Posted March 25, 2015in Food Dude
One definition asserts that romance is whatever transports one to another time or place. That helps explain why people enjoy restaurants set in offbeat venues that have been repurposed. Diners seek to escape their mundane circumstances as much as readers of Victorian romances do. Iowa offers many opportunities for this
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Posted March 18, 2015in Food Dude
Once in a great while, a new type of restaurant changes the way people think about an entire cuisine. Less often, a new café elevates an entire neighborhood. Los Laureles has done both. It opened two decades ago now in a building constructed after the notorious adult theater 1536 had
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Posted March 11, 2015in Food Dude
“If Des Moines does not allow unbridled access to food trucks, then the young professional tribe will leave, and this city’s renaissance will be dead and gone.” That mantra has spread now from the manual of hipster talking points to the mainstream media. Here in the local, alternative media, the
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Posted March 04, 2015in Food Dude
Cultural criticism is elitist by necessity. If critics praised that which was popular, they would be redundant. Academy Awards do not go to popular movies so much as to esoteric films. Only a brave critic would praise fast food before it becomes obsolete. Consider the original fast food genre —
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Posted February 25, 2015in Food Dude
Neighborhoods evolve mysteriously. A few years and one sexual harassment lawsuit ago, Eighth Street in West Des Moines was the center of the Iowa restaurant universe with Jimmy’s American Café, Eighth Street Seafood, Pain Pane and Cabo San Lucas at its nexus. That was before the downtown scene exploded and
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Posted February 18, 2015in Food Dude
In Iowa, chili cook-offs have become a rite of winter. Country clubs, churches, taverns and hospitals all hold them. Last week, one transported me to another time and place. The Altoona Fire Department hosted such an event to raise money for state-of-the-art medical rescue equipment. The firehouse was filled with
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Posted February 11, 2015in Food Dude
Bacon Fest 2015 belly-upped with drama. This year’s event, at the Iowa Events Center for the first time, nearly doubled in size. Shorter lines to buy food and beverages pleased customers, but many vendors said sales were down considerably despite the larger crowd. Twenty-five portable bathrooms filled an entire hallway,
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Posted February 04, 2015in Food Dude
This year Bacon Fest coincided with Super Bowl week, creating a perfect storm of hyperbole. The pork belly celebration marked its eighth year as a bona fide tourist attraction by passing several milestones. Ticket buyers came from 10 foreign countries and 40 different states. Those are Drake Relays-like numbers. The
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Posted January 28, 2015in Food Dude
Taki brought Des Moines its first urban style sushi in 2002. After Food Dude raved about its uni (sea urchin roe) and toro (fatty tuna belly), one reader wrote that I had completely “betrayed dudedom” and that the column should be renamed “something more accurate, such as ‘The Food Metro
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Posted January 21, 2015in Food Dude
Des Moines is in the midst of a bakery boom. La Mie expanded twice recently, and Strudl Haus opened to great acclaim. The most ambitious new player is Scenic Route Bakery, which opened at the end of last year in a handsome new, mixed-use building in East Village. The place
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