Posted March 01, 2017in Food Dude
Trostel’s Greenbriar celebrates an anniversary in style When Paul Trostel moved his brand from Ingersoll (Colorado Feed & Grain, Rosie’s Cantina) to Johnston in 1987, there wasn’t much variety in the local dining scene. In fact, Trostel introduced the appetizer menu at Colorado Feed & Grain. Before that, appetizers in Des Moines
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Posted February 01, 2017in Food Dude
Remember supersizing? It served the fast food industry a couple decades ago. For a nominal fee, customers could have much larger servings of drinks and fries. The fast food police complained they were prime contributors to the obesity epidemic, and they soon were gone. Remember the Dollar Menu? Fast food
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Posted January 04, 2017in Food Dude
The year 2016 was disruptive to the status quo. Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature, the Chicago Cubs won its first World Series in 108 years, and Donald Trump became president of the United States. It took some time to get used to it all. Yet one friend
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Posted November 30, 2016in Food Dude
Don’t get into the grocery store business. Margins are so small that only the supersized can survive. That has been good advice for 50 years now. It also helps explain why small towns have either been losing population or ceasing to exist in Iowa. People rue the loss of small-town
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Posted November 02, 2016in Food Dude
Each fall, Cityview holds a contest to let readers select the ultimate local version of a popular food. Sandwich lovers picked B&B Grocery Meat & Deli’s pork tenderloin as the ultimate sandwich. Steakhouse fans went with Chicago Speakeasy, noodle lovers chose Noodle Zoo, and barbecue aficionados selected Woody’s. Twice we
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Posted October 05, 2016in Food Dude
Before dinner after a high school homecoming in the mid 1960s, my date advised me on subjects I knew nothing about. First she told me that it was unseemly for a lady to order for herself. Since I would be ordering for both of us, she also added that no
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Posted August 31, 2016in Food Dude
Sometimes the big new thing isn’t new at all. This year, savvy veterans of the food scene have turned their attention to diner food with a third millennium twist. Earlier, Scot Carlson took over the venerable address that once housed Jimmy’s American Café with Gilroy’s. Recently, Jeff Duncan moved into
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Posted August 10, 2016in Food Dude
After 29 years of weekly columns in Cityview (and its sister publications), this is my first monthly column. I chose Chef’s Kitchen because it represents what is best about both the old and new in Iowa restaurants — neighborly, small-town service and a third millennium emphasis on fresh ingredients. As
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Posted July 27, 2016in Food Dude
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 like a good opportunity to review 25 years of observations on this beat. Much has changed. When I began this
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Posted July 20, 2016in Food Dude
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 is such an idea. Elise and Rick Wetzel had the brilliant idea to apply the “build your own” style assembly
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