New restaurant, Strudl Haus, brings taste of Austria

There's a decent chance that Michael Leo could have grown up to be a grocer or a carpenter. High school seniors in Austria, where Leo was born, are required to do stints at three different jobs. Leo chose a grocery store, a carpentry shop and a restaurant.

Luckily for lovers of Austria's distinctively beautiful pastries and cakes and its multitude of German-style sausages, Leo was drawn to the restaurant world. He trained not only as a pastry chef but as a chef and sommelier.

And when he landed in the Des Moines metro in 1994, he brought those European flavors with him. Leo's Strudl Haus has been selling an array of the photogenic goodies at farmers markets for 20 years.

Besides a four-year stint with an Altoona storefront called Cafe Salzburg, which closed in 2000, Leo has been without a brick-and-mortar retail space since. But last week, Strudl Haus opened in its new home on Indianola Road.

From early morning to late night

The Strudl Haus project has been long in the making. Because the restaurant sits beside a park, it took eight months just to get the wine and beer liquor license that Leo was determined to have. He needed it to realize his vision of Strudl Haus as a multipurpose place — for pastries and breakfast, for lunch, for coffee, for wine, for after-the-show nibbles. "I need to appeal to everyone," Leo said.

And though the wine bar/coffee shop model is common in Europe, it's not so much here, and "I wanted to be the first one locally — before Starbucks does it," he said, only half kidding. The restaurant has a climate-controlled wine room and both a "hot" kitchen and a "cold" kitchen just for pastry making.

Besides a daily array of goodies, Strudl Haus will also serve a continental breakfast — European-style, not Holiday-Inn-cold-cereal-and-stale-mini-bagels-style — all day. It will come with a kaiser roll, butter, jam, and meats and cheeses; diners can choose add-ons such as eggs, bacon or fruit.

"There's not really any breakfast places downtown," Leo said.

Lunch, he said, will feature some classic Austrian soups, such as what's called klare suppen (clear soups): clear broths with add-ons such as dumplings. The small, changing lunch menu will include some Austrian specialties as well as pastas, sandwiches, meats and a seasonal dish.

While the cafe will not serve dinner per se, there will be tapas-type small plates served in the evening. "I want people to be able to come later, not necessarily for dinner," Leo said.

He envisions it as a place where people come to wind down and end their evening — after a movie or show or dinner. "There's no place downtown to hang out after a show or something, if you don't want to be with the kids on Court Avenue."

Next summer, Strudl Haus will also have a deck for sipping and snacking al fresco.

Putting his education to use

Leo might be most excited about his wine program; though he is a trained sommelier, the portable version of his business doesn't lend itself to "wine service." And he's modeling it after one at an Austrian restaurant where he worked.

"I'm going to do the wine a little differently," Leo explained. "You can buy a tasting-size glass of anything and then choose whether you want to order by the glass or the bottle. I hope to have 20 to 30 wines open, but we'll see how it goes."

He said wine drinkers can expect to find some rare and expensive bottles that will be available by the glass, and he expects them to sell. "We had a Lafite that sold for $600 a glass, and we went through a bottle a day. There is a market for that," which he said is untapped in Des Moines. "Of course we'll also have very affordable wine." One of his first events will be a coffee, wine and food pairing class, with more classes and events to come once the dust settles.

A $600 glass of wine should not feel out of place in the setting of crystal chandeliers, crimson upholstery and accents, hand-finished (by Leo) wood features, and hand-carved art by Leo's father, a professional woodcarver who restored old churches. The focal point of the art in the space is Leo the elder's carved representation of St. Michael. He sent it to his son because it seemed fitting.

The building may soon be not only an elegant restaurant-cafe-wine bar, but also the site of an official UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage item. If the Friends of Austrian Pastry Culture — which is a group of Austrian confectioners, caterers and state and federal officials — has its way, in that country there will be a nationwide registry of classic Austrian desserts.

Regardless of whether the desserts get UNESCO standing, we'll still have easy access to Austria's cultural heritage in its most delicious form.

Strudl Haus

1951 Indianola Ave.

515-259-9886; find it on Facebook.

Hours: 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Wednesday; 6 a.m. to midnight Thursday, Friday; 8 a.m. to midnight Saturday.