dsmWeekly: September 27, 2023

At Horizon Line Coffee, the drink called "...What She's Having" isn't your average cold brew. Photo: Hailey Allen

FOOD AND DINING

Celebrate International Coffee Day with a treat

Writer: Hailey Allen

You read that right: Your favorite bitter bean beverage gets its own internationally recognized day on Oct. 1. And honestly, there’s no better time to mark the occasion. Picture yourself on a brisk fall Sunday morning with a mug in hand and a cozy blanket à la Selena Gomez. Sure, it’s pumpkin spice latte season at Starbucks, but there are plenty of other ways to enjoy your coffee from local establishments.

“...What She’s Having” from Horizon Line Coffee
Not quite a cafe latte, not quite a mocktail, this floral drink offers a fun detour from your usual order. The base is a coffee concentrate infused with vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, orange peel, brown sugar and dates. They dilute it with hot water and top it off with coconut cold foam and orange zest, to add contrasting layers of temperature and flavor. My own thoughts echoed the couple sitting across from me with the same drink: “Interesting, and I can’t stop drinking it.”

Espresso martini from the New Northwestern
By now, the espresso martini has become a classic theme with plenty of variations. Here at this East Village cocktail bar, they add a splash of a Sicilian amaro known as Averna to the vodka and espresso combo, plus vanilla and cream. The result is a robust Italian-style cocktail that teeters between bitter and sweet. And it’s an especially good choice this weekend, since International Coffee Day officially started in Milan.

“Electric Avenue” from Clyde’s Fine Diner
The coffee-forward mocktail from Clyde’s is a non-alcoholic alternative for espresso martini fans who want a little less buzz. Cold brew espresso is mixed with pineapple, cinnamon, coconut cream and bitters. Wait a sec — coffee and pineapple? I thought the same thing. But trust me, it works. The tangy pineapple and bitter espresso complement each other, while the coconut cream adds a hint of a tropical beach — a coffee-colada, if you will.

“Lula” coffee liqueur from The Lift
The popular martini bar on Fourth Street is also popular for something else: its house-made coffee liqueur called Lula. Customers enjoy it on its own as a shot or mixed with something else. You can even take home your own bottle to add fun and flavor to Sunday brunch.

The Holton Homestead team brings the farm to you during the Fall Market on Hubbell on Saturday.

BEST BET

Spend a day at an outdoor market

Enjoy an afternoon of autumn sunshine and shopping during the Fall Market on Hubbell this Saturday. Some 30 local vendors will set up shop from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the lot at 3232 Hubbell Ave. to sell home decor, clothing, vintage items, artwork, handmade goods, jewelry and more.

The Holton Homestead crew will be there with their house-made honey varieties (try the creamed version with salted garlic), and the Bondurant-based Clark Candle Co. will sell candles made from all kinds of scented paraffin. For something more permanent, you and your friends can get matching bling from the Link x Lou pop-up shop, which offers “permanent jewelry” as sort of a grown-up friendship bracelet. They’re 14-karat white and yellow gold chains, welded together on-site so you don’t need a clasp.

Of course, it wouldn't be an outdoor market without food. Stop by the Freedom Blend Coffee truck or say hello to student entrepreneur Mia Nichols, who sells authentic French crepes from C'est la Crepe.

THE WEEK AHEAD

Jorge Luis Pacheco (7:30 p.m. Thursday): The globe-trotting Cuban jazz pianist, who won the Montreux Jazz Piano Solo Competition in Switzerland, opens this year’s Live at the Temple concert series at the Temple for Performing Arts.

Book talk at Beaverdale Books (6:30 p.m. Thursday): Carol Roh Spaulding, author of “Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories,” discusses her award-winning novel, inspired by her Korean-American heritage, with former Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu.

Pearl & The Oysters (8 p.m. Thursday): Best friends Juliette Pearl Davis and Joachim Polack have been making music together for years, since high school in Paris and on through their moves together to Florida and California. Their indie pop band just wrapped up a tour in Asia, and now their U.S. tour includes a stop at xBk.

