BOOK EXCERPT: I Was the Des Moines Register’s Restaurant Reviewer; Somebody Had to Be

PHOTO: JUSTIN TORNER/UI OFFICE OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION An Iowa food critic remembers one of the most delightful surprises of her career: trying tom kha kai, a Thai chicken soup.

This chapter’s title, of course, echoes the opening sentences of Bill Bryson’s book The Lost Continent: “I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.” The tone of resignation describes how I sometimes felt on the most challenging days on the job.

PHOTO COURTESY UI PRESS “I was the Des Moines Register’s restaurant reviewer. Somebody had to be.” is from the book Love Is My Favorite Flavor by Wini Moranville, © 2024 by Wini Moranville. Reprinted with permission of the University of Iowa Press.

Happily, though, for about 78 percent of the time, reviewing restaurants was a great gig. Every Thursday morning from 1997 to 2012, my review appeared in the Datebook, the Des Moines Register’s weekly entertainment guide; later, I continued to cover Des Moines restaurants for dsm magazine many years afterward.

On Thursday mornings, I loved opening my front door, grabbing the physical paper, and seeing how the review looked on the printed page and checking out the photos that ran with it (which I never saw in advance). Thursday was also the day that I always set aside to write and submit my review for the following week.

Back then, reviewing was just one part of how I wove together a living as a food and wine writer. I also wrote for and worked as a project editor on all kinds of magazines and cookbooks, and later websites. While I enjoyed the non-reviewing work—greatly, in fact—it often entailed collaborating with a team of other writers, editors, recipe developers, recipe testers, art directors, graphic designers, photographers, food stylists, prop stylists, and such. Together, we turned out some great cookbooks and magazine food stories, sometimes with moments of discord and tension that creatives often experience when working as a team, but usually with plenty of camaraderie and laughs in between.

“I never loved the job more than when I was writing about an undiscovered gem that I could bring to light.” —Wini Moranville

But Thursdays were all mine—a nice break from the peopley aspect of everything else I did. I’d bang away on my keyboard in my “freelancer’s hut” (my incredibly unkempt home office) and think about the best way to tell the story of my dining experiences with the goal of doing only one thing: to help readers decide whether the restaurant I was reviewing was worth their hard-earned money and hard-won leisure time.

I never loved the job more than when I was writing about an undiscovered gem that I could bring to light—the review would be a pleasure to write and a boon to both my reader and the restaurateur. Win-win-win. In 20-plus years of writing about restaurants, the greatest of such moments was in my discovery of Thai Flavors.

One weekday when I was working in the offices of the Better Homes & Gardens family of publications, I invited David, a food-magazine editor, to go with me to review a newish hole-in-the-wall joint that was supposed to be good in a greasy spoon kind of way. When we got there, we walked into an empty place, took in the haphazardness of the workspace behind the counter and the dingy furnishings in the dining area, and stood there, waiting for someone to come out of the back room. We might have even called out, “Yoo-hoo! Anyone here?”

But no one came, and frankly, I was a bit relieved. By this time I had a remarkably accurate feel for restaurants that looked bleak at first glance but could be worthy in some other way versus restaurants that were hopeless through and through. I called this sixth sense “mon pif” (my snout), a slang term that a Quebecois friend taught me while we were traveling together in France—he was bemused by my knack for snouting out really good restaurants. As a reviewer, mon pif was generally pretty accurate. I knew this place would never make it, and I had no desire to be the one to nail its coffin shut. We beat a path out of there. The place closed within months, entirely on its own.

I had promised to take David to lunch but was scrambling for an idea of where to go. One of the drawbacks of being a well-known food critic in town is that everyone wants you to decide where to eat. That can be a lot of pressure when you’re dining with talented food editors for national publications.

Driving back toward the downtown offices, we spotted a place called Thai Flavors. It was in a scruffy old strip mall, next door to a spay clinic, and yet, mon pif told me something about it looked hopeful. I decided to roll the dice.

We settled into the near-empty, simply furnished space with its tapestry tablecloths under glass and scant Thai decorations here and there. I ordered my go-to Thai dish, a green curry, and David ordered pad Thai. These were hardly the most adventurous dishes on the 50-plus-item menu, I know, but I wasn’t sure if I was truly reviewing the place or just getting a reliable meal to see me through the afternoon.

