Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

Standing outside Butcher & The Boar, waiting for our dining companion and a table, we had some time to consider the name. It sounds like a sequel to one of Hemingway’s novels, substituting a noble and tusked wild pig for the old marlin. If it were, burned out English majors would only have to wander down Hennepin Avenue to find out how the epic battle ended. There the scent of roasted pork, sweet and smoky, lingers outside the restaurant’s doors — clearly, the butcher has triumphed.

If we hadn’t already been planning to eat there, we would not have been able to resist the smell, no matter the wait. If you go — and you should — it’s easy enough to get a reservation, which we recommend lest you end up on the sidewalk outside this much-lauded restaurant making up stories rather than inside drinking whiskey and eating all kinds of tasty, tasty meat.

Hemingway probably would have approved of the Butcher & The Boar on the whiskey alone. As previously mentioned, we counted 63 different bourbons, ranging in price from $3 to $14 for a one-ounce shot or $12 to $15 for a flight. At 5:30 on a weeknight the bar is packed with fellows with one hand thrown back over the chair and the other cradling a bourbon, talking work and enjoying the restaurant’s comfortable yet industrial vibe. The bar seating is all white leather dimly lit by broad steel beams set with bare incandescent bulbs, filaments aglow; the dining area is open and airy, with wood tables and a view into the shiny, stainless steel kitchen. They may be enjoying it too much, as one fellow was heard to say, “I gotta go. I haven’t seen my kid for a week; I need to go home and tuck him in.”

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

If you don’t favor bourbon, there’s also wine and an impressive list of some 58 or so local, national, and imported beers on tap and in the bottle. We do, and so ordered a Hennepin Avenue Manhattan ($10), which combined Makers Mark with elderflower liqueur, sweet and dry vermouth, bitters, and three macerated cherries to create a nicely balanced drink; smooth, flavorful, just sweet enough — and rather deadly. (We recently learned that the secret to macerating cherries is soaking dried cherries, not fresh, in a simple syrup and spice concoction overnight before you put them in the brandy.)

On the fruitier side, the Juicy Basil ($10) layers Basil Hayden and Triple Sec in a tall, summery glass with orange and cranberry juices. It was so refreshing and tasty that a dining companion, who decided she did not love her Manhattan as well, stole mine.

On another night, we enjoyed the Negroni ($9), a concoction of gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth. We had tried a similar drink at Marvel Bar, which tasted delightfully like a super-fortified Campari and very nearly put us under the table. Although still aperitif forward, the Negroni was smoother and less like an herbal remedy — just right before dinner.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Then there was the meat. Chef Jack Riebel (formerly of the Dakota) has created a menu that mimics the formula of classic steakhouses with a la carte meat and giant, shareable sides, but not the flavors. Instead, his dishes feature aggressive notes of acid, smoke, and heat. It makes sense: if you are going to emphasize bourbon, you need all those big flavors to stand up to it.

Only once did this prove an issue: The Green Salad ($9) came dressed in a sweet vinegar and, seemingly, nothing else. It curled our tongues, which was a shame because, between beautiful spring greens, giant chunks of bacon, and sweet cornbread croutons, this simple salad should have been a winner. On the other hand, The Petite Wedges ($10) were a universally beloved. Here the chefs managed to balance a handful flavors and textures — blue cheese, candied nuts, sweet tomato syrup, vinegar, and pepper — and create a highly successful update of the classic. Without bacon!

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

We also sampled the charcuterie with the plate called For The Table ($18). The Wild Boar Headcheese was out of this world: a bit like sushi, it paired layers of meat, soft creamy bits, and aspic with a bitter-sweet mustard that popped. Thin, tender slices of lightly Pickled Heart Marcella tasted, in a good way, like leftover steak. The Wild Boar Ham had a great pepper kick, and was so pleasant on its own we preferred to pair its molasses bread with the headcheese. Although a bit light next to its companions, the Venison Summer Sausage was appropriately mild and tangy — we wouldn’t kick it off a camping trip.

If we had to compare the charcuterie to plates around town, Butcher & The Boar is on par with Haute Dish and Craftsman, but the latter is better value. Still, two people could potentially make a meal of the charcuterie plate if they combined it with the wedge salad and a side of Texas Toast ($3 hot, buttered, awesome).

Charcuterie isn’t the only thing that unites Butcher & The Boar with its local contemporaries — the restaurant is firmly on trend with the likes of HauteDish, The Strip Club, and The Sample Room, serving up manly, gutsy food that has one foot planted firmly in the land of meat and potatoes and another squarely in the world of contemporary gastronomy. Call it a reinvented steakhouse if you must, where tradition takes a firm modern twist without losing sight of what made un-reconstructed steakhouses so popular in the first place.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

The only issue with making a meal out of the charcuterie plate is that you would miss the Turkey Braunschweiger with Black Truffle ($10), which is not included — and that would be a travesty. Light as air, it tasted briefly of whipped bologna, and then melted away, leaving only the truffle, musky and delicious. We fought over it.

You’d also miss out on the big meat, not the least of which was the Smoked Beef Long Rib ($32). Coated in a classic barbecue sauce, spicy hot and sweet with molasses, the rib was described like this by a bourbon-infused Texan: “This rib falls apart at a harsh word, damn near as good as my daddy’s.” It came with a warm yet still crunchy slaw of carrot, cabbage, cilantro, and tortilla — a nice surprise — that complemented the rib nicely.

The Double Cut Berkshire Pork Chop ($27) was also met with enthusiasm for its rich smoke tang and maple flavor. Somehow the outside of the chop was wonderfully succulent, while the inside was less so — that did not stop us from devouring it. At four fingers tall, it definitely was enough for two, especially paired with a side of Bourbon Orange Carrots ($8), which were subtly sweet and beautifully presented in a range of light yellow and orange hues.

Alternatively, if you’ve had enough sweet and vinegar, the Blackened Cauliflower ($7) is seasoned only with salt and pepper and very pleasing with a nutty, roasted flavor.

The 8oz Flatiron ($24) was a perfect, rosy medium rare served slightly charred with salt and pepper on top. It came with an elusive yet appealing smokehouse sauce that tasted vaguely of sriracha and horseradish. The waitress, protecting house secrets, would only say, “We take the flavors out of the smokehouse and make an aioli.” What does that mean?

Even the sauce could not save the funky beer-battered potato sticks served alongside the steak; they were oddly mushy on the inside and overly salty. (How can this be? We loved his fries at the Dakota.)

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

And now for something completely different: We ordered the Fish of the Month ($Market), which turned out to be a beautiful little trout, stuffed with greens, wrapped in bacon, drizzled with green goddess dressing and radishes — set on a bed of broccoli foam! Not only was fish on foam a little disconcerting — bringing to mind polluted storm water on the tide — but it was also incongruous with the rest of the menu. Here was this trussed up fish among all these simple plates of meat.

All silliness aside, the fish ended up being a favorite. The meat and greens melded together, tender and smoky under the bacon, and paired beautifully with the tarragon-dominant dressing. The foam may have been superfluous, but it tasted just like buttered broccoli. One dining companion declared she could eat a bowl of it.

After all that, it was hard to think about dessert, but we did, and so ordered the Bourbon and Coke Float ($7). Made with Mexican coke, Jim Beam, and caramel ice cream, it went down incredibly smooth and delicious — and soothed our scratchy throats. This is our only real complaint of the place: During the dinner rush, the noise builds to a roar, and it’s almost impossible to be heard without yelling.

All in all it was a fantastic meal, and we are looking forward returning this summer to dig into the sausage menu — and enjoy another Juicy Basil in the relative quiet of the outdoor patio.

Best bet: Start with the Petite Wedges ($10) and Turkey Braunschweiger ($10), and then move onto the Smoked Beef Long Rib ($32).

Butcher & The Boar
Meat-forward American in downtown Minneapolis
4 out of 4 stars (Superb)

1121 Hennepin Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55403
612.238-8888
CHEF: Jack Riebel
HOURS:
Sunday 5pm – 10pm
Monday to Saturday 5pm – 12am
BAR: Full
 (Open ‘til 12am Sun, 1am Mon-Thurs, 2am Fri & Sat)
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED: Yes / Yes
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Yes (limited to sides and salads) / No
ENTREE RANGE: $9-$85

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

It’s almost summer and what do we want? Ice cream dripping down our arms, hot dogs in our hands, and all kinds of crap fried on sticks. Yeah, we want to hold our food in our hands. Lucky for us, the list of portable snack spots just keeps on growing. A new restaurant, called Pupuseria La Palmera, is now serving that snack without a season, the El Salvadoran pupusa. Similar to the Mexican gordita and the South American arepa, a pupusa is a thick corn tortilla filled with goodies and fried in a pan.

California native Mauricio Prieto opened La Palmera just two weeks ago, in the old Stabby’s Cafe spot across from the Colossal Cafe in Minneapolis. And while his is a sit-down restaurant, the pupusas his El Salvadoran mother, Ana, makes are perfectly palm-sized, and almost cheaper than a pack of gum.

The restaurant’s full menu offers just three varieties of pupusas: bean and cheese ($1.75, top); a combination of pork, cheese, garlic, onion, and peppers called revueltas ($1.75, bottom); and the classic cheese and loroco ($2). Loroco is a green, tropical flower specific to Salvadoran cooking. It gives the pupusa a unique pungency, something like spinach mixed with okra mixed with parmesan cheese. La Palmera’s loroco pupusa is thick, oozing, and earthy. The revueltas is slightly sweet and never too salty, and the bean and cheese version is highly seasoned and would make a satisfying breakfast (which La Palmera serves every day). The restaurant’s accompanying curtido de repollo, a fermented slaw of cabbage and carrots typically served with pupusas, adds a welcome heat and contrasting crunch to the soft masa cakes.

Then there’s the sun-filled dining room in which you’ll enjoy your pupusas. I guess that’s why they call it “the palm tree.”

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Pupuseria La Palmera
El Salvadoran food in South Minneapolis

4157 Cedar Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55407
612.729.2025
HOURS:
Closed Mon
Tues-Thurs 8am-9pm
Fri 8am-9:30pm
Sat 7am-9:30pm
Sun 8am-7:30pm
CHEF / OWNER: Ana Prieto / Mauricio Prieto
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED: No / No
BAR: None
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Yes / Limited
ENTREE RANGE: $1.75-$11

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

John Garland / Heavy Table

Sassy Spoon Truck — @SassySpoonTruck

Clad in an unmistakable shade of pink, the Sassy Spoon Truck is dishing out “wholesome food with attitude.” Owner Tamara Brown is a dietitian. She’s dedicating her truck to high-quality meals that won’t put you in a food coma upon returning to the office.

“I wanted, instead of just teaching about healthy food, to serve it,” Brown says. “So, I’ve got a lot of good vegetable carbs – the idea is balancing blood sugar. Also, everything is gluten free, there’s no bread on the truck, and, as much as possible, we source locally and organic.”

On the streets for less than a month, she’s offering two or three combos for lunch each day. An absolute knockout is the Pig-Pen ($10) – a sizeable heap of miso-braised pulled pork accompanied by an equally huge pile of lightly ginger-dressed cabbage slaw. The pork picks up strands of delectable char from a quick stint on the flat-top grill. It’s slightly sweet and a little nutty from the miso. And notice how it’s not drowned in barbecue sauce and served on a bun? If this meal were reimagined at many other trucks, you’d probably get about half the amount of pork and slaw in two little sliders. We applaud the idea to ditch the bread and charge a little extra for more of the good stuff.

John Garland / Heavy Table

Marie Antoinette Crepes — @thatcrepetruck

Molly Miller began scraping out sweet and savory crepes in the Marie Antoinette Crepe truck last August. “I grew up eating them; my grandma made them, so I’m using her recipe,” says Miller. “Also, I went to France in 2003 and learned how they did it over there.”

Patrons get lunch and a show at the crepe truck – the iron is right on the counter for you to watch Miller expertly drag batter back and forth. The Croque Monsieur ($7) is among her most popular so far. It’s a wonderful collection of ham, swiss, Mornay sauce, and a mustard made with Stella Artois. It’s a little tough to cut with the plastic forks provided.  Luckily, the crepe is substantial enough to handle being rolled into a mini burrito. Our next visit will be for the egg, cheddar, and bacon jam breakfast crepe.

You can often find the truck at farmers markets – a savvy business move for a product that may be a little light for many people’s idea of lunch, but would make for a perfect walking-around snack while perusing produce. Make sure to seek her out when berries are in season. For now, raspberry preserves with white chocolate ($6) is a more than able substitute.

John Garland / Heavy Table

R.A. MacSammy’s — @RAMacsammys

Kevin Huyck debuted R.A. MacSammy’s at the St. Paul Winter Carnival in January. “I wanted a concept that would bring in a broad audience, and who doesn’t like mac and cheese?” he says. “We also have sandwiches, and as the weather warms up here, we’ll be adding either a salad or wrap. I’ve been playing with the idea of doing stuffed tomatoes, as a lighter cold entree. We’re trying to be an everyman’s food truck – not necessarily courting the gourmet crowd.”

Patrons can expect a weekly featured mac as well as the option build their own with a dozen or so ingredients added in for $0.50 each. Bacon has been, unsurprisingly, the most frequent add-in, but Brussels sprouts and broccoli have taken off as well.

We tried the Kentucky Hot Brown Mac ($8) – with bacon, sautéed mushrooms, halved cherry tomatoes, and cubes of turkey. The mac itself is pleasantly gooey with a good doneness to the noodles, though it’s not exactly distinguishable from any other competent restaurant mac you’ve had lately. A full order is a large undertaking – especially with bacon and turkey thrown into the mix. Light eaters can easily make do with a mini order ($4).

John Garland / Heavy Table

A Cupcake Social — @ACupcakeSocial

A Cupcake Social has been open in truck form for less than two months, though owners Jess Stone and Suzette Herr have been in the cupcake business for over a year. “We catered – brought our cupcakes to weddings and other events,” says Stone. “We looked into opening a location, but decided we wanted to be more mobile.”

This “gourmet mobile bakery,” as they call it, cycles through roughly 30 different flavors, and they do a lot of the baking on board. By far the most popular flavor has been Raspberry Burst – raspberry filling with raspberry-white chocolate buttercream, over vanilla and chocolate cake. “When we say ‘gourmet,’ I know that’s kind of a pseudo-term now, but they truly are,” Stone continues. “We use a lot of fresh fruits and we don’t use any shortening in our buttercream.”

They can often be found in tandem with the Home Street Home truck in St. Paul, though Stone says their biggest business happens in downtown Minneapolis. On our visit, we sampled the Salty Sweetness, Key Lime, and Tres Leches ($3 each, left to right, above). Overall we were struck by how light they came across, and as you might have already guessed, they were each impeccable.

John Garland / Heavy Table

Bacon Trolley — @bacontrolley

We were admittedly skeptical of the Bacon Trolley. A sandwich called The Spanker, comprising barbecue pork topped by pork belly? Bacon popcorn? “Just Bacon” a la carte? This had “half-baked idea” written all over it.

But this trolley is no folly. Open for about a month now, the concept is two years in the making. Owner Jennifer Stone, a restaurant industry veteran, enlisted Fernando Silva of Harriet Brasserie to design the menu. The food is pork-centric, but actually quite well balanced.

“I originally wanted to start a restaurant called Bacon,” says Stone. “I decided that it would be better suited to a food truck, but I didn’t really want a truck like everyone else has.”

Bacon Trolley’s Banh Mi ($8) features pork belly, which receives a 12-hour beer braise and gets sliced paper thin and caramelized on the griddle for service. Surprisingly, though, it’s not the focal point of the sandwich. Rather, it’s accoutrements that steal the show – a vibrant carrot slaw, sliced jalapenos, and a soft, flaky baguette coated with a homemade garlic aioli and a chili-bean pâté. The Carnitas tacos ($8) are also very worthy renditions.

John Garland / Heavy Table

Home Street Home — @HomeStrtHomeTrk

“We’re calling it globally inspired comfort food,” says owner Destiny Buron of Home Street Home truck. She quit her corporate job to live the dream as a chef. Now she and co-owner Daniel Kidd are slinging quesadillas, grilled cheese, pulled pork, and other classic lunch staples.

We found the Korean BBQ Tacos ($7) quite tasty, yet somewhat unsubstantial. The pork beef short ribs had a nice sweet glaze on them and the mung bean-daikon slaw was wonderfully refreshing. The problem was there wasn’t much of either, especially not enough to necessitate a double-wrapped tortilla. We’d suggest doubling the stuffing and charging another buck or two … though their current popularity suggests the formula is working just fine. ”We can’t keep them around,” says Buron. ”Our farmer can’t even supply us with enough short ribs; we’re looking for another supplier.”

We’ll stick to Home Street’s delectable burger ($8). The beef is grass-fed from Ridgeroll Farms in Buffalo, but the real star of the sandwich is the bun from St. Agnes bakery in St. Paul. The bun’s ethereal insides give way to a tougher (and grill-kissed) exterior. The blue cheese inside the patty is nearly liquefied, while the homemade citrus ketchup strikes the same sweet / bitter note as the grilled red peppers on top. It’s a harmonious collection, rounded out by a slice of creamy harvarti.

John Garland / Heavy Table

Neato’s Burgers — @NeatosBurgers

There may not be a more extensively Internet-chatted item among the new St. Paul trucks as the duck fat French fries from Neato’s Burgers. Even this author, who has all but sworn off fries and vowed to only eat a few bites, polished off a small order ($3) and secretly wished for a large ($5). They’re only faintly crispy and studded with large flecks of salt, and they feature a meltingly tender interior. They tell us the duck fat is sourced from a free-range duck farm in Pennsylvania.

“Once Porky’s closed down, we wanted to bring that kind of throwback burger back to the city of St. Paul,” says owner Tony Gutierrez. Their beef is ground daily and cooked on a ripping hot flat top for maximum char. A regular burger only sets you back $3 (or $4 with cheese), but opt for the Neato’s Deluxe ($6) with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and Neato Sauce, which is their version of Thousand Island dressing. And please, dear readers with lower cholesterol than yours truly, comment below and tell us about their peanut butter Goober burger, or any other St. Paul truck finds you’ve been digging as of late.

