Harbinger
CITY GUIDES | MIDWEST
The Best Restaurants in Des Moines: Must-Try Spots in Iowa's Capital
By Jamie Dutton | Feb. 21, 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 come to Des Moines the way a lot of people do: for business at the Capitol, in a pantsuit that wrinkles the second it meets a rental car seatbelt.
Over time, chef-driven restaurants in Des Moines stopped being the exception and started becoming the spine of the scene, the places that made everything else around them get sharper, more ambitious, and less interested in playing it safe. Menus got more confident. Service got more dialed in. Dining rooms got louder in that specific way that says the kitchen is doing its job and the city is paying attention. Des Moines went from “surprisingly good” to downright good.
These are the restaurants right now in Des Moines, a city where the food scene is no longer up-and-coming, it’s here.
Alba
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Alba is chef-owner Jason Simon’s East Village flagship, an upscale American dining room with an open kitchen and reclaimed wooden doors mounted across the ceiling. The menu lands on dishes 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. Happy hour runs daily from four to six, which works well for cocktails like the High Fashion—Bulleit rye, orange shrub, Heering cherry liqueur, balsamic—before a full dinner order.
Best for: A polished East Village dinner with a strong cocktail program
Clyde's Fine Diner
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Chris Hoffmann runs Clyde’s like a diner but with a chefy level of technique. The CFD burger is the signature for a reason, and it sits comfortably next to comfort-food plates like bangers and mash that make the place feel like it has Midwest manners and big-city confidence. Dessert is not optional here, especially if the long john is in play.
Best for: A burger followed by a dessert you will not want to share
Eatery A
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Jason Simon’s Mediterranean-leaning spot revolves around a wood-burning oven that turns out the restaurant’s wood-fired pizzas. Head chef Andy Sayre backs the smoke and char with small plates like bacon-wrapped dates with red pepper coulis, octopus with kale pesto and crispy leeks, and house-marinated olives. The room uses reclaimed wood from central Iowa, which fits a menu that can pivot from mezze to pizza without feeling scattered.
Best for: Wood-fired pizza and Mediterranean-leaning small plates
Fresko
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Fresko does “natural foods” without the sanctimony, mixing vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options with carnivore comfort like a bone-in ribeye. Blackened salmon and Golden Dragon Street Noodles show where the kitchen’s head is at: bright, health-conscious, and still interested in flavor. It is the rare place that can make an expense-account dinner feel vaguely virtuous.
Best for: A lighter dinner that still feels like dinner
Grimaldi's Pizzeria
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Grimaldi’s in Ankeny brings coal-fired, Brooklyn-style pizza to The District at Prairie Trail, which is a sentence that still feels slightly surreal in the Midwest. The menu rounds things out with calzones, salads, and charcuterie boards, plus a full bar for cocktails, craft beers, and wine. It is a reliable way to turn a suburban night into something with a little more heat behind it.
Best for: Coal-fired pizza when the plan is Ankeny
Harbinger
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Chef Joe Tripp’s Harbinger is a small-plates restaurant where vegetables get the kind of attention most places reserve for steak. Korean fried cauliflower comes shatteringly crisp under a sweet-spicy glaze, and it fits right alongside dishes like brussels sprouts okonomiyaki with Bulldog sauce and togarashi aioli, enoki mushroom tempura with curry salt and shiso, and chicken liver pâté served with grilled bánh mì and Vietnamese pickles. The room is lively and built for sharing, which is convenient because the menu rarely gives a table a reason to stop at one or two plates.
Best for: A vegetable-forward small-plates dinner that still feels indulgent
Hobnob Coffee and Wine Bar
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Hobnob sits inside Hotel Fort Des Moines and keeps the menu practical in a way that respects people who have schedules. The Frisco melt is the order that explains the place: folded egg, pepper jack, Iowa ham, roasted tomatoes, and Lola’s hot sauce aioli on griddled local sourdough, served with fresh-cut fruit. It is calm, central, and built for mornings that start early and evenings that end late.
