Gunder is a map dot in Clayton County with one establishment to its unincorporated name: The Irish Shanti, home of the Gunderburger, a whole pound (post-cooked!) of delicious cow packaged between two slices of bread, served with crinkle fries or cheese curds.
My travels across Iowa weren’t going to be complete without one. I checked it off, along with the Cassville ferry, in fall 2011. Then I checked it off again in 2017, the same year it was on a list of Iowa’s best burgers. There will not be a third.
I have found out, a year after the fact, that the Irish Shanty shut down last year. Yes, there is a spelling change in there: The restaurant changed hands June 1, 2018, according to this article in the Postville Herald, and the new owner modified the name. He lasted precisely 12 months.
The restaurant business is low-margin, fickle and merciless. Had the Shanti/Shanty still been going, the plague stood a good chance of crushing it anyway.