For far more food truck and cart reviews, check out The Heavy Table’s Street Food Directory.

Readers: Win Heavy Table pint glasses

The Tap loves restaurant tips from readers, so we’re awarding a Heavy Table pint glass to the best tipster each month. The Tap is the metro area’s comprehensive restaurant buzz roundup, so if you see a new or newly shuttered restaurant, or anything that’s “coming soon,” email Tap editor Jason Walker at

April’s winner: Dana Murdoch of St. Paul

George & the Dragon (now open)

813 W 50th St, Minneapolis | 612.355.9114

After talking to owner Fred Navarro, it sounds like George & the Dragon opened right amid its key demographic.

“Eighty-five percent of the guests that have come in the first couple weeks have been from a four- to five-block radius of the restaurant,” Navarro said. “Of those guests I would say 40 percent, maybe a much higher percentage, have come in at least several times since we opened.”

Not surprising, as George & the Dragon occupies the rebuilt corner that famously burned while housing Heidi’s and Blackbird. For two years, the Malt Shop diner was the only option for blocks; now, though, area diners can explore Navarro’s varied menu. Most popular item so far?

“The fish and chips,” Navarro said. “For our beer batter, we are using the Fulton Lonely Blonde; the response that we have received is that the beer batter is nice and crisp, but not greasy.

“All of the burgers have had great feedback I think due to the bun, baked fresh daily by New French, and that we use arugula instead of just a leaf lettuce for the burgers. It adds a different flavor profile.”

The pub has nine beers on tap, including three poured on nitrogen: Old Speckled Hen, Boulder Mojo IPA, and Young’s Double Chocolate Stout. With locals like Harriet, Brau Brothers, Summit, and Fulton thrown in, G&D sticks to the approach I’ve noticed at other new local restaurants like Blackbird, Sparks, and Mona: Use our wealth of available beer to craft a small but rock-solid tap list that appeals to beer nerds and casual drinkers alike.

George & the Dragon now has Sunday brunch, too, and Navarro said he was eager for summer ingredients to start popping into his menu, especially the daily curry.

Wait times have been long since George & the Dragon opened, and Navarro said to call ahead because a limited number of reservations are available each night.

Ashley Laflin / Heavy Table

Mill City Cafe (closing May 27; planning to open in new location)

2205 California St NE, Minneapolis | 612.788.6188

The Mill City Cafe, a bit of a well-kept secret in the local brunch-goer world, has announced it’s closing while it prepares to move into an undisclosed new space in Northeast Minneapolis.

OK, Mill City Cafe is such a well-kept secret that I had never heard of it until a friend tipped me off, saying, “That place has the best brunch for your buck in the city. Nothing over $10 and all really good stuff. And a great patio doesn’t hurt, as well as good bloodys, and even beer if you want it.” Amen!

So, you’ve got a week to get your Mill City awesome veggie burger fix before they take a relocation break.

World Street Kitchen (opens late 2012)

2743 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis

This is a good trend: First, Smack Shack announced plans to open a restaurant offshoot of its popular food truck. Now, Sameh and Saed Wadi told Rick Nelson that they’re opening a permanent location of their World Street Kitchen. The Wadis, locally famous as the proprietors of Saffron, will continue to sell their twist on street food like rice bowls, tacos, and sandwiches at the new outpost, which Rick says will open later this year.

In a similar vein, it’s been rumored that Chef Shack plans to open a permanent restaurant in the just-closed Jack’s at 46th and Bryant.

Prairie Kitchen & Bar (opens May 25)

1300 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.596.4640

It lost two of Minneapolis’ most high-profile restaurants, Manny’s and Oceanaire, so the Hyatt Regency is fighting back with Prairie Kitchen & Bar, opening May 25.

According to a press release, chef Aaron Hagerdorn’s menu is influenced by the Scandinavian and farming heritage of Minnesota. “Our new menu is a tribute to Minnesota’s unique cuisine, with an emphasis on fresh regional produce, meat, grains, and dairy products,” Hagerdorn said. Quite a broad emphasis.

Since it’s serving a hotel, the kitchen will be open all day for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night, and it will serve all sorts of stuff, from a smoked trout cake benedict to a salmon BLT to garlic and veal meatballs. There’s even waterzooi, a traditional Flemish chicken-and-vegetable stew that I had to Google.

That little section of Nicollet needs something to liven it up, so, what the heck, let’s root for Prairie Kitchen. Otherwise, it’s going to be awfully barren from Brit’s down to Eat Street.

NOW OPEN

• The Left Handed Cook, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market) | 612.208.0428
• Devil’s Advocate, 89 S 10th St, Minneapolis | 612.843.2260
• Tadka Indian Bistro, 1221 W Lake St, Minneapolis | 612.824.6342
• Pupuseria las Palmeras, 4159 Cedar Ave, Minneapolis.
• Casper’s Cherokee Sirloin Room, 4625 Nicols Rd, Eagan | 651.454.6744
• Angel Food Bakery, 80 S 9th St, Minneapolis | 612.238.1435
• Harriet Brasserie, 2724 W 43rd St, Minneapolis | 612.354.2197
• George and the Dragon, 813 W 50th St, Minneapolis | 612.355.9114
• Mona, 333 S 7th St, Minneapolis | 612.259.8636
• Don Julio, 4460 N Hwy 61, White Bear Lake | 651.407.2888
• Agua Brava, 7112 Bass Lake Rd, New Hope | 763.432.2785
• Falafel King, 1199 W 7th St, St. Paul | 651.207.5777
• Selma’s Ice Cream, 3419 Saint Croix Trl S, Afton
• Bread and Pickle, 4135 W Lake Harriet Pkwy, Minneapolis | 612.767.9009
• Tin Fish, 3000 E Calhoun Pkwy, Minneapolis | 612.823.5840
• Rodizio Grill, 12197 Elm Creek Blvd N, Maple Grove | 763.657.1133
• Lynden’s Soda Fountain, 490 Hamline Ave S, St. Paul | 651.235.5646
• Burnsville Ale House, 3809 Hwy 13, Burnsville | 952.882.2911
• Super Moon Buffet, 6445 Wayzata Blvd, St. Louis Park
• Wellman’s Pub, 26 5th St N, Minneapolis | 612.659.9000

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

• Sea Salt, 4801 Minnehaha Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.721.8990
• Hajime Japanese, 10950 Club W Parkway NE, Blaine | 763.780.7944
• Sparks, 230 Cedar Lake Rd S, Minneapolis | 612.259.8943
• Harriet Brewing Taproom, 3036 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis | 612.225.2184
• Bullwinkle Saloon, 1429 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.338.2855
• Ze’s Diner, 3448 Denmark Ave, Eagan | 612.207.6793

CLOSED / CLOSING:

• Mill City Cafe, 2205 California St NE, Minneapolis. Closing May 27; planning to open in new location. | 612.788.6188
• Coffee Gallery, 1011 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis. Closing this spring. | 612.215.2626
• Viva Brazil, 913 W Lake St, Minneapolis
• Tschida Bakery, 1116 Rice St, St. Paul
• Chai’s Thai, 414 1/2 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis
• Minnehaha Coffee, 4554 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis
• Jack’s, 818 W 46th St, Minneapolis
• Risotto, 610 W Lake St, Minneapolis
• Royal Orchid, 625 Marquette Ave (skyway), Minneapolis
• Acropol Inn, 748 Grand Ave, St. Paul
• Caribe, 791 Raymond Ave, St. Paul
• Nick and Eddie, 1612 Harmon Pl, Minneapolis

COMING UP:
Minneapolis

• Maruso Street Food and Cocktails, 715 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis | 612.333.0100
• Somos Peru, 6009 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens in May. | 612.244.3400
• Azia Market Bar & Restaurant, 2550 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.813.1200
• Rincon 38, 3801 Grand Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | 612.408.7063
• Well Seasoned, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens this spring. | 612.886.2489
• Cowboy Jack’s, 126 5th St N, Minneapolis. Opens this spring.
• Icehouse, 2528 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis. Opens June 7.
• J.J.’s Coffee Company & Wine Bar, 1800 W Lake St, Minneapolis. Opens this spring.
• Little Tijuana, 17 E 26th St, Minneapolis. Reopening this spring. | 612.872.0578
• Cafe Maude at Loring, 1612 Harmon Pl, Minneapolis
• Bar Louie, 1320 Lagoon Ave, Minneapolis. Opens this spring.
• Birdhouse, 2516 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | 612.377.2213
• Northbound Smokehouse and Brewpub, 2724 E 38th St, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.328.1450
• Wings N Things, 324 West Broadway, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.735.0637
• Smack Shack, Washington Ave N and 6th Ave N, Minneapolis. Opens this summer.
• El Burrito Mercado, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens in June.
• People’s Organic, IDS Center Crystal Court, Minneapolis. Opens July 2.
• Blue Door Pub, 3448 42nd Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens in August.
• The Pourhouse, 10 5th St S, Minneapolis. Opens this summer.
• New Bohemia, 233 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis
• Primebar, 3001 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis
• Indeed Brewing, 711 15th Ave NE, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.643.1226
• Tangiers Eatery and Lounge, 1st St N, Minneapolis. Opens in September.
• New Don Saunders restaurant, 2115 W 21st St (old Kenwood Cafe), Minneapolis
• Dangerous Man Brewing, 1300 2nd St NE, Minneapolis | 612.377.4164
• The Original Just Turkey Restaurant, 3758 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis
• Rusty Taco, 522 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis
• Alley Sports Tavern, 100 6th St N, Minneapolis
• Yogurt Lab, 80 8th St S, Minneapolis (IDS Center skyway)
• Moonlight Cafe, 1907 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis
• Dilla’s Ethiopian Restaurant, 1813 Riverside Ave, Minneapolis
• Unnamed rooftop restaurant in old Shinders, 733 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis
• Unnamed Kim Bartmann restaurant, 1014 E 38th St, Minneapolis
• Burch, 1942 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis. Isaac Becker’s planned steakhouse in old Burch Pharmacy; opens in late 2012 / early 2013.
• :D-Spot, Dinkytown, Minneapolis
• Burger Night, Minneapolis. Still looking for location. | 612.217.0102
• Humble Pie, 822 W 36th St., Minneapolis. Kim Bartmann’s revamp of Gigi’s. | 612.825.0818
• Rocky and Shem’s Ice Cream Shoppe, 56th St and Chicago Ave, Minneapolis. Opens late 2012 / early 2013.

St. Paul

• Cupcake, 949 Grand Ave, St. Paul. Opens this summer.
• TruBerry Frozen Yogurt, 949 Grand Ave, St. Paul. Opens this summer.
• La Loma, Town Square skyway (6th St and Cedar St), St. Paul. Opens this summer.
• Bon Vie Cafe / A Piece of Cake, combining later this spring at 485 Selby Ave, St. Paul | 651.846.0016
• Cossetta’s, 211 7th St W, St. Paul. Existing market opening new rooftop restaurant; opens this summer. | 651.222.3476
• Blood and Chocolates, 495 Selby Ave, St. Paul. Opens in 2012. | 651.492.4799
• Damera Ethiopian Bar & Restaurant, 823 University Ave, St. Paul
• Chopstiks Cafe, 501 University Ave, St. Paul

Greater Twin Cities Area

• Ike’s, 17805 Hwy 7, Minnetonka. Opens this spring.
• Sweet Ducky Cupcakery, 117 W Churchill St #2, Stillwater. Opens this spring. | 651.472.1150
• Masu Sushi & Robata, Mall of America. Opens this spring.
• Byblos Lebanese Grill, 14637 County Rd 11, Burnsville | 612.327.3663
• Giuseppe’s, 15090 Chippendale Ave, Rosemount (moving from former location nearby)
• Excelsior Brewing Company, 421 3rd St, Excelsior. Beers available on tap this summer. | 952.474.7837
• Pizza Luce, 800 W 66th St, Richfield. Opens in June.
• Tavern Grill, 772 Bielenberg Dr, Woodbury. Opens June 5.
• Spice Thai Cafe, 7704 160th St, Lakeville. Opens in June.
• Nadia Cakes, 11650 Fountains Dr, Suite 207, Maple Grove. Opens in July.
• Candyland, 212 N Main St, Stillwater. Opens this summer.
• Sole Mio, 1750 Weir Dr, Woodbury. Opens in July.
• Moe’s Southwest Grill, Penn Ave S and American Blvd, Bloomington. Opens in August.
• Bread, Coffee & Cake, 750 Minnesota 110, Mendota Heights. Opens in August.
• Hurricane Grill & Wings, Burnsville. Opens in October.
• Raku Modern Japanese Cuisine, 5371 W 16th St (Shops at West End), St. Louis Park. Opens this summer.
• Ruze Bakery and Lounge, 4669 Lakeland Ave N, Robbinsdale

The Tap is the Heavy Table’s guide to area restaurant openings, closings, and other major events. The Tap is compiled and published biweekly by Heavy Table writer Jason Walker. If you have tips for The Tap, please email Jason at

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

A man cannot live on food and writing alone, which is why I also play a regular game of poker. And thanks to the ancient affinity between cards and booze, our group has turned into an informal beer club. We bring beers from across the state, country, and world to each game in bombers, bottles, cans, and growlers.

Last week we gathered together a group of players (including Heavy Table contributors John Garland and Jason Walker) to put Summit Brewing’s two newest offerings through their paces.

The first was Summer Ale, a summer seasonal with 4.9% ABV and 32 IBU that the brewery described as a “new take on a classic German Kölsch: a crisp, refreshing brew offering elegant fruity and flora aromas and toasted malt qualities.” It replaces Summit’s Hefe Weizen as the brewery’s summer seasonal.

The second was Saga IPA, a year-round release that clocks in at 6.4% ABV with 80 IBU. The brewery calls it “an assertive brew with a pronounced hop flavor and tropical fruit aromas.” [CORRECTION: We erroneously stated that Saga had replaced the Hefe Weizen.]

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

KARSTEN: Let’s start out with Texas Hold ‘Em. Simple.

JAMES: Ante? Blinds?

KARSTEN: We might want to do blinds, with this many people.

JAMES: OK, blinds. Once we get the flop we’ll pour some samples and talk some beer.

DAVE [raising before the flop]: I’m gonna raise.

JAMES: COME ON.

DAVE: Come on what?

JAMES: You’re allowed to raise, I’m allowed to give you [guff]. OK, anyway, let’s pour the Summer Ale.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

[samples go around the table]

JOHN: I’m bored. This beer bores me.

JAMES: What bores you about it?

JOHN: It’s too light — there’s not enough body, it’s not as substantial as the rest of their beers. I know it’s a Summer Ale, but it tastes like carbonation is the main driving flavor component.

KEVIN: It’s pretty weak. I taste carrot undertones from the carrot I ate five minutes ago…

JASON: I’m not hateful. It feels like on a hot day it’d be nice. I like it when breweries do beers like this that aren’t trying to hit you over the head with something. That said, I’m not sure I’d buy this and feel like I’d gotten value.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

JAMES: I would worry about the value prospect, but I like the balance, and I’m tasting a little bit of astringency … I really feel like if I’d just mowed the lawn I could pound one of these and really enjoy it.

I know that sounds like faint praise, but there’s really a place for that kind of beer. This is not my new favorite beer, but also I respect it and I understand it.

KARSTEN: In the context of it being a Summer Ale, it’s OK, but it’s probably not much more than that. I agree that it’d be good to pound after mowing the lawn, but it’s not a craving that a PBR couldn’t satisfy. And the value proposition is probably not there …

DAVE: I’m with all that. The first thing I tasted was that drinkability, but there’s a bitter edge that feels a little out of place if you’re going to be chugging something. Which I love to do.

JOHN: I feel like there are brands I know and look for when I’m looking for a sessionable beer, and Summit’s not one of them.

JAMES: So it’s kind of out of character for the brewery.

JOHN: I’d say so.

KARSTEN: The bitter quality wasn’t really an issue for me, because of the European palate for this kind of beer … it reminds me of a European-style Pilsner. But it doesn’t have the body that a European-style Pilsner would have.

JAMES: Well, let’s try the Saga IPA and see how that goes down.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

[more samples go around]

KARSTEN: I’d call this an easy-drinking IPA. It doesn’t hit you over the head. It is nice and balanced, but I’d also put it into the easy-drinking category.

DAVE: I’d like a little more body in my IPA.

JAMES: I like the balance — I don’t like my IPAs to be palate-destroyingly astringent, and this isn’t.

JOHN: It find it interesting, the hops on this — you smell it, you taste it right away, and then 30 seconds after I taste it, I’m still tasting that exact same hops flavor.

KEVIN: It’s good. But I guess when I go for an IPA, I go for something stronger. I like the [Summit] Horizon Red better than this.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

JAMES: The Horizon Red’s really good.

JASON: I agree with you, Jim, that I don’t always want something strong in an IPA, and given that it’s Summit, I might just by it for that reason. It’s going to be good.

JAMES: I think maybe what’s going on here with these two beers is that Summit is aiming at where the mass market is going. Which is people want to try something a little different, they want to try an IPA, but they don’t actually want what the craft brewers and micro brewers are bringing, so this is a really nice halfway strep between popular macro brew swill and incredibly intense, crush-your-palate specialist beer.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

And maybe if all of us are into the extreme beers, these beers will taste like, “Eh, you’re not really bringing your A-game,” but if you’re coming at it from a Grain Belt Premium perspective, it’s like, “Oh, wow, there’s a lot going on here, but I can handle it.”

JOHN: The taste that I’m picking up is that the hops are a little more piney and resin-y, whereas their normal IPA is just more acidic all around. This is a little more biting — it’s not more hops, but it’s a more biting hops quality to it.

JAMES: Piney and resin-y are two good adjectives for it. One, they’re cool adjectives, and two, I am getting kind of a “northern forest walkabout” feel from it, which I like. And I think also that really suits the branding of it, with that Norse mythology thing going on.

KEVIN: The other thing, too: The package has the hops and malts statistics on it. I’m not an expert on hops and malts and but I feel like they’re setting expectations too high here.

JAMES: You’re not getting a multi-layered symphony of flavor?

JASON: This is not the beer you need those statistics for.

