Peppercorn at the Bank brings elegant, upscale steakhouse to historic Peoples Bank building in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — With nearly 30 years of experience, a Cedar Rapids restaurateur is hoping to take a slightly different restaurant model to the bank at his latest opening.

Peppercorn at the Bank, a new restaurant arm of Peppercorn Food Company, is finally making use of the dining room off the kitchen that the catering business has been using for years.

The upscale steakhouse, opened Nov. 18, brings new life to the historic building previously home to the beloved Popoli Ristorante and Sullivan’s Bar.

“It was a nice place, and now it’s going to be an even nicer place,” said Jude Villafana, co-owner of the restaurant and catering company.

If you go

What: Peppercorn at the Bank

Address: 101 Third Ave. SW, Cedar Rapids

Hours: 5 to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Closed for privately catered events Friday through Sunday.

Website: peppercornatthebank.com

Phone: (319) 200-5590

Details: USDA Prime steaks, fresh seafood, pasta made in-house and Italian American classics with a wine-forward drink menu in an elegant, upscale restaurant embedded in the historic Peoples Bank. Entrees range from $26 to $48; a la carte steaks start at $40 with sides averaging $8 each. Reservations encouraged; walk-ins accepted. Reservations may be limited to ensure quality service.

See inside a historical gem

After two years out of the public eye, a new look shows that the historic “jewel box” style bank — one of several Midwest buildings designed by its architect in the early 20th century — still hasn’t lost its glimmer.

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With rare exception, the 1911 building’s timeless interior has been left exactly as it was before Popoli closed for the final time in May 2022.

And, for good reason.

Designed by architect Louis Sullivan, a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, the building was lauded in 1912 by The Architectural Record in a 14-page article calling it “the most interesting event in American architecture today.” Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978, it remains as elegant as ever.

At the restaurant’s central atrium, 24 stained glass windows lining the perimeter add only one layer of artistry to a space anchored by chandeliers. Each pane was designed by Louis Millet, who taught at the Chicago Art Institute and was nationally known for his glasswork.

Below them, a massive, single mural by Allen Philbrick lines each wall, seamlessly depicting specific times of day and seasons through the depiction of tree colors and farm activities. Philbrick, a Chicago Art Institute instructor for nearly 50 years, used his talents from the Impressionist school of art to reflect the architect’s wishes: a simple Iowa work ethic and sense of community.

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In a stroke of irony, what was used to convey simplicity will now draw the eyes of many in one of Cedar Rapids’ most expensive restaurants.

Anchoring it all is a set of elaborate, domed chandeliers with hexagonal tops that leave a grand impression on the central area. With lighting inside and outside each fixture, each chandelier exudes opulence through hand-painted glass windows.

But at tables and booths, diners should feel at ease with details designed to make it “elegant but comfortable,” Villafana said.

The bank’s vault in the back, pulled together by teams of horses, remains a small dining room available for use during regular restaurant hours. With a 22-inch-thick door weighing 25 tons, it’s one of the dining room’s most treasured conversation pieces after painstaking restoration to undo the damage of the 2008 flood.

Next door, a room adjacent to former teller booths that was used to count money is now used to store the restaurant’s wine selection.

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On the exterior, four large pillars outlining the corners of the second story are defined by cast terra cotta grilles in the Art Nouveau ornamentation. One previously served as a functioning chimney for the building’s coal-fired furnace.

Sullivan, a Chicagoan whose professional life rose during the building boom after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, became known as the “father of the American skyscraper” for his pioneering of integrated steel frameworks that allowed cities to build up rather than out. By the time he built this bank — after that boom had ended — buildings like this became the norm in his work.

A classic steakhouse menu

With USDA Prime steaks from Iowa farms, pasta made in-house and fresh seafood flown in via Chicago, two pages of Italian American classics present the city with one of its most upscale menus to match the “jewel box” housing it.

Using top-end ingredients, Chef Megan Hankey hopes to make the food shine through its service — including tableside service.

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Tableside service will be used as much as possible with items like the brussels sprout Caesar salad, flaming bananas foster and a rotating selection of bisques — to name a few.

“We’re really hoping the service will match the flavors and excellence of the food,” Hankey said.

The chef’s favorite appetizer is a massive set of scallops, each wrapped in cherry wood-smoked bacon from Jones County and served in a lemon basil beurre blanc. Others on the menu reflect a timeless style woven through the menu: jumbo shrimp cocktail, bruschetta, arancini and crab cakes.

“I’m a big believer in butter,” noted Hankey, who worked at 350 First and the Cedar Rapids Country Club before starting at Peppercorn’s catering in 2021.

Prized steaks, fish and add-ons are a la carte on the well-edited menu, as are the sides big enough for two. Steaks include the 8-ounce filet mignon at $42, 16-ounce New York Strip and the 40-ounce bone-in rib-eye topping the list at $89.

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Each can be luxuriously garnished with seafood, crab cakes, bruleed blue cheese, horseradish crema, Bearnaise or a red wine demi-glace made with veal gravy.

Sides include bourbon bruleed mushrooms, several elevated presentations of the potato and respectable vegetables, if meat and potatoes are not enough for you.

A different business model

With a second chance at a restaurant in the building he has worked for most of the past decade, Villafana will be doing things a little differently this time around.

After honing gangbuster growth over the past few years in catering operations across Eastern Iowa and western Illinois, Peppercorn at the Bank is his first dip back into restaurants.

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“We’re going to take all of the good things we did at Popoli, and none of the bad,” he said. “We’re not going to skimp on anything to make an extra buck.”

The former history teacher started in the restaurant industry with a Bucca di Beppo in 1997 — a time when the national chain only had 10 locations. With his wife and Peppercorn co-owner, Carrie Quast, they opened their first restaurant, The Peppercorn Grill, in the Minneapolis area in 2004.

After selling that restaurant, he went on to manage multiple others, including the 400-seat CRAVE American Kitchen & Sushi Bar still at the Mall of America today.

They came to Cedar Rapids to help turn around a struggling Popoli in 2015 — a restaurant then only one year old. Villafana helped founders Fred Timko and Gary Rozek turn the restaurant from losing $300,000 to making a profit, until the pandemic hit in 2020.

With self-sufficiency provided by Peppercorn’s catering arm, the restaurant will not rely on high table turnover rates to make a profit — an Achilles' heel for many restaurants.

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Restaurant operations will be the icing on the cake. But unlike most restaurants, where weekends are the bread and butter, you’ll have to enjoy this one on weekdays. Villafana credits much of Popoli’s previous success to its focus on traveling business diners, a market he believes can be tapped again downtown.

“We did more business on a Tuesday with less people walking through the door, than we did on a Saturday,” he said. “That’s what we’re indirectly going after by being open Monday through Thursday.”

But it’s not all business. Diners coming in on special occasions will notice a recalibrated mentality toward service Villafana hopes will return the space to its formerly respected status under Popoli.

Staff tips will be pooled — something he found greater success with decades ago — and front-of-house servers will be trained to understand that every guest is their guest.

“It generated perceived value to the guest, because the service was heightened, and that costs nothing,” Villafana said. “You’re still paying the same amount of money to be there.”

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.