We asked Des Moines what it loves (and can't stand). Here's what you said.

We put a simple question to the r/desmoines community: what's your favorite and least favorite thing about living here? Reddit is nothing if not honest, and that was the point, we wanted the real answer, not the tourism-board version.

A few hundred replies later, a clear picture emerged. Des Moines is a city its people genuinely love, and are perfectly willing to roast in the same breath. Here's the honest roundup.

What Des Moines loves

You can get everywhere on foot or by bike

This was, hands down, the most common answer. People love that you can walk from a downtown apartment to the grocery store, to Gray's Lake, and to both Court Avenue and the East Village in an afternoon, "I can walk the whole perimeter of downtown in an hour or two." Ingersoll is a short walk from downtown too.

And then there are the trails. More than one person called the bike-trail network the single best thing about the city: "Unmatched in most cities, and it will be the thing I miss the most." Gray's Lake and the trail system came up again and again as the crown jewel. If you're new here and own a bike, that's your first weekend sorted.

It's a sleeper foodie town

Locals are protective of the food scene, and a little divided on it, which is exactly what you'd expect from people who care. The prevailing take: "The food scene is better than any other similar-sized city in this country, and I will die on that hill." Others called it a genuine "sleeper foodie town" that "punches above its weight class."

The insider tip that came up repeatedly: skip the tired old standbys everyone reflexively recommends and find the family-run places. That's where the real cooking is. Des Moines also has a deep bench of Vietnamese restaurants and, at long last, all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ. And the breweries earned near-universal praise.

Everything's fifteen minutes away

"You can get everywhere in 20 minutes." "Everything is within like a 15-minute drive." Compared to a Nashville or a Chicago, the near-total absence of traffic feels like a luxury, and people pair it with the low cost of living as the one-two punch that keeps them here. As one person who left and came back put it: "When I leave and come back, I love the costs here compared to elsewhere."

The people, and the creative scene

"People are kind." It came up over and over, along with a recurring note that outsiders are consistently surprised by how much there is to do here. The RAGBRAI crowd, one local pointed out, spends every July raving about Iowa and its people.

Underneath that is a small-but-mighty creative community, food, art, music, comedy, that longtime locals say has grown noticeably over the last two decades. "It's cool to see how much they've grown, and exciting to see the younger people come up too."

The underrated corners

A few neighborhoods and spots got singled out as the ones worth seeking out:

• Highland Park was called the most authentic up-and-coming neighborhood in town, "a great coffee shop, some decent cocktail bars, and unique local shopping, while also having charming old buildings."
• Historic Valley Junction in West Des Moines is the widely agreed-upon exception to the suburbs, the one place out west that still feels like a real main street.
• Drake neighborhood, with the Varsity Cinema anchoring it.
• Gateway Market for wine, cheese, cake, and, as one person insisted, the bread. ("Don't forget the bread at Gateway!")
• Paws & Pints, an "elite" dog park, bar, and restaurant all in one, got a genuinely enthusiastic shout.
• Java Joe's for coffee near Ingersoll.

Cheap fun, if you know where to look

Des Moines is a minor-league town, and the people who lean into that get the best deal in the city. The Iowa Cubs (AAA baseball at Principal Park) came up as an incredible value, "a ticket and two beers for $25 on Wednesdays is a steal at ANY level of professional sports," and you'll regularly catch big-league names on the way up or on a rehab stint. Drake men's basketball at the Knapp Center and Iowa Wild hockey rounded out the sports love.

Beyond sports: the Des Moines Arts Festival and the Downtown Farmers' Market are free to wander even if you don't spend a dime, the Simon Estes Amphitheater just reopened with a free summer concert series, and the public libraries got a genuine shout-out.

The quirks

And then the stuff that only makes sense if you live here, and that locals are weirdly proud of: Slipknot is from here. The Weather Beacon glowing at the top of the Principal building. The "R2D2-looking building." Old cemeteries and interesting architecture wherever you turn. And a new airport that's "about to be baller."

What Des Moines would change

Now for the honest half. This is Reddit, after all.

The water

If there was a runner-up to "bad drivers," it was water quality. It came up in reply after reply, nitrates especially, and it's the gripe locals sound most genuinely frustrated about.

The drivers

Oh, the drivers. "I'm sorry, but you guys can't drive" was practically a chorus, and even the locals agreed: "You're correct, we cannot drive." The specific complaints are painfully vivid, driving ten under in the passing lane, and sitting through a green arrow while staring at a phone.

Transit that doesn't match the ambition

For a city this walkable, the public-transit gap stings. "You'd think if we can't drive well, we'd have a goddamn good public transit system." A few people wistfully brought up the old Ingersoll trolley line and wished for a tram back into downtown.

Nightlife and late nights are thin

A real, recurring critique: not enough late-night dining and drinking, and too many major touring acts skip Des Moines entirely for Omaha or Iowa City. Live-music venues struggle to stay open year-round, and transplants from bigger cities feel the lack of a late-night pulse most acutely.

The restaurant sameness

The flip side of the food love: plenty of people feel too many restaurants serve the same thing, and that a lot of it runs through the same distributor. "There is good food in DSM, but there isn't a lot of it." The consensus fix, again, was to hunt down the independent, family-run spots and skip the places that coast on old reputations.

Strip-mall sprawl

Several people love Des Moines proper and can't stand what surrounds it, "everything outside of Des Moines (with a few exceptions, like Valley Junction) are strip malls. It can feel soulless." More than one compared the metro to a smaller Kansas City that got a little overpowered by its suburbs.

The construction, and the smell

Two very Des Moines complaints to close on. First, the road construction of the last few years, especially on the routes into downtown, which multiple people called the worst they've seen. And second, the one nobody can defend: when the wind is wrong, the rendering plant turns the whole city into, in one memorable local's words, the smell of "a rotting corpse." Charming.

And, for the record

The things people jokingly can't forgive: no Waffle House, no Jack in the Box. "Corn sweat" in August. Too many vape shops with too-bright LED signs. And a year-round conversation that can feel like it's only ever about Iowa vs. Iowa State football.

The throughline

Read a few hundred of these back to back and one thing is clear: people here love Des Moines, and the complaints are mostly the sound of locals wanting the good stuff to get even better, more support for the small, independent, family-run places that make the city feel like itself.

That's the whole reason we do what we do. Every week we send one short email with the Des Moines spots actually worth your time, the independent restaurants, the new openings, the thing happening this weekend, without the forty-option slog. (And yes, we saw the "least favorite thing: bloggers" reply. Fair. We'll try to earn it.)

If that's your kind of thing, we'd love to have you. One email, no noise.