For the 2025 Bread & Butter dining guide, Little Village food reviewers visited and reviewed 10 Cedar Rapids area eateries. You can find more local restaurant coverage here. MARION New York Gyro 808 7th Ave, Marion, 319-200-1750 I feel like once a year when I do these reviews, there’s always one restaurant I’ve never visited […]
Cedar Rapids Dining
Posted inFood & Drink
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.
Posted inFood & Drink
Iowa gastrology: Local restaurant recommendations based on your zodiac sign
If astrology is a method of divination based on the positions of stars and planets used for predicting and explaining human events, then gastrology must be a method of divining dining destinations based on cosmic culinary cravings. Read on for your hunger horoscope. ARIES (Mar 21-Apr 19) Oak Park, Des Moines Energetic, influential, confident and […]
Posted inFood & Drink
LV Recommends: All-day breakfast spots in central and eastern Iowa
Sometimes you just want pancakes for dinner — specifically, a stack of hotcakes fresh off the seasoned griddle of a local diner, presented with a carafe of syrup, crispy hashbrowns, eggs any style and a cocktail or two. Whatever your dream brinner may be, there are plenty of restaurants in the Des Moines and Iowa […]
Posted inFood & Drink
LV Recommends: NewBo’s newest Mexican restaurant, Cafe Tacuba, boasts a full breakfast menu, guac flights, decadent coffee and more
When Fong’s Pizza closed their Cedar Rapids doors in November 2022, their absence left a crab rangoon pizza-shaped hole in the New Bohemian district. The building sat empty for a short stint, until Oswaldo Aguirre and Ariel Barrios saw their opportunity to fill that hole with tacos, enchiladas and guacamole flights. Cafe Tacuba was born. […]
Posted inEastern Iowa Food & Drink
LV Recommends: Raise a slice to Leonardo’s, Cedar Rapids’ 70-year-old time capsule
Cedar Rapids — the city of five seasons/smells, and home of Iowa’s best pizza scene. To celebrate the foundational piece of CR pizza that is Leonardo’s (2228 16th Ave SW) let’s take a look at its origins. The story begins in the early 1950s when Tony and Leo Naso opened Cedar Rapids’ first pizzeria, Naso’s […]
Posted inFood & Drink
LV Recommends: Three restaurants that prove Cedar Rapids wins at pizza
Across this Iowan landscape there stands a little known hill. A hill that I would die upon. A hill called Cedar Rapids is the Best Pizza Town in the State. “Balderdash; [insert city here] has the best pizza!” you may have just exclaimed. But allow me to present three exemplary Cedar Rapidian pizzerias: Starting with […]
Posted inBread & Butter Dining Guide
A guide to eating the day away in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City
Whether you’re from Eastern Iowa or just visiting, chances are there’s a fantastic restaurant you’ve never tried right around the corner. So get out there, support local and enjoy what the area has to offer! Don’t know where to start? Give these CR and IC restaurant itineraries a try. Cedar Rapids First stop: Bea’s Cafe, […]
Posted inBread & Butter Dining Guide
COVID-19 changed Iowa’s dining industry. Will restaurants (and customers) continue to remain flexible?
In 2019, the restaurant industry in Iowa was flying high. According to the Iowa Restaurant Association, there were close to 6,500 restaurants and bars across the state. Nearly 155,000 people worked in the restaurant and bar industry that year. Just over 100,000 were working in restaurants in Iowa in 2014. “The food world was king,” […]
Posted inCOVID-19
‘Microfood’ operations flourished in the pandemic, from home bakers to couriers
The COVID-19 pandemic taught many of us how to switch gears and pivot. In March 2020, as the regular 9-to-5 ruptured, many people quit their desk and retail jobs and started doing the things they’d always wanted to do, either as a side hustle or completely new beginning. “As a person who works in the […]
Posted inFood & Drink
LV Recommends: Tornado’s Grub & Pub is a cozy CR dive bar with a twist
“Checkers?” That was the first question from the waiter as my girlfriend and I slid into a side booth at Tornado’s Pub & Grub. If you grab one of the booths inside the front door, you’re treated to a tabletop that doubles as a checkerboard — just one of the quaint eccentricities in this dive […]
Posted inFood & Drink
LV Recommends: Vivian’s Soul Food
In honor of Galentine’s Day, and to cheer us up in the face of bitter cold temperatures, my daughter Isabelle and I headed to Vivian’s Soul Food for dinner. I had been once before, and was impressed with the amazing food and the warmth and attentiveness of their staff, so I was excited to check out their new space and expanded menu.