Manhattan Short Film Festival (6 p.m. Friday, 1:30 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday): The Des Moines Art Center screens the 10 finalist entries for the annual Manhattan Short Film Festival. Each year, the global film festival distributes its top films from hundreds of entries to participating theaters around the world, where audiences vote for Best Film and Best Actor. The event is free, but registration is required.

Anthony Jeselnik: Bones and All (9:30 p.m. Saturday): The Comedy Central stand-up star’s U.S. tour includes a stop at Hoyt Sherman Place. He won critical acclaim for his 2019 Netflix special, “Fire in the Maternity Ward,” and has performed on several late-night shows, including “Conan” and “The Tonight Show.”

Pat Metheny (7:30 p.m. Tuesday): The Civic Music Association hosts the groundbreaking jazz guitarist and composer at Hoyt Sherman Place.

“Beetlejuice” (opening 7:30 Tuesday, through Oct. 8): The musical adaptation of Tim Burton’s tale of a teenager’s encounter with a couple of ghosts haunts the Des Moines Civic Center.

HOME AND GARDEN

Hanging at home: As part of annual HomeShowExpo this weekend in Urbandale, guests can join the Uncoastal Social at Luxury Lane at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The VIP event includes a tour of six new homes in the Acadia development, off Meredith Drive and 164th Street, with food, drinks and live music at each site. Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit Iowa Skilled Trades and Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity. Tickets include a raffle entry.

COMMUNITY

Architecture adventures: Tour Drake neighborhood’s historic, modern and religious buildings during the Eat.Drink.Architecture pub crawl on Oct. 14. The event will offer a new perspective of the area, in between stops to refuel with food and adult beverages. Participants can choose from four different times, all of which start at the University Library Cafe (3506 University Ave.), before visiting landmarks like the Varsity Cinema. Be sure to wear comfy shoes: The tour will take roughly 4 hours. Advance tickets are required, and proceeds support the Iowa Architectural Foundation.

Amanda Lovelee, left, and Emily Stover from Plus/And installed a sculpture last week at Waterworks Park in Grimes. Photo: Group Creatives

ARTS AND CULTURE

Water-themed art goes with the flow in the metro

Writer: Michael Morain

A cool new sculpture about water just popped up in Grimes, right at the end of one of the driest summers on record. “Water Water Everywhere” at the city’s Waterworks Park is a thicket of metal signs, some nearly 20 feet tall, that together form the title phrase from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The words appear as fragments that click into legible logic only when seen from particular angles.

“You can see it from the splash pad,” said the artist Amanda Lovelee, who designed the sculpture with Emily Stover, her partner in a Twin Cities art collective called Plus/And. Soon they’ll install a series of smaller signs around the park that spell out a related message in semaphore code.

“We want to break down a complex, sticky issue” – in this case, water quality and supply – “and add a sense of play and joy,” Lovelee said.

The artists worked with the city’s public works office to manufacture the sculpture with the same materials the city uses for street signs. They chose a palette inspired by local wildflowers and, just for fun, tossed a bit of glitter into the steel's powder coating.

“We often think of nature as brown and green,” Lovelee said, “but so many pop culture colors come right from nature.”

Plus/And will take that idea further with a sculpture it plans to install next spring near the Center Street dam in downtown Des Moines, as part of the ICON Water Trails. The artwork, called “Hello, River,” will be a giant pearlescent mussel shell, big enough for visitors to step into. Inside, they can press a button to hear an audio recording of the river that corresponds – with a quiet trickle or a roaring rush – to the level of the river’s current flow, according to live data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The sculpture’s design was inspired by the pearly insides of mussels in the river and muscle cars the artists spotted during one of their trips to Des Moines.

“You’ll be hugged by an iridescent mussel. It's bigger than a car,” Lovelee said.

After all posts went up last week in Grimes, the artists were relieved that their computer-assisted renderings actually worked in real life. The words showed up just like they'd hoped.

“When we stepped back and saw that it worked,” Lovelee said, “I felt like my heart quivered a bit.”