Every time the state fair season approaches, I’m asked some variation of the same question – “Now that Younker’s Tea Room is gone, where can I take the grandparents AND the grandkids?”

Because family reunions inspire nostalgia and respect for tradition, my answers rule out places that measure their age in years instead of decades. Des Moines has several restaurants with long term, single family continuity – Chuck’s, Christopher’s, Noah’s, Riccelli’s, Gino’s, Trostel’s Greenbriar among them. All serve loyal customers particularly from their immediate neighborhoods. This year I spent a good part of the season at another place that has been around for seven decades though its location and ownership have changed.

Maxie’s is a cross between Iowa’s two great restaurant traditions – the steakhouse and the supper club. While New York City and Chicago steakhouses developed a cigar room mystique of power and testosterone, Iowa’s steakhouses represented more democratic, Midwestern values. In the state’s smaller towns, where the majority of Iowans lived until the 1990‘s, steakhouses often became surrogate country clubs – the nicest places in entire counties, where people would go to celebrate special occasions. Supper clubs, Iowa’s original response to Prohibition, took that zeitgeist to a larger base.

Maxie’s cultivates those nostalgic traditions. One of the few places left in town with a completely separate bar (complete with caricatures of mid 20^th century celebrities), Maxie’s maintains that an “old fashioned” is not a “martini.” When I visited, wedding dinners, reunions of senior citizens in Santa caps and children’s birthday parties all mingled seamlessly with other diners. All music was recorded before Ronald Reagan became president. The dining room bustled with private booths, open tables and lighting bright enough to spot friends on the other side of the restaurant. Prices were family friendly, particularly on Monday nights when kids ate for $1. Showing that Maxie‘s is appropriately named, adult dinners included salads, pasta, potato, onion rings, bread and butter. Refills of water, tea, soft drinks and coffee always came quickly, sometimes from owner Andy Mayfield who continually checked on customers like an old fashioned restaurateur. Full dinner prices ranged from $11 (pot roast or chicken) to $30 (lobster with filet mignon). Pasta dinners cost $9 – $12 and most lunches came in under $9.

Maxie’s has three claims to fame. It’s peppery Italian dressing is so popular it’s bottled. Cityview readers frequently vote Maxie’s onion rings the best in town. Very thinly cut, lightly breaded and heavily seasoned, they were served both hot and crisp on my four different visits.

Maxieburgers were honored among the nation’s best in Jeff Hagen’s book “Searching for the Holy Grill.” They have been made the same way for 70 years – hand packed and hard seared. In a Younkers Tea Room tribute, they can now be ordered “rarebit“ style.

Maxie’s steak de burgo was uniquely made with clarified butter, which allowed a higher temperature cooking of its fresh garlic and basil. Deep fried chicken (which several readers consider the best in town) had a crunchy batter and tender-to-the-bone style that resembles “broasting,” a small town Iowa icon. A pork fritter sandwich, breaded shrimp and bread pudding were not up to the levels of the steaks, burgers, chicken and salad dressings.

Bottom Line: Maxie’s has maintained an old fashioned spirit that transcends generations. A previous owner once told me that he worked the floor after suffering a stroke because he believed “my customers are my therapy.” On my visits, Mayfield showed a similar conviction.

Maxie’s, 1311 Grand Ave., West Des Moines, 223-1463

Lunch: Mon. – Fri. 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Dinner: Mon. – Thurs. 5 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Fri. 5 p.m. – 11 p.m.; Sat. 4:30 p.m. – 11 p.m.

BOS opened this April in the Renaissance Savery Hotel. Both the hotel and restaurant are owned by Christian Hotel Owners Association (CHOA), a chapter in the story of the American dream. The Chan Soo Cho family was unemployed in 1992 when their prayers led them to jobs in a California motel, as maids and manager. Within four years, Cho bought the first of thirteen motels in his group. The Renaissance Savery represents CHOA’s next phase, upgrading their brand. 

Extraordinary attention has been paid to detailing the restaurant which opens dramatically to the lobby through a satin draped stage window that allowed live jazz in both areas. That openness fostered unusual cooperation – a bell hop bussed tables during one restaurant rush. Art Deco hard wood furniture provided style with substance.

Stunning French Modernist light fixtures played counterpoint to a Neo Classical wall frieze by Tom Moberg. To harmonize those disparate styles, TJ Moberg created a surrealist print series that incorporates both classical and Deco motifs.

 In one, the restaurant’s cylindrical chandeliers float over an Italian Renaissance cityscape.

Similarly, chef John Andres (Wakonda Club) marries Iowa comfort foods with classical and modernist notions. Andres is promoting as many Iowa products as anyone in town and says he wants more, especially produce. A few menu items serviced Midwestern clichés about maximization: Cheese sauces abounded, even “de Burgo” included a blue cheese sauce that overwhelmed its Templeton Rye deglaze; Signature corned beef hash was covered with sausage gravy; Buttermilk mashed potatoes tasted more like cheese than potatoes.

BBQ 2 Die4

West Glen’s newest café appears to have been designed by Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, a character Tim Allen created for the 1990‘s top rated television series “Home Improvements.” Taylor was so obsessed with high powered, danger defying “real guy stuff” that the new products section of a hardware store inspired him to grunt like a mating baboon — “Oooh, oooh, oooh.” Everything about BBQ 2 Die 4 could trigger similar evolutional reversions. Even its name defies feng shui and eastern mysticism, two mortal foes of the real guy creed. (The number 4 is avoided in Chinese culture because its character also means death. Placing the word “die” in front of the number 4 invokes “double death.”)

Design at 2 Die 4 is state of the real guy craft: Wainscoting, bar trim and even baseboards were built with heavy aluminum diamondback sheeting; The tabletop on a long bar was granite so that real guys need not slam their drinks down on marble like girly men wearing togas; Chairs are barstools crafted out of stained birch and leather, the preferred materials of lumberjacks and cowboys; Floors are heavily sealed concrete; Stacked stone pillars, brushed nickel lambs, exposed spiral duct work and porcelain tiled bathrooms completed the 2 Die 4 style manual; “Art” at 2 Die 4 is a testosterone booster shot – a custom built Big Dog (motorcycle). It was mounted on a pedestal and was as visible as numerous hi def, wide screen television monitors, all programmed to real guy channels ESPN, Fox Business, Versus and Speed. Ooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, ooooh.

