The scenario: Fabulously dressed, you've
sampled your way through an appetizer spread at
a cocktail party. The party's over, and now you're still a little hungry and not quite ready to go home.

The solution: Three top spots for stylish nibbles
to complete the evening.  

• Splash Raw Bar or the lounge at Splash Seafood Bar & Grill: Great finds include oysters, shellfish cocktails and creative appetizers, such as Kung Pao calamari and shrimp and a smoked sea bass platter. Ask sommelier Ben Nelson to suggest some great end-of-the-night wines to sip alongside.
  (303 Locust St., 244-5686)

• Centro: Sit in the lounge and watch passers-by through the expansive 
• windows--it's as big-city as it gets. Enjoy fantastic cheese and charcuterie plates and hearty bruschetta (featuring house-made mozzarella). If you need something substantial, order Mama's Meatballs, served with a colorful salad of romaine, chickpeas, red onions and roasted red peppers.
  (1003 Locust St.; 248-1780)

• Trostel's Dish: One of our first local restaurants to usher in the small-plates style of dining remains a great choice for nibbles-and-sips dining. Sit in one of the romantic curved booths and enjoy creative sliders, cracker-crust pizzas or a variety of Latin, Asian, Mediterranean or American small plates.
  (12851 University Ave., Clive; 221-3474)

By Vicki Ingham

Local horticulturist Cathy Wilkinson Barash has been extolling the culinary virtues of flowers for
more than 20 years. On July 23, she's teaming up
with Lisa LaValle, local chef and owner of Trellis,
the café at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, to present the first of three Food Is Pretty lunch-and-learn events at the Botanical Garden.

Titled "Edible Flowers: From Garden to Palate" after Barash's award-winning book of the same name, the event includes a lunch inspired by summer garden edibles and advice from Barash about flowering plants, the flavors they lend to recipes and how to grow and use them in a variety of dishes. Time: 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Cost: Botanical Garden members $25, nonmembers $30. Register by July 21.

Olson-Larsen Galleries is offering a series of gallery talks as part of its 35th anniversary celebration. On July 26 at 1 p.m., Gary Bowling, Barbara Fedeler and Larry Welo, three of the four artists featured in the gallery's annual landscape show, will discuss their common interest in landscape art and their varying approaches to it.

Bowling, one of the most prolific and popular landscape artists in the Midwest, works both outdoors and in the studio to create his richly textured oil paintings on paper and canvas. Fedeler, an art professor at Wartburg College in Waverly, uses willow charcoal to draw panoramic vistas of the terrain in northeast Iowa. Welo, a graduate of Luther College in Decorah, is a plein-air painter and printmaker inspired by the local landscape.

Light refreshments and wine will be served at the talk. Olson-Larsen is located at 203 Fifth St. in West Des Moines; click here for more information. -V.I.