Let’s see, which would draw more people:

A. Earnest lectures about history and culture.

B. Food.

Yeah, that’s what the Young Professionals Connection of Greater Des Moines thought, too. At the start of 2006, some members decided to visit a different ethnic restaurant each month and combine a good meal with a short presentation by the owner or manager, and that’s just what they’ve done.

“I’ve observed that using food is a good way to draw people in,” said group member Micah Kiel. “Then the owner of the restaurant can talk about how that food came about, how it’s used in its normal context, and kind of how to be a savvy cultural consumer.”

Kiel, an M.B.A. student at Iowa State University, remembers first thinking along these lines while attending an event and hearing then-gubernatorial candidate Mike Blouin talk about the need for diversity in Iowa. “In our group of about 50 people, probably 35 were men, and everybody was Caucasian,” Kiel said. It occurred to him that the organization needed to become more diverse and better educated, too.

The result was the “Dinners Around the World” program, and so far it has led invited YPC members to restaurants such as Taki Japanese Steakhouse, Mi Mexico and the Olympic Flame.

“We make arrangements ahead of time and tell the owner, ‘We would like a little bit of background on your restaurant, the food, the customs and etiquette,'” said YPC member Maria Paredes, an operating systems manager at Wells Fargo Financial. “We pick a night that’s not very busy, usually between Tuesday and Thursday.”

During the evening, the host spends 10 or 15 minutes talking about the restaurant, the cuisine and the culture represented by that cuisine.

“We like to know if a particular region has inspired the food, or if it’s more of a family tradition,” Guerrero said. “Anything unique that we wouldn’t know if they hadn’t told us.”

The invitation goes out to the YPC’s 500 dues-paying members, but the dinner group usually consists of just 25 or 30 people. “It’s more for those who are a bit more open-minded and daring, so to speak, in terms of their culinary appetite,” said Brando Guerrero, a community outreach specialist at Allied Insurance. “Not everybody is willing to go out on a limb and try a new dish.”

When the group dined at Tandoor, with its blend of Indian, Pakistani and Mediterranean cuisine, “I heard a lot of comments from people who had never had that type of food and never thought of it as a place they would want to go to,” Guerrero said. “This gives people a reason to go to a place that might not be on their top five when they’re deciding where to go with friends.”

Part of the original plan, Kiel said, was to make Dinner Around the World function as “an economic development tool for the restaurants and a recruiting mechanism for the [Greater Des Moines] Partnership.” He said the YPC needs to do more follow-up on that goal. “It would increase the legitimacy and power of YPC and would have a monetary benefit to the Partnership,” he said.