KARSTEN: They’re definitely catering to the craft beer crowd, while the Summer Ale is the easy drinking, very vanilla summer ale.

JAMES: Anything else anyone wants to say before I shut the recorder off and we can actually enjoy ourselves and drink beer and play cards?

[a tumbleweed blows across the table]

JAMES: Boom.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Kim Ode asserts that rhubarb is having its moment.

While this might be a convenient position for a person with a newly released book called Rhubarb Renaissance (MNHS Press, $16.95), it’s also one that sustains scrutiny — not only is rhubarb gloriously in season at the moment, it’s having a resurgence on the menus of Upper Midwestern restaurants that are scanning their own backyards for ingredients with a connection to the local landscape.

Just two examples: On a recent visit to The Bachelor Farmer, we enjoyed the bright bite of pickled rhubarb in a dish of roasted pork belly, sunny side up pheasant egg, and pea shoots; and The Black Forest Inn is featuring an asparagus and rhubarb strudel as part of its Spargelfest menu [PDF].

“Chefs are looking across the horizon and asking, ‘What aren’t we using?’” says Ode, who is also the author of Baking With the St. Paul Bread Club and a features writer for the Star Tribune. “And local local, of course — there are things we’ve discarded here, in Minnesota, as too homely and corny.” “Bebop-a-rebop, rhubarb pie,” she adds, a convenient musical shorthand for the tart vegetable’s humble status.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

We recently joined Ode and her husband, woodworker and photographer John Danicic,  in their Morningside home for a five-course meal of rhubarb. A rhubarb feast may sound at first hearing like an awful lot of the fibrous red stuff, but it really wasn’t — the meal had a sense of flow, progress, and even drama. And therein lies the story.

We kicked off our meal in the kitchen, with a prosecco cocktail spiked with a sweet / tart rhubarb base, and noshed upon rows of gorgeous crostini with goat cheese, prosciutto, and rhubarb chutney.

“Rhubarb is just such a good foundation for a chutney,” Ode says. “With a lot of chutneys, there’s so much going on that it just becomes … a chutney. You can’t identify it as a, say, blueberry chutney. So the first time I did it, I completely lost the rhubarb. So I bumped it up.”

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

The result is a talented supporting player on a stage filled with stars: “There are your chutney flavors, a little goat cheese and cream cheese combined to take a bit of the edge off the goat, and then prosciutto because… it’s prosciutto,” Ode says. (She then points out that the stuff she’s using is made in Iowa, by La Quercia.)

Like the rest of the elegant-with-a-twist recipes in Rhubarb Renaissance, the crostini were simple to assemble, and had an admirable sense of balance. They were creamy and crunchy, bright and salty — flavors and textures pulling at one another but ultimately in harmony. That rhubarb can be both savory and multidimensional may come as a surprise to some readers, but that idea is really at the heart of Ode’s book; while Rhubarb Renaissance features dessert recipes (including one of the best sweet-tart crisps we’ve tried in years), desserts are somewhat beside the point.

Ode recalls: “When [Minnesota Historical Society Press] said: ‘Can you do rhubarb?’ I said ‘I know rhubarb.’ Then they said: ‘Well, what we’d really like to do is explore the savory side.’ And I said: ‘What savory side?’ That’s where it took my out of the church cookbook upbringing and caused me to ask: “Well, what can you do with it?’”

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Here are a few of the recipes from the book that illustrate what you can do with it:

Spiced Rhubarb-Squash Ravioli
Good Medicine Lettuce Wraps
Halibut Skewers with Mango-Rhubarb Salsa
and Shrimp in Kimonos

These last items were one of the reasons I felt personally motivated to explore and review Ode’s book, so when the wok came out and Ode began enrobing shrimp with wonton wrappers and scoops of a savory rhubarb compote, I got the distinct feeling that I was in the right place at the right time.

Shrimp in Kimonos are absurdly fun, a novelty dish that tastes delicious: Fried in canola until crisp, the wonton wrappers contain a symphony of flavor that draws up the seafood’s natural sweetness and the rhubarb’s compensatory brightness, with the crunch of the fried wrapper rebounding off the tenderness of the shrimp.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

“I had seen a recipe for wonton-wrapped shrimp, and that was all they were, shrimp wrapped in wontons, served with a sauce,” says Ode. “I had discovered — it was kind of intuition — that sweet seafood would complement a tart ingredient. Lemon and fish. So then the question was, what kind of compote you want to come up with.”

“I wanted to do some herbs with this one: rosemary, and ginger because ginger and rhubarb are just good … I fiddled with that. It was one of those recipes that we hit it on the first time.”

“You changed the shrimp size,” corrects her husband, John.

Ode nods. “You find the right-sized shrimp that works with the proportions of a wonton wrapper,” she says. That turned out to be 20- to 25-count shrimp, smaller than the Costco behemoths Ode had originally tried.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Along with the shrimp, which were substantial without being heavy, dinner includes a remarkably balanced (again, that word, but that’s the key here) and light-on-its feet salad of confetti-ed kale, rhubarb, and candied walnuts and a showstopping dessert: rhubarb meringue tassies. Ode describes them in her book as “a perfect exclamation point to a summer meal on the porch,” and that’s how we found them, too.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

The tassies are just the thing to inspire awe in a dinner guest: They present themselves with martial flair, a platoon of tiny cups shaped from cream cheese crust filled with rhubarb curd and wearing perfect miniature helmets shaped from meringue.

It’s no coincidence that we didn’t end the meal with a classic strawberry-rhubarb pie — Ode struggled with that classic pairing as she sought to write a book that took rhubarb in a new direction.

“My initial impulse was to put my foot down and make it a strawberry-free book,” she recalls. “But I was persuaded that I should have one recipe in there because people were going to go to the index and ‘riffriffriff’ look for strawberry-rhubarb. So there is a recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie in there, but because strawberries take to balsamic vinegar so well, there’s a big dose of balsamic in there which kind of savories it a bit.”

When asked what sort of reader she’d written the book for, Ode pauses, and then replies: “I wrote it for my generation and the one below me that has grown up with rhubarb as cobblers and crisps, but have discovered that there are other ways to treat food. I wanted to surprise people who think they know about rhubarb.

“People will go: ‘Wow, I’ve never had rhubarb like this.’”

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Kim Ode will host a lightly catered conversation featuring herself and authors Brett Laidlaw (Trout Caviar: Recipes from a Northern Forager) and Beth Dooley (The Northern Heartland Kitchen) next month. It takes place Monday, June 18, from 7-8 pm in the Barnes & Noble Galleria Store, 3225 W. 69th St. in Edina.

Rhubarb Meringue Tassies
from Rhubarb Renaissance by Kim Ode

These bite-size treats need to be baked the same day you plan to serve them, although the curd and dough can be made several days ahead of time. The results provide a perfect exclamation point to a summer meal on the porch. You’ll need a mini-muffin pan for these cookies. Makes 24 cookies.

Crust:

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

1 ¼ cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
pinch salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut in small pieces
4 ounces cold cream cheese, cut in small pieces
1 recipe Rhubarb Curd (below)

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. With a pastry blender or your fingers, work the butter into the flour until the butter is evenly distributed in pea-sized clumps. Add the cream cheese and continue to mix the dough until it begins to come together in a mass. Knead in the bowl, squeezing and pressing until you have a ball of dough. Turn out onto a counter and press into a thick disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour and up to 2 days.

To make the tassies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Cut or pinch off a piece of dough about the size of a large grape and roll it into a ball. Press the dough into a mini-muffin cup, making sure the bottom isn’t too thin and shaping the sides so they’re level with the pan. Fill each cup with about 1 teaspoon rhubarb curd. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and firm around the edges.

While the tassies are baking, make the meringue.

Meringue:

2 egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
pinch salt
½ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla

In bowl of a standing mixer, beat egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt on medium-high speed until frothy and the beater begins to leave a path. Begin adding sugar one spoonful at a time, slowly but steadily, until meringue holds a stiff peak when beaters are lifted. Add vanilla and mix until just combined.

After the tassies are baked, reduce the oven heat to 325 degrees. Top each warm tassie with a dollop of meringue or use a pastry bag to pipe a swirl onto each cookie. Bake for 10 minutes, or until meringue begins to color and set. Using a fork, carefully lift each tassie and place it on a wire rack to cool. Serve at once, or refrigerate the tassies until serving time.

Rhubarb Curd:

Like the more traditional lemon curd, this rhubarb variation can be used in a variety of ways. It’s great on warm scones or toast or dolloped alongside a slice of angel food cake or on a bowlful of fresh strawberries. But if you want to fuss a bit, it’s fabulous spread between crepes for a stacked cake or used to fill bite-size rhubarb tassies. Those recipes follow. Makes about 1 ½ cups.

2 ½ cups rhubarb, cut in half-inch pieces
⅓  cup plus ½ cup sugar, divided
⅓  cup cranberry juice
4 egg yolks
pinch salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut in four pieces

Combine rhubarb, ⅓ cup sugar, and cranberry juice in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until rhubarb breaks down into a sauce, about 10 minutes. Set aside.

Bring about 2 inches of water to a boil in a saucepan over which a medium bowl will fit. While the water is heating, whisk together the egg yolks, remaining ½ cup sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Reduce heat to keep the water at a simmer and place the bowl over the saucepan, whisking constantly until the yolk mixture begins to thicken.

When the yolks are quite warm, whisk in the rhubarb mixture, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Add the butter a piece at a time, mixing well, then set aside to cool. Refrigerate for up to a week.

Owners Natalie and Josh Kelly; My Minnesota Farmer peppers & cucumbers; Bossy Acres Sunflower Shoots

An online farmers market makes access to local foods easier for Twin Cities’ customers

Serious locavores make a lot of effort to buy from their favorite farmers and discover those uniquely regional specialties that make eating locally so enjoyable. While it is easier to procure your weekly farm rations in Minnesota compared to many parts of the country, Minnesotans endure long winter months without fresh local vegetables. The limited number of winter markets, however, doesn’t mean farmers in the area aren’t working. There are still cows, sheep, and goats to milk, and chickens that lay eggs.

Natalie and Josh Kelly started Twin Cities Local Food to help make sourcing food from local farms a little bit easier. Twin Cities Local Food is in an online farmer’s market that lets local farms using sustainable agricultural practices market their products directly to customers in the Twin Cities, all year. The business was born out of the couple’s desire for access to more local food in the winter months and the challenge of coordinating on-farm purchases. Even though locally grown foods are becoming more abundant in markets and coops, there’s a growing segment of the community that gets a lot of satisfaction in buying directly from the farm.

While the internet limits personal connection of buying at a market, the Twin Cities Local Food web site allows farmers to describe their farm and explain their practices, so conscientious customers can make informed decisions about the food they purchase. The web site offers a variety of fresh, seasonal produce, grass fed meats, dairy, eggs, honey and some unique Minnesota finds like camelina and sunflower oils. Twin Cities Local Food even has fresh milled, whole grains that are grown and milled on the same organic farm. Try figuring out what farm grew your flour in a bag at the supermarket.

Twin Cities Local Food offers the convenience of shopping online. Customers are able to shop from Friday through Wednesday morning, and pick up purchases on Thursday afternoon.  There are currently pickup locations in South Minneapolis and in Savage. Twin Cities Local Food plans to serve areas throughout the Twin Cities as the business grows.

According to Natalie Kelly, co-owner of Twin Cities Local Food, “We think Minnesota farmers are doing some great things for the local food community, and we’re excited to be able to offer them another venue to show off.” Natalie and her business partner / husband, Josh, also think the service can benefit the community by providing more economic sustainability for local farms, and giving customers access to healthier, tastier, and minimally processed foods.

For more information, visit the web site at www.twincitieslocalfood.com.

Susan Pagani / Heavy Table

A tasty nut is a fuel for all things. Like a loyal pet, this small but satisfying portion of protein tucks neatly into our pockets while we adventure outdoors, stays piled at our elbow while we work, and provides a natural complement — and ballast — to our beer while we relax. Lately, our nut of choice has been Barsy’s Almonds “Smokies,” a combination of soy sauce, hickory, and brewers yeast on a roasted almond so addictive that, although we buy them in bulk, they have to be hidden around the house in small quantities so that certain people do not consume the entirety in one sitting.

Barsy’s Almonds are produced by Minneapolis locals Barbara Spenader and Jason Hendrycks. Like many a small-batch food project, Smokies were originally created to be given out as Christmas gifts. “I found a recipe for smoked almonds,” says Spenader, “and I thought, ‘Well, I can do that — and do it better.’ So I started tinkering. The Smokies recipe doesn’t bear any relation to the original, but that was what made me want to see if I could do it.”

Susan Pagani / Heavy Table

Needless to say, friends and relatives went nuts for the savory holiday treat. At that time, Spenader and Hendrycks, good friends as well as business partners, were both working in the creative department of a mail order company. They spent their lunch breaks walking around the neighborhood, talking about how great it would be to start their own company. When people started telling them to sell the nuts, they took it as a sign.

In 2008, they introduced Smokies at the Midtown Farmers Market, where they were warmly received. Soon, the kind people of Corcoran neighborhood were offering up suggestions for new flavors. “They’d say, ‘How about something with cinnamon?’ and we’d try to come up with something familiar, but a little more exotic,” says Spenader.

Recipe development at Barsy’s is a slow and painstaking process, sometimes months of trial and error. Neither Spenader nor Hendryks have any professional cooking experience to draw upon, almonds can be a challenging medium — and then there are the parameters they’ve set for themselves: “We never add preservatives or fats,” Spenader says, “we cook them lighter than you’d find in something at the drugstore, and they have to be dry enough to store, but we also have to find ways to keep the ingredients on because we don’t have fat to deliver that flavor.”

Susan Pagani / Heavy Table

So far, in addition to the Smokies, they’ve successfully created two more savories — Hotties and Stuffies — and a couple of sweets aptly named Sweeties and Naughties. The team is currently working on a cumin and garlic almond and something Spenader calls the “double almond,” an intense combination of vanilla and almond flavors. And there’s a honey mustard project that has them both completely stymied: “It’s so easy for it to turn bitter — we can’t seem to stop it from tasting like a like a vitamin capsule came open, which is not the effect we’re looking for!” Spenader says. “The stuff you buy in the store is made with a creepy powder. We don’t want to do that — we want to use real mustard and horseradish.”

Spenader and Hendryks are experimenting with other nut varieties that can be grown locally. Sunflower seeds are easy to source from  Minnesota or the Dakotas, but roast so quickly they present a whole new set of challenges. “We’re also looking at hazelnuts,” says Spenader, “but the hazelnut industry is just beginning here. We would need for it to mature to the point where we could get consistent availability and size. But we’re watching it closely — I think we’re going to plant hazelnuts in the yard and see how it goes.”

In the meantime, there are the existing five flavors, which are a fine snack on their own or paired with beer, hard cider, and root beer, as we have done here.

Susan Pagani / Heavy Table

Hotties
Hotties taste of really good barbecue, spicy hot with plenty of smoke, a flash of vinegar, and a lingering sweetness. We like a handful with the fresh, lightly sweet, and peppery Saison Nourrice from Harriet Brewing — though the two do seem to bring out the hot in one another. If you prefer to downplay the spice, you might like the Crispin Cider Lansdowne, which smooths down the heat with mellow fruit and a subtle sweetness that reminds us of graham crackers (in a good way).

Naughties
Naughties combine a dusting of chocolate and cinnamon with the zing of cayenne pepper, just the thing for a late afternoon snack. They make a brilliant couple with Brau Brothers Moo Joos, a dreamy oatmeal milk stout. The almond rounds out the beer’s chocolate and coffee flavors and smooths over the bittersweet notes.

Susan Pagani / Heavy Table

Smokies
The salt, yeast, and smoke of these almonds pair well with many a fermented beer, but we like it best with sweet, smooth root beer. We recently had the opportunity to try Smokies with Dorothy’s Isle of Pines Root Beer — famous for having been boiled in her giant kettle and served to folks paddling past her cabin in the Boundary Waters throughout the middle of the last century — which has a pleasantly unexceptional flavor and goes down easy on account of low carbonation. One day, we will decant the root beer, take it and the Smokies in our canoe, and relive the magic.

Stuffies
If you do not favor smoke, Stuffies may be the savory choice for you. They combine sage and onion, a flavor that goes quite nicely with sweet Schell’s Maifest , which tastes fruity — sometimes citrus, sometimes banana. If that is out of season, try Rush River Small Axe Golden Ale. It smells a bit like grass and has a light, crisp flavor that only enhances Stuffies’ herby charm. This is the stuff of summer.

Sweeties
If it were a good idea to drink beer in the morning, we would combine a Surly Coffee Bender with Sweeties. These almonds are coated in East Indian spices, so that they taste like creamy chai-spiced tea and black pepper. In tandem with the smooth, cold-press coffee flavors of the Bender, they are pretty much heaven.

Buying notes: Barsy’s Almonds are no longer available at Twin Cities farmers markets, but you can find them at many of the local co-ops and grocery stores — and, if traveling, in 10 other states. Prices vary ($3-$4 per 4oz). 

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Anyone who knows a bit about gardening or can find their way around a farmer’s market knows that a tomato is not a tomato is not a tomato — they vary in terms of size, flavor, lifespan, and so forth. Bushel Boy Farms, the Owatonna-based grower that puts fresh tomatoes on local shelves on a year-round basis, have begun marketing a new variety of tomato: bigger, supposedly more “fresh-from-the-garden”-tasting Bubba tomatoes.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

The first thing we noticed upon approaching our Bubba samples were that they had the fragrance of garden tomatoes — they were redolent with the volatile compounds that makes tomatoes smell, well, so tomato-y. It was a welcome change from the standard-issue store tomato, and a sign of what was to come: Bubbas pack moderate but noticeable flavor, and are not merely crispy and wet, nor hard and fibrous as some durable but unpleasant store tomatoes tend to be. In terms of their innards, Bubbas are a deep, consistent red with evenly distributed seeds.

