Try ceviche at Panka Peruvian Restaurant on Ingersoll Avenue or tuck into one of their special lunch or dinner menus during Iowa Latino Restaurant Week. (Photo: Duane Tinkey)
Writer: Michael Morain
Take note, hungry readers: It’s tacu tacu time.
The inaugural Iowa Latino Restaurant Week starts today and runs through next Saturday, Sept. 21, at 22 eateries in Greater Des Moines and a couple more farther afield. The idea is to entice Iowans to try some south-of-the-border fare besides tacos — not only tacu tacu, but pozole, llapingachos and other specialties your high school Spanish textbook probably never mentioned.
(So what are those dishes, you ask? Keep on reading. We won’t leave you hanging.)
Local restaurant owners in the newly formed Iowa Latino Hospitality Council cooked up the 11-day foodie fiesta to showcase the diversity of cuisines from Central and South America, as well as various regions in Mexico. Those flavors are available year-round at Iowa’s Latino restaurants, which account for about 10% of all restaurants across the state.
The restaurateurs schedule their big week to lead into the Iowa Latino Heritage Festival (Sept. 21-22 in Western Gateway Park) and National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15 through Oct. 15).
“We want to showcase our culture, not just through music and dance but through food, too,” organizer Gloria Henriquez said.
She opened the Peruvian and pan-Andean restaurant Tullpa on Merle Hay Road in 2022, four years after she and her mother moved here from Peru to be closer to their family. “No regrets,” Henriquez said. “Iowa’s been pretty good to me.”
So will Iowa be good to its Latino restaurants this week? “We’ll talk with the other restaurant owners to see if there’s any increase in traffic,” she said. “It’s a new event, so it might take some time, but we’ll keep doing it.”
For starters, she recommends Tullpa’s tacu tacu, a savory mix of rice and beans pressed into a loose cake, often served with a lomo saltado, a beef and veggie stir-fry.
For other Peruvian dishes including ceviche, check out Panka Peruvian Restaurant on Ingersoll Avenue. You can find pozole, a hearty Mexican soup with meat and hominy, at El Fogon in West Des Moines. Or try llapingachos, stuffed potato patties from Ecuador, at Mi Patria, also in West Des Moines.
The Iowa Latino Hospitality Council’s website has a complete list of participating restaurants, with detailed menus for lunch (two for $25) and dinner (two for $50).
