Located in downtown Iowa City, Crêpes de Luxe is a café that serves French cuisine and is recommended by freshman Penelope Marks. True to its name, the majority of the menu focuses on numerous different varieties of crêpes, which is a French dish similar to a thin pancake.
Upon entering, there is a large menu behind the counter that splits the crêpes into two categories: sweet and savory. To the right of the main menu, there’s a chalkboard containing the specials, such as La Reine. La Reine is a Crêpes de Luxe original, the café’s take on combining the Dubai chocolate trend from earlier this year with the classic crêpe.
Crêpes de Luxe offers indoor booths and occasionally outdoor tables for seating. If in a rush, the café also offers crêpes to-go. Similar to many crêpe places in Paris, Crêpes de Luxe makes each crêpe where people can watch their order be made.
This local business is also very accommodating for people with food allergies. While eggs are vital to the crêpe making process and cannot be substituted, the café is typically able to adapt to food restrictions. Allergies to anything regularly used in their crêpe recipes is not a set-back for Crêpes de Luxe. They are willing to sanitize any tools and the area in which the crêpes are produced in order to reduce any allergen issues.
People with gluten intolerances or allergies can also expect an accommodating experience. While they can make what’s considered “mostly gluten-free” crêpes for a few extra dollars, it is also possible to get completely gluten-free food if the business is given at least an hour of notice prior by phone
Reservations are available at Crêpes de Luxe and are requested if visiting with a party of over six or during a busy time. Requests for reservations can be placed over the phone or email. They also provide services such as catering, in another location or within the café.
Beadology is located in Iowa City and has been open for 38 years. Beadology is proudly women-owned and has a majority of queer employees. The store is co-owned by Karen Kubby and Laurel Kubby who bought the business in 2008 from its previous owners. The store used to be named “Dawn’s Hide & Bead Away,” but the owners changed it to Beadology.
Beadology gets their beads from many places. Often they make beads or are gifted beads to display in their store. They feature a wide variety of bead types such as stone, pearl, metal, glass and crystal. Co-Owner Karen Kubby shared “Well, sometimes we make them because we have beaded beads and glass beads that we make, but we have about 200 vendors, so we get them from all over the place, and we get them from private collections that are either gifted to us or that we purchase.”
They feature a wide variety of beads to share with their customers and even sometimes hosts classes for people to make beads. “Yeah, we have classes two, three times a week…Sometimes we have a guest artist or a featured artist every month.” The owners love to share their gift of beading with the Iowa City community. They even bring in artists to share their gift with new learning beaders,” Kubby said.
Beadology also features an annual Bead Challenge, with this being their 14th year. Artists that choose to participate are given a kit with common bead tools. They are challenged to make an object out of these few materials. They had 18 items turned in and all are featured on their website.
Beadology has a very welcoming environment. Anyone is welcome into the store to explore beads, ask questions or attend fun beading classes.
The Kitty Corner Social Club, recommended by senior Andres Perez-Lopez, is a small business dedicated to improving mental health awareness and providing a safe and encouraging place for cat adoption. Opened on Feb. 25, this local business is still a new addition to downtown Iowa City. However, Iowa City’s population has grown to love this business, which is evident in the 150+ cats adopted in its short time open.
The Kitty Corner Social Club is open six days a week as the small business works hard to provide cats with loving homes. They’re closed on Mondays to do a deep clean on the litter boxes, the food bowls, steam clean everything and wash all the linens. Then they pick up their new cats and name them to prepare for the new week.
When visiting, guests are required to remove shoes, wear socks and sign a waiver, or have an adult sign if under the age of 16. Everything in the social club was chosen by Katy Brown, the founder of Kitty Corner Social Club. It includes a wall of complete original art, which Brown purchased. The art pieces have either been created by a local designer, bought on a trip, or donated from a private collection.
Everything other than the wall is either thrifted from Brown’s travels, gifts from people, or things that bring Brown joy. Brown’s main goal for the decor is to make people find joy in unexpected things. “If anything sparks joy, or like you look at it and you feel delighted, that surprise and delight, that’s the vibe that I’m going for, it’s just making people feel joy in unexpected things,” Brown said.
Every week, The Kitty Corner receives kittens from the shelters they partner with such as the Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center, the Muscatine Humane Society, Cedar County League for Animal Welfare and Scott County Humane Society. To provide the best adoption experience, each cat introduced to the social club must fit a certain health and personality criteria. Since not every cat does, it results in numerous partnerships to maintain cats available for adoption from the local business.
Artifacts, an antique store, is located a couple streets away from the heart of downtown Iowa City. Established in 1995, the store is the leading quality vintage resale shop for Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty and other surrounding areas. Recommended by freshman Malin Brakke, the store offers numerous goods, such as furniture, clothing, jewelry, musical instruments, art, etc.
Although it’s a bit of a walk from the more populated portion of downtown Iowa City, the local business also offers services such as gift certificates, estate sales, consignment and occasionally delivery. Consignment is the process in which a retail store sells goods for the owner and takes a portion of the sales. For some, the cost of the walk doesn’t deter them from visiting. “You would probably have to walk to get there, but, if you’re into thrifting or old things, I definitely recommend it,” Brakke said.
While not particularly large looking from the outside, the inside of Artifacts is packed with many different vintage items. There are sections in the store with art, science equipment, clothes, music instruments, tableware and more. “There’s a lot of fun stuff in there just to, like, look at, even if you don’t want to buy it…things that are completely out of date, that you won’t really see anywhere else,” Brakke said.
Formosa, a local fusion restaurant recommended by sophomore Maggie Nguyen and senior Gabriel Conrad, is located in the heart of downtown Iowa City. While primarily focused on Asian food, such as sushi, it combines other flavors to create innovative dishes, known as a style of cooking called fusion. The menu features many sushi types, poke bowls and more popular seafoods.
One of Formosa’s original sushi rolls, Nguyen’s favorite, is called the Formosa roll. The Formosa roll includes avocado, scallions, yellowtail, salmon tempura fried topped with cream cheese, tempura flakes, spicy mayo and eel sauce. “You have to get the Formosa roll, it’s the best one there,” Nguyen said.
Other original rolls are called crunchy calamari, finding nemo, Iowa City, plaza tower and sea breeze. The restaurant features over 50 types of sushi from basic rolls with one filling to complicated ones with an array of ingredients.
Formosa provides numerous types of seating outdoors and indoors, and is located next to the Iowa City Public Library and Bread Garden Market. It primarily serves dinner, opening daily at 4 p.m. Opened in 2010, the restaurant has earned itself 4.6-5 on Grubhub with a total of 927 reviews. The restaurant also has the kitchen inside the seating area so you can watch your sushi roll be made.
“It’s in a great spot downtown and the staff are really nice. It’s good because it’s downtown and you can go to other places after. There’s a lot of options for food [there] and it’s all really good,” Nguyen said.
