For the 2025 Bread & Butter dining guide, Little Village food reviewers visited and reviewed 10 locally owned central Iowa eateries. DES MOINES Clyde’s Fine Diner 111 E Grand Ave Suite 111, Des Moines, 515-243-3686 Clyde’s is one of my staples and legitimately one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to. Truly putting the […]
Bread & Butter
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LV Recommends: 6 local restaurants to try in Dubuque
Monk’s is a great hangout in the charming Cable Car Square (which boasts the world’s shortest, steepest funicular railway!) with coffee and tea drinks and curated beers. Hang out on the deck with a boutique IPA or cozy up on the sofa with a chai latte.
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Centennial Iowa Snacks: Palmer Candy Company has focused on one product — the Bing — for 100 years
The Twin Bing is an Iowa icon, handmade in Sioux City for more than a century. What it isn’t, really, is a candy bar, even though the packaging says “candy bar” and it’s made by the Palmer Candy Company. Palmer was trying to break into America’s booming candy bar market when it introduced the first […]
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LV Recommends: Five local restaurants to try in Waterloo
The po’ boys are so fresh and expertly battered at Rodney’s Kitchen that you might you’ll be swept into a flavor storm
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LV Recommends: 8 local restaurants to try in the Quad Cities
Mantra Indian Cuisine & Spirits is a classic Northern Indian restaurant that has been a staple of downtown Davenport cuisine for years. Best known for their lunch buffet,
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Centennial Iowa Snacks: Unlike a certain chip giant, Sterzing’s in Burlington has put quality over quantity since the ’30s
Barney Sterzing never meant to get into the potato chip business. In 1933, when he started the Burlington company that produces the iconic chips that bear his family name, it was the Sterzing Candy Company. But summers in Burlington are hot, and keeping a company going in the midst of the Great Depression was hard […]
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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 […]
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LV Recommends: 14 local restaurants to try in Cedar Rapids
Nestled into the back corner of the Town & Country Shopping Center, Siamville is one of those spots that’s easy to miss but hard to forget. It’s the perfect place for a casual lunch date, with a pad thai that’s right at the ideal intersection of sweet and savory.
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Already an Iowa City street-food favorite, Snacky Mini Mart puts the ‘bing’ in mind-blowing
Starting a new restaurant can feel like surfing a tsunami. Luckily, the cousin-cousin culinary team behind Snacky Mini Mart has a great sense of balance. Sandy and Vivian Pei launched their pan-Asian food stall at the Iowa City Farmers Market in spring 2023, cooking under a red canopy and hand-painted signs made by Sandy, one […]
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LV Recommends: 13 local restaurants to try in Iowa City & Coralville
A popular breakfast eatery for nearly 90 years, Hamburg Inn No. 2 found new life in 2023 when new owners saved it from certain death.
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From gold-leafed banana splits to cocktails served courtside, these newcomers are out to impress Iowa diners
The opening of this combination bakery, deli, cafe and fine dining dinner spot in July 2023 fulfilled a lifelong dream of owner Cory Barrett, who has served as pastry chef and executive chef in some of the nation’s most renowned restaurants.
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Centennial Iowa Snacks: The oldest popcorn company in the country is still poppin’ in Sioux City
Popcorn was already popular when Cloid Smith started selling it out of his home in Sioux City 110 years ago. It was cheap; it was tasty. And it’s been eaten in the Americas for thousands of years in a variety of ways. Archaeologists working in Peru found the remains of ears of popcorn dating back […]