According to Bushel Boy, the tomatoes vary from $2-3 a pound this time of year, priced similarly to other Bushel Boy vine-ons. They also last about as long on the shelf.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

Chef Jon Hunt’s Rinata topped our list of five overlooked Minneapolis restaurants last summer, and though Sparks, his latest venture with business partner Amor Hantous, launched with a similar lack of fanfare earlier this spring, it’s unlikely to stay a secret for long. Blending seamlessly into the leafy, family-oriented Bryn Mawr neighborhood in Minneapolis, Sparks is wide open — literally, with its garage-door-like front windows raised in the warm weather — to welcome customers of all ages with its simple yet satisfying wood-fired dishes. While the wide-ranging menu, spanning Western Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Mexico, isn’t without its flaws, its strongest dishes will leave you thinking about them long after you leave.

Small plates comprise a good third of Sparks’ menu, and the best is the least obvious starter. The bulgogi tacos ($8 for two) marry the fermented fire of kimchi with tender beef, crunchy vegetables, zesty salsa, and a cool drizzle of sour cream. Each order comes with two extra tortillas, but you’re not going to share, so order multiples if numerous taco fans are seated at your table. Equally strong is the Greek salad ($7), a substantial platter of crisp cucumber spears, salty feta, briny olives, and ripe tomatoes. Fresh, filling and properly dressed, the salad practically dances across your tastebuds, though cilantro-phobes may shy away from its generous sprinkle.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

The hummus ($5) and tzatziki ($5) arrive with bowls of warm, hearty pita that are easy to swallow without the dips, but it would be a shame to ignore them. The thick, red-tinged hummus is made from cannellini beans, so while it lacks some of the nuttiness of a chickpea-based spread, the smokiness of the paprika adds another welcome dimension. The creamy tzatziki puts its garlicky-ness in the driver’s seat — awesome if you’re a garlic fan, not so much if you find its flavor to be overwhelming. But even though we’re huge fans of garlic, the Catalan garlic soup ($3 / cup, $6 / bowl) left us wanting more. The buttery crouton and soft poached egg couldn’t make up for the mild-mannered broth.

A weak broth also marred an otherwise successful mussels dish ($9), with its Spanish-inspired sofrito seasoning, but the vegan and gluten-free mushroom avocado enchiladas ($9) left no heat behind. The spice of the vegetable mixture tucked inside soft corn tortillas quickly builds up inside the mouth, but the meaty flavor of the mushrooms and the soothing avocado make it hard to stop eating. Just keep your water glass full if you order them or the chicken pocket sandwich ($9), which combines the roasted chicken from the entree list with the crunchy vegetables from the Greek salad and the kimchi from the bulgogi tacos. Stuffed inside one of those thick pitas, the messy sandwich offers a kick that would be even stronger if it were served hot rather than lukewarm.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

If you have room for more meat after those tacos, ask for the thinly sliced tenderloin steak with Bernaise and crispy potatoes ($19). Ordered medium rare, the meat arrives a perfect reddish-pink hue and toothsome texture. You don’t even need the creamy Bernaise for the beef, but you’ll want to dip the salty french-fry-cut potatoes in it. But if you’ve reached your meat maximum for the night, go for the addicting truffle asparagus pizza ($12) instead. With its almost flatbread-like crust, the pie offers a luxurious bite of fragrant truffles and fresh, lightly cooked asparagus spears. One pizza is the ideal size for two if sharing a few dishes, but if this is your only order, be selfish and savor all those slices yourself. The chicken pesto pizza ($9) seems equally promising on the menu but the lackluster sauce left us underwhelmed.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

An apple crisp ($7) tempts you from the dessert section of the menu — give into it. The warm apples, so often reduced to mush in these types of dishes, retain much of their firmness, which makes them a satisfying foil to the soft scoop of gelato. Just enough sugary topping gives it the requisite caramel coating, and the subtle cinnamon flavor of the ice cream ties the dessert together. If you’d rather imbibe your calories, the beverage menu presents everything from sake and local brews on tap to a wine list from around the world.

Like the menu, the service at Sparks has its highlights and lowlights, too. Friendly waitstaff become less so when they disappear for a good part of the meal. On one occasion, our small-plate dishes remained on the table 10 minutes after we finished our starters — the bussing staff had to remove them when the entrees arrived at the table — and a long wait for the check is never welcome when you’re ready to hit to the road. But we always appreciate an open attitude toward children at the table, and with its indoor and outdoor seating, it’s easy to find a comfortable spot for families at Sparks. Come winter, though, it will be quite the squeeze.

For now, though, the bulgogi tacos and truffle pizza will continue to draw me to Sparks’ leafy patio, and if word spreads, the rest of Minneapolis may join along. Hope they made enough kimchi.

Sparks
Bistro in Bryn Mawr, Minneapolis
2.5 out of 4 stars (Good)

230 S Cedar Lake Rd
Minneapolis, MN 55405
612.259.8943
HOURS:
Mon-Sat 11am-10pm
Sun 10am-9pm
CHEF / OWNERS: Jonathan Hunt and Amor Hantous
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED: No, but you can call up to 30 minutes in advance to put your name on the waiting list.
BAR: Full
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Yes / Yes
ENTREE PRICE: $3-14 for small plates; $8-17 for pizza, sandwiches and large plates

Win 2 free seats at a 6-course lamb sampler dinner at Zelo, May 20!*

Lamb is a unique and delicately flavored meat, featured by cuisines around the world with a myriad array of seasonings and accompaniments. Whether lamb is your favorite food, or you are simply curious about its many possibilities, we invite you to join us for a panoramic evening of flavors and enjoyment at Zelo, in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. Make reservations by calling us at 612.333.7000. But don’t hesitate — there are only 36 seats available.

*If you want a bit of added adventure, sign up for a drawing for 2 free seats at the event by “liking” Shepherd Song Farm at facebook.com/ShepherdSongFarm by May 16.

On Sunday, May 20 at 6pm, Zelo and Shepherd Song Farm of Downing, WI, are teaming up to offer a 6-course tasting menu, which will feature Shepherd Song’s grass-fed lamb in all dishes except dessert. The price is $55 per seat (optional $25 each for wine pairings is offered, too). The evening will be held in an intimate private dining room at Zelo that seats 36 people. Both the chefs and Judy Moses and Larry Jacoby, the head shepherds at Shepherd Song Farm, will be present to share in the enjoyment, as well as provide their unique perspectives about the meal, its histories, and the possibilities for healthful, delicious food.

Zelo is a large, bustling restaurant, beautifully decorated and situated on downtown Minneapolis’ central retail thoroughfare, Nicollet Mall. It greets the diner with a focus on ingenious recipes and passionate preparation, and a commitment to make customers feel like they were dining in a 16-seat family-owned cafe. Every meal is a celebration of the restaurant’s collaboration with local, original-source, and sustainable producers, which Zelo and Bacio executive chef Jason Gibbons has quietly carried on for the 13 years Zelo has been in business.

May 20 will be his and his staff’s special celebration of Shepherd Song’s exceptional, pasture-fed and humanely raised lamb, the taste and quality of which he describes as “subtle,” “so clean-flavored,” “second to none,” and “probably the best lamb chops I’ve ever eaten.”

Gibbons, for whom lamb has been a lifelong favorite, will be joined in the kitchen by his two younger and very creative chefs, Peter Hoff from Zelo and Michael Zinser from their other Minnetonka restaurant, Bacio. They will create a boundary-crossing, continent-hopping New American Cuisine festival of lamb, borrowing flavors from Italy, the Middle East, and beyond. All three chefs will contribute a recipe or two, and different cuts from the whole lambs Zelo purchased will be featured in each of the six dishes.

We’d love to share this meal with you, and we hope you’ll “like” us on Facebook, earning a chance to experience the meal for free!

—Judy Moses and Larry Jacoby

Join us as we celebrate the return of the patio and grilling season at GrillFest May 19-20 at 5th Avenue South and 6th Street South downtown Minneapolis, produced by Minnesota Monthly, the same people behind the successful Food & Wine Experience. Purchase your $30 ticket online ($35 at the door) and join other grilling enthusiasts as you taste your way through a variety of flavorful grilled foods, sample summer wines and specialty beers, see the latest grilling products on the market (with special discounts available), gather recipes, and learn to barbecue like a pro.

There will be educational grilling demos, a grilling competition — sponsored by the Minnesota Pork Board — cooking presentations by Ray “Dr. BBQ” Lampe, and nationally recognized and self-proclaimed “grillologists” Mad Dog and Merrill on hand to entertain the crowd.

Feature areas include Girls “Man” the Grill, Ultimate Man Cave Tailgating, the HCMC picnic pavilion, demonstration stages, and performances by local bands — Western Fifth and High on Stress on Saturday, and The Boys N’ The Barrels and Sans Souci Quartet on Sunday.

A GrillFest ticket covers food, wine and beer samplings at many of the booths and feature areas, with larger food items also available for purchase. For more information, please visit www.grillfestival.com.

Scott Theisen / Heavy Table

Like any quintessential Minnesota child, Dan Docken and his seven siblings grew up eating lots and lots of tater tots. “We would have tater tots with our lunches and dinners,” the North St. Paul native recalls. And his mom, he says, “made the best tater tot hotdish.” Her recipe included both corn and green beans, “which is a little bit unique; a lot of people use one or the other,” cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup, ground beef, and, of course, plenty of tots. Those fond memories of the crispy potato clusters are Docken’s inspiration for one of this year’s rookies on the Twin Cities food truck circuit, Tot Boss.

Scott Theisen / Heavy Table

Docken, a big, burly guy who definitely fits the “Boss” nickname, is a relative newcomer to the food industry. He’s spent the past 27 years as a cabinet maker, but started taking an interest in cooking about 10 years ago. Friends and family asked him to cater events such as parties, anniversaries, and funerals. He always wanted to own a restaurant and discussed the idea with his wife, but didn’t think it was feasible given the current state of the economy. So he decided to go the food truck route and follow the advice of his food industry mentor: “He said, ‘Be good at one thing. Do one thing and be that guy,” Docken recalls. He knew he wanted that thing to be tater tots. Thus, Tot Boss was born.

Docken has been testing and tweaking potential dishes for the menu since last August. In the process, “my family has probably eaten more tater tots in the past six months than people have in a lifetime,” he says.

Scott Theisen / Heavy Table

Several concoctions have made the cut, including tater tots topped with homemade chili and nacho-style tots. For the chili tots, Docken opted to create a thicker, Coney Island-style chili so it wouldn’t ruin the consistency of the tots. The chili has a nice kick that is mellowed out by a homemade cheddar cheese sauce and sour cream. The nacho tots come with homemade seasoned beef and nacho cheese, topped with lettuce, chopped tomato, and sour cream.

Docken is particularly excited about a poutine-style tater tot dish with cheese curds from the Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery in Ellsworth, WI, and beef gravy. The idea for the dish was given to Docken by a friend who recently visited Canada. He played around with the idea and it’s now on the permanent Tot Boss menu. The gravy has a nice richness that pairs well with the hot tots and the slightly melted curds.  

Scott Theisen / Heavy Table

In addition, look for burrito-style tater tots in a tortilla and bacon-wrapped tots (“I used to make those for parties,” he says, “and everybody loved those and wanted me to bring those back”), among other dishes. And yes, you can order the same tater tot hotdish his mom made for him and his siblings. Items range from $4.50 for a regular order of tots to $6 for the specialty dishes.

Docken plans to use Ore-Ida tater tots for his dishes, citing the time required to make tots from scratch, and the gluten-free nature of Ore-Ida tots. “That’s very important to me,” he says. He’ll also keep experimenting with new dishes, creating a specials menu where he can try out his creations on customers. One idea involves sweet potato tots with mini marshmallows. And Docken says he has plenty of other recipe ideas spinning in his head.

Scott Theisen / Heavy Table

To start, Docken has a food truck license in the City of St. Paul and wants to take part in some of the food truck courts that set up around downtown St. Paul during the week. He also hopes to sell his tots at local car shows, ballparks, and community events, mainly in the east metro. He’s locked in for Market Fest in White Bear Lake on Thursdays throughout June and July, and hopes to hear from more festival organizers in the coming weeks.  ”I can’t wait to serve them great food,” he says. “People will love the food.”

But the big question remains, will Docken get sick of tater tots? “God, no!” he says. “The problem [will be] keeping me out of them.”

Tot Boss
Tater tot food truck in St. Paul and east metro
Facebook: www.facebook.com/totbosstruck
Twitter: @TOTBOSStruck

Scott Theisen / Heavy Table

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

Like a mirage in a pastry desert, Angel Food Bakery & Coffee Bar opened softly on April 30, beckoning to workaday downtowners desperate for a morning doughnut or midday guilty pleasure just steps from Nicollet Mall and their office doors. Co-owner Cynthia Gerdes calls Angel Food Bakery a natural extension of Hell’s Kitchen, the 10-year-old downtown breakfast mainstay and music venue she owns with her husband Mitch Omer.

According to Gerdes, Hell’s Kitchen has always turned out its own scratch baked goods, led by pastry chef Katherine Gerdes. And “little by little,” she says, “word-of-mouth spread about her desserts, which was great, but we then ran out of space in the tiny baking corner of the kitchen.” Until Angel Food was born and installed just above Hell’s basement lair.

When speaking of bakeries, downtown Minneapolis is parched. Unlike South Minneapolis with its Patisserie 46 and Sun Street Breads, there’s little in the way of accessible specialty baked goods for pedestrians and people stuck in meetings or bound by half-hour lunch breaks. Angel Food seems like an excellent solution, filling the retail gaps left by Cocoa & Fig and Wuollet, and offering delicious Peace Coffee as a substitute for the nearest Starbucks.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

There are other cool things about the bakery. For one thing, it echoes that smirking and flashy Hell’s Kitchen aesthetic, but in a lighter, fluffier way. White and tinsel frame the bakery’s open kitchen, where you can sit at the bar and watch the bakers knead dough or torch meringue. The bakery also offers bread (created by Craig Nelson, a New French Bakery alum), catering, delivery, wedding cakes, and basically any special service you can imagine.

And yet.

The bakery’s most important aspect — its execution of pastry classics — is poor, and on the whole, the product does not reflect the kind of years-deep experience and pastry finesse the Hell’s Kitchen team claims to have.

Let’s start with something iconic: the golden, coveted croissant ($2). Though beautiful, the one at Angel Food is salty and supple, without the delicate outer crunch and stretchy, swelling inner layers of an expert croissant, and its buttery flavor is more schmaltzy than sweet and authentic. Take a look at our story on the many examples of a righteous croissant in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Angel Food’s doesn’t hold a dripping candle to them.

The raised glazed doughnut ($1.50) was a bit of a disaster. On one occasion it had a moist, underfried inside, and on another day it was chewy and dense instead of bouncy and light. This fluffy-looking yeasted treat is as deceptive as a rosy, grinning baby with indigestion. A blueberry lemon scone ($2.50) was similarly disappointing. There were none of the flaky layers essential to scones. It was soft, moist, cakey. Calling it a muffin would have made more sense.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

A carrot cake cupcake ($3), on the other hand, was a standard specimen made delightful by the best cream cheese frosting I’ve ever had. It was light and just barely cheesy without being gooey, dense, or wearisome. The cupcakes in general cater to decadence and greed, with whimsical colors and plentiful frosting. The Anti-depressant Cupcake ($3) was a decent combination of chocolate cake and delicate chocolate whipped cream, but the dollop of caramelized chocolate on top would have done more exciting things as a filling.

Angel Food also makes muffins, tarts, cookies, and brownies the size of a saucer. Like the cupcakes, the brownies call to the id with words like “turtle,” “rocky road,” and “Butterfinger.” But again, they fall short. Though large and heavy, the chocolatey bases of both the Rocky Road and Butterfinger ($3.50) were bland, with a scant supply of their namesake flavors and just a tiny well of ganache in the center. Decadence they are not.

There are also baguettes and several sorts of large, golden loaves of bread for sale at Angel Food, and their sourdough’s ($4.25) thick crust hides a tight, slightly sweet crumb that makes for a sturdy slice of toast. In fact, the bread basket may be where Angel Food’s biggest asset lies. Being able to grab a loaf of decent, homemade bread before heading home from work, and in the same breath find a great cup of coffee, second-rate sweets, and an option for catered office meetings is an anomaly in downtown Minneapolis. And that’s just it — Angel Food Bakery is a great idea. But the food could be a lot greater.

Angel Food Bakery & Coffee Bar

1 out of 4 stars (Notable)

Full-service bakery in downtown Minneapolis
86 S 9th Street (above Hell’s Kitchen)
Minneapolis, MN 55402
612.238.1435
OWNER / CHEF: Cynthia Gerdes and Mitch Omer /  Katherine Gerdes and Craig Nelson
HOURS:
Mon-Fri 6:30am-6:30pm
Sat 7:30am-6:30pm
Sun 7:30am-3pm
BAR: Espresso
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED?: None
GLUTEN FREE / VEGAN: Yes / Yes
ENTREE RANGE: Under $6

Becca Dilley Photography / File

It seems no one, especially not on the Internet, is allowed to have a valid opinion when discussing hamburgers in superlative terms. It’s because determining the pinnacle of the most pervasive American sandwich involves something entirely more than an analysis of a beef patty on a bun. It routinely involves a connection to something intensely personal – a memory, a style, or a feeling.  And depending how strong the association is, accepting someone else’s criteria can feel like wanton self-betrayal. So with no delusions of having this opinion be well received, this author has no qualms proclaiming the best burgers in the state of Minnesota belong to Gordy’s Hi-Hat in Cloquet.

Opened in 1960 by Gordy and Marilyn Lundquist, the Hi-Hat is a throwback drive-in perched up a hill from the St. Louis River.  The vibe is equal parts Wobegon and Pleasantville. Its address is on Sunnyside Drive, the flooring is checkerboard, and the soundtrack is full of doo-wop and surf rock. Its weathered deck seems to have never seen a coat of sealer. On it lay ancient octagonal tables whose chipped red plastic tops are worn like a proof of authenticity. Specials are scribbled in dry erase marker on a Pepsi placard.  Black-and-white photos inside show the old Gordy’s shack selling cheeseburgers for 29 cents while rides on a nearby carousel are a dime “on the honor system.”

