Mi Patria

Mi Patria, located at 1410 22nd St. in West Des Moines, claims to be the first Ecuadorian restaurant in the state of Iowa.  It is definitely the only one currently in the Des Moines area.
Since we have been there a couple times, I've had to look up some of the dishes we've ordered: Lomo Saltado (beef stir fry with fried potatoes that kind of reminds me of the awesomest chili fries ever), Hornado con Mote (marinated pork tips pan fried with white hominy), Churrasco (amazing marinated flank steak served with fried egg, bean menestra, fried plantain, and avocado), Arroz Marinero (translates to sailor rice; similar to paella, yellow rice with every type of seafood on top), and Camarones al Ajillo (translates to garlic shrimp; was sort of simmered in a pepper sauce and served with rice).  Conveniently, a lot of these dishes have their own wikipedia pages and appear to be staple Ecuadorian dishes.
It has been pretty delicious both times we've been there.  It is kind of sad that we've gone there on the weekend and it isn't very busy at all.  The food is made with fresh ingredients by an actual Ecuadorian!  I found out from facebook that they had offered Roasted Cuy (Yes, Guinea Pig) for a limited time and totally wished I had known so I could try that!  It is definitely the place to go to try something new.  Another dish they serve as an appetizer that I would like to try is called Llapingachos.  It is a cheese stuffed potato patty topped with peanut sauce.  The meals are very filling so if I got those I might just get them as a meal though.

Long time no post

Yo2Go - Urbandale

Hanna keeps an eye on the Twitter feed that announces new businesses, looking out for new restaurants and eateries for us to try. A few months back, she noticed Yo2Go, a new frozen yogurt shop. It's in the strip mall at the corner of 100th and Douglas in Urbandale. It's set up like this: you grab a cone or a dish and walk forward. There are six self-serve ice cream machines preloaded with different flavors of frozen yogurt. They rotate the flavors out every once in a while to keep things interesting. After you get your yogurt, you turn around and face the giant toppings bar. It's like a salad bar of everything you'd want to put on ice cream. There are a few warmers off to one end that have hot fudge and hot caramel.

When you pay for it, there are no price levels because everything is weighed. You put your dishes on a scale and you're charged by the ounce. We have been there a couple times and have each loaded up a dish. Both times we paid about $8.00 for a good amount of frozen yogurt.

Saraj - The Home of the Gyros

While I love Ted's Coney Island for my gyro fix, I've been wanting to try out Saraj, which is about 3 miles closer than either of the two Ted's locations. They painted on the side of the building that Saraj is the Home of the Gyro, so I figured they had to be pretty good. The first time I went there, I saw they had two varieties of standard gyro, so I knew I had to try them both, but not in one sitting.

First trip -- Gyro on a Greek pita
Massive. This isn't a bad thing, but apparently you can't order a Greek gyro without ordering fries. I got it to go and the container weighed about three pounds. Once I got home, I opened up my prize and saw that it looked just like what was pictured on the menu -- huge, barely able to close, and slathered in tsatsiki sauce. It was delicious. The fries were acceptable. I've never encountered the perfect French fry, but I knew these weren't it.

Second trip -- Gyro on Bosnian bread
Also massive, but without French fries, but for good reason. There was no picture for this one, so I had to guess what it would be like. The Bosnian gyro filled the entire to-go container! Imagine an 8-inch gyro hamburger on fried bread. Also delicious, but I have to say the Greek gyro is better.

You should go there right now and get one.

Cafe Su - 1/30/09

Ever since the Mandarin in Beaverdale closed, I've been kind of at a loss for quality chinese food. In the current economy, I've seen constant restaurant openings and closings in the local free papers. Its hard to even know until you even get to the restaurant if it will be open.

After a little research, I determined Cafe Su was a sit down chinese place that had been in business for quite a while and was, in fact, still open.

When we drove there, I was excited to actually be driving through historic Valley Junction since I had normally just driven past. The cafe was in an older building so I was surprised to see how modern the interior decor was. The first words out of my mouth were "It looks so trendy...". It seems to have been fairly recently redone in this sort of industrial look. There were metal walls and randomly shaped neon lights. Also they had bubble wrap hung around their cash area... seriously. I can appreciate some creative design but it all seemed a bit surreal for Iowa.

They have a pretty nice bar set up there but I stuck with water and Tim had a thai iced tea. We still aren't 100% sure what the ingredients in that are but I'm thinking tamarind is added to the stuff we've seen around here because thats the only thing that explains the flavor.

The average price of a main course was just over $10 so I was a little concerned that we were "paying for the trendiness", but the food was really great. All of the vegetables were extremely fresh and you could tell that a lot of work went into making the dishes just right.

At the end we had some green tea ice cream. I overheard as we were leaving that the owner makes it. They brought a generous portion and helpfully two spoons. It was weird because on the first bite you really get that acidic green tea flavor but then after that you get kind of generic creamy ice cream flavor and then as your mouth warms up afterwards you get it really strongly again. I also had green tea burps :-\

I think we would definately go again. It was really quiet and empty for a saturday night. Good for a date night.

