Meet James Beard Foundation semifinalist Chris Hoffmann, the owner of Clyde's Fine Diner
Ever since Chris Hoffmann found out that he was named a James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Best Chef Midwest, customers have flooded into his elevated comfort food restaurant Clyde’s Fine Diner in the East Village.
New faces came in. People shared well wishes. “Typically, this time of year is kind of a low for restaurants, so the timing was great. Customer response has been awesome,” Hoffman said during a Friday lunch shift in January.
Hoffmann, who found out that he was a semifinalist by reading the Des Moines Register, opened his modern diner in 2019, six months before the pandemic started and the same week his son was born.
“I really felt like we were just starting to gain traction,” Hoffmann said about the time the restaurant closed and he started offering novelty burgers to keep the crowds ordering.
Indeed, now it's clear that fans love dining at the restaurant and discovering new dishes, and people outside of Des Moines are taking notice.
More: Chris Hoffmann at Clyde's Fine Diner named a semifinalist for a James Beard Foundation Award
How Chris Hoffmann ended up opening a restaurant in Des Moines
Unlike many in the restaurant field, Hoffmann’s path to owning a restaurant in Des Moines wasn’t typical.
Hoffmann was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Ames. He left Iowa for the University of Southern California and then returned to the University of Iowa to study before heading to Florida to attend audio school. He went on to work as a traveling sound engineer for 18 years, mixing sound for bands such as the Rolling Stones and Wilco while headquartered in Chicago.
But when he started to lose his hearing, he had to make a career switch.
“I knew that my career as a sound engineer was going to be over and I wasn’t going to be able to keep doing that,” he said. He didn’t want to miss something in his work due to his hearing loss, and he didn’t want to stay in the industry because he thought he would miss mixing sound too much.
He’d just returned to Chicago after a stint on the road with new-age music ensemble Trans-Siberian Orchestra and was about to return to touring with Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z when he decided to quit and go to culinary school. His wife, Shannon, whom he met in Chicago, just got a promotion and encouraged him to make the move.
This wasn’t a kneejerk decision.
“I played around with the idea of culinary school and in cooking and restaurant ownership for a long, long time. At some point in my sound career, instead of reading all the trade journals about the next greatest soundboard or compressor, I was reading food blogs.”
He kept track of the news on the Chicago food scene. He spent his downtime driving to different markets in Chicago to find ingredients and recreate dishes he ate while on the road. “I really fell in love with it,” he said.
Two weeks after he turned down perhaps the biggest tour of his life, he started culinary school in Chicago.
“Mixing music and mixing ingredients is so incredibly similar,” Hoffmann said. “It tickles the same part of my brain. Cooking professionally came to me very, very quickly. I’m sure it's because of just the way that I was wired. I want to hear everything in a mix, with nothing overpowering.”
He worked in Chicago kitchens, even a food truck, thinking that might be “an easy way to get into the culinary industry. I learned pretty quickly that that’s not something I wanted to do. It was hard. Running a food truck in Chicago is very hard. Not that restaurant ownership isn’t but it was a lot different,” he said.
Hoffmann worked with Paul Virant — was a James Beard Foundation finalist for Best Chef Great Lakes in 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015 — as a sous chef at Vistro, his casual seasonal restaurant in Hinsdale, about 20 miles west of Chicago.
When Hoffmann decided to strike out on his own in 2017, he chose Des Moines because it wasn’t as saturated at Chicago. “We had stopped getting to enjoy the city for all that it was,” he said, reflecting back on the decision to relocate.
Even once he moved to Des Moines, he rehabbed his house and got to know the food scene while looking for the right space. He landed at 111 E. Grand Ave. in a new building with Liz Lidgett Gallery + Design next door and opened Clyde’s Fine Diner in 2019.
Who is Clyde?
Hoffmann named the restaurant for his grandfather on his mother’s side, Clyde, a jack of all trades who was an animator for Popeye cartoons and a woodworker who worked on maps while he was in the Army. The Georgia native also influenced Hoffmann’s foodie side, making breakfast for him when he was a kid, teaching him how to cook, and sourcing his grits from Georgia long before the internet.
“I want to be somebody who’s good at all the things that I pursue as well,” Hoffmann said. “He was kind of an inspiration in that way. This is an homage to him.”
An image of him smoking a cigar flanked by arched mirrors and chic sconces overlooks the restaurant from the western wall.
How does Clyde’s Fine Diner mix modern and retro designs?
While the man Clyde inspires the restaurant, the white neon doodle hanging over the kitchen shaped the design of the 2,500-square-foot space that seats 78. Clyde himself drew the chef “for a G.I. newspaper when he was stationed in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s the heart of the space in which everything else fosters from,” Anna Squier of Modern Studio, who designed the space, told Grand Rapids Chair Co.
