116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Cajun, Creole meets Italian cuisine in The District CR’s triplex restaurant, lounge
New opening brings speakeasy, sports bar and restaurant to Downtown Cedar Rapids
Jul. 18, 2024 4:30 am
CEDAR RAPIDS — Two Cedar Rapids entrepreneurs are going in together on their first restaurant with three distinct concepts spread over two floors.
The District CR, opened July 11, combines a weekend speakeasy, a sports bar and an Italian-fusion restaurant into one at 415 Third St. SE, the former location of Hawk’s Nest Sports Bar and Taboo Nightclub Lounge.
“It’s kind of like it’s own little district,” said co-owner Amanda Rops.
If you go
What: The District CR
Where: 415 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids
When: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday
Website: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559543126562
Phone: (319) 200-3195
Details: Italian cuisine meets the influences of Louisiana’s Acadiana Cajun and New Orleans Creole in downtown Cedar Rapids. A sports bar-themed “waiting room” is available at the front, and a speakeasy-themed basement lounge will soon offer entertainment and crudite with top-shelf drinks.
How it happened
On The District CR’s main floor, oversized booths welcome a new crowd to try a unique intersection of cuisine in the Corridor under low lighting and dimmed lamp posts.
With vaulted ceilings matched by old murals of the Czech Republic, the long-vacant space has found new life with warm, upscale touches that match Louisiana’s spirit of hospitality.
“It’s different,” said co-owner Desiree DeMaria, who met co-owner Rops through a mutual friend. “We had to bring it here.”
DeMaria, inspired by business trips to Louisiana with her cycling charter company, Peddling Panda, used restaurant visits down south to transform an Italian concept into something more.
After training with chefs in Louisiana, she has infused recipes from Louisiana’s backwoods Acadiana region and New Orlean’s Creole culture into a mixing pot of its own up north. The mixture of the Black-influenced Creole and the primarily white Cajun serves as an important symbol for DeMaria, a biracial Colorado native.
Patrons may recognize Rops from her other stints around Cedar Rapids. A veteran of the service industry for 20 years, she previously served as general manager of the revamped Basix bar and worked for Croissant du Jour, a former French restaurant and bakery on Mount Vernon Road in Cedar Rapids.
The food
With many menu items unique to Cedar Rapids, you don’t need to look far for a reason to try the new restaurant.
The cooking at The District CR takes heavy influence from DeMaria’s upbringing under David Puckett, owner of the renowned Cafe Sydnie Mae in Baton Rouge. DeMaria, an information technology specialist for several large Cedar Rapids companies, came to know Puckett during her visits to Louisiana.
“He took me under his wing and showed me how to run a restaurant,” she said.
The menu’s shrimp and grits, with cajun-seasoned shrimp topping a creamy mound of cheesy grits flooded by a savory and sweet Tasso sauce, is a virtual replica of Cafe Sydnie Mae’s dish.
Chef Toni Jones, owner of Shug’s Kreole Kitchen, is another significant influence whose food and name appears all over the menu, thanks to her “meat magic” seasoning and flair for flavor.
With an abbreviated pasta menu, the cross between Italian and French descendants can be found across the menu through salads, flatbreads, entrees and desserts.
The Muffuletta sandwich, for example, is a perfect cross of the two cultures from New Orleans’ Central Grocery, where a Sicilian immigrant is credited with creating the sandwich. At this restaurant, the sandwich is served on schiacciata, a Tuscan flatbread similar to focaccia, with olive tapenade, salami, capicola, mortadella and provolone.
Cajun flavor can be tasted on virtually every meat, from peppery shrimp and butter-soft rib-eye to sweet salmon soaked in honey butter.
Soon, the restaurant plans to expand the menu with new fusions, like a Pasta Yaya with gumbo.
For dessert, Shug offers a taste of her southern bread pudding with pineapple and golden raisins. Bananas Foster, soon to be made tableside, is served with a banana liqueur sauce over ice cream.
If you’re feeling more Italian, opt for the affogato ice cream drowned in a shot of espresso — or its boozy sibling infused with Amaretto.
The space
With a sprawling space, the main floor with seating for about 200 serves as the restaurant, the main bar and a separate sports bar that will act as a waiting area.
“I want people to be able to talk and hang out with their family, and eat food you wouldn’t get anywhere else,” DeMaria said.
Downstairs, an upscale speakeasy concept under a different name is expected to open in about two months. There, top shelf rails and cocktails will be available with crudite set to live entertainment three nights a week.
Backpocket Brewing Pilot Pub, which previously occupied part of The District CR’s space years ago, appears to have left behind the stainless steel beer fermenting tanks around the perimeter of the main restaurant’s catwalk. DeMaria hopes to repurpose them for moonshine in a to-be-determined collaboration with a Davenport distillery.
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.
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