The Rake Magazine

Month: May 2008

  • Table Maestro

    Table Maestro, a personalized answering service and remote booking service for the restaurant industry, is going national this week — offering their services across the United States. I’m not quite sure what the differences are between Table Maestro and Open Table, but they claim to be the only ones doing what they’re doing. (Isn’t that just the way it goes?)

    Here’s the press release:

    Charleston,
    S.C.
    – Table Maestro, the country’s only business to provide
    personalized answering and reservation services to the fine dining industry
    will begin this week to offer its services nationally.

    Beginning
    this week, Table Maestro will begin accepting new client requests from
    restaurants throughout the continental U.S., adding to its portfolio of some 20
    restaurants on the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic. The company marks the first to
    offer restaurants a reliable way to increase revenues by outsourcing the
    burdensome process of taking and confirming reservations, while offering
    valuable customer interaction at the same time.

    Table
    Maestro – which launched in 2006 to revive the bygone days of the
    restaurant maître d – serves as an alternative
    to the traditional hostess by answering incoming calls, making and confirming
    reservations, managing customer databases, and maximizing table turnover.
    The company offers restaurants all the advantages of an in house staff
    at less than the cost of minimum wage, providing a way to increase the bottom
    line while taking customer service to new heights.

    "The call for reservations is the first point of contact for
    restaurants, but so many of them are either missing the opportunity for
    bookings or are relying on web-based services that don’t provide
    personalized customer assistance," said founder and CEO Alicia Aloe.
    "Table Maestro offers a cost-effective way for restaurants to make sure
    each call is greeted within two rings by a friendly voice and with superior
    service."

    With 12 years of experience in the restaurant industry, Aloe
    created Table Maestro after noticing how many fine dining establishments lose
    revenue when no one’s available to answer phones.

    When
    a call goes unanswered, studies show that 65
    percent of diners won’t leave a message for a reservation. At the same
    time, the average reservation includes three people. Together, these
    statistics mean that answering just five additional calls a day during off-peak
    times could capture as many as 24 potential clients who would otherwise have
    hung up.

    Since
    launching operations at the age of 26, Aloe has remained committed to the
    belief that restaurants can return to an era of personalized hospitality while
    still meeting today’s mass needs. Her mission has helped grow Table
    Maestro’s business by 1000 percent in just two years.

  • Get Sauced! A Northside Discovery

    It’s in Minneapolis, it’s the best restaurant for miles
    around, and odds are you have never even heard of it.

    Sauced, a little neighborhood bistro at 2203 44th
    Ave. N. (at Penn Ave.) isn’t just the best restaurant in north Minneapolis; it’s the only restaurant in north Minneapolis with a menu
    of contemporary cuisine and a real wine list. Chef John Conklin’s menu ranges
    from spaghetti squash cakes over a red pepper coulis ($9) and seared scallops
    with a chamomile glaze ($11) to seared salmon with saffron risotto ($18) and
    grass-fed beef tenderloin over roasted red potatoes with currant demi-glace.

    North Minneapolis has some charming little neighborhood
    cafes, like the Sunnyside, 1825 Glenwood Avenue North; and Milda’s, 1720
    Glenwood; and Emily’s F&M Café, just down the street from Sauced at 2124 44th
    Ave., but nothing nearly this ambitious.

    When Carol and I stopped by for lunch yesterday, we grazed
    across the menu, starting with a Caesar salad ($9) and the duo of spreads –
    smoked salmon with tarragon and pancetta with blue cheese and roasted walnuts,
    and then moving on to a salad of garlic roasted vegetables with goat cheese,
    served over a bed of spinach with a balsamic vinaigrette ($10), and an entrée
    of bucatini with mushrooms, asparagus and caramelized onions in a red pepper
    cream sauce. We enjoyed it all – the flavors were lively and robust, but still
    had subtlety and nuance, like the notes of fresh tarragon in the smoked salmon
    spread. We really didn’t have room for the roasted peach-strawberry tart ($8),
    but we ordered it anyway, and ate every bite.

