Autopsy of a grand food scene

Photo courtesy of Travel Iowa

The Pappajohn Sculpture Park (PSP) district was, not too long ago, the best restaurant district in Iowa. It attracted Mike and Lisa Lavalle, Marc Narvailles, David Baruthio, Scott Carlson, George Formaro, Paul Rottenberg, Derek Eidson, Sean Wilson, Carly Groben, Diego Rodriguez and Tony Lemmo, among other restaurateurs. That’s a virtual Who’s Who of great Iowa chefs and restaurateurs. 

Every top restaurant west of 10th Street on Locust is now gone — Nomad, Americana, Proof, Proof 2, Host, Hot Shots, Ritual Cafe, Django, etc. COVID-19 and the work-from-home ethos that followed are usually deemed the reasons why. The workforce in the PSP area has been drastically reduced. 

We think, and we are not alone, that the street festivals and food trucks that took over the PSP weekend after weekend May through October each year also helped kill the district for restaurants. They obliterated parking and undercut the restaurants’ prices — drastically and unfairly. It’s no coincidence that 10th street itself is doing just fine, while everything west of there is dead. Tenth is never closed off for festivals. 

Rents in the PSG area are super high. Lunch died first. Weekend business is the “make or break” point in the notoriously low-margin restaurant business. Mike Lavalle told us that “After 50 years in that neighborhood (Embassy Club in 1974, Eat Your Heart Out in 1983), I can verify there was a need to bring festivals to downtown during its ascension in the 1980s and 1990s — but no longer. Our slowest days at Allora Cafe are festival days and days prior. We have needed an ordinance that one can’t set up a liquor tent in the street within a certain distance of established licensee… And non-locals should never have been allowed in.”

Django’s Paul Rottenberg told us that the closing of Americana was a death knell for the district. Django will be the last to leave after March 14. People clamored for reservations after hearing they would close. As with Americana, they increased tenfold.  

Yet the city planners remain deaf to the cries for salvation. If Locust’s demise boosted any place, it was Ingersoll. That street is in the midst of a restaurant boom with The Palms, Ingersoll Dinner Theater, Oak Park and Heroics Sports Bar joining what was already a great lineup of restaurants and bars in the last two years. 

Visionary developers Jake Christiansen and Connor Delaney have big projects on Ingersoll that feature multiple restaurants. But the powers-that-be keep dissing the scene by removing street parking and laying down an endless series of strangely shaped, obtrusive concrete curbs and islands that add little more than hotter temperatures in summer. Their chief benefactors are tire repair stores. 

Somehow, Ingersoll keeps on keeping on. Mariela Maya had to close down Panka, a superb Peruvian café stuck between two fast food joints in the same strip mall. But, the avenue, anchored by the venerable Noah’s Ark and Jesse’s Embers, has supplanted West Locust as the top Iowa food scene. 

This year, CITYVIEW’s annual Best of Des Moines Awards deemed Jason Simon’s Eatery A the queen of Ingersoll and also awarded Lachele’s Fine Food, Crème, Bartender’s Handshake, Lucky Lotus, Sakari Sushi, Thai Flavors, Harbinger, Manhattan Deli, Palmer’s, Big Grove, The Palms, Oak Park and The Station on Ingersoll with “best of” nods. Noah’s, Jesse’s Embers, and Ted’s Coney Island have won in the past. 

Eatery A is not even Simon’s signature restaurant. That is Alba. But Eatery A is a place that keeps getting better year after year. It is open seven days a week for lunch, brunch and dinner. It has one of the city’s most generous and popular Happy Hours. And no one does Mediterranean fare batter. Most importantly, it has its own large parking lot. ♦

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