Join the Dishcrawl!

Discrawl Ambassador
Mandi and me.

If you missed Dishcrawl's first Des Moines event on March 20th, you missed out on some great food and fun.  But not to worry, there is another Dishcrawl event coming up on April 23rd.  

If you've never heard of Dishcrawl, basically all participants meet at a restaurant in a specified area of Des Moines (the first event encompassed the Western Gateway, and the April event is in the East Village) and sample meals from 4 restaurants, moving to the next restaurant after each meal.  If you've ever done a pub-crawl, that's kind of how this works.  The fun part is that you don't know which restaurants you'll be visiting until the week of the event!  They do these events all over the country and it's so cool that it's now in Des Moines.


The first Des Moines Dischcrawl event started out at the Gas Lamp bar with food from The Hole in the Wall restaurant.  I had never heard of The Hole in the Wall, but their regular menu looked pretty awesome including pb&j made with almond butter and goat cheese and specialty mac & cheese.  While we were excited to try one of those items, we had an interesting combination of watermelon salad, deviled egg and head cheese.  Yes, I said head cheese (google it).  I'll be back to try the regular menu items, but may opt to skip the head cheese next time.


We then moved on to Gusto where we enjoyed specialty pizzas like corned beef and cabbage and one of their most popular pizzas, the Spartan.  Gusto's pizza is always really good and it was fun to chat with one of the owners and learn that they are opening up a new location in Waukee near Jethro's soon!  How exciting!  

The third stop was Exile Brewing where they served lamb sliders with German potato salad.  Really tasty!  Their beer was really popular with the other diners and I opted to try the "float ur' boat" cocktail and it was AMAZING.  An alcoholic root beer float.  So good.  I'm excited to try more food from Exile and see how much they grow in the next few year as they focus on their craft beers and getting them known nationally.  


We stayed there for the final round which was cupcakes from The Sweet Tooth Bakery.  Truly impressed with this new bakery.  The peanut butter frosting on the peanut butter cup cupcakes was perfect, not overly sweet with the right amount of peanut butter.  My hubby tried the strawberry cupcake and it was the first time he had a cupcake with a whole fresh strawberry in the middle.  Very creative and super good.  

They even had photographer Brianna Dawson taking photographs and she set up a photo booth at Exile to take pictures of groups and couples.  You don't always have the opportunity for professional photos at social events so that was a great idea.

What an awesome way to meet some new people, discover new places and enjoy some food you might not normally try.  If you're interested in purchasing tickets for the April 23rd Dischcrawl, you can buy them for $45 here.  All ages were present at the first one so this isn't just for younger people.

The main idea is to walk from location to location, but at 20-ish degrees on the first day of spring, most decided to drive.  Hopefully the April event will get some warmer temps.  Either way, you're going to have fun, meet new friends and enjoy some great food.  Get your tickets before they are sold out!