February 24, 2009
This is a great place to get your fix on available Belgian beers in Iowa. They have a great bottle selection but I think it is little over priced. However, they are usually one of the only places you can find this type of beer in my state. Their tap selection sucks and they over charge for a small glass. This is a bar you would want to show up early so you can really enjoy your surroundings. It is overly crowded on the weekends (which is the only time it is open) and most of the people there are the ones who drink Pirate or Lindeman’s. The staff here is awesome and very knowledgeable on the beers that they have been hind the bar. Also when a specific type of beer is ordered they want to make sure you know what you are getting into so you can truly enjoy that bottle.

October 27, 2008
This is a particularly hard rating to make. It really depends on the night you are in there. Let me take this category by category and explain. My first thought is that this should have a perfect score for Ambiance, because it is gorgeous, stained glass with trappist beer logos, old wood, dark interior, beautiful tapestries and lighting fixtures. Just gorgeous. But they have a digital jukebox that gets turned up very very loud and there is generally some pretty horrible music blasting from the thing. Of course this only happens about every other time I am in there, and I almost only ever go on weekends, so it is horribly unpredictable. The service here is great the staff is very helpful and usually knows their beer very well. This is almost always the case, so I have no complaints here. The selection here is so two faced it is unbelievable, Sometimes it is just stocked with the most interesting hard to find and exciting Belgian beers I can think of having in or around Iowa. On a good day the selection is genuinely remarkable with real lambics, odd Saisons, de Dolle beers, then for whatever reason it just sucks for like two months, they stock the fridge with Lindemans product and I’ve even seen a few rows of miller lite in there when the selection is lacking. The value is terrible, I can hardly justify drinking here, when I do I usually don’t drink more than two. I FULLY understand that these are more expensive beers, and that they are not terribly easy to come by in Iowa. But the beers are NEVER EVER served in proper glassware, everything comes with a water glass (which is fine sometimes) but if you are serving a 7 oz water glass full of 1554 for six bucks, something is amiss. The tap beer is ungodly expensive, I pay less at the maproom in downtown Chicago for a beer served in the proper glass (and usually that means more beer as well). So there I’ve said it. If you love Belgian beer, and you live in or around Des Moines, you pretty much find yourself needing to hit this up now and again. But it is a far cry from what it could very easily be.