Texas Roadhouse: The quickest visit evar and why its the best for steak while wearing a sleeveless racing t-shirt

The following image best represents the reason for going to Texas Roadhouse exclusively for steak:

This is a medium done ribeye. Normally when you order a medium you get medium well or medium rare or some weird strata of the two. TXR not only defines the doneness levels in their menu but you get the exact doneness you asked for. Period.

Also, tonight was awesome because as we were looking for a place to sit to wait our projected 20-30 minutes, our number popped up on the screen. 30 second wait is win. So apparently you should never go to TXR in groups larger than 2 if you are in a hurry.

Also, you can totally go there in your most extreme casual. Yes, we did in fact see a sleeveless racing shirt on a guy two tables over.

Not a restaurant review: Edam vs Gouda!

I am totally fascinated by Hy-Vee's gourmet cheese sections. The cheeses there can be pretty expensive though, so I find myself grabbing inexpensive versions of the same cheese to test them out. I grabbed some of the cheapest Edam I could find the other day. I realised I had had it before... it is pretty much the same as inside of the red babybels.

Then I was looking at the cheese again and began to wonder what the differences were between gouda and edam. They both come in wax and have a similar color. The cheap brand I had been buying sold them in nearly identical packaging. So I decided to have a taste test.

On the left, Edam: soft, smooth, nutty. A good snack cheese for me. On the right, Gouda: firm but smooth, sharp like cheddar or colby. Probably better in a recipe.

Turns out they are completely different flavors and textures! Both incredibly tasty sides of a red wax coin.

I also noticed they were carrying versions of swiss and cheddar made with goats milk. Normally all of the goat cheese is labeled as chevre. I got some of the cheddar, which was white and labeled medium. It doesn't taste much like cheddar, but it is only slightly goaty and very nice.

Gino's Restaurant - 11/19-08 - First Visit

We had trouble finding Gino's the last time we attempted to go because we had thought it was closer to downtown. Actually it is closer to Oak Park/Highland Park; just to the south. Fast forward to months later when we're all wearing winter coats and we drive up to a hugely packed parking lot around 6:30 pm. At first I was thinking we'd just have to go somewhere else, being as that I hadn't eaten more than some dorito's all day, but then we found the extra parking to the north.

We had read many reviews on Gino's that basically said to expect it to be old. I was suprised at how much it truly was indeed old. Everything is wood paneled, except the bathrooms which were teal, and it smelled a lot like my grandma's house which was last remodeled at the same time as this place. Gino himself was serving as the receptionist. It appeared that a daughter had taken over most of the management of the restaurant. Gino gave some preference to the two men who came in behind us and seated them first, but after a while it became obvious that we were suffering for our youth.

The crowd was generally made up of people who had obviously been coming to Gino's since it opened (circa 1966). They had a good 40+ years on us (for the record, I'm 25). It was nice to be at a restaurant with 0 children for once. Unfortunately, we got a waitress who seemed to have been working at Gino's since it opened :P

Most people would be irritated at the slow service, but in this instance, it turned out to be one of the best things because it gave us time to pack away the massive amount of food we were presented with.

We started out with four toasted raviolis which were among the top toasted raviolis I have ever had. With that we were brought some plain italian bread, butter, club crackers, and those little prepackaged italian breadsticks. Gino's sauce is extremely tomatoey, with less seasoning than most people expect in a red sauce, but we took what was left from the ravioli (like half a cup) and put it all over our italian bread.

Most of the meals at Gino's come with bread, salad, and potato or pasta. For our salads, we both chose the house dressing which was a creamy garlic. It came covered in a layer of sweet paprika, which was quite a suprise for me, but it did lend quite a bit to the salad. The only downside was that every piece of lettuce looked rusty which was a little unnerving early on.

I ordered the chicken roll which is chicken stuffed with proscuitto, romano, mozzerella, and italian spices. Not only that, it was breaded. It comes with spaghetti with red or alfredo sauce. I can't do alfredo so I had it with sauce. The chicken itself was amazing... Tim swore he could have ordered just the breading on it and been happy. The spaghetti was al dente but I just didn't have much room for it.

Tim had the cavatelli with meatballs. Gino's cavatelli is made on site, so it is fresh rather than dried pasta. The one thing we noticed was that the pasta was on the blander side... like they needed to kick up the salt in the pasta water. The meatballs were huge and flavorful and suprisingly moist and tender, but really not comparable to the chicken roll at all.

We were full so we ordered two pieces of their white chocolate rasberry cheesecake for the road. And really all I can say about that is: OMFG! The cheescake itself is a silky white chocolate with a faint rasberry stripe through it, but then they ladled a generous portion of sauce over the top. The sauce, which is black raspberry, is more like a thick reduction and is just insane. I would pour it over everything if they bottled it.

As Tim put it, "A+++++++, Would engorge again!"