Becca Dilley Photography / File

Also on the deck, stacked by the kitchen’s back door, are about 400 pounds of softball-sized onions.  There have been sacks of onions sitting there for decades. They greet you when you exit your vehicle, as you stretch your back because you’ve been driving for at least an hour. The message in their multitude is clear: Skip the fries, embrace the rings ($3.49, about a dozen to an order). They nail the elusive combination of super crunchy texture and solid composition thanks to a half-battered, half-breaded preparation that involves buttermilk, cornmeal, and Bisquick.

John Garland / Heavy Table

Gordy’s burgers have a makeup as rudimentary as they come. Fresh, hand-pattied beef, smashed to In-N-Out thickness until just the faintest hint of pink remains inside. The magic comes from the flat-top grill, which ensures every nook and cranny of the irregular patty is imbued with char. The most popular order is a double cheeseburger with everything ($4.29) – “everything” in this case comprises merely ketchup, mustard, pickles, and fried onions. When the burger, onion, and cheese are cooked together, the patty picks up a bit of onion sweat while the American cheese melts over both, trapping the juices like a blanket. They’re juicy, tangy, slightly greasy, and entirely delectable.

John Garland / Heavy Table

The obviously subjective criteria elevating this burger the top of my list has to do with its location and relative lack of availability. Gordy’s is open only for half the year. Their lifeblood is cabin traffic – the thousands of travelers who veer off I-35 onto MN-33 to head toward the Range instead of the North Shore. For this author, a bite of a Gordy’s double instantly recalls Memorial Days on the lake with all the cousins, cramming into the back of the fully packed wood-paneled Plymouth Voyager, and fishing the pieces out of Gordy’s Bubble Gum ice cream to test if blowing a bubble was possible.  Now, summers without a stop at Gordy’s feel fundamentally incomplete. And since Gordy’s has been catering to lake-bound Minnesotans for more than 50 years, it’s a safe bet that there are Hi-Hat devotees out there with similar experiences.

The complete lack of smoke screens and secret ingredients – the very foundation for Gordy’s success – is also what made for the most boring segment in Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives history. Even Guy Fieri, the crown prince of feigning enthusiasm, looked hard pressed to react to such straightforward fare. And it’s slightly sad that since Triple D’s visit, Fieri’s face has been plastered all over the joint – exterior signage, tray liners – as if his tepid approval was somehow a tipping point that validated a half century of burger perfection.

Becca Dilley Photography / File

Also not to be missed: the malts ($2.99 Regular / $4.19 Large). Strawberry is the best bet, followed closely by blackberry. They’re perfectly creamy, though not too dense, with a slight tinge of malted milk flavor on the aftertaste and chunks of strawberries big enough to necessitate attacking it with both a straw and spoon.

Touches of modernity have slowly crept into the Gordy’s experience. Ice cream is no longer sold out of the back window, but rather at a new building across the parking lot. Named the Warming House, it also sells coffee drinks, some other sandwiches, and is complete with a — gasp — drive-thru. Two hours on the nose from downtown Minneapolis, it feels pretty nice to take a quick road trip and be reminded of the glory of a basic burger – and of all the summers passed devouring them.

Gordy’s Hi-Hat, 411 Sunnyside Drive, Cloquet, MN, 55720, 218.879.6125

The Tap loves restaurant tips from readers, so we’re awarding a Heavy Table pint glass to the best tipster each month. The Tap is the metro area’s comprehensive restaurant buzz roundup, so if you see a new or newly shuttered restaurant, or anything that’s “coming soon,” email Tap editor Jason Walker at

April’s winner: Dana Murdoch of St. Paul

Mona (now open)

333 S 7th St, Minneapolis | 612.259.8636 | monarestaurant.com

Affordable small plates from a local food devotee, a full bar as well as a nicely selected beer and wine list, and free downtown parking — yep, chef / owner Lisa Hanson of Mona has an attractive combination. Hanson, whose most recent restaurant gig was at Corner Table, buys from a bevy of local purveyors to create a varied seasonal menu of three-ounce plates.

“From salads to entrees to desserts, they’re all the same size,” Hanson said. “So the concept is that you’re designing your own tasting menu and being a little more adventurous — like the elk, that might be expensive and prohibit people from trying it otherwise.”

That’s a grilled elk ribeye with rosemary hollandaise and fries, which at $13 stands out on a menu mostly in the $5-$8 range. Hanson said she was excited about several items on her first Mona menu, including lunch items like grilled-ramp hummus and pancetta-wrapped halibut with diced potatoes and ramp parsley broth.

For dinner, there are eye-catchers like roasted beef marrow with apple butter and raisin toast; braised rabbit with foie gras and rhubarb bread pudding; and chicken and waffles, which is a fried buttermilk chicken and a cornmeal sour cream waffle with brown butter honey jus.

Then there’s a specialty: house-cured bacon, which can be added to any menu item for $1. That’s any item, even dessert.

“It’s the new super-size,” Hanson said. “People are getting really creative with that and putting it on their dessert. We have a hazelnut donut with caramel sauce, and people have been adding bacon to that.

“I always have a supply of bacon curing and smoking. I will only use Hidden Stream pork for my entire menu. I fell in love with those pigs when I worked at Corner Table. I’m so excited to be able to use that again.”

Beers include locals like Fulton, Furthermore, and Rush River, and general manager Christine Whitt has put together a wine list of around 25 whites and 25 reds, and there’s a full bar. A sizable patio is now open, too.

And about that parking: after 4 p.m., it’s free in the Accenture Tower ramp. Nothing wrong with that.

Lake Nokomis park restaurant (in development stage)

Lake Nokomis concession building, Minneapolis

The Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board is now accepting proposals for a restaurant concessionaire at Lake Nokomis, putting the wheels in motion for the popular South Minneapolis lake to have a food presence like other park eateries Tin Fish, Bread & Pickle, and Sea Salt.

The process will take a while — Friends of Lake Nokomis president Steffanie Musich said she was hoping for something to open in 2013. Regardless, it’s exciting for park-goers, especially when you consider that unlike Bread & Pickle, the Lake Nokomis joint will immediately be able to serve beer and wine thanks to a lack of negative feedback on the issue from the neighborhood.

“I envision a vendor coming in and providing healthy and diverse options at a variety of prices to serve both beach and park users and destination diners,” Musich said. “The user base of this park covers the demographics of the entire city with all ages, backgrounds, and socioeconomic statuses. I’d love to have a vendor that utilizes … a menu that plays homage to those that work so well at the other park concessions but that also has its own unique ‘Nokomis’ feel.”

Count me in next year for a bike culinary travelogue: Tin Fish to Bread & Pickle to Nokomis, then ending at Sea Salt.

Moe’s Southwest Grill (opens in August)

Penn Ave S and American Blvd, Bloomington | moes.com

Take Penn Ave out to the 494 and you’ll probably notice a big apartment development across from Southtown, the Genesee Apartments. Opening there this summer is Moe’s Southwest Grill, a chain with over 400 locations nationwide that advertises a “pop-culture inspired menu” of burritos, tacos, and Mexican-like fare. It will be the only Moe’s in the Twin Cities, but the chain plans to open several more in the next few years.

Who cares, right? Well, according to a Moe’s press release, CNN gadfly Dr. Sanjay Gupta, that’s who. He says Moe’s burritos are “the best.” So, there you have it.

A Which Wich franchise will also open in August at the building.

NOW OPEN

• Angel Food Bakery, 80 S 9th St, Minneapolis | hellskitcheninc.com
• Harriet Brasserie, 2724 W 43rd St, Minneapolis | Find it on Facebook
• George and the Dragon, 813 W 50th St, Minneapolis | 612.355.9114 | ganddpub.com
• Mona, 333 S 7th St, Minneapolis | 612.259.8636 | monarestaurant.com
• Don Julio, 4460 N Hwy 61, White Bear Lake | 651.407.2888 | donjuliomexicanrestaurant.com
• Agua Brava, 7112 Bass Lake Rd, New Hope | 763.432.2785 | Find it on Facebook
• Falafel King, 1199 W 7th St, St. Paul | 651.207.5777 | falafelking.com
• Selma’s Ice Cream, 3419 Saint Croix Trl S, Afton
• Bread and Pickle, 4135 W Lake Harriet Pkwy, Minneapolis | 612.767.9009 | Our take
• Tin Fish, 3000 E Calhoun Pkwy, Minneapolis | 612.823.5840 | thetinfish.net
• Rodizio Grill, 12197 Elm Creek Blvd N, Maple Grove | 763.657.1133 | rodiziogrill.com

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

• Lynden’s Soda Fountain, 490 Hamline Ave S, St. Paul | 651.235.5646 | Our take
• Burnsville Ale House, 3809 Hwy 13, Burnsville (formerly The Edge Bar)
• Super Moon Buffet, 6445 Wayzata Blvd, St. Louis Park
• Wellman’s Pub, 26 5th St N, Minneapolis | 612.659.9000 | Find it on Facebook
• Sea Salt, 4801 Minnehaha Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.721.8990 | seasalteatery.wordpress.com
• Hajime Japanese, 10950 Club W. Parkway NE, Blaine | 763.780.7944 | Find it on Facebook
• Sparks, 230 Cedar Lake Rd S, Minneapolis | 612.259.8943 | sparksmpls.com
• Harriet Brewing Taproom, 3036 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis | 612.225.2184 | harrietbrewing.com
• Bullwinkle Saloon, 1429 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis
• Original Pancake House, 1415 County Rd 101, Plymouth | 952.475.9151 | Find it on Facebook
• Ze’s Diner, 3448 Denmark Ave, Eagan | 612.207.6793 | Find it on Facebook
• Ipotli Indian Grill, 601 Marquette Ave S (Northstar Center skyway), Minneapolis

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

• Butcher and the Boar, 1121 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis | 612.222.7171 | Our take
• :D-Spot, 1993 Burns Ave, St. Paul | 651.738.8300 | Our take on the original
• Aida, 2208 W 66th St, Richfield | 612.866.5601 | Our take

CLOSED / CLOSING:

• Minnehaha Coffee, 4554 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis
• Jack’s, 818 W 46th St, Minneapolis
• Risotto, 610 W Lake St, Minneapolis
• Royal Orchid, 625 Marquette Ave (skyway), Minneapolis
• Acropol Inn, 748 Grand Ave, St. Paul

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

• Caribe, 791 Raymond Ave, St. Paul
• Nick and Eddie, 1612 Harmon Pl, Minneapolis

COMING UP:
Minneapolis

• Devil’s Advocate, 89 S 10th St, Minneapolis. Opens in May. | 612.843.2260 | devilsadvocatebar.com
• The Left Handed Cook, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens May 21. | Find it on Facebook
• Somos Peru, 6009 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens in May. | 612.244.3400 | somosperurestaurant.com
• Azia Market Bar & Restaurant, 2550 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.813.1200 | Find it on Facebook
• Rincon 38, 3801 Grand Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens in May.
• New Nick and Eddie Warehouse / Speakeasy, 1621 1/2 Harmon Alley, Minneapolis. Opens in May.
• Well Seasoned, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens this spring. | 612.886.2489 | wellseasonedmpls.com
• Maruso Street Food and Cocktails, 715 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis. Opens this spring.
• Cowboy Jack’s, 126 5th St N, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | theaftermidnightgroup.com
• Icehouse, 2528 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis. Opens in May. | Find it on Facebook
• J.J.’s Coffee Company & Wine Bar, 1800 W Lake St, Minneapolis. Opens in May. | Our take on the original
• Little Tijuana, 17 E 26th St, Minneapolis. Reopening this spring. | Find it on Facebook
• Cafe Maude at Loring, 1612 Harmon Pl, Minneapolis | cafemaude.com
• Bar Louie, 1320 Lagoon Ave, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | barlouieamerica.com
• Birdhouse, 2516 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | Find it on Facebook
• Northbound Smokehouse and Brewpub, 2724 E 38th St, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.328.1450 | northboundbrewpub.com
• Wings N Things, 324 West Broadway, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.735.0637 | Find it on Facebook
• Pupuseria las Palmeras, 4159 Cedar Ave, Minneapolis.
• Smack Shack, Washington Ave N and 6th Ave N, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | smack-shack.com
• El Burrito Mercado, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens in June. | elburritomercado.com
• People’s Organic, IDS Center Crystal Court, Minneapolis. Opens July 2. | peoplesorganic.com
• Blue Door Pub, 3448 42nd Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens in August. | thebdp.com
• The Pourhouse, 10 5th St S, Minneapolis. Opens this summer.
• New Bohemia, 233 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis
• Primebar, 3001 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis | restaurants-america.com
• Indeed Brewing, 711 15th Ave NE, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.643.1226 | indeedbrewing.com
• Tangiers Eatery and Lounge, 1st St N, Minneapolis. Opens in September.
• New Don Saunders restaurant, 2115 W 21st St (old Kenwood Cafe), Minneapolis | Our take on Saunders’ In Season
• Dangerous Man Brewing, 1300 2nd St NE, Minneapolis | 612.377.4164 | dangerousmanbrewing.wordpress.com
• The Original Just Turkey Restaurant, 3758 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis | originaljustturkey.com
• Rusty Taco, 522 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis | rustytacomn.com
• Alley Sports Tavern, 100 6th St N, Minneapolis
• Moonlight Cafe, 1907 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis
• Dilla’s Ethiopian Restaurant, 1813 Riverside Ave, Minneapolis
• Unnamed rooftop restaurant in old Shinders, 733 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis
• Unnamed Kim Bartmann restaurant, 1014 E 38th St, Minneapolis
• Burch, 1942 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis. Isaac Becker’s planned steakhouse in old Burch Pharmacy; opens in late 2012 / early 2013.
• :D-Spot, Dinkytown, Minneapolis | Our take on the original
• Burger Night, Minneapolis. Still looking for location. | 612.217.0102 | burgernight.me
• Humble Pie, 822 W. 36th St., Minneapolis. Kim Bartmann’s revamp of Gigi’s. | 612.825.0818
• Rocky and Shem’s Ice Cream Shoppe, 56th St and Chicago Ave, Minneapolis. Opens late 2012 / early 2013.

St. Paul

• Cupcake, 949 Grand Ave, St. Paul. Opens this summer. | cup-cake.com
• TruBerry Frozen Yogurt, 949 Grand Ave, St. Paul. Opens this summer.
• La Loma, Town Square skyway (E 6th St and Cedar St), St. Paul. Opens this summer. | lalomatamales.com
• Bon Vie Cafe / A Piece of Cake, combining later this spring at 485 Selby Ave, St. Paul | 651.846.0016 | bonviecafe.net, apieceofcakebakery.net
• Cossetta’s, 211 7th St W, St. Paul. Existing market opening new rooftop restaurant; opens this summer. | 651.222.3476 | cossettaeventi.com
• Blood and Chocolates, 495 Selby Ave, St. Paul. Opens in 2012. | 651.492.4799 | Find it on Facebook
• Damera Ethiopian Bar & Restaurant, 823 University Ave, St. Paul
• Chopstiks Cafe, 501 University Ave, St. Paul

Greater Twin Cities Area

• Casper’s Cherokee Sirloin Room, 4625 Nicols Rd, Eagan. Reopens May 7 after fire. | casperscherokee.com
• Nadia Cakes, 11650 Fountains Dr, Suite 207, Maple Grove. Opens May 15. | nadiacakes.com
• Ike’s, 17805 Hwy 7, Minnetonka. Opens this spring. | ilikeikes.com
• Sweet Ducky Cupcakery, 117 W Churchill St #2, Stillwater. Opens this spring. | 651.472.1150 | Find it on Facebook
• Masu Sushi & Robata, Mall of America. Opens this spring. | Our take on the original
• Giuseppe’s, 15090 Chippendale Ave, Rosemount (moving from former location nearby) | giuseppespastaalforno.com
• Excelsior Brewing Company, 421 3rd St, Excelsior. Beers available on tap this summer. | 952.474.7837 | excelsiorbrew.com
• Pizza Luce, 800 W 66th St, Richfield. Opens in June. | pizzaluce.com
• Tavern Grill, 772 Bielenberg Dr, Woodbury. Opens in June.
• Spice Thai Cafe, 7704 160th St, Lakeville. Opens in June. | spicemn.com
• Candyland, 212 N Main St, Stillwater. Opens this summer. | candylandstore.com
• Sole Mio, 1750 Weir Dr, Woodbury. Opens in July.
• Moe’s Southwest Grill, Penn Ave S and American Blvd, Bloomington. Opens in August. | moes.com
• Raku Modern Japanese Cuisine, Shops at West End, St. Louis Park. Opens this summer. | rakumn.com
• Ruze Bakery and Lounge, 4669 Lakeland Ave N, Robbinsdale | ruzebakery.com

The Tap is The Heavy Table’s guide to area restaurant openings, closings, and other major events. The Tap is compiled by Heavy Table writer Jason Walker, and will be published biweekly. If you already subscribe to our newsletter, look for an emailed version of The Tap every other week — otherwise, you can find it on the website on alternating Tuesdays.

If you’ve got tips for The Tap, please email Jason Walker at The Tap’s Twitter feed has moved to @heavytable.

And they’re off — boating, fishing, biking, hiking, floating lazily down rivers in inner tubes, and working up appetites. Fortunately for them, they’ll find plenty of good stuff to eat along the rivers and among the bluffs.

This list is by no means comprehensive. On our trip we were in the mood for more casual eats. On our next trip, when we’re looking for finer dining, Nosh in Lake City, Quarter/quarter in Harmony, and Crescendo in Albert Lea will all be on our itinerary.

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

Bacon and Cheese Curd Burger at Bev’s in Red Wing

Long before anybody put a “TM” after “Smashburger,” cooks in tiny kitchens in small-town diners were smashing ground beef on hot griddles with long, heavy spatulas. Crisp, smash. Flip, smash.

That’s the burger at Bev’s: It’s big (choose a third or a half pound), it’s flat, it’s misshapen (ours looked like West Virginia), it’s crispy and salty and unpretentious and good. It sits on a bun half its size, with long crisp bacon slices hanging off the edge.

What this burger is missing, sadly, is cheese curds. (Isn’t any good burger just looking for a good cheese curd?) The kitchen was out of curds when we visited, so we had to imagine the squeaky, salty goodness on the Bacon and Cheese Curd Burger.

