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Desperate in Des Moines

Desperate in Des Moines
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  • - August 26th, 2012, 2:33 pm
    - August 26th, 2012, 2:33 pm Post #31 - August 26th, 2012, 2:33 pm
    A few miscellaneous notes from a recent short visit to Des Moines . . .

    At the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, we stopped at The Wooden Shoe, a stand from Pella, a Dutch town 40 miles southwest and world's record holder for the largest wooden shoe dance. They were selling a couple of the town's signature foods: Pella bologna and Dutch letters. Pella bologna (on a stick!) is a tasty sausage indeed, without a lot of similarity to what usually goes by that name. Is this the same as rookworst?

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    Dutch letters are tubes of flaky puff pastry filled with almond paste, usually bent into an "S" shape. Wooden Shoe's version is simple but surprisingly good, tasting like they'd just come from the oven. Reportedly, other stands at the Fair were selling the pastries impaled on sticks. Have a look at this excellent essay on Dutch letters from the Iowa Arts Council.

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    Pella bologna and Dutch letters are exemplary State Fair snacks—real food with a real story. The other food choices were nearly overwhelming, even by State Fair standards. We passed on the "grotesque" beef sundae at Cattlemen's Beef Quarters (seemed to be packing 'em in) and also walked by the (equally grotesque?) veggie corndogs at Veggie-Table.

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    After admiring the life size chocolate moose (and of course the butter cow), we left the Fair and drove a couple miles to Kelly's Little Nipper. The Nipper is more bar than restaurant but their tiny kitchen puts out some awfully good chow. The drunk but friendly pool players seem drawn by cheap booze but we'd come for the tenderloins that impressed so much a year ago. Things have changed a bit.

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    It's still a good tenderloin (and a good deal at $8, including onion rings) but the surface area is at least double what it used to be and the thickness has decreased. It's getting close to the ridiculous dimensions I've come to dislike in giant tenderloins ("My loin is bigger than yours"). The excellent fried onions are unchanged (definitely choose rings over fries or chips). KLN is still a worthwhile stop but I wish they hadn't given in to the pervasive tenderloin inflationary pressures. It was a better sandwich a year ago.

    Kelly's Little Nipper
    1701 E Grand Av
    Des Moines IA
    515-265-2031

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