Obviously, this is not a metro sexual barbecue. All meats were smoked with pecan wood because the smoke master and co-owner is an East Texan whose pagan gods live in pecan forests. These are not easy gods to worship in Iowa. The smoke master must drive to Joplin, Missouri to supply his hearth. The entire menu fits on half of one page and does not include sissy combo platters, fish, tofu or shrimp – only sandwiches ($6), gumbo $4 – $6) or “just meat” ($11 a pound), plus three side dishes. Cupcakes are sold for children.

Not all pecan smoked meats are created equal. 2 Die 4’s whole and half chickens deserve the highest honors in the smokehouse pantheon. Their skin glowed like Chihuly amber glass and even their breast meat was juicy to the bone – the best smoked chicken I‘ve eaten in years. Pulled chicken however lost flavor from its on-the-bone stage.

Gumbo was also worthy of a maximum number of approving grunts. Its deep flavored stock was created with smoked chicken carcasses and sausage was its main ingredient. Brisket, showing a quarter inch smoke ring, could be ordered anyway you like it – fresh sliced from the deckle, the point or the lean end. In the fast service buffet line, it was thick sliced and trimmed. Boston butts of pork were pulled and rated above average in moisture and juiciness. On one occasion, ribs were served during the short window of perfection when they are tender enough to break apart but not so overcooked that their meat slides off the bone. On a second occasion, they were overcooked and I was told that another customer had complained the night before that “they didn’t fall off the bone.” Real guys do not give in to complaining customers who don’t know what they’re talking about – but good businessmen do. It’s not a perfect world for real guy stuff.

Both potato salad (with fresh sweet peppers and onions) and spicy vinegar based slaw were original family recipes that stood out. The baked beans wasn’t and didn‘t. 2 Die 4 makes only a single sauce, very sweet and tomato based.

BBQ 2 Die 4

5535 Mills Pkway, Suite 100, West Des Moines, 564-7010

Sun – Wed. 11 a.m. – 10 p.m., Thurs. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 2:30 a.m.

Side Dishes

Olde Main Brewing Company introduced Puff Irvin’s latest recipe – Clone, an American pale ale with a hoppy bite. Bottles are stocked in Hy-Vee’s statewide, except for Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

Buy a Burrito, Save a Family Farm

In the way that Proust could taste his childhood in a Madeleine cake, Paul Willis’ pork chops were a transcendental experience for Shirley and me. We were driving to Thornton, Iowa because it is the mother lode of the richest pork we could remember. We are food writers, not environmentalists. Our tongues compel us to travel to places like Thornton, not our consciences. It’s the destination, not the journey, that matters.

And yet, we took the slow route. Because Paul Willis’ hog operation in Thornton has been called “a vision of the future that looks like the past,” it seemed appropriate to get off the interstate and drive up US 69. North of Ames, we realized that the old highway now models another, distinctly opposite, vision of Iowa’s future. Where Burma Shave slogans used to dot the fence posts along this road, there are now skull & crossbones warnings — not about dangerous curves, but about giant hog confinements. We could see the DeCoster hog confinements near Blairsburg from miles away. We cold smell them even further. Shirley said they reminded her of some factories she had seen in Vietnam, where they wouldn’t let journalists go. Then she asked me how come, if these were pig confinements, we couldn’t see any pigs, except for the dead ones that overflowed the dumpsters.

According to Robert Kennedy, jr. such warehouses can shoehorn 100,000 sows into claustrophobic cages that hold them in one position, over metal grate floors, for a lifetime. Below them, aluminum culverts collect and channel their waste into open-air pits three stories deep. Swine feces has birthed a toxic microbe that killed a billion fish in one instance and causes brain damage and respiratory illness in humans.

Mathew Scully’s new book “Dominion” animates the horror. Pigs taken prematurely from their mothers root obsessively for something to chew. If they are spending their brief life out on Highway 69, the object of their obsession becomes the tail of another pig, one crammed in their face. Chewed tails often get infected, leading to “unauthorized deaths.”

Dead pigs overflowed factory farm dumpsters

So when such factory farmers wean piglets, 12-16 weeks before nature intended, they amputate the tails with a giant pliers. That leaves pigs with a lifetime compulsion to keep their sensitive stubs out of their pen mates’ mouths, a futile task when there is no room to turn around. When Scully asked an exec from Smithfield, the worlds’ largest pork producer, if there wasn’t something sad about this, he was told that the giant pig factories actually protected pigs from the dreaded free range, where they might “get mosquito bites.”

Iowa is today as emotionally polarized about raising hogs as it was about abortion, Vietnam and the gold standard in other decades. As US 69 cuts through the legendary Des Moines lode, the giant confinements blot the hummocky habitat. This was the rich dumping ground of the most recent glaciers to cover north central Iowa. After ripping out Clear Lake and thousands of smaller potholes, they melted and left bogs and fens that weathered into the finest farm land in the world. When the Europeans came, they drained the slews and tiled the fields, put up fences and planted crops where wild grasses had reigned.

For Shirley and I, this was the last leg of a long, strange trip to the source of the greatest pig meat in America. The journey began at San Francisco’s Harris Ranch, arguably the home of America’s best aged beef. While comparing Harris Ranch’s steaks with rival Niman Ranch’s, Harris’ general manager Keith Reese mentioned that he served Niman’s pork.

“Niman’s pork was just astronomically better than anything else out there. We were blown away by it the first time we tasted it. With it, you can get the true flavor of pork,” he said.

Harris Ranch was using superlatives to praise a pork product made by its chief competitor in the high end beef business. Shirley and I determined to do what investigative food reporters do — follow the taste. At Niman’s bustling operation in Oakland’s International District, macho men in hairnets prepared the next day’s orders. We knew then this was not a typical company. Niman has been developing discriminating markets for free range beef and lamb, mostly in food-hip northern California, since the 1970’s. In the last seven years, their sales doubled annually. This coincided with Niman’s return to the pork business.

When the federal government seized Bill Niman’s original ranch in 1976, to create the Point Reyes National Seashore, Niman was allowed to continue ranching cattle, but not hogs. Freed from an 18% mortgage, he could spend more money developing a superior product. He raised only black and red Angus, Herefords and their cross, Black Baldy, the ultimate beef cow. They grazed only on grass about to go to seed, for more than a year, whereas most commercial cattle never graze and are slaughtered at a year’s age. When Niman’s cattle go to feed lots, at 800-900 pounds, they are fed only sugar beet pulp, corn, barley, wheat, cane molasses, hay and soymeal. They are not slaughtered until they are at least 20 months old.

