While traveling to Mexico, my husband and I had had a brief conversation with a lovely couple from California. We ventured off of our resort in search of a more authentic food experience and ran into them right outside the gates of the resort. They were staying at an Airbnb down the road and were looking to purchase a day pass to our resort. They asked about the amenities, drinks, service, and food. We gave each category pretty good reviews except for the food. We had told them about our poor experience with sushi on the resort prefacing it with, “Of course, we weren’t expecting sushi to be great on the resort, blah, blah, blah” and then they asked where we were from.

When we told them we were from Iowa, we had to make the usual clarifications about growing corn, not potatoes and that we are Hawkeyes, not Hoosiers. When they finally figured out where Iowa was geographically, there was another (only slightly insulting) jab about how we don’t even know what good sushi is. Lord.

This was when we politely excused ourselves before we had to explain that Iowans are able to travel to different areas of the globe and experience the unique local cuisines or that (shocker) we actually have really great sushi locally, thanks to hard-working, entrepreneurial immigrants who chose our area because of the affordability of living and friendliness of our citizens. Truth be told, I was nearing my limit of Modelos that day and can’t believe I didn’t pounce like our cat Carl on…. Well, poor analogy. Carl pounces on nothing. He certainly couldn’t be bothered to rouse himself from his bench to attack a moving object. Unless it happens to be 2 am and one of us goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. Carl is then capable of running at lightning speed up the basement steps, screaming like a banshee to scare the living “nightlights” out of his unlucky owner. I should give him more credit. He caught a mouse once. Granted, it was already dead in the trap that he brought us but he was so proud that we didn’t have the heart to tell him that. Sorry. I got sidetracked. I did NOT say anything further to the West Coast Cuties. We just walked away.

Now, I am not blind to the fact that some of the larger cities in our country have food offerings that are far more abundant than what we can sustain her in North Iowa. However, our food (and drink) scene is quite impressive considering our lower population density. I am so proud of it that I want to feature some of my favorites on upcoming blog posts. I plan to have a new post once a month during the summer month about restaurants, breweries, local growers and area farmer’s markets. Sorry. This was kind of a “teaser post” but I know you will thank me later 😉

Leave me a comment or two below telling me what your favorite places are to visit in the area. Let me know what you think I should check out and post about!