Los Laureles keeps getting better
Once in a great while, a new type of restaurant changes the way people think about an entire cuisine. Less often, a new café elevates an entire neighborhood. Los Laureles [...]
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Posted March 18, 2015in Food Dude
Posted March 11, 2015in Food Dude
Little Morocco revives the pop-up
“If Des Moines does not allow unbridled access to food trucks, then the young professional tribe will leave, and this city’s renaissance will be dead and gone.” That mantra has [...]
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Posted March 04, 2015in Food Dude
Rhyming with history at QT and Pita Pit
Cultural criticism is elitist by necessity. If critics praised that which was popular, they would be redundant. Academy Awards do not go to popular movies so much as to esoteric [...]
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Posted February 25, 2015in Food Dude
503 completes Eighth Street evolution
Neighborhoods evolve mysteriously. A few years and one sexual harassment lawsuit ago, Eighth Street in West Des Moines was the center of the Iowa restaurant universe with Jimmy’s American Café, [...]
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Posted February 18, 2015in Food Dude
Dos Rios has become a bargain
In Iowa, chili cook-offs have become a rite of winter. Country clubs, churches, taverns and hospitals all hold them. Last week, one transported me to another time and place. The [...]
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Posted February 11, 2015in Food Dude
Pig bellies and wood sheep
Bacon Fest 2015 belly-upped with drama. This year’s event, at the Iowa Events Center for the first time, nearly doubled in size. Shorter lines to buy food and beverages pleased [...]
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Posted February 04, 2015in Food Dude
The gut-busting state of bacon elegance
This year Bacon Fest coincided with Super Bowl week, creating a perfect storm of hyperbole. The pork belly celebration marked its eighth year as a bona fide tourist attraction by [...]
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Posted January 28, 2015in Food Dude
Sakura is packed for good reasons
Taki brought Des Moines its first urban style sushi in 2002. After Food Dude raved about its uni (sea urchin roe) and toro (fatty tuna belly), one reader wrote that [...]
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Posted January 21, 2015in Food Dude
Scenic Route Bakery
Des Moines is in the midst of a bakery boom. La Mie expanded twice recently, and Strudl Haus opened to great acclaim. The most ambitious new player is Scenic Route [...]
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Posted January 14, 2015in Food Dude
Salween Thai is Something Special
The Salween is a legendary river that flows out of the Tibetan Himalayas through China, Burma and Thailand to the Andaman Sea. It is one of the longest free-flowing rivers [...]
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