Loving the Des Moines Life: Alba
Welcome to Loving the Des Moines Life , my ongoing series of exploring my new hometown. Mr. Nomadreader and I had been hearing wonderful things about Alba, a restaurant in the East Village, so we decided to try it out on a Thursday night. A tasty summer martini! As usual, the first thing I want to explore at a restaurant is the wine list. Although Alba has their food menu (albeit an outdated one) on their website , they don't have their wine list. The wine list is long, but it's not terribly impressive. There are two major shortcomings. First, some of the price points are exorbitant. Of the wines I was familiar with, the lower-end wines tended to be 400 to 500% of the retail price. I balk at anything over 200%. The higher-end wines were priced appropriately. Even more odd to me were the prices of glasses. Typically, the maximum a bottle should cost is four times the glass price. At Alba, it was four times the glass price plus $2, which doesn't encourage diners to o...