Lindberg’s Bar rolls out food menu

Lindberg's Bar has three words for Springfield: Cashew chicken poutine.

And two more: New menu.

Springfield's oldest tavern, closed for decades but reopened in 2007, is offering a lunch and dinner menu starting Thursday, in addition to local brews, cocktails, diverse tunes and a musical book club.

"We've designed the menu to be playful," says part owner Eric Weiler, who's been at the helm of the 318 W. Commercial St. bar since purchasing the business in 2009 with business partner Ryan Dock. "We took the history of the building and infused some Southern style with modern influences."

Translation: The menu is full of puns about the bar’s heritage of live music, which dates back to 1870. Beers on draft are "Tune-Ups." Cocktails are "Sound Check." Appetizers are "Openers," and sandwiches and main dishes are "Headliners."

Food-wise, everything possible is being made from scratch out of Lindberg's 500-square-foot kitchen (for decades, it was the bar's green room).

The menu includes appetizers like hummus made with black-eyed peas and crab rangoon deconstructed in wonton-chip-and-dip form.

Lindberg's is also doing a version of Canadian poutine with fries, brown gravy, cheese curds, crispy chicken, cashews and green onion stacked together. It will simply be called The Daily Special, a joke, since Weiler and Dock don't plan to rotate a daily special otherwise.

Weiler said Lindberg's would also offer "old-school smash burgers," meaning a thin, quickly cooked hamburger in the style of Taylor's Drive-In or Steak n Shake. The ketchup is made from scratch using Table Rock Red beer from White River Brewing Company, just down the block.

Burgers made from lamb, bison or buffalo will rotate in as monthly specials, while on a daily basis, Lindberg's will serve a turkey burger, along with a red-beans-and-rice veggie burger. It's flavored with smoked sea salt and smoked paprika, then dressed like a po'boy sandwich with tangy remoulade, lettuce, tomato and pickles.

"You'll taste a flavor of pork fat, but it's completely vegetarian," said Weiler, who eats a partly plant-based diet himself.

Bratwurst is going to be served with a Mother's Brewery Lil Helper IPA mustard. "(Ketchup and mustard) are our tip of the hat to two of the major local breweries," Weiler said. "Have you ever made mustard? It gets hot pretty fast. You have to taste it a hundred times to get it right."

Desserts include individual-sized funnel cakes, one of which is topped with sautéed apples, creamy caramel sauce, bourbon, butter, sea salt and powdered sugar. "We tested it out a couple months ago, and people were freaking out." Weiler said he had to advise friends to slow down their feeding frenzy so his wife could get a taste.

The bar is also planning to serve dessert coffee drinks including the Spanish coffee. "It's a super-theatrical drink," Weiler said. Rum is set aflame, caramelizing a rim of sugar on the glass, then the bartender shakes on cinnamon and nutmeg, which spark like little fireworks. Kahlua, coffee and whipped cream round out the ingredients list.

Lindberg's will also be adding a permanent cocktail menu to its rotating seasonal cocktail list, with two cocktails for each spirit behind the bar. One cocktail, the Belle Wilson — a gin gimlet with muddled cucumber, lime juice and perfume-like rosewater, has a special historic connection to the Lindberg's building, Weiler said.

Belle Wilson was the name of the madame in charge of the brothel that occupied the upstairs portion of the building in the 1870s.

A copy of her 1877 arrest warrant for "Keeping Bawdy House" that was found in the Greene County Archives now graces the wall at Lindberg's, mounted in a frame.

Food prices on the new menu are generally $10 or less, with burgers and sandwiches in the $6-8 range and cocktails $10-12.

Lindberg's will serve food indoors and on its sidewalk patio from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. to start, Tuesdays through Sundays, with the bar open until 1 a.m. Lindberg's just received a Sunday liquor license and will open Sunday for the first time, Weiler said. Local singer-songwriter Barak Hill will play a matinee show from 1 p.m.-3 p.m. at no cover charge.

Weiler said he and Dock have planned to serve food since they bought the Lindberg's business — Dock is a culinary school graduate who previously worked in fine dining in Columbia — but it only became possible after they purchased the underlying real estate two years ago and saved up some money since.

Before developing its own food menu, the bar allowed guests to order pizza from nearby Pizza House and consume it inside Lindberg’s, but that option will end with the new menu, Weiler said.