Posted March 04, 2026in Food Dude
The Pappajohn Sculpture Park (PSP) district was, not too long ago, the best restaurant district in Iowa. It attracted Mike and Lisa Lavalle, Marc Narvailles, David Baruthio, Scott Carlson, George Formaro, Paul Rottenberg, Derek Eidson, Sean Wilson, Carly Groben, Diego Rodriguez and Tony Lemmo, among other restaurateurs. That’s a virtual
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Posted February 04, 2026in Food Dude
Small-town cafés are so precious to nostalgia addicts that it is difficult to find much of anything negative written about them, even on the many social media platforms that attract the meanest critics. The reality is that most of small-town cafés are average at best, employing all the kitchen short
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Posted December 31, 2025in Food Dude
Noah’s Ark has been selling pizza since World War II. It is certainly the oldest restaurant in Iowa to sell them continuously and, arguably, the first to offer them. “After serving in the army, Noah (Lacona) got a government contract to feed soldiers passing through Des Moines. To get it,
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Posted December 03, 2025in Food Dude
When Colorado cowboy Paul Trostel rode into Des Moines in the early 1970s, the city thought: appetizers meant a choice of shrimp cocktail, tomato juice or fruit cocktail; that wine choices were simply “red or white;” and that French dressings were all orange and very sweet. He changed Des Moines
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Posted November 05, 2025in Food Dude
Waterfront Seafood Restaurant is a trump card Des Moines can play against similarly sized cities in a game of “Whose food scene is better?” Its 247-seat mother store in West Des Moines has been busy for so long that metro diners take it for granted. Big mistake. Independent seafood market-restaurants
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Posted October 01, 2025in Food Dude
The art of smoking animal flesh came late to Iowa. The Hawkeye state’s climate produced so much ice that our forebearers built ice houses to preserve our perishable foods. Smoking was a southern thing out of necessity. Before electric refrigeration, preservation required ice, salt or smoking, and salt had limited
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Posted September 03, 2025in Food Dude
Masao is Des Moines’ greatest application yet of the miracle of overnight air freight. It is also dramatic evidence that technology shrunk the world more than anything else did. When I graduated from high school here in 1965, I had never seen an avocado, a mango nor cilantro. The only
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Posted August 06, 2025in Food Dude
The local food scene is rifting. Two different sports bars, Blue Shark and Perfect Ten, both failed in just a few months at the same address on Ingersoll. Two Mexican restaurants, Blue Agave and Mojito’s, both closed within weeks of each other half a block apart in Windsor Heights. All
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Posted July 02, 2025in Food Dude
Soul food is having a moment in Des Moines. Two new brick and mortar cafés devoted entirely to this African-American style of southern roots cooking are up and running. Every time we visit, they are busy. That’s probably the closest this most resourceful style of American cooking has ever come
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Posted June 04, 2025in Food Dude
In 1903, brothers Francesco, 21, and Luigi, 17, Graziano left their Calabrian hometown San Morello to emigrate to the U.S. Like many Calabrians before them, and many more later, their way winded to Des Moines. They found jobs working for the Great Western Railroad until 1912. Then they decided that
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