Devotay

The paella is great and the service is very good.  My wife and tried the tapas recently and were undwerwhelmed.  The prices are a bit high given the overall quality and the menu is fairly small.  We used to really like this place but lately it's been missing that special something.

Stopped in Iowa City for lunch on the way to Des Moines from Chicago.  I had found this place on Yelp and thought it would be a great option instead of fast food and also a location in the Iowa University area.  It is not far off 80 at all, so good option close to the highway.

The restaurant itself was cute and the staff was pretty friendly.  The menu was a little difficult to understand (not because it was in Spanish) because they used words like ragu and caviar, but totally different than the dictionary description.  I believe something on the menu referenced olive caviar...but this dish did not have caviar.  I wasn't crazy about this naming practice and had to ask the waiter several questions to make sure what we would be getting.

In the end, we ordered a few small plates as they were somewhat expensive for the amount of food that you received.  It seems that the restaurant skimps on bread, which doesn't make sense.  We ordered the market cheese and bread plate and it came with just a few tiny slices of pita bread, but a lot of cheese!  

We also ordered the pintxo with grilled beef, olive and blue cheese.  This was delicious and worth the price.  It had a nice sauce with it that rounded out the flavor well.  We also ordered the mushroom ragu on bread.  This was nice but a little too small for the price.

Overall, everything tasted great and was very original...different sauces came on each plate that matched well with the food and the sauces became topics of conversation as we were trying to figure them out.

A good place to go and try for a light meal.

I live in the Bay Area and do my fair share of dining out, but, to me, Devotay is right up there in quality of food and is perhaps my favorite restaurant ever, in terms of ambience. I love Devotay and always insist that we have a meal here whenever I am in town.  The atmosphere is perfect, especially if you can snag a window seat. I love the huge windows, the candlelight and the artistic aesthetic...If you need everything to match and look shiny and modern, this ambience probably isn't for you. It may seem a bit "disorderly"  or "mismatchy" to some, but to call it "filthy" seems totally inaccurate to me. The restaurant is clean and, in my experience, the service has always ranged from acceptable to really great. If you, like me, enjoy a more rustic, unique atmosphere, you will probably love Devotay as much as I do and will find that it has a ton of character.

I also appreciate the emphasis on local foods in the middle of the mono-crop agriculture heartland. Devotay uses seasonal produce and has great local beers on tap and delicious local cheeses (plus some imported ones). After our meal, we usually end up searching for one of the same cheeses down the street at John's Grocery or the co-op.

Full disclosure: I've never tried the entrees because I'm always too drawn in by tapas. I love sharing food and tasting a variety of dishes, and I have my favorites at Devotay. The datiles are always tasty, and so are the albondigas. I've also enjoyed trying some of the rotating veggie dishes over the years, and I miss the empanadas that used to appear on the menu. I loved the zucchini ravioli on my most recent visit, but thought the scallops in a nutmeg cream sauce left something to be desired. The desserts are always excellent -- we usually go for a creme brulee of some kind and some sort of bread pudding, but the toffee cake that we tried most recently was seriously amAzing. I also typically LOVE the sangria, but it seemed slightly less tasty than I remembered on my last visit. Maybe they changed the recipe? All in all, Devotay is one of my favorite restaurants, anywhere ever.