Bill Niman couldn’t find a pork producer with the same commitment to quality. Blind, countercultural luck intervened in 1994. Thornton farmer Paul Willis was visiting an old Peace Corps friend’s California lamb ranch which was supplying Niman. Bill heard that Paul’s hogs were raised much the same way as Niman’s cattle and sheep. Niman asked Willis to send some pork and, after tasting it, he asked him what a fair price would be for such hogs.

In Thornton’s Chit Chat Cafe, where Gary Muhlenbruck’s world famous duck decoys define the style, Paul Willis remembered that day in California, when his life changed.

“At that time, no one had ever asked me about a fair price. Buyers simply quoted their bottom dollar as take-it-or-leave-it. It wasn’t a hard decision, would I rather raise 50 pigs and make $2 each, or raise 2 pigs and make $50 each? Bill gave us a chance to farm another way, to maintain an alternative to what you saw driving up Highway 69,” he recalled.

Bill Niman had told us that when hogs sold for 8 cents a pound, he was paying over 43 cents to Iowa farmers. Shirley asked Willis what Niman got for the extra money? “Let me show you,” he replied.

We headed out of Thornton passing a house where a dozen cars were parked. “We call that the casino. A bunch of older guys get together there regularly, some say to play cards. It’s the busiest place in Thornton,” Paul joked. A casino in Thornton, however euphemistic, made as much sense as the luck that thrust this sleepy town into the culinary limelight. Niman Ranch pork has a story full of ironies and oxymora. Mingo farmer Larry Cleverley, who distributes Niman products in Iowa, calls Bill, Paul, himself, and almost everyone associated with Niman Ranch, “a bunch of hippie businessmen, who make gourmet hot dogs and like four star restaurants.”

In some large cities, Chipotle Grill has run an intense media campaign featuring Niman farmers. Duane Dorenkamp, of nearby Sheffield, looks like Grant Wood in a tractor cap and is as well known in Washington DC, a Chipotle stronghold, as Subway’s Jared is here. The Chipotle ads suggest you can save a family farm by eating a burrito, a claim with considerably more merit than the average meat producer‘s, according to Diane Halverson of the Animal Welfare Institute.

“We run into PR firms trying to talk the humane talk without walking the walk. Pipestone Family Farms markets themselves that way, but, as the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune wrote, it’s simply not the case,” she explained, adding “There is so much at stake here. Companies like Du Breton pirate the Niman image, but they also do most of their business in the conventional manner. If that type of agribusiness gets a niche in this market, it will be impossible to remove them. We are not endorsing Niman because we care about selling pork. We care about selling a value system.”

Niman pigs are allowed to behave naturally and to fulfill instinctive behavioral urges. They are given continual access to pastures, dirt yards and pens with straw bedding. They are never given antibiotics, hormones or sulfas to mask disease. Niman also encourages farmers to husband their land, and Water Keepers Alliance, Kennedy’s group, endorses Niman.

Willis returns some of his fields to wetland. One of his farms, set on a hummock above fens full of buffalo skulls, reminded us that we were standing over eons of history.

It was a good place to consider the past and future of pork in Iowa. The last 30 years brought catastrophic changes to the relationship between humans and their meat. Looser regulations, lax trade rules and huge farm subsidies have helped consolidate the agricultural industry. But the public’s loss of taste drove all the above. Politicians gave us cheaper meat because that’s what we wanted. There were predictable, “acceptable casualties” : family farms, local lockers and butchers, pure meat, safe meat, and good tasting meat.

This had been going on since 1970, but it took “enhanced pork” before Shirley and I really noticed. That’s what they call the tasteless crap that our major grocers have been selling the last five years. It’s “enhanced” (remember, bragging is legal in advertising) with a chemical water solution that accounts for as much as 18% of its weight (remember, pork is priced per pound). Grocers could fire butchers and replace them with lower paid stackers. Win-win, as long as customers don’t notice the taste.

Most didn’t. Pork became white, rather than pink and this was advertised as a good thing. Quality was marginalized. So when Willis passes out his pork at the Farm Aid concert each year, stunned tasters ask him what marinade he uses. He laughs and tells them they just rediscovered the taste of pure pork.

While Paul was reflecting on history, Shirley had a bigger problem. At each of a half dozen farms, happy pigs and piglets ran up to the pickup truck, much as dogs would. When she got out of the vehicle, they made eye contact.

“Stop being so damned cute. If I have to give up cooking pork, I’ll have to find a new career,” said the chef to the piglets.

These pigs obviously trust humans, and they aren’t afraid. Fear causes animals to self-produce chemicals, like adrenaline, that toughen meat and disguise its natural flavors. Paul joked that his pigs only have one bad day in their lives, as he showed us farms where sows were busy building straw nests in large barns, while little pigs fought with one another like puppies. In the Spring, they run in the fresh grasses and alfalfa that surround the barns. In the summer there will be sprinklers, mudholes and fresh dry straw.

Niman’s pork operations are half owned by the farmers, 70% of whom are Iowans. The day we visited, Lori Janssen was busy testing pork loins, from Yorkshires. Janssen would be the quality control manager, except that Niman doesn’t do job titles. Everyone is a partner. Loins had been sent by farmers wanting to join the Niman family. Janssen’s goal was to find a Yorkshire that produced meat that wasn’t dry, a tendency of the breed. Color breeds produce good juicy meat, but they lack the Yorkshire’s mothering abilities. A Yorkshire bloodline could give Willis an extra piglet per litter. We helped taste the candidates. Sorry Charlie, not every pig can be a Niman.

When 50 hogs a week sufficed demand, Willis produced all of Niman’s pork. Now that they ship exponentially more hogs a week, he has recruited hundreds of farmers. These hogs don’t look anything like the industry’s standard, nor like show pigs. Willis showed us a picture of a so-called grand champion, calling it “an Olympic weightlifter on steroids.”

The “other white meat” usually comes from a lean, mean, fast growing machine of a pig that averages 54% lean in the USA, and 58% in Scandinavia, where most European imports originate. Niman hogs are only 48% lean, with up to an inch of back fat. Their meat looks like the pork our grandparents ate. You can actually see marbling and the flesh is much darker than supermarket pork. Taste is the startling difference, whether you try fresh cuts, or processed products, like Niman brand bacon, ham, sausage and hot dogs that are prepared in Webster City.

