Centro — grandeur salvaged

10/2/2024

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 of powerful players including the mayor, his architectural advisor and chauvinists of the Chipperdale library next door.  

City Council meetings then were raucous affairs religiously attended by activists for preservation led by firebrand Nan Stillians and her enthusiastic posse. They held things up long enough for two voices with clout to notice. Against the advice of most of their business friends, Harry and Pam Bookey determined to save the Temple from the wrecking ball. 

“I heard about the Temple being on the block on an airplane with a Minneapolis developer. Half joking, I said that I might put in a bid on the place. But after talking to Pam, it seemed like a good idea. We went to the City Council with an alternative proposal,” Harry recalls.

“We were treated like saviors of the faith by the activists,” Pam adds. 

The Bookeys gathered an eclectic conglomeration of financing sources. 

“It was more than 25, maybe lots more,” Harry recalls. 

They also determined that the building needed two anchors to survive — a destination restaurant and a Starbucks franchise. The latter became Iowa’s first. For the former, Harry interviewed “more than six” successful restaurateurs. 

“They all told me the same thing: ‘This could be a good lunch venue Monday through Friday but forget about dinner or weekends.’ Then Herb and Kathy Eckhouse (founders of La Quercia) turned us on to George Formaro. He was a bread maker selling sandwiches out of a florist shop at the time. 

“He walked in to my office with his kerchief over his head. I knew he was different, but I listened. He told me that if I let him build a coal-fired pizza oven, people would flock to the place at all hours. Fortunately, we were up for an adventure.”

The oven turned out to cost about 10 times more than the local standard of the time. 

“And George brought two guys from Brooklyn, or the Bronx, in — both named Vinnie — to install it. That took weeks.” 

Pam went to Milan to find huge vintage posters that look down on banquette seating that was a first in Des Moines. She recalls that they had to be tailored for American-sized bodies after they arrived.

Formaro was right. People flocked. Most got used to the hard char that coal ovens’ 900-plus-degree heat gives to a crust. The restaurant became nationally known after a few caucus seasons, turning into the Democrat equivalence of 801 Chop House. Today, pizza shares top drawer status with steaks, chicken, scallops and pasta dishes.

Centro is among a select few places where the bread is too good to ignore. It evolved from the original brick oven Formaro built in his backyard, modeled on drawings he made in Sicily. Caesar salad is a pure, anchovy-led OG. Common things — thick onion rings, steamed mussels, calamari — become very special here. Brunch is a big weekend event. I never get further than the crab cake Benedict at Centro, and I never order it anywhere else. Same thing for me with the chicken piccata, which is richer and thicker than most.

The Centro steak is similar to the creamy style de Burgo others serve. The scallops are bigger than most others and as perfectly seared as anywhere. Pasta includes lumachel, which is rarely used in Iowa. 

But pizza are still my number one reason to visit. Monday nights’ “half-priced pizza and Peronis” promotion draws a crowd at 4 p.m. and usually packs the room by 5:30. An entire hood of restaurants now surrounds Centro, which anchors the Western Gateway. 

And it almost never was.

Jim Duncan is a food writer who has been covering the central Iowa scene for more than five decades.