I haven't been to this place for years, and it's changed owners in the interim, but it used to be very good. The atmosphere was typical of a small-town restaurant, but the service was always friendly and the food was certainy above-average.

The best breakfast in Plymouth County! I love those fresh doughnuts. Everything is cooked just right in this main street cafe. Wonderful food, friendly owners!

Some of the best food in Des Moines, in what is probably the least known restaurant in the least likely neighborhood. Right next to Drake, in an unassuming brown storefront with three apartments on the second floor. <br> Proud home of the best chicken fingers in town (which is very true!) and some of the best made-from-scratch soups around. Wonderful and reasonably priced for lunch, amazing (and slightly spendy) for dinner, with an exceptional wine list. Probably the best deal in Des Moines.

Archie's has the best steaks you'll ever find, guaranteed! The meat is aged uncut (still 1/2 a cow) in a huge cooler in-house. Family owned and run since 1949, the kitchen staff are experts at slicing and cooking a perfect steak every time. <br> The best steaks are a bone-in New York Strip, which is aged an extra four days and is the most flavorful steak you'll ever eat; and a Benny Weiker, an off-the-menu special which is the biggest tenderloin filet you'll see in your life! People drive for miles to eat here, and there are some people who make a stop in Le Mars when flying by in their private jets just to have dinner at Archie's. <br> The wine list is exceptional, as the owner has cultivated relationships with some of the premier Napa Valley winery owners, and regularly has tastings with them and arranges trades (awesome steak for awesome wine). If you're a carnivore, you have to try Archie's.

Home of the best coney dogs around, not to mention awesome malts! Using only natural casing weiners to make their famous coneys, Bob's is always swamped during their all-too-short (only open in the summer) season. Get two coneys and a chocolate malt and you'll be in heaven.

Home of the best pizza in Le Mars. This privately owned pizza parlor has been a Le Mars fixture since it opened. Relocated from a tiny storefront downtown to an old Chinese buffet on the highway, Mr. P's is one of the most popular places in town with their sports bar, lunch (and maybe dinner?) buffets, and friendly staff. Stop eating the nation-wide chain pizza and get something much better!

Since it's been taken over by a friendly, enthusiastic German, this downtown fixture has gotten better and better. The buckwheat pancakes and pan-fried-potatoes are wonderful. The typical cafe sandwiches and melts reach a new level on homemeade German-style breads (dense and rich, wonderful). Everything is prepared excellently, and service is polite and quick.

A very popular sports bar and excellent restaurant next to Bomgaars in Le Mars. Making your typical neighborhood grill type dishes, including burgers, pastas, sandwiches, salads, as well as some excellent Tex-Mex. The staff is friendly, though mainly local high-school students. If you're sick of pizza this may be your best bet in Le Mars.

This is the gold standard for Italian dining in Des Moines. The atmosphere is wonderful, and the food is absolutely outstanding. Service goes beyond friendly to enthusiastic, and on most nights the owner is roaming the dining room making sure the customers are happy. A must-try if you're in Des Moines.

An unexpectedly good restaurant, Court Ave. Brewing Co. is wonderful. The fancy dining room is very tasteful, and the food is delicious. Onion rings with home-made beer batter were outstanding, crispy and crumbly but cooked thoroughly. The entrees are superlative. Pork chops with blackcurrant sause were perfectly done, and the sauce provided a delicious spin on the applesauce standby. The special for the night was salmon and scallop kabobs with a saffron-cream sauce which was absolutely outstanding! The house beers are decent, but nothing special. For the most elegant and delicious food you've eaten in a brewery, visit Court Ave.

A chain restaurant, Famous Dave's isn't the place to get something unique, but if you like sloppy, saucy batch-prepared BBQ you'll probably like the food. Order at the counter and sit down, your food arrives in a basket. Don't expect to get away clean, because everything is swimming in their proprietary BBQ sauce. Nothing special.

A hard-to-spot little building on 86th St., Saigon Cafe is home of some of the metro's best asian food. Serving excellently prepared but typical Chinese dishes, the real specialty here is Vietnamese food. The lemongrass chicken is my favorite. If you've never had Vietnamese food, you must give Saigon Cafe a try!

One of the best steaks I've ever had! The dimly lit, wood-paneled dining room is decorated with wildlife prints in a typical neighborhood steakhouse fashion. The service is friendly and helpful. The steak is amazing! The sirloin was tender, juicy, tasty, and grilled perfectly medium-rare: pink with just a hint of red in the middle. The best steak I've had in Des Moines, no contest.

In a strip mall on the western edge of Des Moines, the Drunken Goat makes some of the most unique sandwiches you've seen. Using premium meats, breads, and cheeses you can pick your own ingredients or order one of the specialties, which are outstanding. An example: #11 (the Spanish Fig) contains Serrano ham, a fig conserve, green apple slices, and melted brie, all grilled on slices of South Union bread. Absolutely delicious!

In a strip mall, with pressure board booths and a linoleum floor, the atmosphere is somewhat depressing. The food was your typical indistinct, mushy, gloppy Mexican that we're all sick of. A chile relleno that had no texture whatsoever, a burrito filled with some unidentifiable goop, and an enchilada filled with greasy, tasteless cheese were the contents of my combo. I know Mexican food can be a spicy conbination of contrasting textures and flavors, it's just so hard to find a restaurant willing to put in the effort in this town.

I don't know anything about the owner, so I'll just talk about the food. The service was friendly and helpful both times I've visited. The atmosphere is good, with lustrous polished booths and local art on the bare brick wall. The nachos were horrible, a pile of chips with all the toppings on top, then microwaved to warm everything up. The meat had no flavor, and a vaguely powdery texture. The club sandwich is decent, but there must have been a pound of ham and turkey in it; I couldn't even fit my mouth around it. Maybe that is good to some people, but I'd rather have a tasty, balanced sandwich than one that is so one-dimensional. The shrimp bisque has a great flavor, but the texture is a bit off. The halibut came in a wonderfully thick, flaky fillet that tasted great, but the potatoes left something to be desired. There is certainly better game in town.

The homemade chips are good, the service was friendly, but the atmosphere and quality of food left something to be desired. A huge, warehouse-like dining room gave no intimacy, and the numerous windows looked out on a grass field and the interstate. I ordered teriyaki chicken pizza, which could have been a great showpiece for a unique idea, but instead was a complete disappointment. It came on a pre-fab crust (huge mistake!), the chicken had virtually no teriyaki flavor, and there was no discernable sauce beneath the tasteless pile of cheese. The highlight of the dish was the green and red pepper slices. Perhaps the other dishes are better, but I don't know if I'll give them another chance given the other excellent dining options in Des Moines.

Wonderful sports bar/pizzaria. The service is good, the atmosphere is good (if you like sports bars, that is), and the pizza is excellent. With some of the highest-quality toppings around, this is the best pizza you'll find in Sioux City.

While a chain restaurant typically doesn't give you anything special, Carlos O'Kelley's makes some excellent dishes. The seafood combos and burritos are delicious and unique, and the other dishes are generally your typical Mexican choices, but prepared excellently. The margaritas are hit-and-miss, apparently depending on who's making them. May be one of your best choices for Mexican in Sioux City.

Perkins is the same everywhere: good. Not great, but not bad. The service is good, the atmosphere is good, the food is good. Breakfast is only ok in my opinion, but I'm not a big breakfast food fan in the first place. I love the muffins though. The melt sandwiches are my favorite menu items. Always huge and tasty, they're a treat. And don't forget the French Silk Pie.