Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [154]
For Roadfooders, what is especially good about In’t Veld Market is that you can sit down right here and have a hot bologna sandwich: five thick slices on a fresh bakery bun—pass the mustard, please! In fact, a whole menu of meat-market sandwiches is available for eating here (or taking out) until midafternoon each day. In addition to the famous bologna, you can have house-dried beef on a bun, homemade bratwurst with sauerkraut on a hoagie roll, ham and Swiss, or a ground-here beefburger. Side orders are limited to potato salad, macaroni salad, beans, slaw, and Jell-O, and for dessert, we suggest a walk across the square to Jaarsma Bakery, a Dutch-accented shop with some of the most beguiling pastries, sweet cakes, and cookies in the Midwest.
Miles Inn
2622 Leech Ave.
712–276–9825
Sioux City, IA
LD | $
If you look through the Sioux City Yellow Pages for the Miles Inn, you won’t find it under R, for “Restaurants.” It is listed under T, for “Taverns.” This makes sense in two ways. First, and most obvious, is that it is, in fact, a tavern—a place people come for long, leisurely afternoons or evenings sipping beer, watching the overhead TV, and kibitzing with one another. Built in 1925 by bricklayer John Miles, it is a sturdy edifice that sells suds by the case as well as by the draft. The only hot food you can get in this place is a sandwich, which the sign on the wall calls a Charlie Boy. That’s reason number two that its listing under “Taverns” makes sense, because the Charlie Boy is known by many Sioux Cityans as a tavern.
In northwest Iowa, taverns are more popular than hamburgers. Dozens of restaurants serve them, and each has its own twist on the basic formula, which is ground beef that is gently spiced and cooked loose so it remains pebbly when put upon a bun. A scoop of meat is generally garnished with pickle chips and mustard, most often with cheese, and the sandwich is almost never served on a plate.
Miles Inn’s definitive taverns (named Charlie Boys after Charlie Miles, who was founder John Miles’s son) are served in wax paper that you unwrap and use to catch any drippings. They are rich and well-fatted with a concentrated beef flavor that even a sirloin steak cannot match. (Raise your hand if you agree with us that the one meal that most fully satisfies the deepest hunger for beef is a great burger, even more than a great steak.) Two or three Charlie Boys make a wonderful lunch, and the proper libation is plenty of draft beer from the tap.
Off the Hook
1100 E. 14th St.
515–265–1662
Des Moines, IA
LD | $
A pleasant, bare-tabled café and fresh fish market, Off the Hook specializes in meals based around fish, but not your typical middle-of-the-road, no-flavor fishes that people on diets tend to eat. Here you eat fish with character, like catfish with meat fairly dripping flavor, or buffalo fish that is as funky as the darkest dark-meat chicken, and carp encased in earthy cornmeal batter.
The fish-frowner among us Sterns declared the fried chicken to be some of the best she has eaten outside the Deep South—crisp-crusted and thoroughly tender. We both agreed that the vegetables that come alongside meals are soul-food classics. They include collard greens, an insanely opulent dish of fried cabbage, red beans and rice, fried green tomatoes, mac ’n’ cheese, southern-fried potatoes (sliced and cooked with onions), and creamy-cool coleslaw.
For dessert: smooth, silky sweet potato pie.
Smitty’s Tenderloin Shop
1401 SW Army Post Rd.
515–287–4742
Des Moines, IA
LD | $
“Home of the