Posted July 31, 2024in Food Dude
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 from France when he opened. Derek Eidson (Django and Guesthouse Supper Club) followed him. Logsdon is a James Beard Best
Read More →
Posted July 03, 2024in Food Dude
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 buddies from home who were in town for a Rangers-Royals series. The Texas friends were raving about “the best steakhouse
Read More →
Posted June 05, 2024in Food Dude
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 only where the other trendsetters perch. Metro Des Moines is home now to six high-end, USDA prime steakhouses, four in
Read More →
Posted May 01, 2024in Food Dude
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 new wrist watches and stocks. There’s nothing wrong with that, but here’s what Oxford now has to say: “heirloom: 1.)
Read More →
Posted April 03, 2024in Food Dude
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 name came because owner Mike Wedeking has been a licensed pilot for more than half a century, and mango is
Read More →
Posted March 06, 2024in Food Dude
Readers have alerted us about the avalanche of media interest in “the next new thing.” That is something that came with social media. Everyone with a smart phone is a restaurant critic, often posting while dining out. People camp overnight to be first to eat at a new Chick-fil-A or
Read More →
Posted January 31, 2024in Food Dude
Romance has been defined more ways than there are to ask for a date to the prom. Hollywood and the merchants of St. Valentine brand our young minds with very sentimental trappings — chocolates, flowers, linen table cloths, candlelight and violins. There is another more expansive definition, sometimes ascribed to
Read More →
Posted January 03, 2024in Food Dude
Going to college in Hyderabad in the 1960s, there were many magical names calling my inner traveler — Ceylon, Burma, Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Kerala, Puri. The most enticing of all was Nepal. I visited twice and figured I would never again taste some of its marvelous foods again, unless I
Read More →
Posted December 06, 2023in Food Dude
Oak Park opened in October generating more buzz than any restaurant since 801 Steak & Chop House opened in 1991. Much about the recent debut was remarkable. The restaurant was the first hospitality industry venture for Kathy Fehrman, a retired investments manager. It arose quickly amid an Ingersoll Avenue reconstruction
Read More →
Posted November 01, 2023in Food Dude
Early last month, NASA released the first-ever photos of Pan, the innermost moon of Saturn. To great surprise, the moon looks like a potsticker (gyoza in Japan). Asian media have dubbed it “the dumpling moon.” Dumplings are a lifelong food. People learn to love them before they have teeth and
Read More →
