20 Best Seafood Restaurants near Ankeny

“Food and service were excellent! Mia our waitress was absolutely wonderful!!“

“We often eat there when we're in Ankeny, and did so last Sunday. The fish and chips was, as it always is, outstanding. Our waitress, Jordan, was equally outstanding. She took care of our lunch time needs, often anticipating what we were wanting next. She even sent my wife home with a cup of the pop she was drinking. Simply outstanding and is our favorite restaurant when we're in Des Moines area.“

“Definitely our go to resturant. The drinks. The food. The atmposphere. All of it!“

“A group of 6 of us were here celebrating 2 of our closest friends’ birthdays on Saturday, November 22, 2025. We all had a phenomenal experience. Top notch food, and main reason I am writing this review is due to the person serving us (JOSH). Our evening was made extra special thanks to JOSH. He greeted us with a genuine smile, anticipated our needs without being intrusive, and offered thoughtful recommendations that turned out to be spot-on. His friendly demeanor and attention to detail made us feel truly cared for. We left not only full but also grateful for such exceptional service.“

“The best lamb stew I’ve ever had. The herb palate was amazing!“

“Excellent service and food!“

“Foods always good, quick, and by far my favorite selection of music“

“We had a work dinner & it was amazing! Food, drinks, staff - everything!!! 10/10!!“

“I want to start by saying this with full respect: running a restaurant is incredibly hard. I know this firsthand — I’m in the industry myself. I can also see that your family is involved in the business, and that’s something truly admirable.

My intention here is not to hurt your business, but to share honest feedback in hopes it reaches the owner and helps protect your long-term investment. Instead of giving a 1-star review (or zero, if I could), I’m choosing 5 stars so this message actually gets seen.

With that said, my dining experience at Tulpa was extremely disappointing — not because of a lack of effort, but because the fundamentals of Peruvian cuisine were not respected.

From what I understand, you’re not Peruvian yourself, which is perfectly valid. But the person you’ve trusted to run your kitchen is Peruvian — and that makes the issues even more concerning.

Here’s the breakdown:

Ceviche: Made with bottled lime juice instead of fresh lime. This alone completely changes the dish. The tilapia used is farm-raised, and you can taste the muddy undertones that should never be present in ceviche. The sweet potato was over-simmered in a syrup that made it sticky and inedible. The calamari (5 small pieces) were overcooked and rubbery, and the breading fell off due to poor technique.

Pollo a la Brasa: What I was served appeared to be a leg quarter from the W store.cooked grocery-store reheated in the fryer. This is not representative of the dish.

Chicha Morada: Unfortunately did not resemble authentic chicha in flavor.

Lomo Saltado: Lacked the core flavors and technique expected of the dish — no resemblance to traditional Peruvian cooking.

Your sign mentions Novo Andina, but nothing served reflected that or any fusion concept. Instead, it felt like someone convinced you they could cook Peruvian cuisine when, respectfully, they cannot. This is dangerous for a new restaurant. Business may be okay now, but long-term sustainability requires consistency, authenticity, and proper technique — especially with a cuisine as beloved as ours.

Additionally, I was automatically charged a 10% gratuity without any note on the menu. I understand why (Peruvians can be picky about tipping), but for your protection, please list this clearly so customers aren’t surprised.

I’m sharing all of this because I truly don’t want to see your business fail. You’ve invested money, time, and your family’s effort — and you deserve better support from the people working behind your kitchen doors.

If you’d like a more detailed breakdown or want to chat privately, please leave your email and I’ll gladly provide additional feedback. I’m rooting for you, not against you.“

“We booked the private room in advance for a team dinner , what an incredible experience from the reservation to the pre call for expectations to the service and the food was absolutely amazing. The GM stopped by to make sure we were 100 satisfied We will most definitely be back Thanks Robin for your hospitality“

“Amazing food and at a reasonable price and not a bad wait time.“

“Food is always delicious! I went in after work on Mother’s Day to take home 3 orders of shrimp fajitas and the patio and tables inside were packed. Despite staff being very busy, I still got my order in 15 min and one of the teens working at the register checked on me while I waited to see if I needed anything. I’ve always had excellent service. The margaritas are delicious as well!“

