The Original All-American

I’m still a little nostalgic for the days when the wisecracking Link sisters ran the Town Talk Diner, dishing out $1.99 breakfast specials (one egg, hash browns, toast, and orange juice) with a heaping helping of snappy repartee on the side. These days the owners are a hip trio of guys whose restaurant résumés include Aquavit and Cosmos. The result isn’t so much a diner as a theme restaurant with a retro diner motif—and great food. You can still get pancakes at the Town Talk, and burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, but the high end of the menu offers more gastronomic flair: roast breast of chicken over sautéed escarole with sweet corn flan, or lamb braised with sumac, quinoa, and cucumber tabouli. Prices overall are way out of the traditional range, and the decibel level can get painfully high, but it’s definitely become the happening place to be since opening in February 2006.

The original ’40s malt shop décor from the old Rabatin’s Café is still intact at the Modern Café, and although the menu has mostly gone upscale, the friendly feel of a neighborhood diner remains. You can still get a burger or meat loaf for lunch, or the café’s signature dish, pot roast with mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables and horseradish sauce. But chef Phillip Becht, whose cuisine draws heavily on locally and sustainably produced foods, really shines with more delicate and subtle dishes like a chilled mango and melon purée with orange-almond biscotti and basil oil, or a meal-sized soup of langoustine-and-sweet-corn dumplings (think won tons) in an intensely flavorful mushroom broth laced with truffle oil.

The Colossal Café’s name is a joke—the South Minneapolis storefront only seats about sixteen customers indoors and a few more out front, weather permitting. But chef-owner Bess Giannakakis is serious about her food, billed as “American scratch cooking with a European twist.” The menu offers a good variety of breakfast sandwiches served on a homemade biscuit or a “flapper” (a yeast-based pancake), as well as omelets, a frittata, and a handful of salads and sandwiches. It’s simple, but several notches above the usual diner fare: the pork sandwich, for example, is marinated in lemon, white wine, olive oil, and fresh herbs, and served on a baguette with tomatoes, greens, and rosemary aioli. The Colossal is open Wednesday through Sunday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but Giannakakis also offers a daily takeout dinner special: spinach pie on Wednesdays, salmon cakes on Thursdays, and chicken pot pie on Saturdays.

The Blueplate Restaurant Company bills its three restaurants as “urban diners,” and though they’ve taken the concept a long ways from its origins, the label still fits. The company started with the Highland Grill in St. Paul in the early ’90s and has expanded to include the Longfellow Grill in Minneapolis, the Edina Grill at 50th and France, and the Groveland Tap, a neighborhood bar with a more limited menu.

The Highland Grill always did offer a more varied menu than the typical neighborhood café, but has become even more eclectic over the years. There’s a lot of overlap among the menus, and all three Grills offer a terrific breakfast selection, ranging from waffles and huevos rancheros to a heart-stopping crab cake Benedict. But each dinner menu offers unique entrées that take the concept of diner food into unexplored territory: Moroccan lamb stew at the Highland; serrano ham-wrapped salmon at the Longfellow; seafood stew and seafood mac and cheese in Edina. Do those qualify as diner fare? I think so; the ingredients may be more exotic, but the preparations are still pretty simple, service is fast, and prices are reasonable—all three Grills offer entrées for under $12.

Band Box Diner, 729 S. Tenth St., Minneapolis; 612-332-0850

Colossal Café, 1839 E. 42nd St., Minneapolis; 612-729-2377

Edina Grill, 5028 France Ave. S., Edina; 952-927-7933; www.edinagrill.com

Highland Grill, 771 Cleveland Ave. S., St. Paul; 651-690-1173; www.highlandgrill.com

Ideal Diner, 1314 Central Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-789-7630

Longfellow Grill, 2990 W. River Parkway, Minneapolis; 612-721-2711; www.longfellowgrill.com

Mickey’s Diner, 36 W. Seventh St., St. Paul; 651- 222-5633;
686 Lexington Parkway S., St. Paul; 651-698-0259;
1950 W. Seventh St., St. Paul; 651-698-8387

Modern Café, 337 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-378-9882; www.moderncafeminneapolis.com

Peter’s Grill, 114 S. Eighth St., Minneapolis; 612-333-1981; www.petersgrill.com

Town Talk Diner, 2702 1/2 E. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-722-1312; www.towntalkdiner.com


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