It’s not every day you see the top of a hot air balloon. That’s like peeking at the dark side of the moon.
When I first saw this issue’s bird’s-eye cover, photographed by Ben Easter and designed by Annabel Wimer, it reminded me of one of my favorite “chapter books” in elementary school. I read and re-read “The Twenty-One Balloons,” by William Pène du Bois, so many times that I can still picture the title printed in fancy letters across the cover.
In the story, a retired professor tries to fly around the world in a balloon in 1883. It’s an easy breezy trip until he crash-lands on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa a few weeks before a volcano blows it off the map. Before the big bang, though, the professor discovers a secret utopian society of 20 families, each named for the first 20 letters of the alphabet. They’ve devised a 20-day dining calendar, so on A Day, everybody eats at the A family’s American restaurant. On B Day, they eat at the B family’s British chop house, on C Day they eat Chinese, and so on.
So the book has food and balloons. What’s not to love?
You’ll find both in this issue, too, which includes a guide (read here) to our 17th annual dsm Restaurant Week, set for Aug. 16-25. If you plan it right, you could have dinner at Alba, Bubba, Centro, Django — right on through to the Urban Grill.
For extra credit, pick up a copy of Wini Moranville’s new memoir, “Love is My Favorite Flavor: A Midwestern Dining Critic Tells All.” It hits shelves July 17, but she graciously accepted our request to publish a chapter here (read here). I devoured an advance copy of the whole book and highly recommend it, especially if you remember Baker’s Cafeteria, the hippie-run Soup Kitchen near Drake, and several long-gone Younkers eateries, including the downtown Tea Room and Meadowlark Room at Merle Hay Mall. Wini worked as a server at all of those places, long before she became a restaurant critic, and her thoughtful memoir recounts many of the lessons she learned about human nature, seen from both sides of the table. For her, a meal involves so much more than what’s on the plate.
One last note on balloons: As you may have heard, a fire damaged Indianola’s National Balloon Museum at the end of March, just a week before it was scheduled to reopen after a major renovation. The fire destroyed some of the exhibits, artifacts and a new mural and forced the staff to close the building indefinitely. If you’d like to pitch in to support the repairs, head online to nationalballoonmuseum.com.
Meantime, the National Balloon Classic is still set for July 26 through Aug. 3. The team that runs it has an office in the museum but operates as an independent nonprofit. The fire “was truly a shock, and the ripple effect will continue for some time,” the event’s CEO, Staci Scheurenbrand, told me. “We all care deeply about balloons, history and all the artifacts that can’t be replaced.”
But they’re determined to help rebuild and host another Classic. True to form, they’ll rise again.