“The dish had me wide-eyed and reeling, practically giddy with the goofy delight food lovers get when they unexpectedly stumble onto a new and wondrous dish.” —Wini Moranville

But then, the most unexpected and amazing thing happened. When the server (a middle-aged man, likely in his 50s) brought David his pad Thai, he set a bowl of soup down in front of me. He did not speak English fluently, but I understood he was telling me, in a friendly but quite matter-of-factly way, that he was bringing me this dish instead of what I ordered. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement.

I had a sense that all was going to be just fine. And it was better than fine. The dish had me wide-eyed and reeling, practically giddy with the goofy delight food lovers get when they unexpectedly stumble onto a new and wondrous dish. When it was over, my mood turned more wistful as I said to David, “Why can’t all food be this good?”

The dish was tom kha kai—by now a well-known dish in our parts, but new to many local diners at the time. In quintessential Thai fashion, the chicken soup brought a world of great effects into one bowl: the meatiness of chicken and mushrooms; a spicy bite of chiles; a fresh burst of lemongrass; a sweet, smooth, and nutty finish of coconut milk; and a sour touch of lime.

I returned a couple more times on review visits, and the place continued to make me profoundly happy at almost every turn. I also loved the genuine, unrestrained joy of the waitstaff and how they’d do everything they could to steer you right. You could order a dish spiced from one (not very spicy) to five (blowout spicy). On a final review visit, I ventured to order a three. The young server started giggling, and in the sweetest, most amiable way possible, said, “No, no, no! You’re a TWO!” I still smile when I think of her. She knew me well.

Des Moines had seen a few Thai restaurants over the years, but this one moved the needle. Accolades practically flew from my fingers as I wrote the review, and after it ran, diners would sometimes have to wait to get a table at lunch. It tickled me to no end to walk in one day and see my four-star review blown up to poster size on the wall of the restaurant. This, my friends, is when reviewing restaurants is truly the best job in the world. No, it’s not seeing my words blown up on a wall, but, rather, seeing my words truly connect food lovers with restaurateurs who will bring them joy.

I’m still not sure why the owner brought me the tom kha kai instead of what I ordered, but I think it was in the spirit of one food lover saying to another, “You must try this.” Visit after visit—and I continued to go there often over the years—the place was always run by an exuberant waitstaff eager to share their culinary world. In fact, after a while, the owner and staff keyed into my role as a reviewer, and more than once, the owner’s father (the guy who had brought me the tom kha kai instead of green curry on my first visit) invited me to go to Thailand and stay with him and his extended family. He said he wanted me to experience Thai food in Thailand. I’m sorry I didn’t take him up on it. It surely would have been more meaningful than the rote press junkets I’d go on later in my career.

***

That first visit to Thai Flavors combined everything wonderful that can happen in a restaurant: great food, yes, but also that marvelous feeling of being in the presence of people who are genuinely glad you’re sitting at their table.

Alas, how often did Thai Flavor-like moments happen in the years of reviewing? Not as often as I hoped. It is an honor, a pleasure, and a great luck to be a widely read restaurant reviewer, and when it’s good, it’s one of the best jobs in the world. But you have to get out there and try it all, from the subpar to the sublime.

Bad meals indifferently served come with the territory, and in fact, they weren’t even the worst part of the job. No, the hardest part wasn’t the rank letdown of a lousy meal. Rather, it was deciding whether or not you’re going to tell everyone in town about it, and then actually telling everyone in town about it. Before the days of crowd-sourced reviews (Yelp and the like), I was one of just a handful of voices on the dining scene—and likely the one with the widest circulation. That could be a burden.

And just who was I, anyway, to be such a highly visible voice on the Des Moines dining scene? Had I been a chef? A culinary school grad? Was I even a trained journalist?

In truth, I was none of these; rather, I was simply a longtime waitress turned highly experienced and passionate diner … who could write.

PHOTO: ANDY LYONS CAMERAWORKS

Wini Moranville (82BA) has worked as a cookbook author, food and wine writer, and restaurant reviewer for more than 25 years. She has written hundreds of food-related articles for national food magazines and has served as the wine columnist for Relish Magazine, a TV food segment host, and a James Beard Restaurant Awards panelist.