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The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a glowing report about Des Moines in a recent Sunday Travel section. Reporter Rick Nelson toured the area, sampled the restaurants and wrote a piece that just might encourage Minnesotans to pay us a visit.

Here are some excerpts from the dining portion of Nelson’s report:

• “The city’s restaurants fed us very, very well. Lucca was so impressive that we returned the following night for a second shot at chef/owner Steve Logsdon’s spare, unadulterated cooking … which more than matches the chic minimalist surroundings. It’s one of the Midwest’s great restaurants.”

• “Logsdon’s brother Joe bakes the city’s most enticing breads and sweets at his La Mie bakery. Walking in for Saturday breakfast and encountering marble-topped tables loaded with golden brioche, knobbly scones and gleaming, fruit-filled Danish was a rapturous died-and-gone-to-heaven moment.”

• “The best lunch I’ve had in months came courtesy of Proof, a boisterous noon-hour-only downtowner (one exception: Friday dinners) that specializes in Mediterranean flavors. … ‘If we lived in Des Moines, I would eat lunch here every day,’ said my partner. Same here.”

And here are some of Nelson’s other observations:

• Among the city’s architectural examples, “my favorites were definitely downtown’s art deco beauties: US Bank is fortunate enough to be ensconced in the sophisticated Iowa-Des Moines National Bank Building; its equally beguiling neighbor, the Des Moines Building is worth a peek for its glamorous black marble lobby.”

• “Locals apparently have a love-it-or-hate-it relationship with the new Des Moines Public Library by Brit architect David Chipperfield, but I definitely landed in the ‘adore’ camp.

“The library is in the same coming-back-to-life part of downtown as the just-opened John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park, a two-block outdoor gallery dotted with works by the core of artists that make up the DNA of any self-respecting contemporary sculpture garden. … This garden has a talker of a focal point: Jaume Plensa’s ‘Nomade,’ a three-story shell of a human head and torso that appears weightless and is devised, like some crazy airborne jigsaw puzzle, out of interconnected white stainless steel letters. Like the library, it’s a post-sunset stunner.”

To read the whole article, go to http://tinyurl.com/startribunedm