Posted July 31, 2024in Lunch With...
Ben McCollum is Drake University’s new head men’s basketball coach. Previously, he won four national championships including three in a row at Northwest Missouri State. In town amongst recruiting trips to Atlanta, Augusta and Phoenix, we asked him to lunch and met at, where else, Drake Diner. That historic café
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Posted July 03, 2024in Lunch With...
Angela Harrington is a developer, hotelier and civic promoter of the I-80 corridor from Des Moines to Iowa City. We asked her to lunch and met at Panka Peruvian Restaurant, a marvelous, minority- and female-owned café on Ingersoll. Mariella Maya’s restaurant upgraded recently after she closed her rotisserie chicken shop
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Posted June 05, 2024in Lunch With...
Jacqueline Thompson is an ordained elder in the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) and is pastor at both Burns UMC and St. John’s UMC. She grew up in Dayton, Ohio, a town that could be Des Moines’ twin sister in some of its similarities yet is quite
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Posted May 01, 2024in Lunch With...
C.J. Bienert is Des Moines’ chosen cheese monger. Through his Cheese Shop and Cheese Bar, he has enticed the city’s palate to appreciate distinctions between whey and casein proteins, goat’s milk and sheep’s milk fats, Pyrenees and Alpine terroirs, etc. He has promoted wine and cheese tastings to graduate level
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Posted April 03, 2024in Lunch With...
Jake Christensen is a developer who has repurposed many of East Village’s 19th and early 20th century buildings, including E300 (Zombie Burger). That was a ground-up construction on a vacant parking lot with one of the largest residential geothermal systems ever in Iowa. We asked him to lunch, and he
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Posted March 06, 2024in Lunch With...
Clark Williams is a musician, writer, chef, graphic designer, publisher and proud Son of St. Patrick. We asked him to lunch, and he chose West End Architectural Salvage, a downtown coffeeshop surrounded by wonderous things that have passed into second-hand status. Williams worked at two of the best-ever seafood restaurants
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Posted January 31, 2024in Lunch With...
Tim and Wendie O’Brien are horse people with a challenging love story. Because it’s St. Valentine’s month, we asked them to lunch, and they chose Ted’s Coney Island, an Ingersoll stalwart that occupies the iconic International House of Pancakes building that it succeeded. Ted’s has been around Des Moines since
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Posted January 03, 2024in Lunch With...
Kim Perez is the new president and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. We asked her to lunch, and she chose Trellis, the restaurant under the Garden’s dome. Since we both prefer soups and salads during the winter months, we were in the right place. No one does
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Posted December 06, 2023in Lunch With...
Bill Mulstay is a former fireman, carney and an artist with more than 60 years of significant work in Des Moines. Mike Hughes is a guitar maker, post beam constructionist and greeting card (“Good for You”) creator. We asked them to lunch at Manhattan Deli. We went after 1 p.m.
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Posted November 01, 2023in Lunch With...
More than anyone else, Mike Lavalle elevated the Des Moines dining scene over the last 50 years. Right or wrongly, he has been a step ahead of everyone else in Iowa. We asked him to lunch, and he invited us to his new project, Purveyor in East Village. Our old
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