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,” […]
Iowa City restaurants
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 inBread & Butter Dining Guide
Where are the best chicken wings? Ask the Iowa City Wingmen
Since 2019, the original Iowa City Wingmen (Jeff Mannix and Brian Johannesen) have tirelessly scoured the Iowa City chicken wing scene in search of that perfect combination of flavor and texture with the intent of crowning the ultimate, most bodacious chicken wing in Iowa City. Well, that’s a bit dramatic. We mostly just like chicken […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
Photo Gallery: New residents get a Taste of Iowa City at the 14th event
Taste of Iowa City returned to the downtown area Wednesday night. This was the 14th year for the Iowa City Downtown District’s event, which is designed to introduce new students at the University of Iowa to downtown and Northside restaurants. Little Village’s multimedia journalist, Adria Carpenter, captured the samples, party games in the Ped Mall […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
Taste of Iowa City returns with food from more than 50 downtown and Northside restaurants
Taste of Iowa City returns for its 14th year on Wednesday. The four-hour event, organized by the Iowa City Downtown District, is held during the first week of the fall semester at the University of Iowa to introduce incoming students to the variety of food available downtown and on the Northside. But it’s also an […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
Micky’s Irish Pub & Grill expands to North Liberty
Almost 42 years to the day after Micky’s Irish Pub and Grill opened its doors on S Dubuque Street in Iowa City, a second location will debut roughly nine miles up the road. On July 11, a Facebook post announced that the long-running downtown institution would expand to North Liberty in August, taking over the […]
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: 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 inCommunity/News
‘Kitchen to me is all about family’: Maggie’s new chef talks Midwest cuisine and kitchen culture
Maggie’s Farm Wood Fired Pizza has a new chef who wants to recreate the feeling of warm family get-togethers in the kitchen. Chef Billy Jimenez said that when he was growing up in Colorado, the kitchen was always the center of their home, where his family leaned on the countertops, eating and talking. He remembered […]
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 […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The Mill is gone, its building soon to be demolished. But plans to replace it are in the works.
The iconic Iowa City venue The Mill closed in 2020 after 58 years of hosting music, literary readings, political events and more. And after plans to possibly revive it fell through, the building on Burlington Street that was home to The Mill for 48 year has stood empty for a year and a half, and […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Dumpling Darling in downtown Iowa City is closing
Dumpling Darling, a farmers-market favorite turned downtown Iowa City eatery, is closing. “As many of you know, it has been a rough couple of years for the restaurant industry,” Dumpling Darling management wrote in a post on the business’s Instagram page Monday. “Between the product shortages, labor shortages, the overall rising costs of doing business […]
