Posted June 04, 2025in Food Dude
In 1903, brothers Francesco, 21, and Luigi, 17, Graziano left their Calabrian hometown San Morello to emigrate to the U.S. Like many Calabrians before them, and many more later, their way winded to Des Moines. They found jobs working for the Great Western Railroad until 1912. Then they decided that
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Posted April 30, 2025in Food Dude
In 1989, CITYVIEW predecessor Skywalker began publishing the column “Since I Quit Drinking.” It was a take on the Rip Van Winkle legend that used new sobriety as awakening to surprisingly new things for one who had been asleep for decades. One early column focused on a new store at
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Posted April 02, 2025in Food Dude
The year was 1978, a most Dickensian time. A murder/suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, ended 909 American lives while Israel and Egypt were finding accord at Camp David, Maryland. Argentina won its first World Cup after Peru’s national team laid down and allowed six Argentine goals in a strange group stage
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Posted March 05, 2025in Food Dude
B & B Grocery, Meat and Deli is the beating heart of Sevastopol. It has been since the first Brooks brothers, John and “Archie,” opened for business in 1922. “Everyone called him Archie, but his real name was Joseph. That confusion has continued. Joe and I are the third generation
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Posted February 05, 2025in Food Dude
Joe and Red Giudicessi bought Christopher’s in 1961. The purchase included a sign too expensive to replace, so they kept the name someone else liked. Before that, they ran a tavern on East Locust. “It was called Rosie’s, where Bar Nico is now. The main clientele was streetwalkers and cops,
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Posted January 01, 2025in Food Dude
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 quarter century ago, I ran into philanthropist Maddie Glazer several times on connecting flights home through O’Hare. We both usually
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Posted December 04, 2024in Food Dude
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 things up and calculate where we stand as a year ends and another looms. 2024 should go down as a
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Posted November 06, 2024in Food Dude
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 or place. Joyce’s “Ulysses” is arguably the greatest homage ever paid to romance — and to pubs. I think Joyce
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Posted October 02, 2024in Food Dude
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. In fact, the Proudfoot, Bird and Rawson building that houses it, then the Masonic Temple, was on the hit list
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Posted September 04, 2024in Food Dude
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 could only be open on weekends. Lemmo saw the writing on the wall and started looking for a more permanent
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