New Restaurant to Open in Coralville

A unique restaurant with only one other Iowa location is bound for Coralville.

A restaurant and wine bar with eight other locations in the midwest will open later this year in the Iowa River Landing. Louie's Wine Dive will open at the northeast corner of East 9th Street and East 2nd Avenue across from 30hop.

Louie’s has a full food menu along with a wine program. Childhood friends, and co-owners, Whitney VinZant and Corey Gonzalez opened their first location in Urbandale, Iowa and have expanded to Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Nebraska. The Coralville location will be the second one in Iowa. Last week, Louie's Wine Dive announced they'll be opening in Nashville, Tennessee, meaning they'll soon have 10 total locations.

According to a press release from Iowa River Landing, the restaurant sets out to create “a Brooklyn-style, neighborhood restaurant with outstanding scratch food and a major focus on wine.” It has more than 100 wines, more than half of them offered by the glass. Sampling new wine is easy. Louie's policy allows customers to open any bottle on the menu if they purchase two glasses. From there, other customers can purchase a glass of wine from that bottle, often at significant savings. This policy is where the name "Wine Dive" comes from.

Each Louie's Wine Dive location has a formally-trained executive chef and sous-chef, with a menu described as American non-traditional.

Another unique facet of the restaurant is that they host annual events, about quarterly. Each one features a special menu with four to seven courses, all prepped by the executive chef. The food is then paired with wine, with total costs ranging from $45 to $100 per person.

The Coralville Louie's location will have an island bar with open kitchen, private dining space, and a patio with outdoor seating.

Louie's Wine Dive will open in Coralville's Iowa River Landing this fall.

[via Iowa River Landing]