Posted January 23, 2013in Featured Story, Food Dude
Andrew Meek makes a short list of people responsible for turning the local culinary scene into a source of civic pride. At the turn of millennium, Meek and John Ross’ Sage brought the public a level of service and fine dining that had only been available at private clubs. That
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Posted January 16, 2013in Featured Story, Food Dude
For Latino restaurants in Des Moines, the last 20 years brought the best of times and the worst of times. On the latter part of that Dickensian paradox, three different restaurants named Margarita’s have all come and gone. On the positive side, hard-working individuals have parlayed taco trucks and bare-boned
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Posted January 09, 2013in Featured Story, Food Dude
In greater Des Moines, new national chain restaurants debut amidst a barrage of hype. Openings last year of Twin Peaks, Whole Foods and Chick-fil-A became publicity circuses attracting campers and live television news reports. Even smaller Iowa companies like Pizza Ranch and The Other Place attracted huge crowds here from
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Posted January 02, 2013in Featured Story, Food Dude
In this post-New Year’s season of diets, resolutions and purges, even a meat-eating sinner such as I figured it was time to try out New World Café, Des Moines’ first all vegan restaurant. What’s that? Vegans avoid eating all the things that vegetarians refrain from eating plus any foods derived
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Posted December 26, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
The three great cuisines of classical history — Chinese, Roman and Ottoman — all developed as spoils of empire. From Zheng He and Marco Polo to Ibn Battuta and Columbus, history’s greatest adventurers trekked around the world seeking new foods as much as anything else. From Bistro 43 and Sage
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Posted December 19, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
The local restaurant scene seemed oblivious to any economic slump this year. The number of openings tripled the number of closings in 2012. New additions ranged from the spectacular (Exile) to the ubiquitous (fro-yo’s), from the reborn (Buzzard Billy’s) to relocated (Bambino’s) and from first-course specialists (The Standard) to desserts-only
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Posted December 12, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
The year 2012 brought the water dragon. For Iowa that meant far more dragon breath than water. The hottest, driest summer in decades resulted in a 4 percent drop in major agricultural production. Iowa wine growers, though, reported bumper crops. Restaurant news was similarly ambivalent. Many of the best new
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Posted December 05, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
HoQ is East Village’s latest fine dining hot spot. Its moniker is a shortened version of owner/chef Suman Hoque’s last name. Spelled, as it is on its logo, with only a lower case vowel, it’s also an acronym for “House of Quality,” a matrix applied in Quality Function Deployment. According
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Posted November 28, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
When my colleagues ask one another what kind of restaurant they think Des Moines needs, answers almost always reflect worldly hopefulness such as Basque, Moroccan, vegan, Brazilian, dim sum, Ethiopian and molecular. However when real world restaurateurs put their money on the line to open a new place here, they
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Posted November 21, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
“Table d’hôte” menus began in 17th century inns. One could rent a room with or without a set meal that was shared by other guests. After modern restaurants developed (as a consequence of the French Revolution leaving so many cooks unemployed), the term was applied to multi-course dinners with limited
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