    There is a lot more on the menu that I would like to try, including
    the shrimp ceviche ($10) and the tarragon mussels ($11), the cold soup duo of cantaloupe
    peach and tomato gazpacho ($9), and the vegetarian sandwich of avocado,
    oven-dried tomatoes, caramelized onions and cremini mushrooms, topped with Brie
    and served on rosemary kalamata bread ($10). You don’t have to eat fancy,
    though; if all you want is a burger and a beer, the menu also offers a couple
    of Angus beef burgers and a tuna melt, and the selection of tap beers includes Surly
    Bender, Fuller’s ESB, and locally brewed Finnegan’s.

    Later yesterday afternoon, I called Conklin and asked him
    about his plans for the restaurant. "We are not looking at doing anything
    fancy," he told me. "I am not Doug Flicker (chef at Mission American Kitchen),
    I am not trying to do anything that has never been done before. "I am just trying to take the traditional
    French mentality and put to good traditional rustic food."

    Conklin didn’t learn French technique in France, or even at
    a cooking school. He learned his craft on the job, starting as a dishwasher in
    small-town Minnesota at the age of 12, and working his way up. He was as a line
    cook at a Bakers Square in Saint Cloud before going to work for Michael McKay
    at Gallivan’s in Saint Paul; when McKay was hired to open the Sample Room in
    northeast, Conklin joined him as sous-chef. He credits McKay with teaching him
    everything he knows about cooking.

    Conklin and his wife Tricia Clark, and partner Susie
    Gilbertsen took over the restaurant in December, but the sign above the door
    still says Rix, the name of the burger joint that preceded it. He had hoped to
    have a new sign up by April 1, Conklin told me, but there have been some
    unanticipated expenses.

    These guys are facing an uphill climb. A lot of very good
    restaurants have failed in north Minneapolis over the years, from Skip’s
    Barbecue and Lucille’s Kitchen to Rick’s American Café and Coconut Grove. But Conklin is an optimist. He and Tricia
    bought a house nearby in the Folwell neighborhood, and he is not discouraged by
    the abundance of For Sale signs nearby. "I see this neighborhood taking off,"
    he told me He sees families starting to migrate across the river from Northeast
    and buying homes on the north side.

    Wouldn’t it have been a lot safer to open a place in south
    Minneapolis? The idea has no appeal for Conklin: "the people in south
    Minneapolis who can afford $180,000 – $220,000 homes have enough places down
    there."

     

  • Porn Again.

    (Pictured: The 1000HP Hennessy Viper. More on this one in a later
    post. Hennessy is the porn king of American cars and reportedly a real prick. E-mail him.)

    This
    will be an on-going follow-up post to my "Nature Porn" comments a few
    months back. In my my previous post, I covered the world’s most obscene
    SUV for the money—the Hennessy Grand Cherokee SRT-8.

    Like all
    Hennessy cars, this Cherokee offers a compelling alternative to
    something else, such as, for example, a walk through the woods. Others
    are a satisfactory subsitute for Viagra. Or so say the older people who
    can afford them — so they say, it is said, sadly.

    As a former
    canoe camper and devotee of Sigurd OIson (although he did hoard
    electric motors and land), I have always worried that I may be leaving the wrong impression.

    So, here, for starters, are my first picks for the world’s most obscene* "on-road-or-track-only" rides:

    1) The new Mercedes AMG SL series. In their 12-cylinder variants they pump out a cool 738 ft. lbs. of torque (and that’s all that matters.)

    2)
    Yet even in this rarified territory everyone still knows that stock
    sucks. With this in mind, I suggest you call the service manager at Sears
    and ask him for the cell number of the Renntech SL owner I met this morning. I am pretty sure he’ll trade his privacy for a chance at prestigious local press.

    What? Like this blog isn’t?

    A pox on your Prius.

    (*note: what constitutes an "automotive obscenity" is hotly contested)

  • More Rain! Really?