Best for: A traditional breakfast and an evening that starts with wine
Hokkaido Ramen & Izakaya
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Hokkaido Ramen & Izakaya in Ankeny does ramen the way a ramen place should: clear categories, rich broth, and serious toppings. Tonkotsu ramen comes in white shoyu broth with pork belly, bamboo shoot, bean sprouts, bok choy, scallions, and soft-boiled egg, and it eats like a full-body warm-up. Spicy beef ramen runs on a shoyu and beef-bone base with beef, bean sprouts, corn, bok choy, and scallions, which is the bowl to order when subtlety is not the goal.
Best for: Broth-first comfort with a real spice option
Mad Meatball
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Mad Meatball keeps its menu in its lane: thin crust tavern style pizza, meatballs, and a bar setup that encourages a second round. The signature: spicy meatball pie with banana peppers and jalapeños on house-made spicy red sauce. The meatballs appetizer comes in a hot dish topped with cheese and banana peppers in house red sauce, because this is the kind of place to order a meatball starter before more meatballs.
Best for: Square-cut pizza and meatballs that do the job
Masao
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Masao is run by Nick Hanke and Phil Shires—the duo named 2026 James Beard Award semifinalists for Best Chef: Midwest. It’s built around a simple idea: serious sushi on one side of the menu, French dishes on the other. On the sushi page, nigiri comes with specifics like bluefin toro brushed with nikiri glaze, alfonsino with yuzu kosho, and Japanese A5 wagyu, while the maki list swings from clean to loaded, including a Volcano roll built on Maine Jonah crab and topped with broiled mushrooms, garlic, and miso mayo. Then the French side throws elbows with dishes like chicken pâté with pickled mustard seed and house-cured olives, “three way mushrooms” with tempura enoki and truffle oil, and lavender-scented scrambled eggs finished with crème fraîche and caviar. It’s unexpected, original, and very quickly made it on my list of Des Moines’ best restaurants.
Best for: Sushi and French plates in the same reservation
Oak Park
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Oak Park is a prairie-style dining room that leans into the full experience, down to a serious wine program, and it has the staff to match. Chef Ian Robertson builds the seasonal American menu, executive pastry chef Jess Robertson handles dessert, and the restaurant puts enough attention on beverages that it names its sommelier, Carly Dascoli. If the table wants the headline, the $100 banana split comes with pistachio, banana saffron, and foie gras ice creams plus champagne mousse, gold leaf, and Armagnac caviar.
Best for: A splurge dinner with a dessert finale
Parlor
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Parlor is Detroit-style pizza in Beaverdale from the same ownership world as Eatery A and Alba, and it leans into beer and games along with the pies. The sussudio is Italian sausage, mushroom, and chimichurri on red sauce, which is a smart way to make a familiar combination taste like it has a twist. Shuffleboard and a long tap list make it easy to treat pizza as the center of the night.
Best for: Detroit-style pizza with beer and shuffleboard
The Stuffed Olive
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This is a martini bar with a food menu designed to keep the table fed while it works through the drink list. The garlic mashed potato martini is Chopin vodka and olive brine, garnished with garlic-stuffed olives, which is a drink that announces itself before it hits the table. I’m a fan of the Spanish shrimp that come sautéed with cherry tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil and served with toasted bread, which is exactly what a martini place should be serving.
Best for: Martinis with small plates that earn their keep
Table 128
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Chef Lynn Pritchard’s Table 128 runs a modern American menu at Gray’s Landing downtown and layers in a three-course chef’s tasting menu every Saturday alongside the regular dinner service. The tasting changes weekly, which makes it the cleanest way to let the kitchen choose the order and the pacing. On the à la carte side, the restaurant’s comfort zone includes seafood like scallops and stuffed clams alongside the kind of composed plates that feel built for a slow dinner.
Best for: A long, paced dinner where decisions are optional
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