Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [152]
And by the way, in the above paragraph, where we mention “all the fixin’s,” we need to say that the things that come before and during the beef course are pretty special at Archie’s. Along with the salad you get a relish tray and a plate of cured-here corned beef: super-lean, high-flavored, beautiful to look at. The waitress suggested we do like regular customers do and shred the spicy beef on our salads. Available companions for meat include a well-browned patty of hash brown potatoes and a trio of substantial corn fritters.
Archie’s is a big, pleasant restaurant with capacious booths and hordes of happy customers who come from miles around to enjoy what is a Siouxland prize.
Bob’s Drive-Inn
Hwy. 75 S, at Hwy. 3
712–546–5445
Le Mars, IA 51031
L | $
In case you are from any one of the other forty-nine states where loosemeats is unheard of, know this when you come to northwest Iowa: loosemeats is a sandwich of ground beef that is cooked loose—unpattied—and served sauceless. Compared to a hamburger, it has a higgledy-piggledy character, but there is nothing scattered about its satisfying taste. It is customarily dressed with pickle, mustard, and a slice of cheese; and like grits, it is a food spoken of with singular/plural ambivalence. Usually one sandwich is a loosemeats; a batch in the kitchen or a bowlful without the bun are loosemeats.
You will not find loosemeats on the menu that hangs above the order window at Bob’s Drive-Inn. That is because it is listed by one of its several aliases, a tavern. At many restaurants that serve it, loosemeats is called something else: tavern, Big T, Charlie Boy, or Tastee. When Roseanne Arnold opened her Big Food Diner over in Eldon out Ottumwa way, journalists unfamiliar with Iowa cuisine made a fuss over the fact that her menu did list loosemeats, a name that to outsiders sounds vaguely taboo. According to Marcia Poole, food writer at the Sioux City Journal, folks in Siouxland were righteously angry about Roseanne calling it that. “The other side of Des Moines, it should be called a Maid-Rite,” Marcia told us, referring to the eponymous name for the similar sandwich and the Maid-Rite Restaurants that serve it, mostly between Des Moines and Dubuque. “Loosemeats are ours alone.”
Loosemeats are so dominant in this area that Bob’s menu doesn’t even offer a hamburger. If you want beef, you get loosemeats. Browned, strained of fat, then pressure-cooked with sauce and spice, then drained again, the meat is moist, full-flavored, and deeply satisfying. Each sandwich is made on a good-quality roll from Le Mars’s own Vander Meer Bakery.
If for some reason you don’t want loosemeats, or if you, like us, need to sample every good hot dog that exists, get a couple of franks at this fine place. (At $1.35 apiece, the same price as a loosemeats sandwich, they are a bargain.) These dogs are natural-casing beauties with a real snap to their skin. They come from a sausage maker in West Point, Nebraska.
Root beer is house-made, and fruit shakes are made from real summer fruit.
Coffee Cup Café
616 4th St.
641–594–3765
Sully, IA
BLD | $
If you are southeast of Des Moines looking for the sort of town café where locals come to eat and schmooze, here’s the place. Breakfast is lovely—plate-wide golden pancakes and big rounds of sausage; there are eggs and potatoes of course, and modest-size but big-taste cinnamon buns with a translucent sugar glaze, served warm with butter on the side. The meal we like best is lunch. The menu lists hot beef sandwiches and tenderloin steaks, and there is one square-meal