Most Niman pork goes from Iowa to Chicago and to the two coasts. While the three and four star restaurants that made Niman famous use prime cuts, Niman partner Rob Hurlbut has been building markets for cheaper cuts. “We sell the feet , the tails and even the fat back, which is prized for its high Vitamin D count and its lack of hormones,” he told us.

That market for low end cuts will increase with the rapid expansion of Chipotle. Each time the chain opens a new store, every three days, Niman brings one more family farmer on line. The math inspired Chipotle’s advertising campaign. Buy a burrito, save a family farm.

The Chipotle-inspired growth presents a new challenge for Niman. Because carnitas for burritos is made from the leg and shoulders of pigs, Niman anticipates an abundance of higher end cuts. Bill Niman says the low end markets might help make them more price competitive at the high end. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see them in a Hy-Vee someday. That’s the final irony of this story. The impetus of Niman’s marketing has gone from the high end, to the low end. They’ve come whole hog.

Niman pork is served in greater Des Moines at Sbrocco, Phat Chef’s, Cyd’s Catering, Bistro Montage, Raccoon River Brewing Co., Star Bar, Cosi Cucina, South Union Bread Café, Centro, Splash and Django.

Niman Ranch sells directly at www.nimanranch.com, or 510-808-0330.

“Eating is an act of politics.” Wendell Berry

The New Bully Pulpit

This year’s food news sounds like a lot of rejected pilots for new television shows. First there are some sitcoms:

~ Star Industries of New York goes into the kosher tequila business, producing a half million cases on their first run.

~ Fifth Third Ballpark, home of the West Michigan Whitecaps, decides the timing is right to begin serving 4,800-calorie burgers. Pizza cutters are given to those who want to share.

~Gau jal, a new commercial drink based on cow urine, goes to market in India. It’s a big hit.

~The Environmental Protection Agency puts forth a plan to tax farmers and ranchers for their cows and pigs’ farts and belches. The Food & Drug Administration objects starting a turf war.

Then there are new Sci-Fi shows:
~Mexican scientists find that the heated vapor from 80-proof tequila blanco, when deposited on a silicon or stainless steel substrate, can form diamond films.

~Storchen restaurant in the exclusive Winterthur resort of Switzerland begins serving dishes made with human mother’s milk.

~The Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal’s three star restaurant in England, closes after 40 people reported flu-like symptoms after dining there. After the word reaches the media – another 400 people claim to have also been struck ill after eating there.

We also have potential 60 Minutes segments:

~93 year old Clara Cannuciari becomes an internet sensation with her You Tube cooking show, Great Depression Cooking. Canned peas with pasta, anyone?

~A Lebanese restaurant worker finds 26 perfect pearls in an oyster she is preparing for the table.

~ University of Iowa scientists link the deadly MRSA bacteria to hog lot confinements. Should you worry?

Next there’s a potential Bill Moyers script about injustice.

~Angry dairy farmers march on the Iowa capitol to dramatize the fastest drop in milk prices since the Great Depression.

And finally there are a couple 20/20 exposés on political correctness run amok:

~Scientists at Queens University in Northern Ireland determine that crabs recall the effects of electric shock and conclude that the seafood industry needs to protect all crustaceans from pain.

~ After successfully waging war against trans fats and cigarettes, New York City began pressuring food companies to remove sodium from their products. One can almost hear John Stossel asking “What’s next?”

Just when it didn’t seem possible that the food news could get weirder, two presidential administrations teamed up to produce a pilot for one of those old Peter Sellers comedies about the politics of absurdity. On their way out the White House door, Bush Administration trade representatives announced new tariffs on European foods like Roquefort cheese, bone-in ham, beef sausage and San Pellegrino water. With the World Trade Organization’s blessing, their stated purpose was to bully the European Union (EU) into legalizing beef that has been given hormones for growth purposes. The EU banned raising and importing such beef in 1998 and added a ban on livestock given antibiotics for growth purposes in 2006.

Most non bureaucrats in America can understand why. Way back in 1993, E coli O157:H7 became famous serial killer of people who ate fast food hamburgers. Such antibiotic-resistant bacteria were not a human medical problem before modern feed lots changed the American beef industry in the 1980’s. Today’s corn-heavy feedlot diets have shortened the average life of a steer from 5 years to 15 months, while adding body fat to its carcass. Grass, the preferred diet of cows that Europeans and South Americans prefer to eat, can’t take a baby calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in a year and a quarter. For that matter, corn can’t do the job alone either – it also needs protein supplements, antibiotics and growth hormones. However, feed lot diets create so much acid in a cow’s stomach that some bacteria become resistant to the human stomach acids that used to kill them. Food chain bacteria have also become resistant to antibiotics.

In 2003, McDonald’s Corporation announced it would only buy chicken from producers who do not use antibiotics for routine disease prevention. More recently four of the nation’s top ten chicken producers announced they have stopped using antibiotics for growth promotion. Most of the food media thought that the world’s opinion about hormones and antibiotics would sway the Obama Administration to rescind the bullying tariffs.

But these are strange times. Instead, the tariffs were pushed forward, giving the Europeans only an extra month to think it about it. Rather than back down, Europe fought back. Germany banned the cultivation of genetically modified corn, claiming that one Monsanto seed is dangerous for the environment. The EU also released a series of studies they say prove the American growth hormones in beef cause cancer. Now we have a full fledged trade war because our leaders think they can force the EU to accept foods they refuse to eat.

This is an extension of an age old dynamic. Before the 20^th century, all politics were a conjugation of the verb “to eat.” Countries went to war, if necessary, either because they wanted to eat someone else’s food or they wanted to force someone else to eat their foods at a set price. Today’s trade war takes that to a second degree – the US wants to make the Europeans eat meat that ate something they don’t want their meat to eat.

Tell me that doesn’t sound like a Peter Sellers script.

