(small town wowzw family restaurant between DSM and KC, right off I-35)
Wow. WOW! This is the basic goldmine of small town, Midwestern comfort food. I asked on a Des Moines “where to go” food page what was a good place to eat between DSM and KC. The OVERWHELMING response was Toot-Toot Family Restaurant & Lounge. So Toot-Toot’s it was! Upon arrival about 8pm, the restaurant had about half a dozen tables. We were seated in a comfortable, cozy little corner booth right next to the buffet.
I ordered the buffet, generally against my food religion but 1) this was highly recommended both on the food page in the comments, as well as from our server and 2) it gave me a chance to sample a ton of foods at once. My dining partner ordered the two piece broasted chicken, all-white meat, mashed potatoes and white gravy (not chicken gravy but more like breakfast gravy), and homemade coleslaw. It’s a crapTON of food for a two piece dinner. Both chicken breasts were massive, one piece would’ve been plenty for dinner. And the most important detail, the chicken breast was extremely moist and delicious. It was not flaky, not dried out, or any of the other things that usually go along with chicken breasts. I almost never ordered chicken breast in a restaurant because more times than not, it’s extremely dry. This is not the case with their broasted chicken. I did get a piece of dark meat from the buffet to try and same thing, very delicious, juicy and not at all dried out, even after sitting on the buffet.
The buffet was great for me to sample multiple different items. As you can see from my plate, I was able to sample their bone-in, fresh cut ham �, which was delicious, their pork tenderloin, which was fantastic, I liked the simplicity of their salad bar which was fresh with lots of different topping options, The chicken fajita was a little bland, The sautéed onions and bell peppers had no flavor and the chicken was extremely mild, but they do have plenty of sauces to jazz up your own fajita. I did not get a loaded baked potato or make a beef taco but I did sample all of the toppings, just so I could get a feel for what these items would have tasted like had I made the entire entrée off the buffet. I have to say all of which were fantastic, less the spaghetti sauce. The mashed potatoes are definitely fresh, the brown gravy tastes delicious and not out of the package but if it is, could have fooled me. I didn’t care for it their spaghetti sauce, I thought it was way too sugary. We were stuffed to the gills when a very friendly granddaughter of the owner came over to check on us, and told us that it was not right to leave without at least sampling their desserts. She even offered to get us a sampling plate from the buffet, and we emphasized only to get tiny portions. As you can see from the picture, they were anything but small portions! We were able to each take tiny bites of all of the desserts, each one home made and fantastic, but wanted to crawl out of there. This is a place to take a big eater and enjoy! If you like spicy, make sure to ask for their gunslinger hot sauce, it tastes very much like a smoky, burnt jalapeño, similar to Lola’s if you are from the Des Moines area. Not a lot of heat, but a nice flavor that added a little kick to my chicken fajita.
And who could leave without a toot-toot T-shirt, which I did purchase, along with some black raspberry jelly.
I didn’t realize how huge the restaurant was until I went to use the restroom after our meal. There’s an entire large room in the back! While dining, a large party came in late late and took up a large portion of the back room.
Service was OUTSTANDINGLY friendly. Everyone was just very kind, Iowa kind. OK, I know this is in Missouri but it’s close enough to the Iowa border and everyone was just very “Iowa sweet”.
One of these weekends, I want to drive around to different counties in Iowa and give that list of small town bites a try. Places like this are amazing and makes you feel very at home with excellent comfort food. Next time I am heading down to Kansas City, I will be stopping again…and again and again and again and again and again.
This place is worth a fun drive just to eat at, on a boring day when road driving to nowhere sounds fun. We contemplated briefly stopping at the casino because we were so hangry, but with the overwhelming number of suggestions to go eat at toot-toot, we decided to keep going. We are so glad we did!
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