Waveland Café’s secret little sister, Booneville Bar and Grill

Bar manager Nicole Kimberlin is a cool and friendly favorite of the Booneville Bar regulars. Her team recently established the bar’s signature Raccoon River margarita using a particularly potent secret ingredient.

There’s a nexus of contrast in a small village town just down the Raccoon River from West Des Moines. A place where Cy and Herkey can sit down and have a reconciling beer. It’s a biker bar that welcomes both Harley and Schwinn to its patio past times. A union of country and city colliding. The confluence of river and road.

“We get all sorts in here,” said Booneville Bar manager, Nicole Kimberlin. “We get West Des Moines people, Napa Valley is nearby, Waukee, Van Meter. A lot of country people. But we get a lot of new faces all the time, and I love that.”

“It’s pretty diverse,” added an eaves-dropping biker (Harley) who was bellied up at the bar.

Hence the three matching spandex alternatives who entered through the café side of the building to grab an iced tea and stretch their bones after a long haul down Dallas County back roads. County blacktop F90 follows along the Raccoon River.

Motorists, bikers, cyclists and river rats on canoes, tubes and kayaks belly up to the outskirts staple in a town that offers little else. In fact, if David Stone hadn’t opened a sister Waveland Café and accompanying pub at the intersection of Ute Avenue and F90, Booneville wouldn’t be a nexus of anything but those two roads.

The only problem with the outlaying locale is the road construction that is currently detouring traffic around a canyon the county has dug into Ute Avenue, routing traffic along a gravel alternative. But, according to Kimberlin, who opens the bar every weekday, “the detour hasn’t deterred business at all.” Des Moines and West Des Moines traffic can easily find Booneville by following Grand Avenue west, which turns into F90 in Dallas County. CV

Ute Avenue detour: Southbound on Ute Avenue from Interstate 80 (Waukee/Booneville exit 117), go east on the gravel 335th Street, turn south on V Court and then south/west on Booneville Road. Takes you right in to town.