But we consoled ourselves with another State Fair treat: funnel cake fries. Pencil thin, airy, and just sweet enough that you don’t really need that dish of melted icing that comes with them.

Bev’s opens early and serves breakfast all day, but they put a time limit on your coffee refills ($1.30 supposedly buys you an hour, but I suspect these folks are too nice to actually kick you out).

Bev’s Cafe
Diner in Red Wing

221 Bush St
Red Wing, MN 55066
651.388.5227

OWNERS: Shelley and Roger Diercks
HOURS:
Sun-Thu 8am-1am
Fri-Sat 8am-2am
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED?: No / No
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Some / No
ENTREE RANGE: $4-8

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

Breakfast at Trout Scream Cafe in Welch

In the summer, when the inner tubes outnumber the trout on the Cannon River, families line up for ice cream and sandwiches at the Trout Scream Cafe, one of three buildings that make up the entirety of downtown Welch. But in the off-season, you can just waltz in and take any table you like. Except that long one in the center of the room.

When we were at Trout Scream, a dozen regulars congregated at that table, coming and going at their own pace. The men universally had tractor bellies and wore baseball caps. They talked of why nobody leaves May baskets on the front steps of cute boys anymore, what will happen if Governor Scott Walker loses the recall vote in Wisconsin (predictions were dire), how often you have to change the tires on your Bobcat if you run it on blacktop (every five days, turns out). As they got up to leave, one by one, they all mentioned that tomorrow it will rain, so there’s lots of work to get done today.

They ordered eggs, sausage, French toast, pancakes — and they handed their plates to the server when they were done, thanking her by name.

We had The Cajun: crispy, crispy hash browns tasting of butter, not oil, and topped with bites of spicy sausage, fried mushrooms, green peppers, a perfect poached egg, and homemade Hollandaise. It was excellent.

Trout Scream Cafe
Diner in Welch

14689 Welch Tr
Welch, MN 55089
651.388.7494

OWNER / CHEF: Peggy Zenner Hansen
HOURS:
Mon-Thu 7:30am-6pm
Fri-Sun 7:30am-7:30pm
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED?: No / No
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Some / N0
ENTREE RANGE: $4-8

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

Croissants at Rabbit’s Bakery in Lake City

Getting your sailboat ready for the season really works up an appetite. Good thing Rabbit’s Bakery is right there by the Lake City Marina. We don’t have a sailboat to scrub, polish, and rig, so we took our croissant to the tables outside to watch others work in the sunshine.

The croissant was big and buttery, substantial and flaky, the equal of any in the Twin Cities. The selection in the bakery case was sparse — granola scones, a couple of muffins, chocolate croissants — but there was plenty of room for more when the season begins in earnest.

Rabbit’s Bakery
Bakery in Lake City

304 S Washington
Lake City, MN 55041
651.345.3199

HOURS:
6am-3pm daily
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED?: No / No

Bison Burger at Lakeview Drive Inn in Winona

Yes, that is a preformed patty and those are the dreaded frozen crinkle-cut fries. And, to be honest, it wasn’t awesome. But this meal was set down on the counter with the warmest, most genuine welcome a diner has ever experienced. And that has to count for something.

What’s more, the sun was high in the blue sky over Sugar Loaf, the conical promontory that Winona locals navigate by, and happy college students were enjoying the spring day. Everything was much as it has been since 1938, when the Lakeview Drive Inn started serving burgers and house-brewed root beer by Lake Winona. Flash your lights and a server will bring a tray right out to your car window, old-style, or you can sit at the long counter inside or the sunny tables outside.

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

Lakeview Drive Inn
Drive-in in Winona

610 E Sarnia St
Winona, MN 55987
507.454.3723

OWNERS: Tim and John Glowczewski
HOURS:
10:30am-8:30pm daily
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED?: No / No
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Yes / Often
ENTREE RANGE: $4-6

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

Pie at Aroma Pie Shop in Whalan

You don’t have to ride your bike to the Aroma Pie Shop in Whalan, a few miles outside Lanesboro, but that’s how most people get there. The shop, in an old house with an inviting sun porch, is at the halfway point between Fountain and Houston on the Root River Trail.

Maggie Gergen bakes dozens of varieties each day, from fruit pies to cream and custard pies. Closing time comes when the pie runs out — and during the summer that can be earlier than you think.

We had the Peanut Butter Elvis pie, a creamy whipped treat with peanut butter and bananas in a chocolate cookie crust. It had a fantastically light texture and was just sweet enough. Next time we’ll have to go back for the rhubarb.

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

Aroma Pie Shop
Pie shop in Whalan

618 Main St
Whalan, MN 55949
507.467.2623

VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Yes / Yes
ENTREE RANGE: $5-7

Tricia Cornell / Heavy Table

The Lumberjack at Pedal Pushers in Lanesboro

With “Do you, do you, do you, do you wanna dance?” playing overhead, 1950s records hanging on the walls, and a few design details from the former drugstore’s interior still visible, the atmosphere at Pedal Pushers is all about nostalgia. But the menu is rooted in the values of the present: fresh and local.

The eggs, milk, meat, and vegetables all come from a short distance away (this is still farm country, after all) and the bread makes the trip from the Twin Cities. These turn into burgers, salads, and classic plates like meat loaf, Norwegian meatballs (not Swedish, this being proudly Norwegian Lanesboro), and a hot beef commercial. Pedal Pushers also makes its own root beer: a rich, creamy brew with a lot of zip.

We had the lumberjack: tender pulled pork in a light barbecue sauce on a classic soft bun. It was topped with just enough cheese and a scoop of creamy coleslaw. It was not, fortunately, large enough to feed a lumberjack. Bluff Country had already fed us well.

Pedal Pushers Cafe
Diner in Lanesboro

121 Parkway Ave N
Lanesboro, MN 55949
507.467.1050

OWNERS: Angie and Scott Taylor
HOURS:
Mon-Fri 11am–8pm
Sat-Sun 8am–8pm
BAR: Beer
RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED?: No / No
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Yes / Often
ENTREE RANGE: $6-10

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

CONFIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN MEMO

TO: Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Albany, New York
FROM: Stephen Himes, Kansas City, Missouri
SUBJECT: 2016 Iowa Caucuses and the Importance of Local Food

Governor:

As a New Yorker, you may be uncomfortable with the kind of Midwestern retail politics that wins the Iowa caucuses. Never fear: By and large, we are friendly people. Just understand these broad, probably unfair generalizations — and, when outlining priorities to your staffers, understand the messaging of food.

Obama-hating Midwestern evangelicals are likely to mistrust East Coast urban elites because This is Real America, and if you’re not one of us, then you’re not really American. These are Bachmann / Santorum voters; you’ll never win them anyway.

Midwestern moderate persuadables, though, don’t mind you city people coming out here to the sticks. We’re happy to have you! Go Badgers / Wolverines / Jayhawks / Wildcats / Tigers / Hawkeyes! As long as you don’t condescend to us, we’re always up for showing you how to tailgate, play hammerschlagen, or otherwise participate in a food-and-beverage-based group bonding activity. Remember, Iowa legalized gay marriage and Obama won the Iowa caucuses by nine points in a 96 percent white state.

We’re open to voting for you.

If President Obama and Vice President Biden are re-elected, 2016 will likely be a replay of 2008, with both parties converging on Iowa a year ahead of the caucuses. As Nate Silver explains, the Republicans’ Ames Straw Poll is a decent predictor of electoral strength because it challenges a candidate’s organizational ability.

The Democrats don’t hold their own Ames Straw Poll, but this might be the opportunity to mobilize the Story County Democrats to put on your own statewide fundraiser on the Iowa State University campus. You know, be a Man of the People! Run for President of All the United States. If you decide to do this, do not underestimate the importance of catering! This is your chance to show Midwesterners that you get it!

Look at Michelle Bachmann, the 2011 Ames Straw Poll champion: Sure, she’s Midwestern, but her conservative suburban sensibilities led her to choose Famous Dave’s BBQ for the Straw Poll. This is a clueless abomination. Famous Dave’s is a chain based in the Minneapolis suburbs near Bachmann’s district — the epitome of overpriced, ketchupy strip mall barbecue.

Persuadable moderates in suburbs or small towns, well, they heard about that new place that was in the newspaper, and, you know what? Let’s try it next time we’re in the city.

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

Persuadable moderates want to try The Local Place when they’re in town — this kind of adventurism is not the Bachmann  /Santorum sensibility. So for a city slicker, the quickest way to establish to locals that you get it is to properly cater your events. The by-product is that you send pundits and insiders the message that you’ve got a good political “ground game.”

For your Ames events, there’s one correct answer: Hickory Park Barbecue. Mind you, the actual quality of the barbecue is immaterial to your choosing of Hickory Park Barbecue. It’s Ames’ LOCAL INSTITUTION, so don’t judge it, just try to understand it.

What are you going to get for your non-Super Pac campaign dollars? Granted, this researcher is from Kansas City and has four or five world-class barbecue joints he can reach by city bus. Still, Hickory Park is calculatedly average — if you’re looking for barbecue with an identity (the vinegariness of Arthur Bryant’s sauce or charcoal ribs of Charlie Vergos’, for example), then you don’t get what Hickory Park is doing. The barbecue is beside the point.

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

From the parking lot to the placemats, Hickory Park is designed as a Family Event. As the peeling laminated menus will tell you, Hickory Park began with church pews room enough for 60, then became an Iowa State football hangout for 80, and finally in 1997 put the church pews and soda fountains in an acre-sized faux-barn at the edge of town. There’s more parking than is necessary, and the wait, even during business times, is minimal. Greeters use headsets to direct parties toward various stoplights in the restaurant, where you’re promptly seated by other greeters with headsets. This coordinated effort extends to the wait staff, who doesn’t rush you but is clearly trained to keep things moving. The ice cream sundaes are not melted when they reach the table.

The décor is post-Depression Americana; the dark wood panels are overstuffed with an array of metal signs that could have been curated by Frank from American Pickers. So, by the time you sit down, Hickory Park has thoroughly tweaked your 1950s country nostalgia. This is by design: The menu outlines the barbecue options in a faux-olde-timey style, and the placemat reminds you to leave room for the “sundae specialties.” You might call the ambiance Ernest Tubb Malt Shop: something for both the grandparents and the kids.

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

There’s a reason I’m reluctant to talk about the food. It’s not that the food is bad, but it’s simply nondescript. Take the Saucy Southerner, “Hickory Park’s version of a pulled pork sandwich.” Hickory Park isn’t lying — they tell you their “version” of the sandwich is “chopped hickory smoked pork, beef and turkey simmered in barbecue sauce.” Pulled pork, by definition, is not chopped; it’s strips and chunks of pork shoulder ripped into a pile. Hickory Park throws together some various incarnations of white meat and sauce, then puts it on a bleached white bun.

It’s not a bad sandwich, but it’s scarcely barbecue. In fact, the Saucy Southerner (above) feels more like a sloppy Joe with supermarket barbecue sauce. But again, understand that Hickory Park is creating a Big Family Outing: The Saucy Southerner and fries is $4.95. Of course, don’t expect, say, Gates’ thick-cut fries — Hickory Park thaws out some Ore-Ida fries for you. But it’s not bad, you’re enjoying the Big Event feel of the place, and you can feed the entire family for that price.

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

My wife spent $5.95 on the Smokehouse Link Sandwich, a “1/2 pound of homemade, hand cased polish sausage link made from a flavorful blend of beef, pork and spices.” Basically, they slice a polish sausage in half and put it on a white bread hot dog bun. Again, not bad — in fact, their homemade sausage has some personality: a touch of black pepper spice, and not too greasy, like you’ll get with cheap-meat sausages. She got the baked beans, which come in a pasty brown sauce with a touch of sweetness. Add some sauce to give it a little complexity, and they’re perfectly fine.

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

Unlike most barbecue places, you don’t get so much food that you’ll need a box. Again, by design, Hickory Park leaves you with enough room for dessert. The foundation of Hickory Park’s desserts is Blue Bunny ice cream — again, the least-expensive-but-perfectly-decent option.

Rather than a sundae, which seemed like a predictable combination of Blue Bunny and Hershey’s, my wife went for the Butterscotch Milkshake. The art of the milkshake is in the thickness and flavoring, accomplished by proper blending. Hickory Park gives you a frothy blend in which the flavor doesn’t sink to the bottom, and it’s not so thick you pass out getting the deliciousness up through the straw. Well worth the $3.20.

I opted for the Streusel Coffee Cake, a spongy swirled cake topped with coffee ice cream, caramel, whipped cream, nuts, a cherry, and — in an inspired touch — “crispy streusel topping.” The result is a delightful blend of textures without the sickly-sweetness of a syrup-based sundae. The crunch of streusel bits with the cake elevated the dish, priced right at $3.95.

And this, Governor, is how you can understand the persuadable moderates of the Midwest through a place like Hickory Park. I’ve had hundreds of meals like this in similar after-church local favorites, and, at their roots, food really isn’t what they’re about. They’re about fellowship.

Look, the whole town is going to be here, so make something we can all like. This doesn’t mean make something bad or bland — Hickory Park’s barbecue isn’t exactly bold, but it is inclusive.

The Saucy Southerner is perfect for milder tastes, the sausage has a little kick, and there’s ice cream for the kids. The truth is that places like Ames aren’t big or diverse enough to support “concept” restaurants in a competitive, niche-driven marketplace. So, if we understand “democracy” as accommodating the diversity of existing tastes in a particular place, then Hickory Park is as democratic as it can be in a small, homogeneous Midwestern city.

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

Applying this virtue to the entire restaurant experience is how you become The Local Place.

You might see Hickory Park as a kind of down-home meal assembly line dressed in nostalgic pseudo-Texan garb. This is true, in part, but it lacks the offensive tour-bus chow-trough feel of, say, Lambert’s Cafe (“The Only Home of Throwed Rolls”). Rather, Hickory Park is thoughtfully convenient: easy access, quick seating (the kids will be entertained while you wait), attentive service, large menu of time-tested favorites, quick order turnaround, and then you’re on your way.

In other words, it’s as easy and convenient as Thanksgiving at grandma’s house. There’s comfort in knowing exactly what you’re going to get, and Hickory Park gives you the feel, not of ritual exactly, but of home. You respect the experience, even if you can’t convince your grandma that the potatoes could use a little pepper and butter, or the Saucy Southerner doesn’t liven up even with a dollop of the house’s “spicy” sauce. And because Hickory Park chooses the most cost-effective way to deliver a decent meal, you can feed a family of four for less than $30.

In the end, Governor, Hickory Park makes sense for you on several levels. The food is good enough, they’ll deliver it right, and you’ll demonstrate a Gingrichian grasp of local issues.

Kendra Plathe / Heavy Table

Don’t show off by trucking in Famous Dave’s from West Des Moines — you’ll impress nobody, and you’ll likely turn some people off by sending the message that the local place isn’t good enough. We are suspicious of those who conspicuously throw their money around, or of preachers who prattle on past kickoff.

People out here remember these things, not because we’re judgmental, but because we appreciate hospitality. For most of us, temperament matters more than politics, and we appreciate it when you make the effort to consider our experience at your event. It helps us spend time with our neighbors at the church potluck / homecoming game / Fourth of July parade.

All that, and the price will help you beef up your Fiscal Conservative bonafides.

Hickory Park Restaurant Co.
Barbecue and ice cream fountain in Ames, Iowa
1404 S Duff Ave
Ames, IA 50010-0765
515.232.8940
OWNER:  David Wheelock
HOURS:
Sun-Thu 10:30am-9pm
Fri-Sat 10:30am-10pm
VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Black bean burgers and vegetarian sandwiches
ENTREE RANGE:  $4.25-8.50

Photo by Mette Nielsen

“I adore Brenda Langton for her commitment, her principled unwavering vision, her social agenda, and most of all her scrumptious food.” — Andrew Zimmern

“Langton embraces the way real people live, eat, and cook. Though it is called The Spoonriver Cookbook, it’s really an ode to the bounty of our local food scene.” — Mpls.St. Paul Magazine

For nearly 40 years, Brenda Langton has been one of the most recognizable guiding lights of Twin Cities organic dining. The Spoonriver Cookbook serves as a tribute to her acclaimed Spoonriver Restaurant and the Mill City Farmers Market and presents the vision and philosophy of the remarkable chef behind Spoonriver’s delicious creations. Below are three recipes from The Spoonriver Cookbook:

Melon Mint Soup (page 27)

Photo by Mette Nielsen

There is nothing like the taste sensation of a really good cantaloupe or honeydew. When melon is at its peak, everyone at the market is searching for the perfect melon. As we all know, it’s a real bummer to come home with a bland one. Choose a melon that has an aroma and is slightly soft at the bottom. This soup blends that wonderful melon flavor with a hint of mint, a great combination. This is a good first course for a summer brunch. // Serves 4 to 6

1 large (about 3 pounds) cantaloupe
½ cup apple juice
1½ tablespoons lime juice
1½ tablespoons chopped fresh mint
½ cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon honey, if needed
Pinch of salt

Cut the melon into chunks, reserving the juices. Put the melon and its juice in a blender along with the apple juice and lime juice, and blend until smooth. Add the mint for just a few seconds at the end. Pour the soup into a bowl and whisk in the yogurt. Taste the soup and correct the seasonings. You may want to add more mint or perhaps a little honey.

Soba Noodles with Vegetables (page 137)

Photo by Mette Nielsen

Soba noodles are a traditional Japanese buckwheat noodle. They have an earthy flavor and a soft texture and are high in protein. We like soba noodles that are 60 percent buckwheat and 40 percent wheat. Toasted sesame oil and a high-quality soy sauce are essential for finishing this dish. // Serves 4

1 (8.8-ounce) package soba noodles
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, sliced
1 pound firm tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 to 2 carrots, sliced
1 cup cauliflower florets or chopped cabbage
1 to 2 cups broccoli florets (or another green vegetable)
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1½ tablespoons maple syrup or mirin (optional, but delicious)
Red pepper flakes (optional)
Toasted sesame seed oil

Soba noodles cook quickly, so make sure to prepare all the vegetables before you start cooking. If you start cooking the noodles and the vegetables at the same time, they will be ready to serve at the same time.

