Fine Dining That Feels Just Right

Three highly acclaimed Midwestern chefs tell me about their commitment to approachable, less-complicated cuisine that's nevertheless quite refined. Where can we find this in Des Moines?

This past year, while dining in the Midwest—including Chicago, Kansas City, Dubuque, Iowa City, and Fertile, Iowa, (yes, Fertile, Iowa)—I’ve noticed a refreshing pattern. At the restaurants I enjoyed most, I’ve seen less of those precariously stacked dishes with herbs shooting out of the top, fewer foams, and hardly any dots and zigzags of this and that. I encountered exactly zero tasting menus and very few small plates.

Of course, all those things still exist—and continue to make a lot of people very happy. Yet somehow, I’ve been gravitating toward places offering food that feels both gratifying and approachable. While hearty food is hardly rare in the Midwest, what I appreciated most was the way these acclaimed chefs blend precision with comfort, sophistication with substance.

Recently, I visited restaurants where this approach is thriving. Later, I interviewed the chefs/restaurateurs for some insights into why they’ve chosen to craft this kind of food.

Colby Garrelts

Rye Plaza, Kansas City

Colby Garrelts. Photo used by permission.

Husband-and-wife team Colby and Megan Garrelts first dazzled me with their highly detailed and intricate cuisine at Bluestem (c. 2004-2020), the now-closed Kansas City restaurant where Colby earned a James Beard Award for Best Chef—Midwest, and Megan was a James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef.

More recently, however, I’ve appreciated the heartier, more approachable style of their Midwestern menu at Rye Plaza, the 2017 offshoot of Rye Leawood, which first opened its doors in 2012. When I asked Colby Garrelts about the redirection of their efforts over the years, he offered a candid perspective on how the food world—and the couple’s priorities—have evolved.

“At Bluestem, I used to cook for critics … to get written about and win awards. Now, I’m cooking for the public.” — Colby Garrelts

“About ten or more years ago, food got to a point where it felt impossible to keep up with restaurants like Alinea or The French Laundry, with teams of 30 or 40 cooks in the kitchen,” he explained. “I think it drove a lot of chefs in a different direction—you started seeing more ‘back-to-basics,’ like nose-to-tail and live-fire cooking.”

For Garrelts, the pivot was also personal and practical. “Bluestem was expensive to run—everything from the glassware to the china to the staffing,” he said, and this made it a challenge to turn a profit. He also mentioned that the all-consuming work and long hours of running a restaurant like Bluestem is a “young-man’s game.”

“We started to have kids—life happened—and instead of living in the kitchen, we wanted to do food that was more approachable and easier to execute.”

The shift was also about reconnecting with more diners. “At Bluestem, I used to cook for a certain audience—for critics and people with educated palates—to get written about and win awards … I was also cooking for myself—it was art to me. Now, I’m cooking for the public,” he says.

While Bluestem’s highly creative and artistic menus made a lot of people (including me) very happy, Garrelts admits that they could be “esoteric,” and even intimidating to some. These days, he enjoys focusing on more affordable food that people recognize, like steaks, pan-roasted trout with Brussels sprouts, and classic Midwestern pies—all done, of course, with the expertise and refinement of two highly esteemed chefs.

Michael Smith

Farina, Kansas City

Michael Smith. Photo by Ron Berg.

Early in his career, this acclaimed Kansas City chef trained in France and later served as sous-chef at Chicago’s Charlie Trotter. But while Trotter would soon became a pioneer of intricate, multi-course tasting menus, Smith went in another direction, heading back to France, to gain more expertise in traditional European cuisine.

The focus paid off. Back in the U.S., he took over The American Restaurant, earning a James Beard Award for Best Chef Midwest with his unfussy American fare grounded in his extensive French training. In subsequent years, avant-garde cuisine from ground-breakers like Spain’s Ferran Adrià dominated conversations. Yet while Smith admired the innovation, he avoided molecular gastronomy. “A lot of cooks passed through wanting to do all this cool stuff,” he recalls, “but that’s not what I do.”