“သားလေး ရာယန် ရဲ့ Spring break ကျောင်းပိတ်​တော့ ကိုယ်ပါ အလုပ်ကနေ ခွင့်ယူပြီး မိသားစုအတူတူ HangOut လုပ်ကြတယ်။နေ့လည်စာကို Kathmandu Restaurant စားဖြစ်ကြတယ်။နီပေါအစားအစာ ဖြစ်တဲ့ ဆိတ်သားချက်ကတော့ တကယ့် ရှယ်ပဲ။ အစားအစာ အားလုံးက လတ်ဆတ်ပြီးတော့ တကယ့် Authentic ပဲ။ ပြီးတော့ ဆိုင်တဆိုင်ရဲ့ သန့်ရှင်းမှု ကို သိချင်ရင် restroom ကိုအရင်ကြည့်ပါ။ အနံ့အသက်ကင်းပြီးတော့ သပ်ရပ်နေတယ်။ ပြီးတော့ waiters တွေရဲ့ customer service နဲ့ personal hygiene ကိုကြည့်တော့လည်း ကောင်းပါတယ်။ဒီစားသောက်ဆိုင်ရဲ့ ထူးခြားမှုက၊Customer တွေက စိတ်ကျေနပ်မှုမရှိရင် ဆိုင်ပိုင်ရှင်ကို တိုက်ရိုက်ဆက်သွယ်နိုင်ဖို့ အတွက်၊ခုံပေါ်မှာ အသင့်ရှိနေပါတယ်။ စျေးနုန်းကအသင့်အတင့်ပါပဲ၊ နှစ်ယောက်စာကို ဒေါ်လာ ၆၀ ဆိုတာ အတော်ပါပဲ။ဒါ​ကြောင့် နီ​ပေါအစားအစာ အော်သန်တစ် မှ စားချင်တယ်ဆိုရင်၊ ဒီဆိုင်ကို သွားစားကြည့်ဖို့ Highly recommended ပေးပါတယ်။ A very unique and delicious experience. If you're looking to enjoy fresh and authentic Nepali cuisine, I highly recommend visiting this restaurant. It sounds like their goat curry is particularly delicious, which makes it a must-try dish. The cleanliness and excellent service at the restaurant are also standout features. I really like the suggestion to check the restroom to gauge the cleanliness of a restaurant. The good hygiene and friendly staff also reflects the professionalism of the establishment. Additionally, the unique feature of allowing customers to directly contact the owner is a great idea. This system enables immediate feedback and helps improve the service quality. The prices seem reasonable, making it a suitable place to dine. If you're craving authentic Nepali flavors, I recommend giving Kathmandu Restaurant a try.“

“Returning customer from when they were at the other establishment on 6th. We have always enjoyed the food and they do not skimp on portions. We came for dinner and stayed for the live band. My only complain is the beer was served at room temp. At least that is how mine was served to me. We did ask if we could get a cold/ icy beer which staff tried to accommodate but fell short. I love my beer cold and icy even if there is is a winter storm outside. Other than that, I definitely recommend.“

“GIVE FRANCIS A RAISE!!!!!“

“Thank for great food and service. ?“

“My new favorite Mexican restaurant! I got the lunch special steak fajita. Delicious! The service was fast and if a worker that wasn’t serving me saw I needed something they handled it. A truly team player atmosphere from the workers. The restaurant its self is gorgeous. So much beautiful art work to admire. If you’re in the area a perfect choice.“

“An absolute must for authentic and delicious Peruvian food in Iowa! We were blown away by the ceviche and pollo a la brasa and the excellent customer service. Cannot recommend this place enough and it will be a regular spot on our trips to Des Moines.“

“We stopped here at the last minute and they did not disappoint! Their food is amazing! Highly recommend stopping if you’re hungry.“

“Currently, this is my absolute favorite restaurant in Iowa. They have the tastiest shrimp cocktail and my favorite are the shrimp empanadas from the appetizer section of the menu. My husband loves virtually anything they serve. I can overlook that it isn't fancy and sometimes the service is a little uncoordinated when you end up with such amazing food. I see the people in the kitchen looking like they are working so hard and from the heart. Now, if you want a good laugh, I ate here ten years ago for my first time and it took me nine years before I ever would consider returning. I ordered paella with the extra $1 charge if I wanted the seafood all out of the shell instead of me doing it myself. I was eating away while in deep conversation with my family, enjoying my food, when I bit down on some random large piece of a broken shell buried in the paella. I got up and ran to the bathroom and had to spit out the shells and unfortunately parts of six of my broken teeth! So, if you order any dish with the promise of the seafood all taken from its shell; still be careful!“