October 5, 2009

• QV’s Home of Cavatelli

  

  Where does Des Moines’ eastside begin? After asking that question for decades, I’ve learned there are four different answers, depending on the source. For westsiders, the east side begins a block east of 2^nd Avenue and that’s a statement of faith. A considerable percentage of westsiders have never actually been there to see for themselves. If you’re a true east sider, one who knows what “Lee Township versus the world” means, it begins on the east bank of the Des Moines River, whatever street that happens to be. For southsiders, the answer doesn’t matter unless you’re running a ballot initiative that effects the southside. Then the answer is expediently adjustable. Finally, if you’re from Highland Park, the eastside begins “somewhere south and east.”

  Highland Park is its own place and its food establishments reflect that. There are no cookie cutter chains here, just quirky independents and traditional favorites. Restaurants are bars and bars are restaurants and it’s been that way since liquor by the drink was legalized. Sharing a parking lot with a tattoo parlor, QV’s Home of Cavatelli is very much its own place too – half bar, half restaurant and all Highland Park. This is a slice of life café where Nelson Algren or Stud Terkel would have been comfortable. On my visits, Roller Derby recruiters were working patrons in the bar and Mike King was working the restaurant. King is an acoustic guitar playing singer who covers “storyteller” songbooks by Kenny Rogers, Michael Johnson, Willie Nelson and John Denver. His stylized voice registers somewhere between Neal Young and Gordon Lightfoot‘s range. There is never a cover charge to hear him in Highland Park.

  Décor, featuring colored light globes that predate disco, matches wall North and Tech high school pennants from the mid 1950’s. If it weren’t for the immaculate shape they are in, one might think the red vinyl booths had not been recovered since Ike was president. While the furniture might be “retro,” the ambiance is simply traditional. Real flowers grace every table, next to wine list placards that offer six generic varieties – no vintners or vintages here, just no nonsense $4 a glass prices.

  Sandwiches include both loose meat and whole patty versions of both beef and pork. I tried beef burgers, coney style beef burgers, hamburgers, sausage sandwiches, grinders and meat ball sandwiches – all scratch made sandwiches. QV’s chili was homemade with more kidney beans than one finds at Coney Island or George’s, the other local purveyors of old recipe chili. QV offered six full dinners that came with salads and ten others that did not. All included cavatelli, either as a side or a main dish. There was no potato or vegetable option, this is “the home of cavatelli.” In true Highland Park fashion, the word cavatelli does not mean the same thing here that means in the rest of Des Moines.

  

  Instead of the doughy little dumplings that Calabrese immigrants brought to the southside, “cavatelli” here refers to a combination of six cutely shaped dry pasta, cooked and baked with rich red marinara and aged Provolone. Every dinner order also included garlic bread made with malty kaiser rolls that came as close as anything in town to the kummelwick rolls that so many eastern transplants miss in Iowa.

  I tried stuffed peppers, sirloin steak and rib dinners. Hidden in their cavatelli casserole, the peppers ($9.75 with garlic bread) were a happy textural contrast to the pasta.

  

  Ten ounce steaks cost just $12.95 in the full dinner version. Ribs ($10.95 with cavatelli and garlic bread) fell off the bone and were covered in a sweet sauce. Pizza was cheese rich and its crust tasted unleavened, almost like crackers.

  

  Pizza prices began at just $4.50. A five item children’s menu ranged in price from $3 – $4.

  Bottom line – this is a time warp, reality theater café with serious bargains.

  QV’s Home of Cavatelli
  209 Euclid Ave., 280-1860

  Mon. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.

  • 2:48 pm
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