“It is a shame to grow crops and run them through animals for food because that black Iowa soil looks good enough to eat as it is.” Robert Frost

Summer 2008

Robert Frost was bothered about corn being fed cows and pigs. It‘s a good thing the gentle poet didn’t live long enough to see Iowans feeding it to their sports utility vehicles. That would have likely knocked him off his road less traveled. Despite the best efforts of the ethanol industry, the future of corn-eating Hummers frosted over this year. First Jean Ziegler of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council’s blamed ethanol farmers for “unconscionable” greed which, he said, condemns 852 million people to malnutrition and starves 8 million children to death each year. The reaction to the eminent diplomat’s charges was brutally defensive. Editorialists attacked the messenger, often making false assumptions about Ziegler’s nationality, politics and sexual preferences. Internet bloggers turned his work at the UN into the second coming of Hitler, ironically since Ziegler made his name retrieving financial assets that Nazis stole from holocaust victims.

One can understand the bitter reaction though. Industrial agriculture had not been kind to Iowa’s family farmers in the last half of the 20^th century. In the new millennium, corn ethanol looked like the savior of traditional values, rural lifestyles and state pride. We were going to feed the world AND free the nation from Arab oil dominion. Ethanol-driven corn prices would reverse a 60 year downslide for Iowa’s small towns and make us a wealthy state of proud producers again. It seemed to be working too. Local investors in some Iowa ethanol plants had already recouped their investments – just in dividends! Biofuel euphoria even convinced the Des Moines Register’s editorial board that ethanol could make Iowa “the Texas of the 21^st century.” Ziegler was polluting that dream and he had to be discredited.

Unfortunately, more bad news followed quickly. The journal “Science,” the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy all released studies that exposed accounting errors in previous reports about ethanol’s carbon dioxide emissions. Together, those studies predict that greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol will be twice as much as from gasoline and that it will take 48 to 93 years to repay the carbon debt created by converting food grain into corn ethanol.

Earlier this year, prices of all grains doubled or tripled and food riots began breaking out on every continent. Because industrial corn is now diverted into so many links of our food chain, it’s hard to find a supermarket product that does not include some trace of it. So, expensive corn raised the cost of almost every processed food. Just when it appeared that the industrial food system was finally going to work in the Iowa farmer’s favor, our corn dream developed root rot.

That seems so unfair. When the 20^th century began, Iowa was a state of mostly farmer-producers who proudly fed the nation. The market valued their labor enough to make us a wealthy state too. When that century ended, the majority of Iowa’s counties had peaked in population – at least 100 years earlier! We became a mostly urban and suburban state and the farmers’ share of the food dollar had shrunk to 18 cents. Middling marketers, packagers, transporters, wholesalers, retailers, advertisers and bureaucrats all skimming off what the chemical companies, seed manufacturers, equipment salesmen and mortgage holders left behind.

Those middlemen created an industrial food system that defied logic. While the world’s population doubled since 1961, the tonnage of food shipped between countries quadrupled. Central American bananas became cheaper here than Iowa apples. Yet, the dysfunctional system worked for the USA in strange ways. The price of American food, as a percentage of income, became the cheapest in world history. Between 1960 and 2006 it declined from 17.5 percent to 10 percent, freeing disposable income for the pursuit of other American dreams. Our food became cheaper despite some really absurd choices too. For instance, a pound of potato chips costs two hundred times more than a pound of fresh potatoes, yet processed chips account for nearly half of all potatoes consumed in the USA. Throw in French fries and you have a super majority, big enough to pass another Farm Bill over Presidential veto.

Illogical systems have fatal flaws. The industrial food network depended upon cheap oil, government subsidies & tariffs, and consumers who remained willing to eat food that wasn’t really fresh. As the cover story of this issue of Relish shows, there’s a new anti-industrial food system in place now in Central Iowa. It allows us to eat logically, consuming fresh and local foods and beverages raised by farmers working outside the industrial complex. Other stories detail several mouth watering reasons why that makes sense. For an appetizer, here’s a philosophic reason: About the same time Robert Frost made his observation on farming, Iowa naturalist John Madsen defined Iowa as follows:

“A repository of traditional attitudes that are metered out through the root system in subtle but powerful ways. It is the region of the world whose soil base has lent the freedom and stability that men need to reach free and stable conclusions.”

Our free and stable conclusion:

There’s no such thing as a cheap potato chip.

November 2008

“The times, they are a changing… or not.” Bob Dylan

Even in less stressful times, presidential eras influenced the way our nation dined. Thomas Jefferson blew Washington away with the culinary artistry he imported from France, introducing America to new dishes like macaroni & cheese. His buddy Ben Franklin disapproved of such culinary excess and advocated the healthy virtues of an all-corn diet. Today, corn industry marketers are trying to counter the unhealthy image of the ubiquitous high fructose corn sweetener.

Most presidents who followed the Founding Fathers emulated Jefferson’s culinary style. Even man-of-the-people Andy Jackson continued setting lavish tables that awed the nation. That changed, to the chagrin of Washington insiders, with the cornbread and coffee diet of Abe Lincoln. He shocked elitists with an inauguration menu of mock turtle soup, corned beef & cabbage, potatoes and blackberry pie. Nothing else. Even in a nation at war, detractors complained that Lincoln’s culinary asceticism besmirched the dignity of his office. It too set a precedent though.

During the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover also set a White House table with which the common man could identify, actively promoting a new dish, corned beef hash, as a penny stretching meal. Seeking a populist connection, Bill Clinton projected a fondness for cheap fast food, particularly donuts. His administration corresponded with the high water mark for franchise fast food, in Des Moines as well as in America. When George W. Bush premiered his Texas White House, smokehouse brisket was pretty much impossible to find in Des Moines, or anywhere outside the southwest. After eight years of ranch feasts from Crawford to Iraq, barbecue has been the number one growth segment of Central Iowa’s restaurant industry, for three years in a row. Every new barbecue restaurant here has included beef brisket on its menu.

At the moment, leading indicators point to lean years of culinary influence during either a John McClain or a Barack Obama administration. McCain forged his image on the rations of a prisoner-of-war diet. Obama would become the thinnest president since Lincoln. Besides, these are hardly fat times.

Befitting a creature with a dual hemisphere brain, humans have traditionally indulged conflicting behaviors while dealing with hard times – feast or famine, one after the other. First we dance to the end of time, indulging the epicurean advice to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die. That thinking gave history famous banquets on the eve of Waterloo, champagne toasts to the iceberg that sank the Titanic and even death row budgets for condemned convicts’ last meals. On the other hand we also assume Lincoln’s more austere method of leading by self denial. That example gave us U.S. Grant dining on tin rations, Gandhi fasting against the salt tax and Lyndon Johnson replacing the linens and candlelight of the Kennedys with lights-out picnics on the Pedernales.

