Graze Gourmet To-Go...

We believe life's best moments happen around the table. For thousands of years, people have gathered around food to celebrate, connect, laugh, tell stories, and strengthen relationships. It's one of the most important things we do as human beings.

Our Mission is Simple:

We want to be your trusted source for

great food when it's time to gather your tribe

around your table...

Whether you're celebrating a birthday, anniversary, graduation, game day, office lunch, family dinner, holiday, or wedding, we're here to help make the occasion a little easier and a lot more delicious. We believe strong families, strong friendships, strong teams, and strong communities are built one meal at a time.

Thank you for allowing us to be part of your celebrations. We look forward to serving you and your tribe for many years to come.

You Make the Memories. We'll handle the food.

I want to Order Takeout

I want to Order Catering

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS GRAZE?

At first glance Graze may seem confusing
Are we a dine-in restaurant, a takeout place, a catering company or a ghost kitchen?

Are we Italian, Mexican, Asian or American?
The exciting answer is - YES!

We are all of these great things wrapped in one package.

Graze Gourmet To-Go is a Modern Chef Owned Restaurant
Created by Chef Peter Harman, The Food Guru

GRAZE IS A CULINARY EXPERIMENT

We believe the modern restaurant doesn't have to fit neatly into one box

Only 10% of our customers actually come inside Graze
The other 90% order Graze to come to them

Home, office, hospital, university, party, tailgate, wedding

or wherever their tribe happens to be.

AFTER 20 YEARS IN IOWA CITY

Graze is something different to every customer we serve

and that's exactly the point.

We are building Graze for you

Our goal is to adapt to Your Needs

Where you need us & How you need us.

Today that means dining with us - picking up at Graze

Or having us deliver with our vans or via third party app.

Tomorrow, we see delivery drones and autonomous vehicles

Making your life a little more delicious.

We'll keep creating, experimenting and adapting

But two things will never change

Creative Delicious Food

Friendly Genuine Hospitality

The Graze Story

Locally Owned Business:

Graze Gourmet To-Go is owned by Peter and Kim Harman. Graze originally opened at 115 E. College Street in March of 2007. We moved to our current Dubuque Street location in 2021. We have a long history in Iowa City, like most small restaurants, our story is one of survival.

Peter Harman, The Food Guru spent 20 years as an Executive Chef and Food & Beverage Director, in fancy resort hotels in Southwest Florida. Peter moved to Iowa in 1996 to start Martini's Grille in Burlington, Iowa.

Modern Day - 2026

We believe people want to feed their family something delicious and nutritious - AT HOME, but they rarely have time to cook.

We believe that local businesses and community leaders want to feed their people GREAT food, but they usually end up with underwhelming fast food, soggy pizza or cold sandwiches. We believe there is a Better Way..!

We believe Catering and Takeout is the New Culinary Frontier.

TAKEOUT & CATERING is WHAT We Do... We FOCUS 100% on Great Food TO-GO..!

Great Food TO-GO:

Our food is designed to travel. We serve great food in high quality to-go containers that keep hot food hot and cold food cold.

We Feed Business Groups:

When it's Really Important and It's Gotta Be Great... Let Graze do the work - Catering IS what we do.

We Feed Athletes:

We have the pleasure of feeding Iowa Hawkeye Athletes since 2010. Football, Baseball, Mens and Womens Basketball, Volleyball, Soccer, Softball, Rowing, Gymnastics, Golf, and The Wrestlers. We also fed the Indiana Fever and Savannah Bananas when they were in town.

We Cater Weddings and Up-Scale Events

We have catered some really cool weddings and prestigious events, in some really cool places, including Kinnick Stadium, The Iowa Presidents Residence, The Children's Hospital, Hanger 319 and Ted Pasha's Garage. We would love to cater for you too.

Graze Gourmet To-Go 2026

The Leadership Team 2026

Graze History - 2007-2017:

Graze opened in 2007 at 115 E. College St. In the Pedestrain Mall in downtown Iowa City. At night, Graze was a really cool 10 table cocktail bar that specialized is sharable food... a concept we call Grazing, hence the name... Graze.

The Graze Bar featured cutting edge Martini's and Cocktails, in fact we won the Press Citizen Award for Best Cocktails 10 years in a row. During the day, we served a delicious lunch buffet. We did that because we knew the thing people really want for lunch is... Speed.

Graze History 2019 - 2020:

In 2019... Everything Changed...
The City of Iowa City, closed the street in front of Graze for 9 Months to renovate the Ped Mall.

It was nearly impossible to get to Graze... We knew this was coming, that's why we got into catering...

In 2020... We did the Covid Thing - Pivot, Pivot, Pivot - just like everyone else.

Most of our business was takeout...

In 2021, our landlord sold the building and the new landlord, knocked our kitchen down... To build The Nest.

So we scrambled and moved to our current location at 345 S. Dubuque St.

2021 The New Graze Gourmet To-Go

Our objective is to create a modern restaurant based on the future instead of the past.

We believe people want to feed their friends and family great food at their place.

We believe this is the greatest time in human history to be alive and living in Iowa and the future will be even better.

We believe the future of Iowa City will look quite different from the past.

Our goal is to be your Go To Place for Gourmet Catering and Takeout. We are just getting warmed up.

In 2024 - Graze Gourmet To-Go Won - The Community Choice Award for Best Caterer - Wow!

Floyd's Birthday 2025

Community, Community, Community:

We believe in giving back and paying it forward. We are privileged to work with many local non-profit organizations, including, the Free Lunch Program, The Shelter House, AYA Cancer Research, The Chris Street Memorial Golf Tournament, No Foot Too Small, The Stead Family Childrens Hospital, and Community Fridge to name a few.

We don't tell you this to brag, we tell you this because it is part of our corporate mission to give back to the community, it is in our DNA. Perhaps we can help your non-profit organization.

Thanks for reading this far and we look forward to serving you soon.

Chef Peter Harman, The Food Guru