Das Boot Was Made for Drinking

Hessen Haus 101 4th St
Des Moines, IA 50309-4741
(515) 288-2520

You've been in this situation before.

You're a suit wandering the strange city your employer temporarily sentenced you to (in this case Des Moines, Iowa).

The days are long, even grueling at times.

You're only respite is the hope that a new unique bar or restaurant with an interesting local flavor and numerous beers on tap sits around the corner.

You cruise the nearby neighborhood and all you find are strip malls with chain joints from "anywhere USA."

The only bar almost worth visiting is yet another Irish themed pub that looks like it came out of Froto's shire.

This Lucky Charms-esque establishment is complete with plastic cobble stones and a yuppie guy playing a horrible rendition of Piano Man in a fake Irish accent.

As your coworkers dig into their "Irish Buffalo Wings" and swig down that flavorless, overrated stout known as Guinness, you think to yourself, "there must be something other than this commercialized, commodified BS…salvation must be somewhere!"

Then, you begin to hear the faint sound of an accordion billowing out polka music.

You pick up the whiff of beer mixed with the smell of charred pig flesh.

The quiet roar of people get your blood pumping and your hopes high. Could folks, unlike yourself, actually be enjoying themselves?

After following the scent you turn the corner to see an old railroad station, sitting along rusty old tracks that run long into the midwest.

The building has a large wooden sign shaped like a beer stein.

Uplifting polka fills your ears and before you know it you're sitting at a large table with a liter of quality German beer and a beautiful cut of swine atop a bed of golden sauerkraut; to Hell with Irish-fakery, you've found Heaven.

Friends, I'm talking about the German Beer Hall known as the Hessen Haus in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.

What a great place!

The menu was large and diverse with all your German/Austrian/whatever favorites such as, Wilde Schweine Wurst, Jaegerschnitzel, Goulash, and Rind Rouladen.

The copious beer menu was mind blowing with not a single American puke beer to be found.

For appetizers Suit 69 and I decided to go off the beaten path with a little midwest favorite that had an interesting twist; toasted ravioli filled with rabbit.

Not amazing as far toasted ravioli goes but the addition of Thumper made the difference - if only for novelty sake.

Dinner brought me the delicious Wienerschitzel.

A tender cut of veal freshly breaded and fried to a golden brown, served with that unmistakably sweet and smokey German potato salad then topped off with pickled red cabbage.

Like a good beer garden, the table was long and we shared it with another group.

Small talk commenced and gradually got better after liters of imported beer were consumed to the sound of tubas and accordions.

Our friendly neighbors to the left (geographically and politically) where kind enough to share their SchweinsHaxe, or for those who don't speak Deutsch, a large, seasoned, mild flavored pork shank served with sauerkraut.

Good times where being had when the challenge came.

Our new friends began to tell us about "Der Stieffel" or otherwise known as "The Boot."

This 72 ounce glass, shaped like men's footwear is the desert of choice at the Hessen Haus.

So large, so intimidating, that they won't even give you one unless there's at least three people in your group.

This beast can be filled with any of their tap beers and if in a drunken haze you manage to break "Der Stieffel," it will set you back $50.00.

Since we're not known as people who always follow the rules, Suit 69 and I decided the try on this boot solo.

No group for us, no letting the boot travel the table clockwise, no flicking it before passing it along. We were going to have our very own beerfest.

I don't know about Suit 69 but as the barmaid began filling this monster, I was having second thoughts.

Did I have the sauerkraut balls to take that boot down?

The heaping Spaten Oktoberfest arrived at the table and it was time for me to hike-up my lederhosen and dispatch that behemoth.

After about an hour of steady chugging, I struggled to return my empty boot safely to the bar.

Suit 69 dropped his in 42 minutes.

Soon after, a freight train went by the bar and a whistle inside sounded, signaling half-price jager shots and bad decisions.

It wasn't long after that the night came to a close -- mostly due to our inability to put a sentence together and the fear that we wouldn't be able to keep our wienerschitzel down.

The next morning I felt like I had been kicked in the head by the giant beer boot.

