About Us

Rapid Creek Cidery’s building was reconstructed using two local barns. The upstairs dining area was once the barn owned by Paul and Diane Hebl, located in Iowa City. The structure was salvaged by Wilson’s Orchard owner Paul Rasch, taken down piece by piece, and reassembled as close to its original architecture as possible. Insulation and modern windows were added to complement a geothermal heating system and make the building energy efficient.

Downstairs, our event space was constructed from refurbished beams and other wood gathered from the Lodge Barn, a magnificent structure in its day. The light fixtures above the bar and the community tables were also made with salvaged items gleaned from barns. These barns already contained decades of stories and we look forward to adding to that history in our “new” building.

The kitchen at Rapid Creek Cidery is headed by Chef Matt Steigerwald and is known for its curated pantry of local and seasonal ingredients. We aim to take diners on many new and exciting culinary adventures. Our menu changes often, which means there’s always something innovative, fresh, and unexpected. We’re cooking what we’re hungry for, and hopefully what you’re hungry for too. The restaurant at Rapid Creek Cidery is open for dinner Wednesday through Saturday and brunch on Sunday mornings.

On the lower level, we offer a warm and inviting space designed to provide a customizable and full-service experience for wedding receptions, ceremonies, large private parties, corporate events, and other special events and celebrations. A beautiful blend of rustic and contemporary, our venue features reclaimed barn wood siding and beams with 14 foot ceilings. The space can seat up to 250 guests. All events are catered through the Rapid Creek Cidery kitchen, and we offer a wide range of plated and family style meals.

Chef Matt Steigerwald

Chef Steigerwald is regionally known and well renowned as the chef and owner of the nationally lauded Lincoln Café in Mount Vernon, Iowa. The Café advocated local and organic food with a focus on the betterment of the community through mutually beneficial relationships with local farmers and producers, as well as rooted investment in the local economy of Mount Vernon and the surrounding area. In addition to praise from countless Iowa and midwestern publications, Steigerwald received positive notices from wide-ranging media outlets, including the James Beard Foundation, the Travel Channel, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Week Magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Later he purchased an adjoining location where he opened the Lincoln Wine Bar, which soon became a social hub for the community, offering an international wine and beer list, world-class cheeses, and house-cured hams and sausages. In 2012, the Wine Bar remodeled to feature a Stefano Ferrara oven and expanded their menu to include wood-fired pizzas. Steigerwald was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended the University of Northern Carolina at Chapel Hill. Early in his career he trained with iconic southern chef Ben Barker at his now-closed Magnolia Grill in Durham, North Carolina. He later went on to work as a chef at Vertigo in downtown Raleigh and Helen’s in Richmond, Virginia.

Maggie Harris, Front of House Manager

After 8 years in the service industry, it was working for Matt at the Lincoln Café that really inspired Maggie to delve into cooking and start looking at food and the restaurant industry as a career rather than a job. Rapid Creek Cidery perfectly encapsulates everything that she loves about food and restaurants: it is focused on quality, locality, beauty, and subtlety, and on creating and fostering a community of people who value the same things. Before Rapid Creek Cidery, Maggie helped manage the Lincoln Wine Bar in Mount Vernon, Iowa, before moving to Maine to work at Salt Water Farm, a fine-dining restaurant with a similar focus on farm-to-table ingredient sourcing and drawing inspiration from the farm in which the restaurant was located.

We are located on Wilson’s Orchard where over 100 varieties of apples are grown, ripening each year beginning in August until the end of October. In 2015, Wilson’s Orchard started making their own hard cider using 100% fresh-pressed juice. Rapid Creek Cidery soon followed suit, creating our own small-batch, house-made ciders, using apples grown at the orchard. In addition, we offer several international and hard-to-find ciders in bottles. Whether you’re a novice to cider or want to dive deeper, our friendly and knowledgeable staff is happy to talk more about our process or introduce you to something new.

Want to work at Rapid Creek Cidery? Open positions are posted below. Don’t see an opening? If you are interested in future employment opportunities please feel free to drop us a line.