Italian food, desserts are on the menu at this 'great little restaurant' in West Burlington

WEST BURLINGTON — Leave your preconceptions about Brussels sprouts and lasagna at the door when you walk into Cashus Italian Cuisine.

The restaurant, located in Westland Mall, 500 S. Gear Ave., offers up an eclectic array of cakes and made-from-scratch Italian dishes ranging from traditional to adventurous.

"Someone said you need to have lasagna," Bobby "Cashus" Singleton said Monday while carrying a plate of lasagna rolls prepared by chef Kora Seitz from the kitchen to a table. "So I added it, but it's not traditional."

Instead, rich, creamy spinach Florentine sauce takes the place of red sauce, and chicken, not sausage, is accompanied by seasoned ricotta, broccoli and shredded cheddar.

It's a combination that works.

"I had the lasagna (on Saturday), and it was excellent," said Phil Pool, owner of Omni Photography. "The Brussels sprouts are to die for. They have a pecan glaze. I'm not a huge Brussels sprouts fan, but I could eat these things like popcorn."

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Pool has dined at Cashus Italian Cuisine three times in the past two weeks and returned Monday to take photos of an assortment of entrees and appetizers at the request of Cashus and Seitz, who plan to use them on their website and freshen up the menu.

The photo shoot was without fancy place settings or fanfare, allowing the food to speak for itself.

"I just need pictures of the food," Cashus said. "People aren't going to eat table cloths."

Key to many of the dishes is the sauce.

"Chef Kora specializes in sauces," Cashus said. "Italian food is 70, 80% sauce."

They worked together to create the menu, and Seitz, who spent much of her life in Texas, tamed down her use of spices and went full-bore into sauces.

The restaurant's signature sauce is Florentine, but there also are alfredo dishes coated with butter and parmesan rather than saturated in cream.

"The roasted garlic parm is our version of chicken alfredo, just amped up," Cashus said, explaining that dish has a healthy amount of garlic and Havarti cheese, "which gives it a whole different feel."

Time allowing, the pasta there is made from scratch.

"Ninety percent of what we do is from scratch," Cashus said. "Our food takes a little bit longer, but that's because we care a little bit more."

In addition to seven dinner entrees and six lunch options, Cashus Italian Cuisine also offers six appetizers, the most popular among them being the bruschetta.

"This is a really popular appetizer for us," Cashus said. "We love the reaction to it. That's what we go for. You can tell that it's fresh, the parmesan is shaved and people really dig it."

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Cashus and Seitz opened the restaurant in West Burlington about four months ago after a stint at Burlington's Comfort Inn and Suites, where Seitz, who went to culinary school in Texas, had worked as a chef for Cashus. Now, the two are partners.

"It works because ... she just loves the freedom of creating and being in that kitchen," Cashus said. "And I like to socialize and network and build relationships with guests."

That's not to say Cashus isn't ever in the kitchen. His specialty is cakes. Very large cakes that go for $10 per slice, and each slice can easily feed three people.

"It's a great little restaurant, fabulous desserts," Greater Burlington Partnership President and CEO Della Schmidt said of Cashus Italian Cuisine.

A total of 11 cakes are on the menu, and while selection is limited at any given time, whole cakes can be ordered in advance.

"The most incredible part afterwards is the cake," Pool said, explaining he can eat maybe half a slice and takes the rest home to enjoy later.

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From dishwasher to restaurateur

Cashus, a native of Chicago, studied culinary arts in San Francisco, but he wanted to learn more about the inner workings of the restaurant industry.

"I wanted to learn how to function in a kitchen," he said. "I would go to these high-end restaurants and talk to the head chefs and the managers to see if I could just watch and learn, and in return, I'd do labor."

He was paid in knowledge and food.

"I wasn't getting any money, but I would get food and that was my rent," he said. "I would bring home food for my roommates and let them eat it. That's how I survived."

After three years of sofa surfing and having gained a solid grasp on how to manage a kitchen, he turned his attention to the front of the house and set his sights on an Olive Garden in Minnesota that was hiring line cooks and dishwashers. He already knew how to cook and didn't want to get stuck in the kitchen, so he became a dishwasher and worked his way to the front of the house.

"At that time, they had the reputation for the best service in the restaurant industry at this point, so I started off as a dishwasher," Cashus said. "Within seven years, I'd worked my way up to be a certified trainer, and I'd opened up 13 stores for them by the time I left."

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From big-city Olive Garden to a restaurant of his own in small-town Iowa

After about 15 years living near Minneapolis, Cashus met a woman from southeast Iowa who had grown tired of Minnesota winters and was moving home to Mount Pleasant. Cashus moved with her and opened his first restaurant in Batavia, a town of about 430 just west of Fairfield.

It was a small restaurant in a cafe-like setting with about five tables. The setup allowed Cashus to chat with his customers while preparing their food.

"I knew it was providing a good service to that community," Cashus said.

But owning a restaurant in a town that size came with its own hurdles.

"Distributors wouldn't deliver to me because they felt my market was too small, so that's why I had to learn to do everything from scratch," he recalled.

He was able to make the restaurant a dining destination and was selected by the Iowa Restaurant Association as the recipient of the Coralville Faces of Diversity Award in 2019.

But running a restaurant, even a small one, can be stressful.

"That's where I died," Cashus said. "I died in that restaurant."

He suffered what he would later learn was his first heart attack while cooking on a Friday night. He chalked it up to being dehydrated, so he went home, drank fluids and went to bed.

Cashus awoke the next morning feeling fine and went to work like usual. After the day's lunch rush, he collapsed.

He woke briefly to see his 11-year-old son, Dominick, who had been playing video games in Cashus' office, standing over him with the phone before slipping out of consciousness again.

He awoke after the EMTs arrived to find that his son had put up the cash, turned off all the kitchen equipment and locked the doors.

"He did everything right," Cashus said of his son.

Cashus also learned he needed a triple-bypass.

It took about eight months for Cashus to recover and return to his restaurant, and it wasn't long after that that he had to adjust his business to survive through the pandemic.

He partnered with local farms and butchers to get meat and began serving $5 to-go burger baskets and hand-cut fries.

That first Cashus Italian Cuisine made it through the pandemic, but a challenge from a friend spurred him to move the restaurant to Burlington.

"Batavia was just too small," Cashus said. "Someone said your food is great out here, but will it work in a bigger demographic. A buddy of mine bet me $1,000 that I wouldn't open up a restaurant in Burlington and be successful."

And so he did, operating Cashus Italian Cuisine out of the Comfort Inn and Suites for about a year before he and Seitz decided to partner up and find a new location.

The two are uncertain about where their restaurant may take them in the next year or so and are considering a potential move to downtown Burlington in the future.

But for now, it's the perfect place to go on date night before heading down the hall to see a movie.

Cashus Italian Cuisine is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

Michaele Niehaus covers business, development, environment and agriculture for The Hawk Eye. She can be reached at mniehaus@thehawkeye.com.

This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: Cashus Italian Cuisine in West Burlington offers a menu 'to die for'