Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

July 26, 2012: A Czech list of the food offerings in Clutier on RAGBRAI XL.

While checking out various Iowa State-related places before last Saturday’s football game*, I learned something about a former ISU player. Brent “Big Play” Curvey restarted his “Coaches Kolaches” store in Urbandale over the weekend (pushed back from Sept. 1). Grand View University’s student media did a piece on Curvey, a Houston native, last year. His wife, an Iowa native, said, “… once he got to Iowa, he realized that there were no kolaches, so we came up with the idea because he missed kolaches and I love to cook.”

HOLD IT. What’s with that “no kolaches” line? Regional differences.

Curvey’s business is primarily selling Texas kolaches, which are stuffed with meat and other things, with Iowa kolaches, which are open-faced and fruity (or poppy-seedy), on the side. The daughter of the founder of the famous West, Texas, kolache bakery made clear to NPR the difference:

While traditional kolaches are fruit-filled, a Texan twist evolved when they were made with sausage, cheese and jalapeños. Irwin, a self-proclaimed kolache purist, maintains that these are not true kolaches, but rather what her father called a “klobasniki.” …

For Czech communities outside of Texas, Irwin is right. In Iowa, where there is also a large Czech community, kolaches can be found in grocery stores, but they’re most definitely filled with fruit, not meat. There are other differences: Iowa’s kolaches have a rounder shape, with the fruit filling covering a larger area than their square-shaped Texas counterparts.

Des Moines Register columnist Courtney Crowder also made the distinction in 2017, when Curvey started his business. Curvey isn’t the only former Iowa State football player to get into the food business. Seneca Wallace opened his first Wingstop in central Iowa in 2018 and continues to franchise out.

One of the caretakers of the football trophy this weekend, 2001 North Tama graduate Scott Beenken, has “bohemiefarmer” as his Twitter handle, so we know a kolache when we see one. (Here’s a picture of Scott with the trophy and his business partner.)

In extremely related news, St. Ludmila’s Catholic Church in Cedar Rapids will not have its Kolach Festival next year while its now-closed school building is demolished and replaced with a community center. This will be be the third time in four years there hasn’t been a festival, and second time in four years there haven’t been kolaches.

*Ninety-nine-plus yards in twenty-one plays with five third-down conversions! CYCLONE STATE!

Viking Cruises has introduced a boat designed to ply not the oceans and seas of the world, but the Mississippi River. The Viking Mississippi will go from St. Paul to New Orleans on 15-day excursions. Decorah News reports that hundreds of cruise-takers have signed up for a “side trip” to the Iowa town in September and October with a stop at the Vesterheim Museum.

According to the Norwegian American, “America’s only Norwegian newspaper”:

While larger than Viking River Cruises’ European river ships, the Viking Mississippi vessel feature “clean Scandinavian design.” The ship’s designers chose to display artwork in the staterooms of drawings done by Decorah, Iowa, area children and oil-on-canvas works by Lois Tønnessen Andersen, a Norwegian-American artist featured in our Sept. 18, 2020, issue.

(So it’s a floating IKEA? Which is Swedish, but obviously also Scandinavian?)

The article also details the traditional Norwegian craft classes one can take in Decorah. There is much more about the Upper Midwest and Decorah offerings in the river cruise at the link.

All of that sounds quite nice, but I prefer to do my cruising with a windshield in front of me.