By Jim Duncan CVFDude@aol.com

Krieger's Sports Grill

Before there were "Sports Bars" in Des Moines, we had neighborhood bars with sports on TV, and good family food. Such de facto sports bars as Wellman's Pub, Orlondo's and Francie's built business around original kitchens and the big crowds that showed up to watch Hawkeye games with a community of like-minded fans. Every time I hear NASCAR commercials, I still think about the handmade sausage sandwiches at Liz's. These days, new "sports bars" pop up as frequently as any other kind of restaurant, heavily clustered in the far western suburbs. You can now try to watch a dozen different games simultaneously while ordering from menus the size of football programs. Yet, from a taster's point of view, more is less.

The new joints, mostly chains, offer similar menus with huge portions and little originality. It doesn't have to be this way. Sports bars with good original food exist outside Des Moines, in places like Winchell's in Lexington and Long Wong's Chinese Sports Bar in Milwaukee, which also has its own bowling lanes with human pin setters! After our last sports-bar review, alert readers touted Krieger's to us. Soon after that we received advertising from that St. Louis chain in which it claimed to have been voted "Best Pub & Grill, Best Fries, Best Burgers" and three other "best's" by the Riverfront Times, St. Louis' respected weekly and the only Midwestern alternative paper I know that publishes a periodical similar to Relish in its focus on serious culinary journalism. Since good fries have been another endless quest of ours, I jumped on the next game bus to Krieger's Jordan Creek-area grill.

A combo appetizer platter included potato skins, roasted ravioli, mozzarella sticks, chicken tenders and a Tex-Mex chicken roll. All were quite ordinary, so we moved on the touted burgers and fries. The bison and beef hamburgers deserved their kudos. Even though both were cooked longer than we ordered, they had perfect sear on both sides and the beef burger was hand made. Fries were another matter. Heavily coated with what tasted like Lawry's and sugar, they were soggy, even on the outside, so much so that they actually flopped over when held by one end. Since coating is usually a bad trade-off for crispness, these made me question St. Louis' collective taste buds.

I checked the Riverfront Times "Best Of" archives, but Krieger's fries were not listed among winners. I called the paper to ask about the discrepancy. The editorial department told me that they vote on the paper's "Best of" awards and that Krieger's had not won anything. They added that the paper's advertising department also has some separate awards, but not the "Best Of's."

On return visits, we found exceptionally nice people going out of their way to please customers. We tried pizza and blackened grilled chicken after being told those were the chain's most popular offerings. Both were above average if you like thin-crust pizza and cheesy chicken. A lunch special "pizzetta" was quite disappointing, though, overwhelmed by salty feta that was still cool and vegetables that were barely warm. The crust was a whole-wheat brainstorm that should not be allowed north of Missouri.

The chain offers lots of promotions. Las Vegas vacations are given away every two weeks, to anyone participating in a "fourth drink is free" happy hour special. I counted 24 TVs, and my oddball requests for out-of-market games were cheerfully met. The big screen TVs had such bad resolution, though, that we watched adjacent small screens. Second-hand smoke permeated the non-smoking area. Fittingly, Krieger's "signature drink" was "purple haze," made with vodka, gin, rum, tequila, triple sec, sweet & sour and Chambord.

Food Skinny

Des Moines' Oktoberfest will be Sept. 22-23. Fourth Street will be closed south of Court to host tented beer gardens, live polka music and authentic German food. Hessen Haus will anchor the event, which drew nearly 15,000 last year...The Game Sports Bar opened in Parkwood Plaza, with a concession-stand window dispensing ball-park fare. CV

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