What exactly do you order when you’ve never been to a place before and the person behind the counter is already halfway through a conversation with the guy ahead of you about his daughter’s soccer tournament?
That’s the first thing you notice at Lincoln Café — wait, wrong city. That’s the first thing you notice about the Cedar Rapids breakfast experience at Zindrick’s — no, covered. Let’s talk about The Blue Strawberry, and more specifically, the woman who’s been running it since before the 2008 flood rearranged half this city’s identity.
Judy Moreau has worked the morning shift at Blue Strawberry on 1st Avenue SE since 2011, the year the café reopened in its current location near the NewBo corridor after relocating from the old storefront. She’s not the owner — that’s a separate conversation — but she is, functionally, the reason regulars show up at 7:15 on a Tuesday instead of waiting until the weekend rush hits. She knows orders. She remembers the guy who switched from oat milk to whole milk after his running injury. She asks about your brother’s new apartment in Des Moines even though you only mentioned it once, six months ago.
You’ll find the café on 1st Avenue SE, a short walk from the NewBo Market building, in a space that manages to feel unhurried even when every table is taken. The room is narrow and bright, with a small chalkboard menu that changes seasonally and a pastry case that peaks on Thursdays and Fridays when the baking schedule lines up. Get there before 9 a.m. if you want first pick of the cardamom rolls. Get there after 10 if you want a seat without waiting.
The food is the kind that doesn’t need explaining. Eggs come from a local farm, and you can taste the difference in a scramble. The avocado toast is thick-cut on house bread that has some actual structure to it, not the pale, dissolving kind. The soup — always a rotating daily option — is genuinely good on cold mornings and not worth skipping even in July, when they lean toward lighter broths. Breakfast for two lands somewhere around $22 to $28 before tip, depending on whether you add a second coffee.
What Judy will tell you, if you ask how long she’s been here, is that the neighborhood changed around the café more than the café changed. The flood reshaped NewBo. The Market came in. More apartments went up. Younger crowds started appearing on weekend mornings. But the regulars — the retired schoolteacher who reads a physical newspaper, the contractor who calls in his order from the parking lot — those people stayed, and they kept the place from drifting into brunch-for-Instagram territory.
That’s not nothing. A lot of the spots that opened in NewBo in the years after the flood have since closed or pivoted or sold. Blue Strawberry kept its hours, kept its menu honest, and kept people like Judy behind the counter. The place has gravity because the people in it do.
If you’re coming from out of town, park on 2nd Street and walk. The neighborhood is worth the extra two minutes. If you’re a local who’s been meaning to stop in, just go on a weekday morning before 9. Order whatever Judy says is good that day. She’s not going to steer you wrong.