Still, around 2010, he grappled with the fear of falling behind culinary trends. A trip to Napa Valley reassured him. “We were eating in these restaurants that were all about real food, and I talked to a lot of the winemakers and chefs. I said, ‘I don't want to fall behind, and all of a sudden wake up and nobody wants to work for me, my food starts to feel old …’”

The cuisine—and conversations—in California reassured him that real food is never going away. He’s continued to take the more traditionally rooted course, opening Farina in 2019. Here, he’s embraced Italian cuisine for its richness and accessibility while re-imagining it in his own style. The result: well-crafted, handsomely presented food that resonates. “Especially in the Midwest, people want something they can recognize and enjoy—real food,” he says.

Smith never dabbled much in molecular gastronomy. “A lot of cooks passed through wanting to do all this cool stuff,” he recalls, “but that’s not what I do ... I just want to cook really good, delicious food.”

Sam and Riene Gelman

The Webster, Iowa City

The Webster, Iowa City. Photo used by permission.

The Webster’s family-style approach—with large, shareable plates served communally at the table—is worlds apart from the small-plate tasting-menu model. And it’s exactly where Sam and Riene Gelman wanted to land.

“From a front-of-house perspective, and a person that has done the fancy stuff (Eleven Madison Park) and the more family/share style (Tom Colicchio at Craft), I find the family style to be so much more of a ‘normal/comfortable’ way of eating,” says Riene, who oversees the front of the house while husband Sam helms the kitchen. Sometimes, she even sees customers sharing dishes with nearby tables. “It really cements the idea of breaking bread together, looking past differences, and just finding that bit of joy in life.”

But if you think that home-style means “something you could cook at home for a lot less money,” talking to Sam Gelman will disabuse you of that notion. Indeed, precise culinary technique remain central for this chef, who held key roles in respected kitchens in Boston, New York, and Toronto. He described, for example, the process for his “chili jam,” where each aromatic (e.g., Thai chilies, galangal, shallots, garlic, and ginger) must be thinly sliced and fried individually until golden and crispy to achieve the layers of nuanced flavors. And that’s just one step of a multi-step process for this one single condiment. The kitchen also pays razor-sharp attention to how every dish will be enjoyed at the table—right down to the way each component should fit on a fork to get optimal results from every bite.

What’s remarkable for the diner (and I’ve eaten at The Webster three times now) is how all this meticulous attention to detail never seems overwrought on the plate. The food feels effortless in its appeal—gratifying, joyful, and deeply satisfying, without a hint of pretentiousness.

So, Where to Find This Kind of Food in Des Moines?

Grilled chicken with cilantro pesto and mojo de ajo at Café Mir. Roast chicken flavored with honey, peach, and sumac at Brazen Open Kitchen. These are just two of the robust yet fine-tuned dishes I had last year.

This past year in Iowa, I also enjoyed a kind of refined heartiness at both Café Mir in Fertile, Iowa, as well as Brazen in Dubuque. Finding it in Des Moines takes a little digging. A few leads:

• Alba comes top to mind. On a recent visit, I enjoyed inventive dishes that were hearty yet strikingly vivid—precise and detailed, yes, but grounded.

• When Colby Garrelts mentioned open-hearth cooking, I immediately thought of the charcoal hearth at Prime & Providence. The food there is undeniably robust, leaning toward richly indulgent dishes with a price tag to match—more so than most places mentioned here. Pay special attention to the sides, which offer detail and precision that outshine the usual heavy-handed high-end steakhouse fare.

Your turn! I’d love to hear where you’re finding this kind of “refined hearty” food at fine-dining restaurants in Des Moines.

The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative

I’m proud to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Each Sunday, Julie Gammack shares a roundup of articles that collaborative members have written in the past week. Check out last Sunday’s roundup, here.