This year’s end approaches with a toast of good riddance to a time in which the waters around us have grown – tornados, floods, credit crises, rampant inflation and a sixth year of war. As if to demonstrate humanity’s bipolar nature, those same six years have been a time of bloom on our beat. Des Moines’ independent food and beverage scene grew and prospered as in no previous era. While similarly sized towns were losing their personalities to the chains of corporate America, Des Moines responded to independently owned cafés that began offering fresh & local foods. That success encouraged food producers to rediscover the diversified bounty of the black earth of Iowa.

The international credit crunch now looks like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” stopping the expansion of the corporate chains. Industrial franchise restaurants are so leveraged in speculation that their money lenders have stunted their growth. 2008 will become the first year in ages when new independent restaurants in Central Iowa outnumber new chain restaurants. A healthy independent restaurant scene is a good thing, because human minds do not thrive on asceticism alone. That’s why most diets fail – we need to reward self denial with self indulgence. If we skip dessert for a week, we then want two at once.

That’s also why taverns are believed to be immune to economic downturns — they provide the kinds of affordable luxuries that keep spirits up. In that vein, tiki bars, an invention of the Great Depression, provided a cheap escape. Today, tiki bars and tiki cocktails are making comebacks with contemporary twists. One original tiki drink was named for a Hollywood celebrity who represented an American ideal of her era. The “Mary Pickford” (light rum, pineapple juice, maraschino liqueur, grenadine syrup and a cherry) was sweet as the girl next door. It’s contemporary equivalence, the Paris Hilton (vodka, orange vodka and Mountain Dew), is trashier and far more intoxicating.

Another, more infamous, early 20^th century cocktail was the “Jack Rose” (apple brandy, fresh lime juice, grenadine), named for one of New York City’s most corrupt public officials, an infamous bagman. Jake Barnes quaffed “Jack Roses” in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” but the cocktail fell out of favor as the Gilded Age gave way to World War II. Now it’s back, gangbusters, but some partisan bartenders are changing its name. They are now called “Chris Dodds” after today’s compromised Senate Banking Committee chairman, at least in some politically partisan taverns. A Rose, by any other name, still tastes as sweet, and as sour.

Hispanic Heirlooms of Des Moines

The Des Moines Register’s recently-published list of Des Moines’ “ten best Mexican restaurants” omitted three places that a lot of food professionals considered automatic selections, notably Dos Rios. That restaurant spawned two of Iowa’s finest young chefs ever — Hal Jasa and Scott Stroud. They use more fresh and local products than anybody this side of Chicago. Yet, they didn’t make a list filled with places that don’t even make fresh tortillas or tamales. I decided it was time to revisit two other places conspicuously absent from the Gannett Outlet Store’s judgment of excellence.

La Peña

In 2002, I wrote “La Peña is our happiest discovery since we started writing about food in this state.” Luis and Carmen de Avila’s seven-booth café remains truly authentic. Large basalt molcajetes and tejolotes are used not as arty décor but to grind flours, meals, spices and salsas. La Peña salsas use chilies de arbol, the legendary chili that Columbus first noticed in the New World. They produce a unique tannic, smoky flavor. Their high heat makes them rare in culinary applications but La Peña mixes them with more than 90 percent fresh tomatillos and tomatoes, sweet enough to cut the heat and perfectly complement chips still hot from the fryer.

Birria and menudo (made daily) are renowned specialties — goat horns on the wall note the café’s legitimate birrieria status. Goat is treated two ways: lightly marinated and braised in its juices; and “revolcado” — caramelized on the grill and smothered in onions and jalapenos.

Both delivered the most tender, juicy meat around. Bone stock menudo can be ordered with a whole calf’s foot, or without. Tacos were made with the best, freshly made tortillas in town. Tamales, enchiladas and gorditas were made from scratch with fresh stuffed masa. All came with choices of birria, carne asada (flank steak), adoba (baked marinated pork shoulder), chicken or homemade chorizo. Chilies rellenos were made with stem-on poblanos and Mexican cheeses. Even the creamy beans and corn-speckled rice were distinctive.

La Rosa

La Rosa, another Mom and Pop café, is a local legend for two reasons. Early this decade, owner Rosa Martinez Ruiz commissioned a Los Angeles muralist to paint her building. Despite hundreds of signatures or support, and not a single complaint, the city made her paint over every part of the mural except for a single rose. More happily, Martinez is the Hispanic queen of the holidays. Last Christmas Eve, customers formed a block long line at her door to retrieve their tamale reservations.

La Rosa’s tamales are a border-crossing heirloom. She explained that her former hometown, Gomes Farias in Michoacan, used to be surrounded by cornfields that produced the backbone of the local diet. Now, as a photo on La Rosa’s wall shows, it’s completely planted with flowers, a post-NAFTA export. So Gomes Farias’ tamales live on in Des Moines. Rosa’s father Don Juan Martinez used to sell them in an Eastside parking lot. She learned from him. They are still the state of the art in Iowa — meat, or cheese fillings ran the entire length of the tamale.

Hand cut steaks, stem-on chilies rellenos, enchiladas and tacos with multiple choices complemented the specialty. Just in time for the 4th of July, Rosa began serving two specialties that aren’t listed on her menu: sweet corn with butter and grated Cotijo cheese and chili salt; and guaraches (show tongued shaped masa) that are toasted on the flat top and covered with delightful things.

Rosa said that carpal tunnel syndrome has forced her to stop making her own tortillas but she’d never stop making from scratch, her gorditas, tostadas and, of course, tamales. The latter she sells by the dozen six days a week. On the seventh day, she closes the restaurant in order to make more tamales.

Bottom line — these Mom and Pop cafés belong at the top of any list of local culinary treasures.

‘Tis the Season of Ozmozome Worship

Gas and electricity have killed the magic of fire, the kindling of live flame from inert wood. Simone de Beauvoir

For most of man’s time on earth, nature delivered feast or famine in seasonal cycles. Survival depended on storing calories in the fat times to get through the lean. Even late in the 20^th century, body weight dramatically varied from season to season in temperate zones, more because of genetic memory than necessity. A Playboy photographer in the 1980’s told Iowa reporters that he should never have scheduled a trip to Ames when subjects were fattened for winter.

What does still vary with the seasons is our method of cooking. In summer, we still move the fire outdoors, as our ancestors did. For this reason, half of the hot dogs and hamburgers consumed in Mid America, are eaten in the hot season. Over three fourths of the charcoal is burned then.

