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With menu and service modifications, Zachary Mannheimer hopes to help restore the luster of the Des Moines Embassy Club and attract younger members in his position as maitre d’.

“It’s bringing (the Embassy Club) back to being the gem of the food, wine and dining world here,” he said.

After leaving New York on a 22-city tour, Mannheimer landed in Central Iowa packing fresh ideas for wines and amenities, and an adaptable style of service.

Restaurants specializing in different types of cuisine, from Italian to seafood, have opened up in Greater Des Moines since the club’s establishment in 1946. But the Embassy Club is taking an approach focused on service and a unique menu.

“What we are doing here is different than anywhere else,” Mannheimer said. “We purposely seek out the odd, the bizarre, the seldom-seen cuisines and wine and make them no longer odd or bizarre. We make them familiar and recognizable.”

Since starting at the club in September, Mannheimer has helped implement a tasting menu, cuisine and wine appreciation classes and a new sequence of service, which he has developed throughout his career and modified to fit the establishment.

“I wanted more of a challenge and also wanted to see what the rest of the country was into,” he said. “I knew what they were into on the West and East Coasts, but had no idea what they were into in the middle.”

Prior to joining the club, Mannheimer worked at Manhattan restaurants, including Balthazar, Fiamma and The Central Park Boathouse, and most recently helped open a Mediterranean-themed restaurant in Brooklyn called Tempo Restaurant and Wine Bar. Wines from Mediterranean countries, such as Italy, France, Spain, Northern Africa and Greece, are his specialty.

“(Mannheimer) has come in with what has worked for him in his past and blended it with the culture of Des Moines,” said Michael LaValle, general manager and culinary director of the Embassy Club.

A little taste

After getting a taste of Greater Des Moines, Mannheimer decided to mix it up a little, with help from the Embassy Club’s à la carte chef, Michael Bailey.

“A lot happened when Zach arrived,” Bailey said. “I have always wanted to do a tasting menu. It is more my approach, rather than the Iowa steak and potatoes.”

Bailey, who has been with the club for almost eight years, began his culinary career at age 13, working in a Chinese restaurant in Marshalltown. A Laotian chef trained him on everything from taste to how to chop, even with his eyes closed.

“(The chef) was inspiring to me,” Bailey said. “I started out washing dishes, but he taught me basic food flavor and pairings.”

The tasting menu prepared by Bailey features five dishes that are paired with five little-known international wines. The menu will change two to three times a month.

“The dishes are not Asian, but fused with Asian ingredients that are bold, like ginger and lemon grass,” Bailey said. “They create a more exciting palate.”

The menu variations of the small plates have provided opportunities for Bailey and his staff to explore flavors and borrow from their ethnic backgrounds. Twenty percent of the Embassy Club’s staffers come from overseas, including countries such as Afghanistan, Hungary, Wales and Bosnia.

Mannheimer coordinates the wines that accompany the tasting menu.

“When I got here, the wine list was 90 percent Californian, with no real focus,” he said. “It was all the top wines from around the world. And that is great, but they are not essentially affordable and you can’t play with them.”

By seeking out and serving uncommon but still high-quality wines, members’ palates are expanded, and their time and money saved (outside the club), while cutting costs for the Embassy Club.

“There are over a million different grapes; most people think there are seven,” Mannheimer said. Some wines are labeled by the name of the grape and others are labeled by the name of the village where the vineyard is located. Consumers are not as familiar with geographical names and can be less inclined to buy them, he said.

The new philosophy at the Embassy Club is “If you like …,” meaning if the customer likes chardonnay, the club employees might suggest something similar that the customer has never tried (or maybe even heard of) before.

“You don’t have to buy the name brand,” LaValle said.

Members are educated on little-known wines. Mannheimer is helping introduce them to wines that “drink like a $25 bottle” but can be bought in the store for less than $10.

Mannheimer said, “I wanted to experiment more and wanted to bring things to people that they have never had before.”

So far, the Embassy Club is selling more tasting menus than Mannheimer and Bailey had anticipated. “We expected to sell around 20 percent, but we are hitting between the high 30s and 40 percent,” Bailey said.

Classes on cuisine

In conjunction with the rollout of the tasting menu, Bailey and Mannheimer host cuisine and wine-tasting classes.

The program, consisting of casual get-togethers to explain certain types of food and taste a little wine, started in January and is held the first and third Friday evenings of each month from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the club’s 801 Grand Ave. location.

Mannheimer said the focus of the classes is “heading toward: What do (the participants) want to learn?”

Cuisine classes are not the only service at the Embassy Club catered to the needs and wants of the members. With Mannheimer came a new sequence of service for the club staff to follow.

“Service is not standing over your shoulder watching you eat,” LaValle said. “It is not coming over to the table five times and interrupting you to ask if everything is OK. … Good service does not happen by accident … it happens by design.”

The sequence of service, designed by Mannheimer and adapted to fit the club, is followed by servers and bussers from their first approach to their 12th. The four pages of instructions detail everything from how to clear crumbs to whether to offer coffee or tea. But most important, the servers must anticipate the customers’ needs and wants.

“We adapt if you want white-glove service,” Mannheimer said. “The whole point is reading your customer. If the guest wants casual/familiar, we will do that.”

Changes to the Embassy Club’s dining services and menu have been spurred by Mannheimer, but the alterations follow a transformation in fine dining nationwide.

In the 1980s, with the downturn of the market, bistros became more popular. Bistros offer less expensive but still high-quality food in a fast-paced environment, Mannheimer said, as opposed to longer meals, higher-class, hands-off service. The 1990s brought small plates. And the current decade, he said, is a combination of both.

The amount of time spent eating and size of the meals are getting smaller. “Multi-course meals are not happening; however, multi-course meals are happening in a different way, such as small plates,” Mannheimer said. “That is why our tasting menu is not a five-course meal.”

The changes are an attempt to appeal to the younger generation in Greater Des Moines. “We are trying to bring in younger people,” Mannheimer said. “Downtown there is a push to bring in younger people. We still want to have to have the ability to bring (service) to our older guests, but our younger members or potential members as well.”