Cook the noodles in boiling water as directed on package.

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan or wok over high heat. Add the onion, tofu, and 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce and cook, covered, for 2 minutes.

Stir in the carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, ginger, maple syrup, and red pepper flakes (if using), and about ¾ cup water. Continue cooking, covered, for about 5 minutes or just until the vegetables are done but not soft. You want the broccoli to be bright green and firm. Do not overcook.

Add the last tablespoon of soy sauce to the pan or at the table.

Serve the vegetables and tofu over the soba noodles and drizzle with toasted sesame oil.

Almond Cake with Whipped Cream and Berries (page 221)

Photo by Mette Nielsen

This is a very delicious and versatile cake. We serve it layered with a variety of different fillings: berries and whipped cream, raspberry preserves, chocolate ganache, or orange marmalade lightened with whipped cream, to name just a few. This cake is also a delightful base for strawberry shortcake. // Serves 10 to 12

½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, separated, plus 1 additional egg white
½ cup plain yogurt
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups ground almonds
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter and flour two 9-inch cake pans or one 9 x 13-inch pan.

Cream the butter. Add the sugar and beat until creamy. Add the egg yolks, yogurt, and almond extract. Beat until well blended.

Whisk together the flour, ground almonds, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the butter mixture.

Whip the egg whites until they are stiff. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the egg whites into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pans.

Bake the cake for 25 to 30 minutes. The cake is done when a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cakes made in a single large pan will take longer to bake. If you are making a layer cake, cool the cake in the pans for about 10 minutes; then invert and remove the pans. Cool the cake completely before frosting it.

For more information on The Spoonriver Cookbook and for a list of Brenda’s upcoming events around the Twin Cities, click here.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

Once Kopplin’s moved its coffee and wares from the intersection of Hamline and Randolph Avenues in St. Paul late last year, the narrow piece of real estate near the Nook stood yearning for a tenant. That tenant arrived a couple of weeks ago, and while coffee lovers can relish that they can still get a cuppa in the familiar spot, the main attraction now is something significantly colder. Though  you can order Dogwood Coffee, the buzz at Lynden’s Soda Fountain surrounds its selection of Chocolate Shoppe ice cream, egg creams, and phosphates served up at a refurbished vintage soda counter.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

While the various flavors of Madison-made ice cream will tempt — and it’s good stuff, don’t get us wrong — a setting like Lynden’s nudges you toward the soda-fountain specialties found in few other places locally. The chocolate egg cream ($3), which teased and ultimately disappointed us recently at Rye, doesn’t fare much better here. Again, the creamy / fizzy ratio was way off, lacking in creaminess and offering the sourness of an abundance of seltzer. Instead, try a phosphate ($3), an old-timey treat that combines your choice of syrup, acid phosphate, and ice cream. Our combination of ginger ale and butter pecan worked together surprisingly well — the sweet pep of the ginger ale only improved with the thick richness of the ice cream that slowly melted into the drink. With flavors like chocolate, hibiscus, and green river, you could spend weeks taste-testing soda / ice cream pairings.

Owned by Jon and Tobi Lynden and partner Matt Miller, Lynden’s throwback appeal draws in families, teenagers, and even a few people who might remember sitting at such a counter themselves long ago. Its scoopers, however, lean toward the younger end of the spectrum, and while you have to applaud their enthusiasm, one would hope they’d be a little more diligent when it comes to learning their craft. The two chocolate egg creams sampled varied in not only milk / seltzer balance, but also the amount of froth, and even topping. (The pretzel rod gets our vote over the wan cherry that sunk to the bottom of the glass.) A $2.50 kiddie cone surpassed a $4 sundae in volume of ice cream. But hey, the young jerks (yes, it’s PC to call them that here) are friendly and generous with the samples, so it’s easy to oversee a few inconsistencies.

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

If the ice cream isn’t sweet enough for you, you also can scoop up bulk chocolates and candies ($10 / lb.) from the narrow shelves opposite the ice cream case or choose a few old-school varieties, like candy cigarettes and lollipops bigger than a baby’s head. Morning visitors get first dibs at the Mojo Monkey Donuts served at the counter, where you’ll also find giant marshmallow treats made with Froot Loops and Rice Krispies.

If the Nook didn’t already inspire you to wear elastic-waist pants whenever you’re in Highland Park, the addition of Lynden’s surely will. A Juicy Nookie and a banana split practically next door to one another? Dangerous.

Lynden’s Soda Fountain, 490 Hamline Ave S, St. Paul, MN 55116; 651.235.5646

Katie Cannon / Heavy Table

WACSO / Heavy Table

While we wait, we watch a guy peruse the dirty magazines. A sign above the rack says, “No magazines in restaurant unless you’ve paid for them.” To be clear, it’s not that you can’t take one into the restaurant, it’s just that you have to pay for it first.

A truck stop’s gotta have rules.

It’s lunch on Wednesday and the restaurant is just about full up. Guys wearing baseball caps and cowboy hats and jackets with the logos of various engine lubricants occupy stools and booths lining a counter that snakes through the room.

Many are talking on bluetooth headsets. Not the prissy earpieces worn by white-collar drones trying to impress the barista with their ability to order a caramel macchiato and conference into a meeting. No, these are built for life in the cab of big rig. They fit over the head and come with big, noise-canceling, gooseneck microphones. These guys wear them while they eat, because if they miss a call, they miss a load. And every load is a paycheck.

The waitress hands us menus and slaps down a couple of printed paper placemats advertising specials on rubber mallets, diesel fuel treatment, and CB radios. She hitches a hip and flips open her order pad. “What can I get you?” She’s not actually smacking gum, but she might as well be. We ask what she recommends. By the time she reaches the eighth item on her list, we realize we’re on our own. After we give her our order, we ask if we made good choices. She nods slowly and rolls her eyes back in her head like a Great White clamping down on a tender baby seal. A good sign.

All around us a din of road-honed voices go on about the trucks they drive or wish they drove, about the load they have or don’t have yet, about where they’ve been or where they’re headed next.

A slab of a man with an evergreen smile tells us he hasn’t been home since the day after Christmas. We ask where home is. “Janesville, Wisconsin. Just down the road a ways.” We ask if he plans on going home soon. “Depends on where the boss decides to send me. If he don’t call soon, I’m headed home.” We ask how many miles he puts on in a year. “Two hundred fifty thousand give or take. Got fifty-eight hundred since last Thursday.” He follows every answer with a raspy chuckle as if he finds his own answers funny.

A driver walks out with a Styrofoam container filled with turkey scraps for his puppy. Later we see them out for a walk. His “puppy” turns out to be some kind of mix between a Rottweiler and a Clydesdale. Faithful company on a darkened interstate. And one hell of a vehicle alarm system.

WACSO / Heavy Table

You might not expect to find homemade soup at a truck stop. But here it is. The tomato garden rotini with beef is chock full of flavor and suspiciously healthy, given what hits the table next.

The waitress presents us with a scale model of a volcano with thick brown lava erupting from a crater at the top, oozing down the side, and pooling around the base. Excavating this mound reveals a tower of bread and tender roast beef toppling under the weight of a massive pile homemade mashed potatoes. Let this be a warning: The Hot Beef Special sticks to the ribs (and everything else).

The corned beef hash is golden crispy around the edges and moist in all the right places. Hunks of fried potatoes and onions and juicy meat are topped with two eggs just begging to have their yolks broken and mingled into the mess below. Two thick slices of buttered pumpernickel toast handle sopping and scooping duties beautifully.

Our one regret is not trying the steak. Stockmen’s made a name for itself on steaks hand cut from loins they bought fresh from the St. Paul stockyards next door. The stockyards are gone, but they still cut the steaks themselves. You won’t get that at some chain “travel stop.” We vow to come back at try one. Probably at two in the morning. Because we can. And because late nights have to be interesting at what amounts to a 24-hour crash pad.

After lunch a directional sign pointing toward a game room and showers proves itself too tempting not to follow. Upstairs we find private showers, a laundry room, and a TV lounge with a small tube television in the corner airing a Lifetime movie to an empty house. In the back of the building there’s a room lined with Formica booths, each outfitted with a corded telephone and a stack of phone books. Temporary offices. The game room features a pool table, a pinball machine, a digital jukebox, a couple of coin-op video games, and wood paneling straight out of your grandfather’s basement.

The place is ugly with function. But it’s a true oasis for nomads. A place where a 100-gallon fill-up earns you a free breakfast. Where you can eat a square meal, wash the road off you and swap stories with strangers who probably understand you better than your own family. Just don’t get too comfortable. You gotta put a thousand mile markers between you and this pit stop by tomorrow night.

BEST BET: A 16-oz., never-frozen “top butt sirloin steak” is $15.65. For reference, Murray’s charges $25.95 for an 8-oz. top sirloin steak. That’s twice the steak for 10 bucks less. And you can take a shower afterward. Bargain.

Stockmen’s Truck Stop, 501 Farwell Ave, S St. Paul, MN 55075, 651.455.3044

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Ten years ago native New Yorkers Randy Ng (below left) and Michael Ding (below right) were friends in Brooklyn who regularly played basketball together and daydreamed about opening a dumpling shop. Both men are of Chinese heritage, so for them, making dumplings was a family affair — a part of Chinese New Year, and a staple of any family event.

By 2009, Ding was disenchanted with his job on Wall St. and approached Ng seriously with the idea of pursuing their dream. Madison, Wisconsin, seemed the perfect location. Ng had left his job at an educational startup and had moved to Madison the previous year, and Ding was himself an alumnus of UW, returning annually to attend Badgers games. They both were looking for a change.

Mandie Haberman / Red Gecko Studio

The team knew that they had dumplings down, but that dumplings alone couldn’t sustain a business. They turned to friend Conrad Seto, a self-taught, self-proclaimed ramen fanatic, who had spent five years studying the “art of the noodle.” His personal passion turned into a career as a consultant / chef, hosting ramen pop-up dinners regularly in the San Francisco Bay area at Flavor Restaurant. Ng and Ding flew Seto to Madison to host a 20-person tasting to help gauge the city’s reaction to ramen; it was a success.

From there they were off and running, taking a 10-day research trip to Japan to sample ramen for Ng and Ding’s soon-to-be restaurant, Umami Ramen & Dumpling Bar. Umami, the Japanese word loosely translated as “savoriness,” is accepted worldwide as the fifth basic taste along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Ramen is now Japan’s national dish. Originally adopted from Chinese La Mian (hand-pulled noodles), it became popular after World War II when there was a shortage of produce and an abundance of wheat flour from the U.S. government. The Japanese adapted the dish over the years and took it to a new level as ramen. “In Japan people really respect you if you can master tonkotsu-style ramen made from pork bones,” explains Ding. “It takes more than 14 hours and has many steps. It’s the opposite of how you learn to cook in French culinary school: bringing it to a hot rapid boil, and knowing just when the right time is to add the aromatics.”

Ng and Ding took more research trips to Taiwan for recipes and to New York City for inspiration from restaurants whose aesthetics they wanted to emulate. Their discovery and acquisition of a restaurant space sealed the deal and turned their year-and-a-half-long journey into a reality. Working with an architect responsible for designing a Wisconsin Tibetan temple, Ng and Ding created an unusual space with an element of surprise. Starting with a converted house with a patio, formerly an 1880s blacksmith’s shop located on Willy St., they created a homey Japanese restaurant with an urban edge. It recently won an award for historic preservation from the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Madisonians love food, enjoy a lot of choices, and are very accepting of ethnic cuisine, evident if only by the number of Nepalese restaurants available. However, Ng and Ding made special considerations in planning the menu to adapt to Umami’s Midwestern location. While Madison has several noodle places, they are usually Chinese or Vietnamese, not Japanese, which is typically associated with sushi. Most ramen places in Japan focus on a single type of broth, but Ng and Ding realized that wouldn’t work in Madison, where ramen is still new and where people (especially in a college town) associate ramen with the instant ramen sold 3 for $1.00. To distinguish their ramen offering from the supermarket variety, they decided to offer a variety of broth options.

While Umami’s menu is pork-centric, in addition to their signature tonkotsu ramen ($12) they offer four other varieties, including vegan and vegetarian (both with a seaweed and mushroom broth), shoyu chicken ramen, and miso chicken ramen. “People new to ramen are familiar with miso because it is a popular starter at Japanese restaurants, so they are comfortable trying it,” explains Ding. All the broths are made in house, and in deference to local demand for vegetarian options, veggie-driven dishes are plentiful.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

The noodles found in all Umami’s ramen are made fresh for Umami by RP’s Pasta Company, a local pasta maker known for using hand-rolled processes. The pH level from kansui, a mixture of alkaline salts added to the water, gives ramen noodles more springiness than Italian semolina pasta. The presentation of the ramen is artful. Several varieties include a “flavor-infused” soft-boiled egg that adds both color and flavor and is soaked in pork shoulder brine for 6 hours before being served.

Umami offers four varieties of dumplings — the classic pork and chive ($6 / $8) come straight from Ding’s mother-in-law’s well-loved recipe. They are paper thin, crispy on the bottom, and offered with a choice of dipping sauces: soy vinegar, sweet, and spicy. The vegetable summer rolls ($5) are bright, crispy, and fresh, served with a spicy peanut sauce. The only seafood on the menu, tuna poke ($10), is a must. Sashimi-grade ahi tuna is served with seaweed salad and apple cucumber slaw in a sweet soy sauce, atop crispy pork rinds. It’s a balanced bite of salty / sweet and crispy / meaty each time.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Two other items deserve special mention. The pork buns ($7) feature roasted, thick, juicy pieces of Berkshire pork belly and pickled vegetables in a homemade hoisin sauce stuffed inside a fluffy steamed gwa pao bun (Taiwanese clamshell style). If you prefer spicy over sweet, try the ones filled with Korean beef. Finally, although you are sure to be full, the green tea crème brulee ($6) is a flavorful end to a savory meal.

Umami Ramen & Dumpling Bar just celebrated its one-year anniversary in March. Ng and Ding plan to continue what they’ve started at Umami, and they also hope to open a restaurant that offers sushi and a branded food cart on University of Wisconsin’s nearby campus. “As a young adult in New York I never would have imagined myself making the move to Madison, but I wouldn’t change a thing,” Ng says. “Somewhere along the line I figured out what to do with my life. ” But despite his success, he sees room for growth. “My sous chef commented the other day that he has never worked in a restaurant that has become so successful so fast. While I can appreciate that on the surface, deep inside I feel we can always do better, and that we cannot afford to rest on our laurels.”

Umami Ramen & Dumpling Bar, 608.819.6319, 923 Williamson Street Madison, WI

Sarah McGee / Heavy Table

On Saturday, April 21, Harriet Brewing and friends got down all day for their first annual Sol Bock Revival, a parking lot party that celebrated the initiation of the brewery’s summer beers (like Sol Bock) and the retirement of its wintery ones (like Elevator Doppelbock). Local craftsmen, jewelry makers, artists, musicians, three delicious food vendors, and the surrounding community convened to drink, mingle, and pound huge nails into tree stumps (try that after three glasses of beer).

The crowd was like rainbow confetti. From Harriet Brewing Principal Pete Loeffler’s gaudy tunic and corkscrew curls (“I’m the Prince of Beer!” he told me), to a bartender’s glistening purple bob, colors and psychedelic-flavored ephemera glowed around the edges of a gray, soggy day. Children scurried underfoot and guests gravitated toward the open taproom, which felt a lot like a sweet basement den, the walls covered with the original painted versions of Harriet’s swirling, beer label art.

Sarah McGee / Heavy Table

Ginny Herman, Harriet’s official Maître d’ and jack-of-just-about-everything, says the brewery and the event are all about community. “It’s the theme of our statue [behind the brewery],” she says. Artist Sara Fro says that almost every vendor at Sol Bock has some kind of personal connection with the guys behind the beer. Herman was acquainted with owner Jason Sowards’ wife, and Fro used to nanny for Harriet’s label artist, Jesse Brodd. “It’s such a different environment [at Harriet],” Fro says. “It’s welcoming; it’s nonjudgmental.”

Sarah McGee / Heavy Table

And the food was good, too. Gastrotruck, Glaciers Cafe, and 3 Tiers Bakery were there selling beer-laced versions of picnic favorites. A tender, melty smoked pork belly from Gastrotruck was braised in Harriet’s citrusy Wodan Weizen, topped with earthy kimchee and served on a fluffy white bun. My favorite bite was Glaciers Cafe’s sort of jacked-up take on an ice cream float. Heaping cups of thick vanilla custard, served dripping with a syrup of reduced Elevator Doppelbock, were rich with toasty, cocoa-y depth and just a zing of boozy, grown-up bitterness. They should serve it all summer long.

Like the event, its namesake is fun and easy to drink. Harriet’s limited-time-only Sol Bock is their take on a Maibock. It’s sweet, bright, and malty, and, as Herman says, “I could drink six of them.” It’s easy to go overboard when the drink and the company are so good and so warm.

Sarah McGee / Heavy Table

Harriet Brewing, 3036 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55406; 612.225.2184

Aaron Landry, producer of the Heavy Table, here. I want to introduce you to Tod Foley, a local designer and friend you should know. I worked with him at a design agency years ago where we worked with both smaller local businesses as well as Fortune 500 clients. I subsequently chose him for design work on small companies and campaigns I was involved with later on.

When Jim and I were starting The Heavy Table, Tod was the first and last person we talked with to get advice on our visual identity. For example, he took our logo ideas and turned around with what’s now the iconic Heavy Table logo – something completely different than what we were thinking but fell in love with. He’s also done a lot of other visual work for us — our Atlas of Ethical Eating and our printed rate cards, for instance.

If you have a great project, brand, or campaign that you need visually represented as great as (or better than!) it is, Tod is someone you’ll want to start talking with sooner than later. Send him a note.

Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table

The term “dive bar” conjures up a host of not-so-great images: tired furnishings and even more weathered patrons, sad little decorative touches from a well-meaning owner, lipstick on the glasses even though only men are at the bar.