Michael Symons’ “The History of Cooks and Cooking” tells a four thousand year tale of a disrespected magical art. Cooks have intermingled the destinies of humans with the plants and animals they eat, and the fuels they burn. In one interesting take on pre Enlightenment history, Symons believes that cooks practiced the true, feminine science of healing — trial and error — while masculine physicians practiced unscientific dogma. For this, cooks were marginalized as insignificant and condemned as witches.

Non-sustainable agriculture is nothing new. Man has always pushed the limits of his environment and then adapted to depleted resources. Symons reminds us that during the Trojan War, Homer’s heroes “consumed an ox, over an open fire, every 200 to 300 verses,” and disdained fish as a food of destitution. However, by the Golden Age of Classical Athens, fish was a luxury, meat was almost unheard of, and wood had become so scarce that braziers were invented and charcoal had become a major industry.

Most of the great inventions in cooking compensated for exhausted supplies of wood. Cauldrons, fireplaces, braziers, ovens, ranges, clay pots, woks and kitchen cutlery were invented to cook more food with less fuel. French and English cooking developed according to different resources. Until the end of the 17^th century, wealth at the table was synonymous roasts, which consumed precious fire wood. Rich in forest and pasture, England’s gourmet class was content to throw a dead animal over a fire and rip apart the results. In France, only the south coast produced olive oil and only the north coast supported dairy farms, so cooks put more fat in the diet by extracting stock from bones and turning it into sauce. Ragout, stew, soup and braised dishes then invaded England, which by the 18^th century was feeling quite inferior.

James Boswell defined man as the cooking animal. “Beasts have memory, judgment and the faculties and passions of the mind, but no beast is a cook.” In an era when most cooking is out of sight, what possesses this animal to spend billions on outdoor grills that he only uses three months a year?

Probably we cook with fire, outdoors, for the aromas. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin coined a word for the smell of beef searing on a fire – “ozmazome.” Chemists today deduce over 600 flavor compounds in roasted beef, but most backyard chefs relate better to the mysterious “ozmazome.”

Browning by fire changes food chemistry dramatically. The high temperatures that cause browning are not possible in boiling, steaming or micro waving. Infra-red radiation from charcoal sears meat at 2000 degrees F, from open flames at 3000 degrees F. Ovens and pans can’t get nearly hot enough to produce the delicate flavors that real roasting achieves.

There are more romantic explanations for our attraction to cooking outdoors. Fire is elemental and contrary, the burn of Hell and the light of Paradise. The ancient Egyptians believed that it was a living creature who devoured whatever it feeds on, and died when it was full. Philosopher Gaston Bachelard called it a terrible, contradictory divinity.

That explains both the lack of trust and the awe of other thinkers before a fire. Heraclitus believed it the source of the entire world. Empedocles altered this view of the elements, to include water, air and earth, and his opinion held for 2000 years. The 20^th century replaced it with the Periodic Table — “Osmazome” taken to a laboratory and deconstructed.

Some scientists prefer the mystery. Harold McGee put it this way, “In the sip of roast coffee, or the taste of crackling, there are echos of flowers and leaves fruit and earth, recapitulation of moments from the long dialogue between animals and plants.”

Civilization happened when societies determined to keep a constant public fire burning, so that each home fire could be started without rubbing sticks together. The Hestian devotees of ancient Greece and the vestal virgins of Rome were keepers of such fire, which became a temple, a church, a restaurant. Fire was the original focus of civilization. In fact, the word “focus” is Latin for hearth.

Two mit Legend

In most parts of the Midwest, people get excited about season openers for baseball, hunting and fishing. In Elkader, they wait all winter for burger season. By 4:30 in the afternoon on April 17 this year, more than a dozen folks had lined up in front of 2 Mit Burgers’ boarded trailer window, even as rain fell hard and the temperature plunged rapidly. Some hunched their shoulders and opened umbrellas but no one left the line – it was only half an hour until the first 2 Mit of 2008 would be served. Across the street Janet McNece explained from the dry warmth of her coffee shop.

“When the weather’s nice, that line is a block long. I lose a lot of business to them but I don’t mind a bit. 2 Mit’s a big part of the town‘s charm,” she explained. McNece is a true believer in Elkader charm. She moved her family from California after visiting two other couples who had already made the same move.

In most places, people would look silly queuing up in a cold rain for burgers. Sitting under Chicken Ridge on the banks of the Turkey River, Elkader is a bird of a different, mythic feather. It’s is the only town in America named for an Algerian freedom fighter. Abd el-Kader was battling the French in 1846 when mostly German settlers plotted this town in Pony Hollow. The local population has always been dominated by three great ethnicities for creative storytelling – Norwegians, Irish and Germans, the inventors of nisse, leprechauns and fairy tales respectively. The banks of the Turkey River are connected here by the largest keystone bridge west of the Mississippi, a quarried limestone beauty that would fit perfectly in the native lands of trolls.

On my first day in Elkader, people described the area to me as 1.) “the cowboy capitol of Iowa,” 2.) “the best morel hunting and trout fishing area in the state” and 3.) “the inspiration for Iowa’s eeriest crime novels.” All those claims are credible. Local rivers carved karst landscapes of steep limestone ridges, sinkholes and caves. Such land resisted the row crop agriculture that cleared distinctive personalities out of much of the Midwest. So Clayton County water remained purer than that of the more heavily fertilized sections to the west and south. Farmers and ranchers diversified resourcefully. Herds of horses and cattle still range freely in the hills and pastures, a sight that pretty much disappeared from Iowa in the last quarter century.

In places comfortable with mythology, even inanimate objects develop quirky character. Local cowboys keep their saddles in their houses rather than their barns – not because they’re worried about thieves either. An infamous local sinkhole caused a mysterious mass murder – when trout died of cheese whey intoxication. A roaring “killer” cofferdam, situated above the Elkader Library, sucked careless canoeists to their death, like a psychopathic troll.

Eccentric foods are at home in this environment. Elkader’s most contemporary café is run by a gay couple who mix Algerian and American cuisines. The town’s most stylish B & B is the converted county jail where the cell block hosts a series of lavish dinners created by guest chefs. In this context, the 2 Mit isn’t just a burger, it’s lore.

“We boil them for about 20 minutes,” explained cook and partner Jeff Walch.

