Name: Alba
Address: 524 East 6th Street, Des Moines, 50309, US
Price range: $$$

The Restaurant

Alba occupies a converted East-6th-Street storefront in Des Moines's Historic East Village under chef-owner Jason Simon, who opened the room in 2006 after returning to Iowa from kitchens in Chicago and Napa. The restaurant earned a 2010 James Beard Foundation Restaurant Award nomination, at the time the only Iowa restaurant on that ballot, and was voted Best Restaurant by the Des Moines Register in both 2010 and 2011. The dining room reads as a deliberate editorial answer to the polished East-Village format: funky reclaimed antique doors used as wall panels, rotating local artwork selected by Simon himself, an open kitchen visible from every seat in the house, a chef's table directly at the pass, a covered patio onto East 6th, and a small wine bar at the front that holds eight seats for the city's most-photographed by-the-glass programme.

The format is a contemporary American carte that pivots weekly with named Iowa producers, the menu prints the farms and the cuts with the kind of editorial honesty that has made Alba the East Village's working farm-to-table reference. Signature plates have included a Niman Ranch hanger steak with chimichurri and crispy potatoes, a roasted Maple Leaf duck breast with sour-cherry jus and farro, a pan-seared Atlantic halibut with brown-butter capers and asparagus, a hand-cut beef tartare with smoked egg yolk and frites, and the room's signature gnocchi with brown butter, sage, and Parmigiano-Reggiano that the kitchen has refused to retire across twenty years of menu turns. The dessert card, a brown-butter cake with bourbon caramel, a dark-chocolate budino with sea salt and olive oil, has held its own following.

Service is informal and informed: the staff narrates each plate's producer without overselling it, the by-the-glass programme runs about thirty-five labels with deliberate natural-wine and Burgundy depth, and the chef's table at the pass, six seats directly facing the open kitchen, is the city's most-booked single-evening counter. Simon himself works the floor most service nights. The East 6th storefront at twilight, with the antique doors lit from above and the open-kitchen ticket line visible through the front window, is one of the East Village's most photographed dining-room images. For a Des Moines evening that wants editorial neighborhood dining rather than downtown hotel formality, Alba is the city's working East-Village answer.

Primary Occasion

Why This Is Des Moines’s Birthday Pick

Alba is the Des Moines birthday room because the format scales for any size of celebration. A table of two takes the chef's table at the pass and lets Simon's kitchen narrate the evening. A table of eight orders across the carte without arguing over a cuisine and lets the by-the-glass programme close the evening with a tasting flight. The wine bar at the front, eight seats, a selected rotating Burgundy-and-natural-wine list, the city's most-photographed by-the-glass pour, is the conversational opener that converts a dinner reservation into an evening. The East 6th address, three blocks from the State Capitol grounds and the East Village's main retail spine, means the after-dinner walk through the historic district is the closing image of the celebration. And Simon's continued presence at the pass, twenty years in, no franchise expansion, no consulting-firm rebrand, reads as the kind of working continuity that a Polk County birthday dinner needs. For an East-Village celebration in any season, Alba is the answer.