Alba
CITY GUIDES | MIDWEST
These Are Iowa’s Michelin-Worthy Restaurants
From Des Moines to Decorah, Here Are 15 Spots That Cook Like the Guide Is Watching
By Jamie Dutton | Feb. 22, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: With family spread across the Midwest and a job that has her in airports near daily, Jamie Dutton finds herself across the Heartland regularly. She’s partial to BPTs a Bell's.
I have been traveling Iowa for work for years, which means I have eaten a lot of meals in clothes wrinkled from rental cars, staring at a laptop, promising myself I would order something green next time.
Somewhere along the way, I started saving the good ones in my Notes app: restaurants worth detouring for, restaurants worth planning a meeting around, restaurants that made me look up mid-bite and think, “So this is what Iowa is doing right now.”
Michelin inspectors are not coming to Iowa anytime soon, so this is my version of an Iowa Michelin Guide: 15 of the Michelin-worthy Iowa restaurants across Des Moines, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Coralville, and Decorah, with the kind of cooking that deserves stars, a Bib Gourmand, or at least a simple, official “Recommended” from a guide that pretends the middle of the country is a blank space.
Alba, Des Moines
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Jason Simon runs Alba like a serious neighborhood restaurant that just happens to cook at Michelin level. The menu shifts with what Iowa is growing right now, but it reliably lands on things like deviled eggs with horseradish soil and beet tartar, pan-roasted halibut with green curry farro and charred asparagus, and marinated hanger steak with smashed baby yukons, roasted red peppers, charred onions, and whipped goat cheese. This is the kind of place where the cooking has range but still remembers it lives in Iowa.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Baroncini, Iowa City
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Chef Gianluca Baroncini opened the place under his own name, and it reads like a personal argument for why Iowa City deserves real-deal Italian cooking. The menu is built for people who want to eat their way through pastas and seafood: capellini al frutti di mare, bolognese, and tagliolini con tartufi show up alongside pizza tartufi with truffle and mushroom sauce. It feels less like a “special occasion Italian” room and more like a working chef’s steady idea of comfort.
What it deserves: Recommended
Brazen Open Kitchen, Dubuque
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Kevin Scharpf’s whole pitch is scratch cooking, right down to the pastas made by hand. The vibe is modern and unfussy—cocktails, craft beer, and a menu that can swing from house pasta to a potato-wrapped halibut with charred green onion, blistered cherry tomatoes, and celery root purée. Dubuque does not get many restaurants that cook with this kind of ambition and still feel approachable.
What it deserves: Recommended
Clyde’s Fine Diner, Des Moines
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Chris Hoffmann calls it a diner, but the menu lets diners know they’re in for something much more: dill pickle wings made from dill-cured confit chicken wings, beef tartare with a confit egg yolk, and Bloody Oysters with bloody mary jus and smoked trout roe. The CFD burger is the anchor, and the rest of the lineup rotates around it with the confidence of a place that knows people trust what the kitchen is sending out. Michelin inspectors gravitate toward restaurants where the chef is having fun, and that’s Clyde’s
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Cobble Hill, Cedar Rapids
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Andy and Carrie Schumacher run Cobble Hill as a seasonal restaurant with both a five-course tasting option and an à la carte dinner menu that leans hard into seafood, pastas, and careful plating. Recent menus list Parisian gnocchi with roasted sunchoke, Neuske’s bacon, chive powder, sunchoke purée, and parmesan; scallop crudo with mango, ponzu, jalapeño, ginger, and cilantro; and beef tartare with potato pavé, smoked leek, horseradish, and black pepper, plus raw oysters. The pasta section stays busy with dishes like radiatore with duck heart bolognese, agnolotti with duxelles ricotta and black garlic balsamic, and chitarra with roasted garlic, chèvre, and beldi olive.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Duck City Bistro, Davenport
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Davenport’s special occasion restaurant for three decades now, Duck City is now run by chef Jeremy Charles Moskowitz, whose menu starts in luxury mode and stays there. Start with the sushi grade ahi tuna with soy mustard ginger sauce before heading to the mains, like the Filet Melissa with brie cheese sauce or duck breast finished with framboise sauce. Finish the meal with classic desserts, like Key lime pie or salted caramel cheesecake.
