Latino Restaurant Week — a celebration of diversity

9/10/2024

Educating yourself on Latino cuisine will never be easier… or as delicious. 

 

Iowa Restaurant Association reports that more than 10% of Iowa restaurants are now Latino-owned. The percentage in Des Moines is much higher. Just take a drive down Army Post Road, and you will start wondering what happened to all the Italian cafés and other places that used to dominate the southside. It’s now El Camino Real of Iowa, and it’s much more than tacos and burritos.

 

The past

Through the 1950s, Latino restaurants were few and not so far between. They were concentrated in Valley Junction plus El Patio on Ingersoll until Dahl’s chased that café a few blocks west. All were Mexican, specifically Sonoran. That’s the part of Mexico that supplied the majority of Mexico’s wheat, beef, corn and seafood, as well as most of Des Moines’ early 20th-century Hispanic immigrants. 

Raul’s and Tasty Taco popped up in the early 1960s, introducing the flour tortilla, deep fried taco that the Mosqueda family made into the signature of Des Moines cuisine. 

 

The progress

Iowa luckily found a truer association with Latino cuisine when a new wave of immigrants came here beginning in the late 1980s. By the mid-1990s, tiendas Los Laureles and La Tapatia were doubling as restaurants with menus of foods from the interior of Mexico — mostly Michoacan and Jalisco. 

In 1992, both the English version of Laura Esquivel’s novel and the movie version of “Like Water for Chocolate” made Mexican cooking magical and sexy. A teenaged Rosa Martinez sold her tamales on weekends in a parking lot where La Placita on East Grand is now. The line of pickup trucks waiting to buy them, and to flirt with her, ran two blocks down East Grand and around the corner on East 14th. She later moved her catering business into La Rosa on Forest. And the race for Iowa hearts, minds and stomachs was on. 

 

The present

This century, the stunning international success of Peruvian chefs Nobu Matsuhisa, Gastón Acurio and Virgilio Martínez Véliz made gourmets everywhere aware of the complexity of Peru’s cuisine. The popularity of Brazilian churrascarias have given Latino dining a Portuguese accent. 

Today, Des Moines’ Latino restaurants include specialists in Ecuadoran, Peruvian, Salvadoran, Honduran, Venezuelan, Brazilian, Cuban, Guatemalan, Jamaican and Puerto Rican cuisines plus all parts of Mexico from Sonora to Yucatan, Oaxaca and the District Federal. By the time this goes to press, there will likely be something new. 

 

The promotion

Iowa Latino restaurant owners have formed their own professional association, the Iowa Latino Hospitality Council. From Sept. 11 to Sept. 21, they will promote Iowa Latino Restaurant Week so that diners have an affordable way to check out the diversity of Latino dining in town. Special set menus will offer two lunches for $25 or two dinners for $50.

Opportunities will be spread all over the metro. Participating restaurants include:

• Tullpa Restaurant — Des Moines
• Panka Peruvian — Des Moines
• Mi Patria — West Des Moines
• Ceviche Bar — Des Moines
• La Cuscatleca — Des Moines
• Roots 95 Craft Kitchen & Bar — Johnston
• Puerto Rico Restaurant — Windsor Heights
• Cancun Grill & Cantina — Urbandale
• Malo — Des Moines
• Los Allegres — Des Moines
• Margarita’s Mexican Buffet — Des Moines
• El Fogon — West Glen
• El Fogon — Eighth Street
• El Guacamole Patio and Cantina — Waukee
• Fiesta Mexican — Adel
• Fiesta Mexican — West Des Moines
• Fiesta Mexican — North Liberty
• Fiesta Mexican — Pleasant Hill
• Blue Bean — Johnston
• Blue Bean — Ankeny  
• Flame Cantina — Ankeny
• Cancun Grill & Cantina — Ankeny
• El Barco Mexican — Des Moines
• Toro Loco Restaurante/Bar — Des Moines 

Educating yourself will never be easier… or as delicious.Turn the page to see what it’s all about.

Jim Duncan is a food writer who has been covering the central Iowa scene for more than five decades.