Eatery A was as busy and noisy on a Saturday night as expected last weekend – also fun and good food so that helped. Located in a former Blockbuster video store on Ingersoll Avenue in Des Moines, the restaurant is a mashup of middle eastern and Italian from what I can tell. Lots of lamb, pizza, harissa, figs, dates, feta. We ordered a few too many things with figs – including a pizza with figs and proscuitto and greens and a green salad with figs. But the lamb sliders were excellent as was the “cucumber salad” – although it was more delicate fresh greens, including a free mint leaves, with some cucumber slices, feta, pomegrate seeds and a tangy lemon dressing. The desserts were interesting – we had “donuts” served with lemon curd, which were a bit like beignets, light fried dough dusted with sugar and a cake made with cornmeal or polenta that had an odd but interesting crunchy texture, served with a dollop of very good dark chocolate ice cream. The decor is lots of distressed wood that looks like it’s from an old barn and fun chandeliers. It was a bit too dark to be able to read the menu – especially the red section of the menu. We had to use our cellphone flashlights. We’ll be back.
We also peaked in at Malo, the new Latin restaurant opening this week in the way cool new former 1930’s firehouse location of the Des Moines Social Club – how great to have all these new options in Des Moines. We also wandered over to nearby West End Architectural Salvage, which had some great albeit pricey crafts including some terrific bags made out of old seed corn bags.
TakeBetsywithyou 