Louie's Wine Dive — Restaurant in Des Moines

Louie's has been one of my favorite restaurants since 2013. I've made many visits with various friends & family to enjoy a summer night on the patio, great drinks, and delicious food. It had an upscale feel to it, yet an atmosphere where I felt welcome even if I wasn't driving a BMW. My daughter and I visited for lunch on Thursday, November 7th of this year. We were given a lunch menu which I assumed had similar items to the dinner menu but smaller portions and a lower price. We each ordered a glass of wine at $8 and $10 a glass...a bit tough on our wallet but delicious all the same and we were having a girl's day out so we splurged there. The waitress was very friendly but unacknowledged about the wine my daughter requested and go ask I assume the manager for assistance. We decided on the Champagne Fish & Chips which is one of our favorite meals at Louie's. The fish has a super yummy batter which reminds me a little bit of tempura and the fries are deliciously seasoned. I recalled that the dinner order of this dish was $13.95 so I was surprised to see that the lunch order was the same price. I figured maybe the "lunch menu" was just called the "lunch" menu because it had less of a selection so I didn't think too much more about it. We asked for two plates though because we didn't have a big budget. When the dish came out it was pretty disappointing. Not only was it much smaller than the dinner portion, it was smaller than what anyone would assume to be the lunch portion! There were literally 2 small sticks of fish and a handful of fries. So divided between my daughter and I - that was 1 small stick of fish a piece and maybe 5 fries. It was almost laughable that we were going to eat 1 fish stick and 5 fries for $6.50 a piece. I spoke to our waitress about this and she adamantly agreed that the prices and portions were ridiculous and that they'd recently changed. She explained that in a recent manager/employer meeting they'd been told that dinner prices were going to apply to lunch and that the portion sizes were going to be smaller and she admitted being very disappointed with this as she'd worked at Louie's for 6 1/2 years. She said others had already complained about this as well. All well and good - that's inflation I guess - but having not realized this or been told this before we ordered I asked that we be compensated in some way as I didn't feel it was fair to pay $6.50 for literally a few bites of food, no matter how delicious. The waitress said she'd speak to the manager. When she returned with a new bill - our total had gone from $30 roughly to $26. So they'd deducted $4 explaining that this would bring the fish dish down to it's "old" lunch price of $9.95. Somehow this still didn't seem like they were going above and beyond for loyal patrons. I've probably spent upwards of $500-$600 at Louie's over the past 4 years and introduced many new patrons to this establishment in the interim. I took the initiative and spoke with the manager directly. I will admit I wasn't a very happy camper at all by this point. The manager listened and with surprising swift action, went ahead and said he'd take care of everything, meaning he'd buy our lunch. My daughter and I were in shock and awe and extremely grateful for this grand gesture. While I would've been happy with just the $12 glass of wine deducted or even a couple free desserts ~ he waved his wand and poofed the bill to $0. So in our case, there IS such thing as a free lunch! We'll definitely be returning to Louie's as long as it's in business and as long as the food meets the 5 star standards which it did. But now we'll be better prepared for the uptick in prices and the smaller portions at least .. so there won't be any surprises. Much thanks to Louie's for all the years of beautiful food, experiences, and for taking care of...

Teetering between 🌟🌟🌟🌟 or🌟🌟🌟 to be honest. The atmosphere is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a cute little spot that isn't "trying too hard"-in a good way. The location is strange, but convenient. Tons of off street, free parking, as the "strange" location happens to be in a strip mall. But, hey, it works. The main seating area is one big room that I would imagine gets pretty loud if the place fills up.

The menu was just hipster enough to make options intetesting without falling over into the abyss of "what exactly am I eating?" I was really excited about my french toast with fancy whipped cream. I'm sure I would have been delighted if it looked like the menu describes it. Instead I got a plate with the kind of french toast you can throw together while clawing your way out from under your hangover. This dish looked to have been slapped together using thickly sliced bagged bread, a drizzle of Aunt Jemimah's and a very small dollop of Reddi Whip with a few candied walnuts tossed on top like an after thought. In this case the "not trying too hard" theme continued, but not in the good way.

As a server, I understand and sympathize with the insane pace required to keep guests happy during a Sunday brunch rush. If this had been a Sunday brunch "rush." There was no rush. Our server sure wasn't in a hurry. Certainly again "not trying too hard." Much like the candied walnuts on my French toast, she made us feel like an afterthought in a nearly enpty restaraunt. Good service is not hard to pull off. With the exception of being given water right away everything took for-ever. She may have forgotten to take our order. She possibly just forgot us entirely a few times. Not easy to do. We arent quiet, andbthe place was a ghost town. It's almost like she tried to forget us. Which would have been the only time she seened to try to do anything the ejole time were there.

If I hadn't been with a very laid back friend I was happy to catch up with and hadn't set aside two entire hours for lunch (planning to kill some time elsewhere before I had to work myself,) we would have been in trouble. Thank God we weren't with any high maintence friends, because there would have been a meltdown.

I can appreciate an establishment where servers are allowed to wear their own clothes with a few guidelines to keep it cohesive. If our waitress was a poster girl for their uniform cohesion it would have literally been "I woke up like this."

All in all, I feel like this place has a solid game plan. But the execution struck me as either a complete fail or the staff was to didn't care to pull it together this morning. It did provide the very basics of what we were looking for: a nice warm place to catch up, gossip, make plans, and feed my pregnant bestie. That being said, the most positive impression anything in the restraunt made on me were the big green water bottles and little matching cups....

We had an awesome fam dinner at Louie's Wine Dive Des Moines. One diner has celiac disease, which makes finding GF or GS places a challenge. We were happy to learn that this place is mostly GF or, at least, most dishes can be made GF.

Squeaky Cheese Curds & Not-So-Standard Potato Chips apps: curds were ok, but we loved the chips! The spicy dipping sauce was 🔥 and the chips were just a fun shareable app. Curds weren’t “squeaky” cheese and were exceptionally greasy.

Pork Gnocchi: cooked right, not too soggy (like so many places). Not much meat though and the portion was slightly small (but, to be fair, we have a large football player). In hindsight, he should’ve listened to me when I told him to also order the happy hour $10 burger special for a backup meal 🤷🏻‍♀️ but what do I know 😉

$10 Happy Hour Burger: my dad thought this was an excellent deal and loved his meal, too. He wants to go back and sit at the bar, just for this HH burger.

Shrimp Diablo Pasta: I LOVED this dish. Shrimp were excellent, rigatoni pasta was al dente, creamy chili pepper arrabbiata had good heat, green onions and greek yogurt were a nice touch, toasted baguette completed this meal.

Steak Pumpkin Mascarpone Ravioli: roasted butternut squash cubes were my favorite part. I have a newfound love of butternut squash things. I didn’t taste much prosciutto and this dish was delicious but VERY rich. Like so rich, my family had to all shuffle plates around so everyone could help me have a few bites to share around the richness. No way I could eat more than a few bites, but it gave me a chance to taste everyone else’s dishes!!

Cajun Salmon GF: our celiac disease diner loved this dish made GF. Salmon had a nice seasoning crusted and great flavor. She especially loved the side of broccolini and 2 shrimp, albeit the menu did say crab stuffed, and these were not..

Beignets were so so, a little dry.

Chocolate Molten Cake: don’t be turned off by the orange marmalade, it’s awesome and such a nice complement against the rich chocolate!

Went here two weeks ago for a date night glass of wine, fell in love, and came back for a family dinner. We already can’t wait to return for another date night. — at Louie's Wine...