, isn’t your typical college bar. There are no deejays
or dance floors. There are no Hawkeye posters or big screen TVs.
You’re not going to find a $2 “big beer” or a
$1 “you-call-it.”
“We wanted to build our business on quality and not cheap
drinks,” Piper said of the establishment he co-owns with longtime
friend Jim Adrian. “We do it with quality products and quality
atmosphere. They can go to a bar where there’s hooting and
hollering and stupidity, or they could come in here and relax and
get a good drink.”
Like a mojito. The refreshing Cuban cocktail made of rum, sugar,
lime, soda and mint leaves has become one of the hottest drinks
this summer. Many bars don’t make them because, made individually,
muddling the mint leaves and lime wedges is too time-consuming.
At Atlas, bartenders pre-mix a homemade simple syrup with lime and
mint leaves, allowing them to serve mojitos en masse.
“I’ve had people who live in Miami come in and say our
mojitos are just as good, if not better, than anything they can
get down there,” Piper says. Which is perhaps why mojitos
are his top sellers, and why Atlas is known among college students
as the mojito place in Iowa City.
But quality doesn’t end with mojitos. Piper educates his bartenders
on the background and history of drinks, and how to mix, shake and
pour them properly. The result is high standards for standard drinks.
They’re not mixed differently, just better.
“We have rum and Coke; we don’t have rum and Pepsi,”
Piper said. “It’s not the same. There a different acidity
and a different taste. A rum and coke is supposed to be a rum and
coke.
“Our drinks are made the classic way with subtle differences.
We’re not reinventing the wheel,” he said. “A
cosmopolitan here is made the same as it was originally made in
New York City. Our martinis are made with good liquor, shaken correctly,
ice cold with ice shavings on the surface. Our bloody Marys are
made like bloody Marys were originally made. We don’t add
Guiness or anything like that.”
Piper doesn’t like to reinvent the wheel, but he and Adrian
have invented a few concoctions of their own. The Atlas drink menu
features a handful of martinis from your traditional gin-vermouth-olive
shake to fruity vodka martinis. Other signature drinks include their
Jamaican Ten Speed (rum, fruit juices and cream) and their Astronaut
on the Rocks (vodka, Mountain Dew and Tang).
While Atlas is a relaxing place to enjoy a quality drink, it’s
the food menu that makes Atlas truly a “World Grill.”
Piper and Adrian have traveled around the world collecting recipes
and ideas. For dinner, a customer can get an appetizer of New Orleans
style BBQ Shrimp Voodoo, a Greek Goddess salad, a Jamaican Jerked
Chicken entrée and a Cuban mojito to wash it all down.
One of the restaurant’s top sellers is a burrito with fried
chicken dredged in buffalo sauce packed in a tortilla along with
diced carrots and celery and mashed Yukon gold potatoes. Yes, mashed
potatoes in a burrito. After all, being a “World Grill”
means no limits to Piper and Adrian’s menu.
“We’re not an Irish pub. We’re a world grill,”
Piper said. “We’re not stuck with one theme or genre.
We wanted to be able to do it all.”
And they certainly do. Atlas even serves a macaroni and cheese dish.
Why would anyone order that in a restaurant? “The fact is
that it’s the best macaroni and cheese you’ll ever eat,”
said Piper.
With its eclectic atmosphere and worldly menu, Piper said Atlas
World Grill attracts a clientele of young professionals and older
college students. It’s a crowd that appreciates quality over
quantity – just like Piper himself.
“I don’t want to serve something I wouldn’t drink,”
he said. “And I don’t want to drink a margarita out
of a gun.”
A hand-mixed mojito suits Jack Piper much better.
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The Mojito: A Cuban Treasure
In 1586, Queen Elizebeth hired a band of pirates led by Captain
Francis Drake to seize a treasure of Aztec gold being held
in Cuba’s Havana Harbor.
Captain Drake left Cuba without a treasure. In his possession,
however, were the ingredients for a different concoction—a
cocktail made from rum, sugar cane, lime and mint.
Orignially called the Draque (derived from Drake), the mojito
was used primarily for medicinal purposes. During an epidemic
of cholera that overtook Havana, those who avoided the disease
credited their health to their consumption of Draque.
Today, the mojito is one of America’s hippest drinks.
It is made by crushing—or muddling—mint leaves,
lime wedges and sugar in the bottom of a high ball glass.
Ice is added, then Caribbean rum. The glass is topped off
with club soda and garnished with a mint leaf.
Captain Drake may not have left Cuba with any Aztec gold,
but he certainly found a treasure.
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