Sure, there are plenty of places exactly like that — you can pick them out based on the lack of windows — but many of these alleged dive bars also boast plenty of charms. The most notable? Cheap, satisfying burgers.

Winnowing the possibilities down to just three dive bar burger standouts wasn’t easy. Arteries got clogged. But in the end, this trio made an impression, and not just the greasy kind.

Dean’s Tavern

Situated on Rice St. just south of Hwy. 36, this modest bar and eatery is surrounded by industrial buildings — including the compellingly named Hess Hair Milk — and the parking lot is bustling by 10am.

Like any well-worn neighborhood bar, Dean’s offers karaoke nights, loud bands, pull tabs, and prime booth space. A few years ago, the place came under new ownership, and a couple old-timers there waxed nostalgic about a grubby, darker tavern atmosphere, but they had to admit, the cleanup improved the food. Plus, there are occasional taco specials, and you can’t beat a $1 bar taco.

Unless, that is, you can offer a pretty decent burger ($7 for a basic), and Dean’s works hard to make that happen. Although the place tries to differentiate itself with hot dogs, especially its Coney dogs, the burger was surprisingly tasty, given its regulation-type shape. Anyone who’s worked a fast food line knows the dimensions of a frozen hamburger patty, with its neatly pressed edges and perfect circumference, and although Dean’s had the same look, it was far better than anything off a griller conveyor belt.

Granted, this sounds like faint praise, but when talking about affordable bar food, let’s face it, expectations get lowered. Chances are that a James Beard Award winner isn’t going to pop into Dean’s and put duck fat and truffle flecks into the burgers. Instead, what bar denizens want is a nicely prepared burger that doesn’t make them joke about hockey pucks or regret leaving their Maalox at home. So, given the somewhat moderate expectation level for bar food, Dean’s rises a few notches above that. Also, they serve their burgers in plastic baskets, and that always evokes a salt-of-the-earth feel somehow.

Dean’s Tavern, 1968 Rice St, St. Paul, MN 55113; 651.488.6868

Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table

Adrian’s Bar & Grill

Another fan of plastic baskets, Adrian’s is squished between The Town Hall Tap and the Parkway Theater / Pepito’s on 48th and Chicago. It’s a sliver of a place, with just two rows of booths and a modest bar.

Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table

Some Adrian’s enthusiasts believe that this is where the true jucy lucy originated, but owner Jim Pratt calls BS on that. “Nah, we just stole it from Matt’s,” he says, with a shrug. “The 5-8 Club stole it too. But I will say that we improved on it.” The addition, he says, is a second piece of cheese.

For the regular hamburger ($4.75), though, there are no spiffy additions, just a slightly greasy patty on a white bread bun, with a few chips thrown on the side like an afterthought. Add a few pickle slices, and you’ve got yourself some mighty affordable bar fare.

What makes Adrian’s burger a little unique is the aroma — there’s something just a bit meatier in it, as if the cook was grilling on his Weber out back instead of flipping them in the kitchen. Perhaps it’s the smaller space, catching the scent of the many burgers delivered at a rapid pace, or maybe it’s the VFW-meets-backyard-grillout atmosphere, but it would feel wrong to opt for a grilled cheese or even a BLT here. Go burger or go home.

Adrian’s Bar & Grill, 4812 Chicago Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55417; 612.824.4011

Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table

The Rail Station Bar & Grill

The largest of the three beer-and-burger joints profiled here, The Rail Station seems like an institution — or, at least, a permanent fixture. Similar to the others, and to dive bars everywhere, the place has enough of a loyal clientele that most patrons look at the door whenever someone walks in. This can be disconcerting if you’re new, but that first-date awkward vibe doesn’t last long, fortunately.

Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table

Also, it doesn’t happen at all if you show up during the busier times, like in the midst of a ball game, karaoke, or a craft beer tasting (the bar recently added a bevvy of draft lines, 40 total). One of the larger burger havens in the cities, the restaurant features a strange configuration for its dining — splitting the tables into two distinct sections, with a narrow sliver of bar between them. But the logistical challenges don’t seem to bother the servers, who seem to be telepathic. No sooner does a beer threaten to reach its sudsy endpoint than it’s whisked away for another.

That level of efficiency is balanced by its basic “North American burger” ($7.50). A half- pound of meat, grilled expertly, the burger might be a little more flattened than some burger connoisseurs prefer, but it’s nicely seasoned and has a luxurious decadence to it. Diners take their time, watching the servers speed around the room, glancing toward the door occasionally, taking another bite. Unsullied by extra ingredients (unless you ask for some), the burger is just patty-plus-bun, the way your grandpa might make it during a summer barbecue. Or the way he might put it on a plate if he worked as a cook at a dive bar.

The Rail Station Bar & Grill, 3675 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55406; 612.729.3663

Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table

In general, to call a place a “dive bar” doesn’t have to be an insult — instead, that term can refer to a cozy neighborhood place where you can get a cheap burger, an even cheaper beer, and some chatty company. The trio of eateries profiled here are worthy of being seen with that lens, but we certainly acknowledge that they’re only three of many decent dives in the metro. So feel free to chime in with your favorite in the comments section. Together, we can elevate dive bars to their rightful place… one burger at a time.

Readers: Win Heavy Table pint glasses

The Tap loves restaurant tips from readers, so we’re awarding a Heavy Table pint glass to the best tipster each month. The Tap is the metro area’s comprehensive restaurant buzz roundup, so if you see a new or newly shuttered restaurant, or anything that’s “coming soon,” email Tap editor Jason Walker at

March’s winner: Heidi Panelli of Fridley

Somos Peru (opens May 4)

6009 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.244.3400 | somosperurestaurant.com

Somos Peru is opening early next month in the former La Perla del Pacifico, giving the area a much-needed injection of South American food.

Co-owner Jorge Custodio said Peruvian cuisine was influenced by the sheer variety of climate, geography, and culture found in Peru. The coastal, jungle, and Andean highlands areas all force the use of different ingredients, and influence from indigenous peoples as well as immigrants from all over the world — especially Chinese, Italian, and Japanese — have created a mix of tastes and dishes that Somos Peru hopes to replicate properly.

Take ceviche, the popular fish dish “cooked” with citrus juice: “It was brought over from the Pacific Islanders and Japanese who ate raw fish,” Custodio said. “But due to the different ingredients found in Peru and the abundance of lime found on the coast, the lime became a main ingredient to season or cure the fish.”

Other examples Custodio gave are “Tallarines Verde,” an Italian-inspired dish of spaghetti with Peruvian basil and other spices; the Chinese-inspired “Lomo Saltado,” which combines beef strips and sliced potatoes with soy sauce and is cooked in a wok; or traditional Incan food like “Papa a la Huancaina” (a saucy potato dish) or “Parihuela,” a traditional seafood stew.

“Selecting the menu was one of the hardest things we had to do in starting the restaurant,” Custodio said. “We tried choosing at least one dish from every region in Peru while considering Minnesota’s location. It’s really not easy trying to get good quality Peruvian ingredients into Minnesota, and this alone took us about a month’s worth of research and contacting and even visiting a large number of distributors not only in the U.S. but also in Peru.”

Somos Peru will begin with a list of Peruvian beers and wines but hopes to expand to a full bar — including a pisco list — once it gets a liquor license.

Custodio said Somos Peru would open May 4.

Rodizio Grill (now open)

12197 Elm Creek Blvd N, Maple Grove | 763.657.1133 | rodiziogrill.com

Let’s hope Maple Grove is ready for a case of the meat sweats: Rodizio Grill, an all-you-can-eat, meat-on-skewers gorgefest a la Fogo de Chão, is now open. It’s the chain’s first Midwest location, so market research must show that Minnesotans really like their meat — Denver is the only other metro thus far boasting both churrascaria chains.

From a press release: “The premier Brazilian Steakhouse will be bringing Maple Grove their first authentic Brazilian Steakhouse, featuring over a dozen rotisserie grilled meats, perfectly seasoned and carved tableside by Brazilian Gauchos. Rodizio Grill is excited to bring the flavors of Brazil to Maple Grove, and is sure that their authentic flavors will be a big hit with the community.” So, it’s Brazilian?

Bon Vie Cafe / A Piece of Cake (combining later this spring)

518 Selby Ave (Bon Vie) and 485 Selby Ave (A Piece of Cake), St. Paul | 651.846.0016 | bonviecafe.net, apieceofcakebakery.net

Losing your lease stinks, but in Bon Vie Cafe’s case, it helps to own a building and bakery just down the street: the cafe will move into a remodeled A Piece of Cake later this spring or in early summer. Owner Mary Zahasky said the remodel would start soon and should only cause minimal interruption to the bakery, “perhaps just a few days closed.”

NOW OPEN

• Mona, 333 S 7th St, Minneapolis | 612.208.7675 | Find it on Facebook
• Selma’s Ice Cream, 3419 Saint Croix Trl S, Afton
• Bread and Pickle, 4135 W Lake Harriet Pkwy, Minneapolis | 612.767.9009 | Our take
  
• Tin Fish, 3000 E Calhoun Pkwy, Minneapolis | 612.823.5840 | thetinfish.net
• Rodizio Grill, 12197 Elm Creek Blvd N, Maple Grove | 763.657.1133 | rodiziogrill.com
• Lynden’s Soda Fountain, 490 Hamline Ave S, St. Paul | 651.235.5646 | lyndens.com
• Burnsville Ale House, 3809 Hwy 13, Burnsville (formerly The Edge Bar)
• Super Moon Buffet, 6445 Wayzata Blvd, St. Louis Park
• Wellman’s Pub, 26 5th St N, Minneapolis | 612.659.9000 | Find it on Facebook
• Sea Salt, 4801 Minnehaha Ave S, Minneapolis | 612.721.8990 | seasalteatery.wordpress.com
• Hajime Japanese, 10950 Club West Parkway NE, Blaine | 763.780.7944 | Find it on Facebook
• Sparks, 230 Cedar Lake Rd S, Minneapolis | 612.259.8943 | sparksmpls.com
• Harriet Brewing Taproom, 3036 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis | 612.225.2184 | harrietbrewing.com
• Bullwinkle Saloon, 1429 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis
• Original Pancake House, 1415 County Rd 101, Plymouth | 952.475.9151 | Find it on Facebook
• Ze’s Diner, 3448 Denmark Ave, Eagan | 612.207.6793 | Find it on Facebook
• Ipotli Indian Grill, 601 Marquette Ave S (Northstar Center skyway), Minneapolis
• Butcher and the Boar, 1121 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis | 612.222.7171 | Our take
• :D-Spot, 1993 Burns Ave, St. Paul | 651.738.8300 |Our take on the original
• Aida, 2208 W 66th St, Richfield | 612.866.5601 | Our take
• Droolin’ Moose, 9424 Lyndale Ave S, Bloomington | 952.451.9634 | droolinmoose.com
• Victoriano’s, 402 N Main St, Stillwater | 651.430.3700 | victorianospizza.weebly.com
• Fulton Brewing Taproom, 414 6th Ave N, Minneapolis | 612.333.3208 | fultonbeer.com
• Uncle Moe’s Deli & Drafts, 1501 University Ave SE, Minneapolis | 612.886.2553 | unclemoesdeli.com

CLOSED / CLOSING:

• Risotto, 610 W Lake St, Minneapolis
• Royal Orchid, 625 Marquette Ave (skyway), Minneapolis
• Acropol Inn, 748 Grand Ave, St. Paul
• Caribe, 791 Raymond Ave, St. Paul
• Nick and Eddie, 1612 Harmon Pl, Minneapolis
• The Lunch Box, 950 Nicollet Ave (Retek on the Mall skyway), Minneapolis
• Franklin Street Bakery, 3904 Sunnyside Rd, Edina | franklinstreetbakery.com

COMING UP:

• Azia Market Bar & Restaurant, 2550 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens in late April. | 612.813.1200 | Find it on Facebook
• Angel Food Bakery, 80 S 9th St, Minneapolis. Opens in late April. | hellskitcheninc.com
• Devil’s Advocate, 89 S 10th St, Minneapolis. Opens May 7.
• Rincon 38, 3801 Grand Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens in May.
• The Left Handed Cook, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens in May. | Find it on Facebook
• New Nick and Eddie Warehouse / Speakeasy, 1621 1/2 Harmon Alley, Minneapolis. Opens in May.
• Nadia Cakes, 11650 Fountains Dr, Suite 207, Maple Grove. Opens May 15. | nadiacakes.com
• Well Seasoned, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens this spring. | 612.886.2489 | wellseasonedmpls.com
• Maruso Street Food and Cocktails, 715 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis. Opens this spring.
• Cowboy Jack’s, 126 5th St N, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | theaftermidnightgroup.com
• George and the Dragon, 813 W 50th St, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | 612.355.9114 | ganddpub.com
• Ike’s, 17805 Hwy 7, Minnetonka. Opens this spring. | ilikeikes.com
• Somos Peru, 6009 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens May 4. | 612.244.3400 | somosperurestaurant.com
• Casper’s Cherokee Sirloin Room, 4625 Nicols Rd, Eagan. Reopens May 7 after fire. | casperscherokee.com
• Icehouse, 2528 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis. Opens in May. | Find it on Facebook
• Harriet Brasserie, 2724 W 43rd St, Minneapolis. Opens in early May.
• J.J.’s Coffee Company & Wine Bar, 1800 W Lake St, Minneapolis. Opens in May. | Our take on the original
• Little Tijuana, 17 E 26th St, Minneapolis. Reopening this spring. | Find it on Facebook
• Cafe Maude at Loring, 1612 Harmon Pl, Minneapolis | cafemaude.com
• Masu Sushi & Robata, Mall of America. Opens this spring. | Our take on the original
• Bar Louie, 1320 Lagoon Ave, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | barlouieamerica.com
• Birdhouse, 2516 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | Find it on Facebook
• Sweet Ducky Cupcakery, 117 W Churchill St #2, Stillwater. Opens this spring. | 651.472.1150 | Find it on Facebook
• Blue Door Pub, 3448 42nd Ave S, Minneapolis. Opens this spring. | thebdp.com
• Northbound Smokehouse and Brewpub, 2724 E 38th St, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.328.1450 | northboundbrewpub.com
• Cupcake, 949 Grand Ave, St. Paul. Opens this summer. | cup-cake.com
• Smack Shack, Washington Ave N and 6th Ave N, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | smack-shack.com
• Excelsior Brewing Company, 421 3rd St, Excelsior. Beers available on tap this summer. | 952.474.7837 | excelsiorbrew.com
• Pizza Luce, 800 W 66th St, Richfield. Opens in June. | pizzaluce.com
• Tavern Grill, 772 Bielenberg Dr, Woodbury. Opens in June.
• El Burrito Mercado, 920 E Lake St, Minneapolis (Midtown Global Market). Opens in June. | elburritomercado.com
• People’s Organic, IDS Center Crystal Court, Minneapolis. Opens July 2. | peoplesorganic.com
• Bon Vie Cafe / A Piece of Cake, combining later this spring at 485 Selby Ave, St. Paul | 651.846.0016 | bonviecafe.net, apieceofcakebakery.net
• Raku Modern Japanese Cuisine, Shops at West End, St. Louis Park. Opens this summer. | rakumn.com
• Candyland, 212 N Main St, Stillwater. Opens this summer. | candylandstore.com
• TruBerry Frozen Yogurt, 949 Grand Ave, St. Paul. Opens this summer.
• The Pourhouse, 10 5th St S, Minneapolis. Opens this summer.
• New Bohemia, 233 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis
• La Loma, Town Square skyway (6th St and Cedar St), St. Paul. Opens this summer. | lalomatamales.com
• Moe’s Southwest Grill, Penn Ave S and American Blvd, Bloomington. Opens in August. | moes.com
• Primebar, 3001 Hennepin Ave S, Minneapolis | restaurants-america.com
• Indeed Brewing, 711 15th Ave NE, Minneapolis. Opens this summer. | 612.643.1226 | indeedbrewing.com
• Sole Mio, 1750 Weir Dr, Woodbury. Opens in July.
• Cossetta’s, 211 7th St W, St. Paul. Existing market opening new rooftop restaurant; opens this summer. | 651.222.3476 | cossettaeventi.com
• New Don Saunders restaurant, 2115 W 21st St (old Kenwood Cafe), Minneapolis | Our take on Saunders’ In Season
• Blood and Chocolates, 495 Selby Ave, St. Paul. Opens in 2012. | 651.492.4799 | Find it on Facebook
• Dangerous Man Brewing, 1300 2nd St NE, Minneapolis | 612.377.4164 | dangerousmanbrewing.wordpress.com
• The Original Just Turkey Restaurant, 3758 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis | originaljustturkey.com
• Rusty Taco, 522 E Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis | Our take on the original
• Alley Sports Tavern, 100 6th St N, Minneapolis
• Unnamed rooftop restaurant in old Shinders, 733 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis
• Unnamed Kim Bartmann restaurant, 1014 E 38th St, Minneapolis
• :D-Spot, Dinkytown, Minneapolis | Our take on the original
• Pistol Pete’s BBQ, 222 N Chestnut St, Chaska
• Damera Ethiopian Bar & Restaurant, 823 University Ave, St. Paul
• Dilla’s Ethiopian Restaurant, 1813 Riverside Ave, Minneapolis
• Chopstiks Cafe, 501 University Ave, St. Paul
• Ruze Bakery and Lounge, 4669 Lakeland Ave N, Robbinsdale | ruzebakery.com
• Burger Night, Minneapolis. Still looking for location. | 612.217.0102 | burgernight.me
• Humble Pie, 822 W 36th St., Minneapolis. Kim Bartmann’s revamp of Gigi’s. | 612.825.0818
• Rocky and Shem’s Ice Cream Shoppe, 56th St and Chicago Ave, Minneapolis. Opens late 2012 / early 2013.

The Tap is The Heavy Table’s guide to area restaurant openings, closings, and other major events. The Tap is compiled by Heavy Table writer Jason Walker, and will be published biweekly. If you already subscribe to our newsletter, look for an emailed version of The Tap every other week — otherwise, you can find it on the website on alternating Tuesdays.

If you’ve got tips for The Tap, please email Jason Walker at The Tap’s Twitter feed has moved to @heavytable.