Dino’s redefines the bar and grill
With a new and improved Cityview coming soon, this will end a streak of more than 1,300 straight weeks in which I have written about a local restaurant. It seems [...]
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Posted July 27, 2016in Food Dude
Posted July 20, 2016in Food Dude
Blaze of glory
Arthur Koestler’s “Act of Creation” suggests that all great inventions are part of a Hegelian dialectic in which an antithetic idea is applied to an existing one. Blaze Pizza [...]
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Posted July 13, 2016in Food Dude
Shanghai brings solid cuisine to Waukee
I have been writing a lot this year about good places in Waukee — Jethro’s Jambalaya, Kue’d, H Pho and India Tadka. Hot new joints sometimes obscure the memory [...]
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Posted July 06, 2016in Food Dude
Phat chance of success
Soon after the last snow melted this spring, two of the most reliably excellent services in my life changed for the worse. Almost simultaneously, my postman stopped setting my mail [...]
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Posted June 29, 2016in Food Dude
Mexican conquest of America
Mexican is the new Italian. Just as Italian chefs dominated the local dining scene after World War II, Mexican chefs are running the kitchens of many restaurants today. Not just [...]
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Posted June 22, 2016in Food Dude
Wasabi moves west
Twenty-some years ago, American sushi joints began opening outside Japanese neighborhoods in California and Hawaii. Soon after that, a sociologist published an infamous study determining that, at age 41, [...]
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Posted June 15, 2016in Food Dude
Happy days return to Prime
The building at 1261 Eighth St. in West Des Moines peaked several incarnations and one nefarious lawsuit ago. As Eighth Street Seafood, it featured live jazz, fresh seafood and a [...]
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Posted June 08, 2016in Food Dude
Wong’s Chopsticks
Suburban strip malls are far less predictable than they used to be. One of the greatest restaurant cities on Earth is Monterrey Park, California, where almost all its many great [...]
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Posted June 01, 2016in Food Dude
Bistro Montage becomes a teenager
Each time I visit Bistro Montage, I see several of the same people. One of them explained that recently by saying, “Hey, it’s the neighborhood café.” Indeed, it [...]
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Posted May 25, 2016in Food Dude
Business is bustling at Safari
At 5 p.m. on a recent Sunday, three hours before closing time, I tried to order a few things from Des Moines’ newest African café — Safari. Fish? Sorry, [...]
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