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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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
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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
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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
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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.)
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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
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