Minneapolis Food Scene Strong, Good-Looking and Above Average

 

MINNEAPOLIS – Beyond those images of Mary Tyler Moore flinging her chapeau into the sky, and a sweaty Prince belting out “Purple Rain” on stage at First Avenue, Minneapolis has, traditionally, been a repository for more Swedish jokes than I care to remember (including the one about how Aquavit couldn’t make it here, despite the large number of Scandinavians living in the region). But those of us from the area, or who have frequent business in the Twin Cities, realize that the food scene has become a lot more interesting over the past few years. It helps to have guys like Andrew Zimmern blog and tweet from his adopted home so frequently, raising the flag and telling other food fans about the region’s delicious discoveries. But Minneapolis is doing just fine on its own; with or without Lynn Rossetto Kasper’s help.

 

 

Kasper’s American Public Media radio show, “The Splendid Table,” originates from St. Paul, and so you’ll see her name on the occasional menu here, touting this or that ingredient, like I did at Hell’s Kitchen in downtown Minneapolis during weekend brunch. In this case, it was in reference to the funky basement restaurant’s peanut butter and jam caddy, a must if you’re getting toast. But I would have made an even stronger case for their incomparable Mahnomin Porridge, a vegan/gluten-free option containing “native-harvested, hand-parched wild rice from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibway,” then gently simmered with heavy cream, roasted hazelnuts, dried blueberries, sweetened cranberries and pure maple syrup. It’s congee for the Garrison Keillor set. The porridge has become so popular they now sell packages of it to go:

 

 

The restaurant serves food all day long, and it’s also quite the live music venue. We loved how they had a band playing Saturday morning singing Johnny Cash favorites. Other highlights included their “sausage bread,” the sticky-sweet caramel roll and the hearty, rustic rosti potatoes – shredded hashbrowns embedded with bits of smoked bacon:

 

 

For dinner, we visited one my favorite Twin Cities restaurants, 112 eatery. This kitchen, helmed by Isaac Becker (previous winner of a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest) is one of two popular establishments his group runs, the other being Bar La Grassa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve never had a bad meal at 112. On our visit, we stressed out over which dishes to try. As good as the sweet and sour crab salad sounded, those guajillo steamed mussels sounded just as good (we got both); same went for the roasted head of cauliflower, the grilled shishito peppers and the gougére (cheese puff) sandwich with fried mortadella (tried all three).

 

 

The menu veers from Italy and France (tagliatelle with foie gras meatballs) to Asia (duck paté banh mi and nori encrusted sirloin with ponzu sauce). The wine list is remarkably affordable – we found two bottles well under $40 – and the desserts were extremely tasty; especially the “Nancy Silverton butterscotch budino,” which the Founder of La Brea Bakery and Pizzeria Mozza would have adored:

 

 

Shout-outs on local menus seemed to be a theme. The next night, at HauteDish, as I perused the game and offal-heavy menu which pays its respects to Midwestern ingredients, I noticed “Duck in a Can – Martin Picard style,” which was an obvious nod to Montréal’s celeb chef and owner of Au Pied de Cochon, which I just visited two weeks ago. The cooking at HauteDish is hearty, rustic and yet still somewhat refined, as the kitchen employs state-of-the-art cooking techniques like sous vide, which were used with the Colorado lamb entree, served three ways, including the belly and the rack; the accompanying tzatziki with cucumbers and eggplant was truly inspired:

 

 

We also loved the beef tartar, served with an egg-in-the-hole brioche and a small bloody Mary shooter:

 

 

The namesake hot dish of the current menu was a fork-tender short rib that arrived with a porcini mushroom béchamel and a few homemade “tater tots” that managed to be expertly crisp outside, but when you cut into them, the soft, warm potato oozed as if it was a rich, starchy lava:

 

 

The restaurant had a nice cocktail list, but I chose to go with local brew Surly, the pride of Brooklyn Center, and actually ended up getting two rounds of their hoppy, totally quaffable Cynic:

 

 

I realize there are restaurants in St. Paul as well (had a good meat at The Strip Club Meat & Fish a few years ago) and I’ll probably get to Travail Kitchen & Amusements in Robbinsdale on my next visit – I’ve heard great things about it from local experts in-the-know – but if you find yourself in Minneapolis for a day or two, know that there are eating options truly worthwhile, which also happen to come at a fraction of the cost of other, more highly-touted food towns such as Chicago and New York.