Review: Walleye, poutine and decadent s’mores help make Guesthouse Tavern + Oyster in WDM a superb supper club experience

Food, like all cultural exchange, is relative. One person’s adventurous meal out of their comfort zone is another person’s daily staple. An example: even though I’m born-and-raised Iowan, I had never heard of a supper club before dining at West Des Moines’ Guesthouse Tavern + Oyster. “Oh, is it like a book club for foodies?” is a question I may or may not have asked my LV colleagues. 

Turns out that the supper club is a classic Midwestern affair. “A Taste of the Northwoods” is how the Guesthouse describes itself, the Northwoods a region covering Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and parts of Canada. A thread on the Des Moines subreddit had my favorite comment on the Guesthouse’s vibe: “I felt like there was an urban outdoorsman dress code. I don’t have a puff vest and all my trucker hats aren’t expensive enough.” 

Though I didn’t know the specific history (and had left my trucker hat at home) the ambiance was familiar and welcoming. Owners Pete Faber and Chef Derek Eidson shucked the sterile trappings that plague so many other modern restaurants; it’s all about warmth and comfort. Even though its layout is open, the space wasn’t a cavernous void of concrete and metal. Our table could actually hear one another! 

There are vintage posters for regional beers adorned on knotty pine walls. A canoe sits above the bar, the lights are kept low, and I swear there was the faint smell of a campfire wafting in and out (more on this later). It felt like going to a friend’s house for the first time and getting to join in on their Sunday dinner.  

Speaking of dinner — one glance at the appetizers on the menu and I knew what I had to try for the first time: that oh-so-exotic and almost mythical “mess” of a dish known as poutine. I felt connected to my Canadian brethren as I noshed on the plate of crispy French fries and raw Wisconsin cheese curds topped with an in-house gravy and chives. The dish was kept stripped-down and classic. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a lesser restaurant trying to over-complicate and “put a modern twist” on something like poutine. Look at me, fitting in with the locals, already pissed at the idea of some dorks in the big city subbing the gravy for something like an emulsified garlic aioli. 

That’s not to say that Chef Eidson and co. are averse to changing things up when it makes sense. An example is the salt and vinegar fries that accompanied the fried walleye. Instead of dousing with malt vinegar, which could lead to soggy, uneven spuds, the Guesthouse’s signature side mixes a vinegar powder with their salt, like a salt and vinegar potato chip. To the uninitiated, that may seem like a small tweak, but the result is a perfectly seasoned and flavored fry. It’s one of those quality-of-life gamechangers that has you asking, “Why doesn’t everyone make them like this?” Pair this with the flaky walleye, fried crisp but not greasy, and you have a dish worth coming back for. (Lowkey the fries alone got me jonesin’ for round two.) 

In true Midwestern fashion, my party ended up going family style, divvying up our plates. There wasn’t a bad bite in the bunch. The lobster roll and crab-stuffed shrimp were delicious counterarguments to the “you can’t get good seafood in a landlocked state” naysayers. (Fresh seafood is flown in multiple times a week.) 

Particularly impressive was the lobster mac and cheese, as it managed to win over my picky 4-year-old. We only had to field a few dozen questions (“Because it’s a different type of cheese, it’s a fancy cheese called Gruyere. That’s just corn. You like corn, remember?”) before she decided she liked it. 

In contrast, the toddler had no questions for the Guesthouse S’more, the signature dessert that capped off our night. Our server brought the treat under a glass cloche. The s’more consisted of a smoked chocolate tart and toasted marshmallow, topped with salted caramel, graham cracker crumble and berries. They lifted the glass, releasing the smoke and revealing the source of the smokey campfire smells. 

Whether the capstone to our meal was in keeping with supper club tradition matters less than the consistent tastiness and comfort the Guesthouse Tavern + Oyster provided throughout our meal. Next time, I’ll make sure to bring the flannel and trucker hat.  

This article was originally published in Little Village’s February 2026 issue.