A classic diner air permeates the design, with teal blue swivel stools dotting the U-shaped bar that is topped with a modern white quartz countertop, edged with classic corrugated aluminum and anchored by a brass foot rail. Tufted blue banquets line the wall closest to the entrance.
A record player plays vinyl — think Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Greatest Hits,” Tom Petty’s “Full Moon Fever,” and The Rolling Stones’ “Some Girls” — a nod to Hoffmann’s love of mixing sound.
Small black-and-white hexagon tiles decorate the floor while a maritime stainless steel swinging door with a porthole window leads to the kitchen, giving the space a retro feel. More modern touches of wood paneling lining the bar, exposed timber overhead and black Windsor-style chairs lining sleek tables add to the elegance of the space.
What’s on the menu at Clyde’s Fine Diner?
Hoffmann focuses on elevated comfort food, pulling from his fine dining background and giving traditional foods a twist. He met his sous chef Tom Kelly in culinary school in Chicago and encouraged him to join him in Des Moines.
“I always say that I like to live in the entrée section of the menu and that is definitely where we flex our culinary muscles,” Hoffmann said.
There he explores dishes such as salmon with a Carolina Gold rice combined with green curry and bok choy, an adobo pork chop glistening with a tepache glaze (a fermented pineapple juice), and the Hot Bird with two pieces of Bell & Evans fried chicken slathered in Clyde’s Sichuan hot sauce for enough heat to wipe your brow.
He describes the sandwich section as some of the more accessible items on the menu. Everything is made from scratch in house, including the sausage, French fries, the marble rye bread, and the potato buns for the famous CFD burger.
“It’s all those little details that hopefully come through on the plate,” Hoffmann said.
Hoffmann considers the menu ever changing, with some items sticking around for a day and others for four months.
“There are two staples that have been on our menu, but the other stuff rotates and we just kind of wait until we don't want to make it anymore or until people aren't interested,” Hoffmann said.
What to order at Clyde’s Fine Diner
Boquerones: Hoffmann suggested started with the boquerones, a dish that includes marinated white anchovies on rye toast.
Caesar sprouts: “They are the most popular thing on the menu that I can't get rid of. If I would, everybody would lose their minds,” Hoffmann said.
The fried Brussels sprouts are coated in breadcrumbs and tossed with sunflower seeds and Parmesan in a Caesar dressing. Hoffmann came up with the dish during a tasting dinner before the restaurant opened. The one unplanned dish that he tossed together as a snack turned into a menu staple.
Anything with sausage: Hoffmann enjoys making his own sausage. “There’s always one on the menu and we like to rotate that dish,” he said.
Right now, that’s a bangers and mash dish with house-made pork and garlic sausage and a Yukon gold purée topped with red onion gravy.
Soft serve ice cream: Hoffman said he rarely has a plan for the next iteration but flavors usually turn out to be a hit with customers.
More: A comprehensive guide to finding James Beard Foundation-nominated chefs, restaurants in Iowa
What’s next for Clyde’s Fine Diner and Chris Hoffmann?
Chefs from 19 other restaurants were nominated for a James Beard Foundation award in the Best Chef Midwest category, which includes Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin along with Iowa.
Next, the committees within the James Beard Foundation will visit the semifinalist restaurants and decide which will be among the five finalists in each category, announced on April 3.
The foundation announces the winners during a ceremony in Chicago on June 10.
Clyde's Fine Diner is on the essential restaurants list from the Des Moines Register as well.
Hoffmann still feels like central Iowa is just learning about his restaurant. “We’ve been here for four years. I think we’ve been doing a great job. Those who know us, know us. When I talk to people all over town there are still people who’ve never heard of us,” he said.
“You know who we get our biggest compliments from? To the point it's a joke around here? Hoffmann asked. “They’re always the people who rave the most. They’re from Chicago. They’re from Minneapolis. They’re staying in the hotels.”
When pondering why, Hoffmann said: “I think maybe it’s because this was a surprise. Maybe they’re not expecting to find something this good.”
He doesn’t have plans to open a second location or even a different type of restaurant. “I know we’re four years old but I don't think that we’ve matured yet.”
And that just means the best is yet to come.
Where to find Clyde’s Fine Diner
Location: 111 E. Grand Ave., Suite 111, Des Moines
Contact: 515-243-3686 or clydesfinediner.com
Hours: Open for lunch Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., dinner Tuesday through Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m., and happy hour Tuesday through Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.
Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor and dining reporter at The Des Moines Register. You can reach out to her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Chris Hoffmann is the James Beard Foundation semifinalist in Des Moines