He added that the beef is fresh ground daily in nearby Postville and served on yeasty buns from Pedretti’s Bakery in Elkader.
“2 Mit began in 1980, after several adult beverages,” admitted Walch, adding that he and partner Earl Lembke noticed that Elkader had no place to get a sandwich on a Saturday afternoon.

“Earl had been making burgers for the West Union Fair and we decided to follow in the footsteps of Arnold Gossman – a character in his own rite. When we were kids, Arnold sold hamburgers and honey during the summer, down where Mascara Park is now. Then he’d go to Florida for the winter. He got started in his business by Pete’s Hamburger Stand in Prairie du Chien, which is still going. So, we were just following a long line of traditions.

“Now one of Arnold’s most famous customers was an old German character named Bill Doeppke. Everyone remembered how he would always order his burgers. ‘Give me two mit and two mit out onions.’ So when Earl and I were brainstorming about what to call our place, ‘2 Mit’ came as an inspiration,” Walch explained.

2 Mit burgers are simmered in a mixture of water and honey on a unique recessed grill. Their texture is similar to a Maid Rite except that the patties hold together. Their flavor is redolent with honey and the intoxicating yeast of Pedretti‘s buns. Walch’s mother Millie makes a sweet mustard to dress them. One customer ate five burgers plus two brats, which are made in the nearby Czech community of Protivin. Another ordered two dozen to go. Others argued whether cheese was “sacrilegious” on a 2 Mit.

It all adds up to about two and half tons of burger a season. Walch simmers one fifth of a pound patties 44 at a time. His grill, characteristically, comes with its own story.

“I saw it in a used trailer. I bought the trailer to get the grill,” he explained.

Eat a Burger, Save a Town

The 2 Mit is probably the most famous burger in central Clayton County but it’s not the central Clayton burger most famous in Iowa. That distinction belongs to an invention of retired cook LaVonne Christianson. According to legend, this heroine concocted a burger to keep the town of Gunder from disappearing from the map.

“That’s exactly right,” she said. “We had burgers on the menu and I said let’s make one that’s bigger than anything else and name it for Gunder so that no one forgets,” she recalled.

That was over 20 years ago. Her plan worked. Unincorporated Gunder remains on the official Iowa map today even though it lists no population, its mailing addresses are in Elgin and its telephone numbers in Postville. Without Christianson’s Gunderburger, the town would have likely joined area communities Osborne, Clayton Center, Littleport and Mederville in various processes of giving up the ghost town. Today, Gunder’s Marion Lutheran Church cemetery is far more populated than the living part of town where all the action is at The Irish Shanti.

That’s where Christianson convinced former owner Cindy Thias that a humongous burger could save Gunder. The Shanti had begun as a bar and restaurant in 1975 after Jim & Helen McShane remodeled Gunder’s former grocery store. Today the Kevin & Elsie Walsh family represent the restaurant’s tenth set of owners. In central Clayton fashion, Kevin is Irish and Elsie is Norwegian. He moved from Boston which explains the bar’s plentiful Red Sox paraphernalia. Their son and chef Hans Walsh explained their philosophy.

“It’s a tradition as much as a business. We bought it to keep the tradition going. People drive regularly from as far away as Waterloo and Cedar Rapids. You don’t change traditions like that. We added some beers and live music but the beef still comes fresh each day, from Moore’s in Elgin, and it’s still slow cooked on the flat top grill,” Hans said.

The Gunderburger includes 20 ounces of beef plus sautéed mushrooms and onions on a fresh bun from the Postville Bakery. Hans wears a Red Sox cap while cooking 500 pounds of burger a week along with 200 pounds of American fried potatoes, which are “boiled, peeled, sliced and fried.” His home fried (and baked) chicken makes Thursday as big a day for business as Friday or Saturday. Lately a new magnetic force has been introduced – lard-crust, home made pies by Hans’ aunt Inga Hanson.

Statistically, the Gunderburger is 80 percent lean, which helps explain its perfectly seared crust. It measures eight inches in diameter and over an inch in thickness and it takes 20 minutes to grill. Like all legends, the burger’s fame comes more from lore than statistics. That lore includes another hero, known simply by his nickname – Animal. During Gunder’s centennial in 1996, Animal (Ralph Detra, if you must know) consumed five Gunderburgers plus dessert in less than an hour. No one else has come close to his record.

“I can verify the record. I served him several beers too,” recalled Norma Koenig, barkeeper and waitress since 1987. When asked about a newspaper account of Animal’s feat which described him as “a slight man,” Koenig laughed.

“He’s not slight any more,” she clarified.

Christianson attested to the Gunderburger’s fame.

“I take my husband down to the hospital in Iowa City. The back of my coat says ‘Home of the Gunderburger.’ I can’t tell you how many people walk up, tap me on the shoulder and tell me they’ve been there. That’s a reputation for sure,” she said.

Christianson thinks that the real secret of the Irish Shanti and the Gunderburger’s success has little to do with her, or even with the actual burger.

“I was just a post that came with the place. The real magic is the friendliness. People will drive a long way for a big burger once. But what makes them come back over and over is the friendliness. The people at The Shanti just have the knack for making strangers feel like family,” she mused.

Food Lovers Directory

The Irish Shanti

17455 Gunder Road, Elgin, IA 52141

(563) 864-9289, www.thegunderburger.com

(Note – Gunder Road from Elkader is being rebuilt this summer and detours might be necessary.)

2 Mit Burgers
Junction of Hwy 13 and Hwy 56

Downtown Elkader, (563) 880-3346

Pedretti’s Bakery
101 N Main St., Elkader, IA 52043
(563) 245-1280, www.pedrettisbakery.com

This scratch bakery supplies the incredible yeast roll buns for 2 Mit Burgers, plus baker Christopher Reimer’s gingerbread men, fruit-filled cookies and crispies.

Big Springs Trout Hatchery
16212 Big Spring Road, Elkader, IA 52043
(563) 245-2446
Rainbow, brook and brown trout are raised in raceways and earthen ponds supplied from Iowa’s largest spring. The adjoining hills are rife with morel mushrooms and deer.

Schera’s
107 S. Main St., Elkader, IA 52043
(563) 245-1992

Algerian and American fine dining on the Turkey River.

Elkader Jail House Inn
601 E. Bridge St., Elkader, IA 52043
(563) 245-1159, www.elkaderjailhouseinn.com