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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Posted November 14, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
Two iconic restaurant companies have been moving into the Des Moines metro area after decades of avoiding it. Both provided interesting footnotes in the 2012 election. Pizza Ranch is the largest regional pizza company in Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas. Until recently it focused exclusively on small towns. Political notoriety
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Posted November 07, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
The story of Schlitz is a hubris-laden Greek tragedy taught in the finest business schools. It was the most popular beer in America from the end of the prohibition until the mid 1960s, when Robert Uihlein Jr. became president and chairman. That polo-playing Harvard graduate decided to let Anheuser-Busch sell
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Posted October 31, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
While checking out readers’ choices for Iowa’s ultimate places for steak, I happily discovered that steak dinners need not be a splurge. Chicago Speakeasy, the winner of the Cityview Ultimate Place for Steak Challenge, provides the best example of this. Its lunch menu offers some slightly smaller steak dinners, which
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Posted October 24, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
Nothing starts a good argument like food. So two years ago, to determine a consensus about what central Iowans prefer between two slices of bread, Cityview instigated the Ultimate Sandwich Challenge. We followed that up last year with an Ultimate Pizza Challenge. More than 4,000 votes were cast for readers’
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Posted October 17, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
Baseball’s post season was the biggest television event in American sports through the mid 1970s. Today those games are hard to find, even in sports bars, if they conflict with football telecasts. So this nostalgic fan spent the first week of the playoffs in front of his home TV catching
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Posted October 10, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
Recession changes the way we eat. Look at the performance charts of both high- and low-end restaurant chains over the last 10 years. A new McDonalds Era began during the stock market meltdown of 2008. That’s no surprise; we all have to eat within our budgets. Food and travel TV
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Posted October 03, 2012in Featured Story, Food Dude
Wall-to-wall TV screens dominate the new super Hy-Vee’s Market Fresh restaurant. On a recent visit, each was tuned to a talk show, and all were muted. Why? Did restaurant consultants convince a team of architects and corporate executives that Urbandale diners all want a silent TV in their direct sight
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