Pho All Seasons returns
Pho All Seasons built a loyal customer base on East Ninth Street during the previous decade. Four years ago, the family was told they needed to add a prohibitively expensive [...]
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Posted April 02, 2014in Food Dude
Posted March 26, 2014in Food Dude
Café di Scala mellows out
With 20 new dieting books published each week, one might think this is the golden age of nutritional wisdom. Actually, dieting obsessions have been recycled for hundreds of years. Lord [...]
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Posted March 19, 2014in Food Dude
International African Cuisine is a rare gem
These days caterers who cook in other people’s houses are called “nomadic chefs.” That’s either a cheap appropriation of those words or a redundancy. Historically all nomads moved about in [...]
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Posted March 12, 2014in Food Dude
Panchero’s and the Burrito Wars
Remember when Chipotle was the good guy? The Colorado chain had just 16 stores in 1998 when McDonald’s bought a majority share in the company. It quickly grew to 500 [...]
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Posted March 05, 2014in Food Dude
What’s in a name? Lots at Blue Tomato
Blue Tomato Kitchen is named after a new, cross-pollinated fruit that gourmets are comparing to the legendary New Mexican chile. Created in 1913 at New Mexico State, and improved 20 [...]
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Posted February 26, 2014in Food Dude
Four Asian cuisines at One Asian
Top Iowa chefs and restaurants continue to receive national honors (see “Side Dishes” below.) A different story on the café beat, though, has been every bit as significant to the [...]
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Posted February 19, 2014in Food Dude
Building a better sandwich
Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly said, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” That hasn’t been good advice. In “the Discipline of Innovation,” Tim [...]
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Posted February 12, 2014in Food Dude
Ice-fished walleye and other Earthly delights
Seafood season arrived on the first weekend of this month, along with Bacon Fest, the Year of the Horse and the NFL championship game between the Denver Broncos and Seattle [...]
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Posted February 05, 2014in Food Dude
Casey’s takes on Subway
If you pay for gas at the pump, you might be amazed by all that has been going on inside convenience stores this century. Some have become liquor stores, fried [...]
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Posted January 29, 2014in Food Dude
Jethro’s still growing
Earlier this month the City of West Des Moines erected a sign just west of Jethro’s Jambalaya and BBQ: “Welcome to West Des Moines.” The city felt a need to [...]
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