What it deserves: Recommended
Harbinger, Des Moines
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Joe Tripp built Harbinger around vegetable-forward small plates with Southeast Asia flavors. Even the happy hour reads like a mission statement: chicken liver pâté with grilled bánh mì and Viet pickles, brussels sprouts okonomiyaki with bulldog sauce and togarashi aioli, and enoki mushroom tempura with curry salt and shiso. It is bold, highly seasoned cooking that treats vegetables as the main event.
What it deserves: Michelin star
La Rana Bistro, Decorah
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Chef-owner Carina Cavagnaro runs La Rana around a seasonal, scratch-made menu and a bar that takes cocktails seriously. The menu stays largely in a French-and-Mediterranean lane, with crab cakes, halibut, mushroom ravioli, and agnolotti—there’s crowd-pleasers, yes, but also the kind of inspired cooking that shows Cavagnaro is shooting big.
What it deserves: Recommended
Masao, Des Moines
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Masao is Nick Hanke and Phil Shires combining French and Japanese with the same exacting standards. The ever-changing menu can include bluefin tuna brushed with nikiri, alfonsino with sakura leaf and yuzu kosho, and scallop with tosazu jelly. Then there’s Shires’s dishes: lavender-scented French-style scrambled eggs finished with crème fraîche and caviar, three-way mushrooms with tempura enoki and truffle oil, and chicken pâté with pickled mustard seed and house-cured olives. The room commits to the odd details too, which fits a place that would rather do fewer things and be exact about them.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
The Monarch, Davenport
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Owner-chef Matthew Fenton runs The Monarch with the kind of menu that starts in luxury mode and stays there, beginning with an Ossetra caviar service served with potato chips, Roman gnocchi, chive, egg, and crème fraîche, plus Island Creek oysters with cucumber mignonette, cocktail, horseradish, and fire sauce. Then it shifts into the main-event stuff: whole Maine lobster spaghetti with chile de arbol, oloroso sherry, and basil, and Mountain River venison listed under the Butcher’s Reserve. Finish the meal the way the kitchen clearly intends, with the red wine poached pear with cardamom mousse, ruby port, candied pistachio, and citrus.
What it deserves: Recommended
Oak Park, Des Moines
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Chef Ian Robertson and executive pastry chef Jess Robertson work with seasonal ingredients to build dishes that are decidedly fine dining and yet still very much Iowa. Start with the caviar cone, before heading to lobster-and-ricotta ravioli with butternut squash, charred leeks, pickled ramps, and lemon beurre monté. Then hand things over to Robertson for honey crème brûlée with earl grey ice cream, granola, honeycomb, and bee pollen. For the full “judge us properly” version, the restaurant also has a chef’s table tasting menu experience seated inside the kitchen for a small group.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Plated Table, Iowa City
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Chef-owner Alex Smith runs this weekly-changing restaurant and wine bar that also functions as a bottle shop and event space. Dinner service is just Thursday through Saturday, and the restaurant’s whole operating system is rotation: new menus, seasonal sourcing, and the kind of flexibility that also shows up in its meal kits and private dinners in the wine room. Wine curator Steve Karanikolas handles pairings, and definitely trust him when he pushes a new-to-you glass.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
The Webster, Iowa City
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Sam Gelman built a food menu around seasonally driven cooking and a wine list that prioritizes smaller producers. It’s unlikely to find the same thing twice here, but my recent meal started memorably with biscuits and Kalona strawberry jam, tuna crudo with watermelon, and then, to finish, a chocolate tart with mint chip mousse and chocolate gelato. Seasonal, creative, and just downright good—exactly what Michelin likes.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
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Chef-driven standouts, classic locals, and cheap favorites worth a road trip.
