Posted March 19, 2014in Food Dude
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 order to either eat or to feed their flocks. Since modern warfare began, a new class of nomads has traveled
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Posted March 12, 2014in Food Dude
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 outlets before McDonald’s divested. Now it has 1,500. It built its image around a remarkable series of billboards and magazine
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Posted March 05, 2014in Food Dude
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 times, the New Mexican chile dominates that state’s agriculture and cuisine. Iowans flock to Hy-Vee each August when it imports
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Posted February 26, 2014in Food Dude
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 sophistication of Des Moines’ collective palate. Its main player was not a chef or restaurateur but a politician. Gov. Bob
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Posted February 19, 2014in Food Dude
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 Kastelle writes that the U.S. Patent Office has granted 4,400 mousetrap patents, still about 40 new ones every year, yet
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Posted February 12, 2014in Food Dude
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 Seahawks. Despite the seemingly antithetical relationship between the first thing and those others, all are bonded in mutual dependence. Sales
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Posted February 05, 2014in Food Dude
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 chicken shops and live bait dispensers. Some specialize in ethnic snack foods like samosas and tacos. None is as ambitious
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Posted January 29, 2014in Food Dude
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 clarify that Jethro’s occupied West Des Moines real estate, because that restaurant bills itself as “Waukee’s Sports Bar.” Waukee is
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Posted January 22, 2014in Food Dude
The yellow building at 215 E. Walnut is hallowed ground in Des Moines’ cultural history. It’s where nurse Benichang “Beni” Luangaram converted an automobile garage into the city’s first Thai restaurant. After seven months of remodeling, she recruited her sister Somchai “T” Luangaram to be chef and her then husband
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Posted January 15, 2014in Food Dude
A food writer friend recently asked to meet for dinner while she visited Des Moines for the first time. She was on a 20-year-old mission to visit Noah’s Ark. “My college roommate was from Des Moines, and she talked about Noah’s as if were some kind of holy cathedral. It’s
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