La Mie remains true to its French roots
Because we have been covering the local food scene since the late 1980s, we’re often asked what jump-started the Des Moines restaurant renaissance. Good bread is our best answer. A [...]
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Posted January 01, 2025in Food Dude
Posted December 04, 2024in Food Dude
Harbinger of invention
Jim Duncan will further reckon the year in food in his Daily Umbrella column the last two weeks of the month. www.thedailyumbrella.com December is the month of reckoning. We sum [...]
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Posted November 06, 2024in Food Dude
Hessen Haus has romance on tap
James Joyce wrote novels that were often incomprehensibly complex. He also wrote about aesthetics with precious simplicity. For example, he defined romance as that which transports one to another time [...]
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Posted October 02, 2024in Food Dude
Centro — grandeur salvaged
From today’s perspective, Centro proved to be perfectly named. It is the heart of downtown now. But it seemed like an eccentric pipe dream at the turn of the millennium. [...]
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Posted September 04, 2024in Food Dude
Aposto — the fruit of deep roots
When the millennium was new, Tony Lemmo opened his first café in the Metro Market. That brilliant incubator of food businesses was doomed by its limitations — mainly that it [...]
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Posted July 31, 2024in Food Dude
Lucca finds its ‘sweet spot’
Lucca just turned 20 years old. It has nurtured some of the city’s very best chefs and restaurateurs. Owner Steve Logsdon brought David Baruthio (Baru66 and four other places) here [...]
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Posted July 03, 2024in Food Dude
801 Chop House — still the one
A few years back, I was taking a food writers tour of Kansas City with a score of writers, most of them from Texas. My Dallas friends ran into restaurant [...]
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Posted June 05, 2024in Food Dude
The aroma of searing protein
The fashion of the day is “the next new thing.” Social media made it so. Everyone with a phone is now a critic and a wannabe influencer. And influencers flock [...]
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Posted May 01, 2024in Food Dude
Tumea & Sons is a veritable heirloom
The meaning of “heirloom” has been extended this century in American vernacular. It’s not just for nouns anymore. I have seen it used to describe baseball fans, tomatoes, pigs, brand [...]
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Posted April 03, 2024in Food Dude
Flying Mango is unique to the bone
Flying Mango has been around for a quarter century, 21 years at its present location in Beaverdale and five before that at farmers markets and as a catering service. Its [...]
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