Not reinventing the wheel
Do not mess with perfection. Why do so many cooks think that adding ingredients to legendary recipes improves them? In Des Moines, this often manifests itself in the form of [...]
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Posted March 09, 2016in Food Dude
Posted March 02, 2016in Food Dude
Fish fry season
Lent inspires restaurants to experiment with temporary offerings, showing regular customers that they understand their dietary restrictions while testing new items at minimum risk. Few people will be angered when [...]
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Posted February 24, 2016in Food Dude
Doors close, others open
Many places in town think lunch is not worth the effort or cost. When Alba owner Jason Simon opened Eatery A, he said the main lesson he learned at his [...]
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Posted February 17, 2016in Food Dude
Teriyaki House Japanese Grill
New Year’s resolutions are obsolete. The real temptations toward gluttony come in the weeks after the drunken singing of “Auld Lang Syne.” Burns Night, Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras, Super [...]
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Posted February 10, 2016in Food Dude
Gateway Café: The anti-Pizza Ranch
The caucuses drive me nuts. I’m embarrassed that Iowa eschews the secret ballot for a system where everyone goes back to middle school to stand publicly with whomever they perceive [...]
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Posted February 03, 2016in Food Dude
Manhattan Grill
Some things are much better than the sum of their parts. Consider mustard. There is a good reason why people don’t often eat straight mustard seed. However, mix it with [...]
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Posted January 27, 2016in Food Dude
Guru BBQ
Since I began writing this column, the number of barbecues in the metro has changed from one, to none, to more than one can count. The genre exploded in the [...]
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Posted January 20, 2016in Food Dude
China quest
Fans of traditional Chinese restaurants absorbed a double shock at year’s end. It had been announced for months that Kwong Tung would close after New Year’s Eve following more than [...]
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Posted January 13, 2016in Food Dude
Firebirds Wood Fired Grill
The steakhouse is a distinctly American institution. They thrive in North America, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay where wide-open spaces have allowed grazing and ample grains to be grown to feed [...]
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Posted January 06, 2016in Food Dude
New Yorker story
When Jay Wang opened Wasabi Chi in 2011, he said he wanted to bring New York-style sushi to Des Moines. I asked him last week what that means. “I think [...]
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