For the 2025 Bread & Butter dining guide, Little Village food reviewers visited and reviewed six Iowa City area eateries, including a few notable newbies to the scene. Saj Grill, 23 S Dubuque St, Iowa City: Middle Eastern and Mediterranean dining have come full force to downtown Iowa City. Locals boast about the quality of its Jordanian cuisine — falafel, shawarma, baba ganoush, hummus, gyros and more — citing it as “food that tastes like home.” Owners promise bold spices, fresh ingredients and halal-certified meat.
Coralville restaurants
Posted inEastern Iowa
Seven stellar newcomers to the CRANDIC restaurant scene
Mesa 503 2302 Muscatine Ave, Iowa City 319-519-6170 Yolanda Amaya and Luis Hernandez immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1993. Nearly 30 years later, in May 2022, they opened Salvadoran restaurant Mesa 503 on the east side of IC. A sister restaurant to downtown’s Mesa Pizza, Mesa 503’s large menu features pupusas (with […]
Posted inFood & Drink
LV Recommends: Blue Elephant Thai Restaurant in Coralville has all the marks of excellence
For two years now, Blue Elephant Thai Restaurant has been serving delicious and nourishing food off 2nd Avenue in Coralville, in between Nailville Salon and Almost Paradise Tobacco & Vapor. Thai cuisine is known for its blend of sour, sweet, salty, savory and sometimes creamy notes, and it’s this perfect meld of flavor that Blue […]
Posted inBread & Butter Dining Guide
The world at your forktips: 15 international restaurants and markets throughout the CRANDIC
From empanadas to masala, jollof rice to donburi, let these international eateries take your tastebuds on a trip. Pinoy Cafe 1100 3rd St SE, Cedar Rapids 319-343-8081 View Website Blanche Vega’s Filipino restaurant, Pinoy Cafe, got its start in a small spot in Cedar Rapids’ NewBo City Market in 2018. Vega graduated to a slightly […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Takeaway: Marquee Pizzeria’s sweet and spicy pie is my new vice
I have heard it said that pizza is like sex: even when it’s bad, it’s good and when it’s good, it’s amazing. I tend to agree. I’ve had slices from school cafeterias, gas stations, bars, food trucks, mall food courts and upscale pizzerias — and I’d eat every one of them again. Pizza is never […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Put your money where your mouth is: Black-owned restaurants in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area
The Eastern Iowa area is blessed to be home to a plethora of businesses owned and operated by black chefs and entrepreneurs. We’ve sung their praises in these pages before, but we haven’t covered them all yet—something that we aim to rectify in coming issues. In celebration of our black community, we’ll be focusing on […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Sparti’s Gyros is closing
Just shy of their 10th anniversary, Sparti’s Gyros will close its doors for good on May 24 (or as soon as it runs out of food supplies). The restaurant, located at 61 2nd St in Coralville, opened on June 1, 2009. Owner and manager Keith Brophy had just graduated from the University of Iowa and missed the meals of his Chicago-area upbringing. “Italian beef, gyros and Chicago dogs were definitely staples of my diet growing up,” he said
Posted inCommunity/News
New restaurants and other changes on the local food scene in 2017
Fifteen restaurants — serving everything from burritos to bao — opened in the Iowa City area this year. Some were entirely new ventures, some belonged to local favorites that expanded (you no longer have to go downtown to get a pie shake). Taking a big step beyond its NewBo District coffee shop in Cedar Rapids, Brewhemia started distributing its nitro coffee throughout the corridor. And in Iowa City, a new, locally-owned food delivery was launched, to provide an alternative to big, national services like GrubHub.
Posted inDining Recommendations, Food & Drink
LV Recommends: Nile Ethiopian Restaurant
“Finally” seems to be the most frequently expressed response to the recent opening of Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant just off the Coralville strip. Finally Iowa City transplants who once hailed from big cities rich with international food scenes can reconnect with a long-lost comfort food. Finally Eastern Iowa natives, young and old, can again enjoy a lesser-known cuisine without a long drive — or trial-and-error in one’s own kitchen.
Posted inFood & Drink
Marquee Pizzeria and Bar brings Italian flavors and late-night hours to Iowa River Landing
Marquee Pizzeria & Bar brings a “Brooklyn meets Little Italy” atmosphere, communal dining and brick oven pizza to the Iowa River Landing this fall. From their tables, guests will watch Neapolitan-style thin-crust pizzas crisp in the brick oven, which is on its way to Coralville from Medina, Italy. There will be 10-12 pizzas on the […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Beyond the buffet: Hy-Vee launches full service restaurants
If you’ve visited the Waterfront or East Side Hy-Vees recently, you may have noticed some changes in the stores’ dining areas. The grocery chain’s cafeteria-style dining has given way to the newly opened Hy-Vee Market Cafes — full-service, sit-down restaurants with servers, bartenders and a kitchen located in the back of house. Hy-Vee decided to […]
