The first cat café in the world opened in Taipei, Taiwan in 1998. Called Cat Flower Garden, it was born out of its founders’ love for local strays and from a desire to set their café apart from others in the area. All the cats are permanent residents of the cafe. The concept quickly spread […]
Tiffani Green
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: A fence between neighbors sparks polite, passive aggressive chaos in Riverside’s timely ‘Native Gardens’
Native Gardens opens to the strains of “Las Casitas del Barrio Alto” by Victor Jara. Keen-eared listeners will recognize the melody of Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes” and while the Spanish iteration was written to critique socioeconomic disparities in Chile, it contains the same critique of upper middle class posturing as it’s sister song.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: Riverside ensures you’ll never see the ‘The Illiad’ the same way again with ‘The Cure at Troy,’ a tale of snakes and scruples
Iowa City’s Riverside Theatre is entering the final week of performances for their run of The Cure at Troy, a play featuring a lesser-known character detailed in Homer’s Iliad.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
This Des Moines food stylist can get any dish ready for its close-up
Cellphone cameras and social media have made amateur food photographers of us all. In any high-end restaurant on any given night, you’ll see diners snapping pics of their plates. Of course, the quality of those images varies. Try as we might, most of us don’t have the skills or know-how to capture photos as drool-worthy […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Joel and Katrina Anderson hope their new Mt. Vernon ‘brew lab’ is up to scratch
If you’re familiar with Wake Up Iowa coffee, then you’ll recognize the names and faces behind Iowa’s newest coffee roaster, Little Scratch Coffee. Joel and Katrina Anderson’s path has taken them around the Midwest from Iowa to Madison, Wisconsin, to Chicago and back to Iowa and through careers spanning education, engineering and coffee roasting. After […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
LV Recommends: Encounter Café, an Iowa City living room serving well-crafted classics
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the Encounter Café was the feeling of calm. Coffee shops are typically bustling, noisy places where orders are being called out and people are squeezing past each other to get to tables, the counter, the bathroom. The Encounter is as lively and full of customers as […]
Posted inBread & Butter Dining Guide
This wine maven from Cedar Rapids is shaking up the industry, one bottle of sparkling sauv at a time
“I’m the fish that likes to swim upstream.” Chris Christensen used this phrase over and over again to describe his journey from a middle-class upbringing in Iowa to attending Stanford University to starting his own winery in Sonoma County. Christensen’s unlikely breakthrough into the wine business is underscored by his identification with and affinity for […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Takeaway: IC’s new Salvadorian restaurant proves Mesa can do more than pizza
If the name Mesa 503 rings a bell, it might be because it’s the sister business of Mesa Pizza, an Iowa City institution for over a decade. Owners Yolanda Amaya and Luis Hernandez immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1993 and have made visits back home every year, always looking forward to revisiting […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Takeaway: New IC food truck South Side Street Foods serves Southwestern-style fry bread with style
When you approach the South Side Street Foods food truck, you’re likely to hear Motown pouring out of the windows. The inviting warmth of old school soul music could be a metaphor for the appeal of both South Side’s food and the man who makes it. Daniel Velasquez wears a classic black fedora and has […]
Posted inFood & Drink
LV Recommends: Four new eastern Iowa breweries, off the beaten path
Though many things ground to a halt during COVID, the opening of local breweries was not one of them. Despite opening shortly before, or in the midst of, the pandemic, these four breweries managed to gain a footing and expand Eastern Iowa’s craft beer scene to new communities. Don’t forget your designated driver! BIT Brewery […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Takeaway: Ramen Belly leaves you full and nourished
Prior to ordering from Ramen Belly this week, I had eaten restaurant-quality ramen exactly once — in 2018 while visiting my sister in Portland, Oregon. At the time, it was a novelty, and I didn’t really know what it was, my only previous ramen experience being with the kind that comes in a brick along […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Takeaway: Basta is a carb-lovers paradise, but don’t sleep on their salad
Restaurant food is a great way to get your recommended daily intake of cheese, bread, deep-fried things and cured meat. And after weeks of moving, late hours and takeout meals, many of them chosen exclusively because the restaurant in question delivered after 9 p.m., my body had not seen a vegetable in sometime. It was […]
