Devotay - Iowa City, Iowa by Patty

Sunday, August 26. After a final brunch in Minneapolis at the new Common Roots Café (a cafe that features great local food, fair trade coffee, and space for community groups to use), it was back on the bus to head to Iowa City. This was my first real ride on the bus, since I joined up with the tour in Minneapolis (one early lesson in life on the road – opening cardboard boxes with a box cutter is not such a good idea on a moving bus. But I still have all my fingers.)

We started our visit to Iowa City with a fantastic dinner at Devotay, with some of the local food scene’s leaders. There was the chef/owner of Devotay, Kurt Friese, Wendy Wasserman from Edible Iowa River Valley magazine, Leah Wilson from Johnson County Local Food Alliance, David Wieseneck, the chef/owner of the Motley Cow, and Laura Dowd from Local Food Connection. The food (especially the paella) was excellent, as was the conversation and we learned a lot about how much is going on with local food in Iowa City. Since we had two local chefs at the table, it was great to hear them talk about how they view each other as part of a bigger effort to create a sustainable restaurant corridor instead of competitors. And we learned about the innovative program run by Local Food Connections, which buys produce, bread, eggs, meat and other products from local sustainable farms and donates them to low-income families in the area so that they have access to healthy local food.

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