116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Watermill Kitchen + Bar brings elevated American cuisine to newly renovated Hyatt Regency in Coralville
Find small comforts or go big with a varied menu
Jun. 27, 2024 6:15 am
CORALVILLE — A new American restaurant has completed the multimillion dollar transformation of the Hyatt Regency Coralville Hotel & Conference Center.
Watermill Kitchen + Bar, opened in April at the Iowa River Landing property previously under the Marriott portfolio, showcases an upscale interpretation of traditional comfort foods.
The restaurant, whose name is inspired by the mills historically found along the banks of the Iowa River, delivers a “modern nod to the past” through a full-service menu envisioned by a chef returning home after 18 years away.
Executive Sous Chef Tony Zinn, an Iowa City native, brings with him a career full of experience serving high-end hotels from larger markets like the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago and the JW Marriott in Marco Island, Fla., — a few miles south of Naples.
“As I was growing up, I’d go to a lot of high-end restaurants around town. But their version of high end was to put a bunch of ingredients in it and call it high end, which really muddled the flavors and just didn’t do it for me,” he said. “It’s all about simple flavors, letting the food shine, and seasoning it correctly. That’s the form of elevation I appreciate.”
If you go
What: Watermill Kitchen + Bar
Address: 300 E. Ninth St., Coralville
Phone: (319) 887-5018
Website: watermillkitchen.com
Hours: 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 6:30 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday
Details: Breakfast, lunch, dinner and a full bar of specialty cocktails are served at a moderate price point with high-end options. Dinner entrees range from $12 to $44, with more expensive steaks ranging from $32 to $55.
The menu
With small plates starting at $10, sandwiches with beef fat fries starting at $12, and dinner entrees starting at $20, the new restaurant attached to a hotel is introducing a varied menu, hoping to appeal to a crowd beyond hotel guests.
“We’re really striving to be a stand-alone restaurant. It’s great we’re connected to a hotel — it means you can get a room if you eat too much,” said Matt Hill, director of food and beverage for Watermill. “We’re ramping up still, but people have really taken to the menu and the new aesthetic of the hotel and the restaurant.”
With an eye to detail, its offerings are not so much revolutionary as they are evolutionary — taking the familiar and adding a twist that elevates without convoluting it.
Iowa corn cakes are served with rock shrimp and a Cajun remoulade. Brisket sliders are served with bacon jam and smoked Gouda. The burrata salad with heirloom tomatoes won’t weigh you down, but the details in the meatloaf will give you something to think about.
With bacon and a spicy tomato glaze, it gives a new lens of familiarity to a dish everyone already knows. Add the colcannon on the side — an Irish take on mashed potatoes, sweetened with chunks of apple and texturized by sauteed cabbage — and you have an accessible point to comfort while trying an entirely new dish.
The little details, gleaned from years of working away, gave Zinn a skill he could bring back home. But more than that, he’s infusing it with the things he loved eating at home.
His mother is a new fixture on the dessert menu with her mandarin orange cake — the one Zinn ate for every one of his birthdays growing up. Barbara always made it with a sugar and butter glaze, but Tony now serves it with a Grand Marnier glaze, ice cream and chocolate tuile.
In addition to his mother, his grandmother played an outsized role in helping him love food.
“The food was always amazing, no matter how many times you ate it,” he said. “Elevating the food is what I can do for the community.”
Throughout each dish, ingredients are sourced locally whenever possible — perhaps an unusual feature in a restaurant tied to a brand as big as Hyatt — through familiar vendors like Dan and Debbie’s Creamery, Farmers Hen House and Amana Meat Shop & Smokehouse, among others.
A specialty cocktail menu embraces an Iowa theme with options like “Snowbirds” with rum and grapefruit juice, the “Iowa Nice” gin cocktail topped with an experiential bubble filled with aromatic smoke, and the “Whitetail Buck” with bourbon, lemon juice and ginger beer.
With hopes to drive growth through happy hours, the drink menu is punctuated by a robust selection of whiskey, tequila and other spirits.
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.
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