Great decor – meh food…Des Moines

I hope this isn’t a trend but yet again, we’ve gone to a new restaurant in Des Moines hopeful and left disappointed. Great decor in a cool old building downtown. Very unexceptional food. We probably won’t return. In the case of last night, we thought +39, an Italian restaurant in a beautifully renovated old building across from the sculpture garden would be interesting contemporary Italian  – which sadly we haven’t found in Des Moines to date – because the owner is from Italy and allegedly had a restaurant in Sardinia (as well as Ames, Ia.) But nothing we had was interesting or even particularly good – and in many cases it wasn’t even hot (cold pizza, cold pasta, even cold cappuccino) which was disappointing on a surprisingly wet cold May evening.  The raspberry gelato was indeed cold but it had the texture of ice cream. Good ice cream but not gelato.  This is the third restaurant we’ve been to lately in downtown Des Moines that looked great but tasted bland. I’d rather have bland decor and great food. Or better yet – great decor and food!