Iron Horse Pub & Grill

The Story

We asked the guy at Canyon River Golf Club where to get a quick local bite and a beer. He said Iron Horse. Shout out to everyone at Canyon River for all the hospitality. Great course and great people.

Iron Horse opened in 1991 in the old railroad depot with eight employees and Tami Ursich running it. The name came from Homer Phillips, a grandfather in the family, who pointed out that iron horse is what people used to call a train engine, and that an engine is a workhorse. They moved into the Higgins Avenue building in 1997. Same owner, same single location, about ninety Missoulians on the payroll now.

Thirty-plus years in a college town and they never opened a second one. In a business where the reflex is to franchise the minute something works, staying put is a decision, not an accident.

The Vibe

Downtown on Higgins, with four separate outdoor sections and plenty of room inside. There's an on-site lot, but it isn't big, so plan on the street if you're coming at a busy hour.

We walked into a relatively quiet room, apparently just beating the mad rush for a USA World Cup match, which jammed the place to the gills. Every table full, people standing, nobody able to hear anybody, which is about perfect for World Cup soccer. We don't know what it's like on an ordinary day, but the crowd told us something. On the day half of Missoula wanted a screen and a beer, this is where they went.

The Food

Dynamite sandwiches, and they let us substitute without making it a project.

I had the Big Sky BLT, Daily's bacon piled high on Wheat Montana sourdough with mayonnaise, fresno jelly, and an over-easy egg. The jelly is the part you don't see coming, a little sweet heat pushing back against the bacon, and the egg came exactly right, loose enough to give up some yolk without collapsing the whole thing in my hands. I took avocado in place of the tomato.

My daughter ordered the Salmon BLT, pan-seared salmon with the same bacon and bread plus a honey-curry mayo, and made the same swap. She liked it enough that she bought the ingredients to build it again once we got home. That's a better grade than any adjective I could put here.

They nailed the sides, which is rarer than it ought to be. Kettle chips worth eating on their own, and fries crisp outside and tender inside because somebody back there listened to what we asked for and delivered it.

The menu tells on them a little, in a good way. They name their suppliers, Daily's for the bacon and Wheat Montana for the bread, and both of those are Montana names. A downtown bar with a full house and a game on could put anything between two slices and still sell every one of them. They don't.

Plenty of local beer on the board. I had an IPA and couldn't tell you now which one, only that it was made nearby and it was right. Missoula has at least ten breweries inside city limits and one of the highest brewery-per-capita counts in the country, which makes it a legit beer town by any measure. Put the Miller down and raise a local brew.

One caveat on service. With the game on and the room overrun, our server walked past me twice while I was trying to flag her down, so I went to the bar and got my own beer. Overrun is overrun. She gets a pass.

The Bottom Line

If You're Nearby, and I'll show my work on that in case you figured higher.

I thought about Worth a Short Detour. The place wasn't far from where we were staying, and we never went back. That's the honest test, and it answered itself. Missoula has too many places worth trying for us to spend a second meal here with limited days in town.

Let's also be honest about the category. How many American bar and grills am I driving out of my way for? Not many. Short Detour is about the ceiling for the whole category, and when one clears it, it's usually because the place turned out to be a lot more than a bar and grill. This one is cool, no doubt about it. I'd also bet there are five more rooms like it in Missoula alone.

But it did exactly what we asked of it. We wanted a quick local bite and a beer on day one of a trip, and we got sandwiches better than they needed to be, sourced from down the road, the town's beer on tap, and two substitutions handled without a sigh. You're not crossing Montana for it. You're walking a few blocks for it, and you'll be glad you did.

A Note on Missoula

We didn't document this trip the way we normally would, because we took it before the Not Our Local category existed. Damn.

We were there for Zootown and a few rounds of golf, so dinners weren't really on the docket. Here's everywhere we ate and where we'd put it:

• Iron Horse (If You're Nearby): the one above.
• Lolo Brewery (If You're Nearby): cooler room than Iron Horse, honestly, though I'm a sucker for a brew-pub beer in the mountains. We hit the hot springs in Lolo the same day.
• Top Hat (If You're Nearby): I'd go back just to work through more of the menu. Big outdoor dining area and the food was quite tasty. Right across the street is Montgomery Distillery, where I grabbed a bottle of their Mama Tried bourbon to bring home, and back the other way is a The Bell cigar shop that won our hearts with a couple of free shirts. More on that soon.
• Finn (Worth a Short Detour): if somebody asked me where to eat in Missoula, this is the first place I'd send them out of the places we've been so far. Ownership puts it in the locally grown restaurant group column for us. I'd detour for the setting alone. It sits right on the Clark Fork River, and watching college kids raft by and party on the water was worth the table by itself. Add great appetizers, good drinks, and a bartender who turned out to live in the same Colorado mountain town I used to. Small world.

The list for next time is already written: Lolo Creek Steakhouse, Boxcar Bistro, The Notorious P.I.G., and The Keep. We're coming to put you to the test. Next time you're the main course.