The Rafters Restaurant, Gluten Free in Lena

We decided to go for a random drive out to Dubuque, IA for the day. Funny part, we never made it over the Mississippi, we found more stuff to do in Western Illinois than we expected. Our first stop was in Lena. Garmina, our Garmen loves taking us on the most interesting adventures. We've driven this way several times, and never passed this place before. It looked like a cute barn, next to a brewery we'd never heard of. My fiance asked if this place happen to be on Find Me Gluten Free. I was able to get enough of a signal to find out that YES they were. We found a place to turn around and went back.

What a great little place, The Rafters. The beer in the brewery was not gluten free, but they had several gluten free cider options and quite the gluten free menu! They did caveat that some sides weren't available until dinner, and we were there about noon. But were able to make an exception to have veggies ready for my lunch. I went with the "Spin-art Chicken, which essentially was a grilled chicken with spinach artichoke dip on top. It was very tasty and really enjoyable. My meal came with a side salad, the menu offered a wedge salad with homemade blue cheese. So of course I asked for blue cheese with my salad. Very nice touch, not too potent but tasty. My fiance went with a bourbon bacon burger, and was very pleased. He got a lot of food and was pleasantly full when we left.

We were going to stop and eat in Galena, but this was better over all, none of the places in Galena are amazing, this was pretty close to it. One review on Find Me Gluten Free stated, this the best place you're going to find in this area. I agree. Great food, our waitress was super chatty and told us about how they moved the barn we were eating to it's current location 15 or so years back from up the hill, using logs to roll it down. She took a lot of pride in all the things to do in the area, and kept telling us more reasons to come visit more often. I would totally come back here when we're heading west this away again. Next time we might find less interesting things and actually make our way to Dubuque! 4 dragonflies here, for great service, food, options and a nice stop in the middle of no where!