But my headache was nothing compared to the pain every lame Irish bar in the United States feels after a swift butt kicking from Des Moines, Iowa's Hessen Haus.

Rating: Why didn't I buy the shirt?

Hickory Park Letdown

Last week I was in Ames, Iowa for the big political event of the season, but the politics was almost upstaged by the barbeque. It was on everyone's mind, and on their plates.

One of the candidates had a "Famous Dave's" tent, and nearly everyone else had some kind of smoked pig, brisket, or bbq chicken on their menu. But when I'm traveling and looking for bbq, I'm usually on the hunt for a local establishment so I can order the "house special".

The other few times I was in Iowa, there wasn't enough time to enjoy the local specialties, so now I was asking around to see what the top joints were. One place kept popping up: Hickory Park.



The first time I tried to eat here, it was dinnertime and the line was out the door. The parking lot smelled pretty good, so I wasn't surprised a bit.

The wait was 20 minutes and since I was on my lunch break, at everyone else's dinner time, I decided that I'd come back tomorrow for a proper lunch.

The next day there wasn't a line and my compatriots and I were able to sit down at a table right away. We were brought menus and iced teas, and our waiter seemed knowledgeable and helpful.

Hickory Park looks kind of like a cross between a German beer hall and a typical BBQ joint. As I walked inside, I happened to eyeball a few customers wearing lederhosen.

"What do Germans know about BBQ?" I thought. Not much, as it turns out.



I immediately asked for the "house special" and our waiter pointed to a highlighted part of the menu, to an item called the Saucy Southerner. Touted as "Hickory Park’s version of a pulled pork sandwich - The perfect combination of chopped hickory, smoked pork, beef and turkey simmered in barbecue sauce"... how could I go wrong? I ordered it with a side of green beans and mashed potatoes.

While we waited for our order, I excused myself from the table and made my way to the wait-station to inform our man that it was my table-mate's birthday, and that despite what he might say at the time, he really did want an ice-cream sundae with a birthday candle.

Soon our food came, and just in time - I was getting hungry. We had a pretty good selection at the table. Between my Saucy Southerner, a bbq chicken dinner, and a plate of smoked beef, pork and turkey, I figured we had all of the bbq food groups covered.



Now before I tell you about the worst bbq experience in my amateur bbq career, let me take a minute to say that Hickory Park has the best bbq green beans I've ever eaten.

Seriously.

The green beans were fresh and flavorful. They were cooked perfectly - not too mushy, but not crunchy and under-cooked. The seasoning was light and complimentary, not heavy and overpowering. Overall the green beans were excellent, and if I lived in Ames I'd get my bbq somewhere else, and make a trip across town just to complete the order with some of Hickory Park's green beans.

The sandwich roll looked fresh, and it was. Fresh, but tasteless. I took a bite of it naked, before putting any sauce on it. That's when I was glad I hadn't eaten all of the green beans right away.

Have you ever seen those 1986 diesel Volvo's, where the back bumper is blackened from diesel soot and burning oil? I'm sure you can imagine the odor of riding behind one of those old Volvo's in a traffic jam.

If you were to lick the rear bumper of that Volvo, you'd know what my Saucy Southerner tasted like.



The mashed potatoes weren't much better. I should say, the mashed potatoes could have been amazing, but since they were covered in a gravy that tasted like the inside of an over-heating vacuum cleaner, I wasn't able to tell.

It was so bad I started laughing, and I had to get my table-mates to try some.



Obviously "this is the worst bbq I've ever eaten... no seriously, you gotta try some of this!" isn't the best selling point.



At this point I reached for the sauce and started to get liberal. No matter how much I put on, I couldn't shake the Volvo bumper flavoring.

Needless to say I wasn't able to even choke down half of it, so as soon as the waiter came around asking about dessert, I was more than ready.



When he came back with the rest of his crew, 2 ice cream sundaes and a song, we had a few laughs and tried to forget about the whole horrible bbq experience.

RATING: I wouldn't insult my grill by using the t-shirt to clean it off