Posted November 20, 2013in Food Dude
If addresses could tell stories, 1238 Eighth St. in West Des Moines would be a renowned raconteur. After converting a Cork and Cleaver there, Jimmy’s American Café was the hottest spot in town beginning some 30 years ago. After owner Jimmy Lynch lost it in an infamous sexual harassment lawsuit,
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Posted November 13, 2013in Food Dude
Food courts have played an important role as entry level positions for American entrepreneurship. The historic indoor markets of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New York City and Detroit have all launched famous restaurants and food brands that became household names. Even though those places had a century head start on Des
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Posted November 06, 2013in Food Dude
At the turn of this decade, lunch was the new dinner. Flarah’s had just moved its lunch business into a larger spot in Beaverdale and opened the first of two downtown outlets. Proof was the hottest new café in town with weekday lunches and a single evening service. Flour became
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Posted October 30, 2013in Food Dude
Not long ago eating at museums, colleges and public buildings meant vending machines or boring cafeterias featuring bad coffee and stale pastries. No one did more to transform the local non-profit dining scene than Mike and Lisa LaValle. Their tent dinners added a new gala event to the opera season.
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Posted October 23, 2013in Food Dude
Bread might be the staff of life, but noodles are its bliss. Their brilliant simple paste of unleavened flour and water has been improving the quality of dinner for at least 4,000 years now. In Iowa, noodles have stretched food dollars through 200 winters, a Civil War, two World Wars
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Posted October 16, 2013in Food Dude
The idea of visiting several restaurants with a group of people has served me well as a tourist. That’s probably why the great culinary cities have many such tours. Mandi Borst is betting that Des Moines is also ready for such an idea. She is the local franchisee of Dishcrawl,
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Posted October 09, 2013in Food Dude
The great story of Iowa in the 20th century was that of people migrating from the state’s small towns and rural areas to a few cities and suburbs. Small towns lost their schools to the cult of consolidation, their farm hands to the industrialization of agriculture, their post offices to
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Posted October 02, 2013in Food Dude
In romantic lore, food is the universal language that brings people together to appreciate their similarities and understand their differences. In history that doesn’t work so well. As often as not, dinner invitations from an enemy were considered poisoning opportunities. Priscus, an envoy of the Roman Empire, wrote that, during
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Posted September 25, 2013in Food Dude
Local science businesses are frequently cited when civic leaders tout the cosmopolitan makeup of central Iowa. Our restaurant industry rarely gets credit for such things despite its extraordinary record for attracting outsiders. Italian immigrants, mostly from Calabria and Emilia-Romagna, dominated fine dining here between World War I and the Vietnam
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Posted September 18, 2013in Food Dude
A hundred years ago, our civic leaders were debating a ban on food cart vendors in Des Moines. Arguments sounded much like those against food trucks today: They were eyesores and had an unfair advantage over property tax-paying businesses with which they competed. A century later, I sympathize with restaurant
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