    BOOKS & AUTHORS
    End of Baseball

    Is your favorite Major League Baseball team already out
    of contention for the Pennant? Relax. Peter Schilling’s novel The End of Baseball may be entertainment for those fanatics with a long summer ahead. The End of Baseball
    covers the complete season of the 1944 Philadelphia Athletics in the
    race for the pennant. But Schilling’s novel is much more important than
    following a baseball race; it’s about equality for the human race. The
    story’s exposition follows the eccentric Bill Veeck as he purchases the
    worst franchise in the Majors and tries to make contenders out of them.
    Veeck’s plan to accomplish this lies in replacing his Caucasian players
    with some of the greatest Negro League players — this, of course, in
    the segregated professional baseball era. If you’re interested in following a maverick owner and a team for the ages, The End of Baseball may score a base hit, but it’s the way Schilling treats humility in this story that scores a grand slam. —Joshua Fischer

    Available in bookstores on Friday

    BENEFIT
    6th Annual Fundraiser for Breast Cancer

    You have to love the promotional material for this breast cancer fundraiser: "Can’t run a 5K? Do you suck at baking? Hate working garage sales? Then this is the fundraiser for you. All you have to do is raise your beer bottle and listen to the music, and you’ll be making a difference." Enjoy a candlelit acoustic evening with Trick27 on Friday. Then gear up for a full night of music and dancing on Saturday night with the Street Team from the St. Paul School of Rock, a Lucky Town reunion of Bruce Springsteen classics, and the Tim Sigler Band. All proceeds go to fight breast cancer — ALL of them. Monster Energy Drink donates the printing. The musicians donate their time. And O’Gara’s donates the space.

    Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., O’Gara’s Shamrock Room, 164 Snelling Ave. N., St. Paul.

    FILM
    Planet of the Apes

    "Somewhere in the universe there must be something better than man. In a matter of time, an astronaut will wing through the centuries and find the answer. He may find the most terrifying one of all on the planet where apes are the rulers and man the beast." What more do you want. If you haven’t seen this 1968 Franklin J. Schaffner classic on the big screen, now is the time!

    Friday at 7:10 p.m., Saturday at 4:35, 7:10, and 9:30 p.m., and Sunday at 4:35 and 7:10 p.m., Heights Theatre, 391 Central Ave. N.E., Columbia Heights; 763-788-9079; $8.

    Then She Found Me

    Families
    comes in all shapes and sizes, but the two main ingredients are
    certainly love and trust. Helen Hunt’s directing debut, Then She Found Me, brings the life and passion of Elinor Lipman’s characters to the big screen. After
    being left by her husband (Matthew Broderick), mere months after their
    wedding, April (Helen Hunt) is tracked down by her birth mother (Bette
    Midler) in hopes of starting a relationship. At the same time, April
    begins to form a bond with the father (Colin Firth) of one of her
    kindergarten students. As she struggles to determine the meaning of
    family, she discovers something missing, driven by the burning desire to have
    a baby of her own. —Hannah Simpson

    Opens Friday at Edina Cinema, 3911 W. 50th
    St., Edina; 651-649-4416.


    Big Ideas for a Small Planet

    Back in June, Rake staff and friends had our own little parking squat in honor of green space in the city. Yes, we took a couple of video cameras — and we even got some pretty amusing footage — but oevrall, it was far too uneventful to merit a video for your pleasure. Apparently, somebody else must have had en entirely different experience, because they even made a film about it. This Sunday, you can enjoy a screening of the Sundance Channel award-winning eco-series Big Ideas for a Small Planet, featuring Twin Cities’ National Park(ing) Day. I have to be honest, when The Rake did its parking squat, most of us lacked a clear idea as to why we were there. We simply set up our plants and our chairs in the street by a parking meter, and spouted out something about preserving our green spaces. (And then we played a peanut game.) The screening is sure to far better than that — far more educational and far more amusing. One episode, “Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Food” explores environmentally friendly food and wine.

    Sunday at 2 p.m., F.K. Weyerhauser Auditorium, Landmark Center, 75 W. 5th St., Downtown St. Paul; RSVP.

    ART
    The Figure and the Landscape

    Figure and landscape. Sculpture and photography — black and white landscape photography. What’s the connection? Go see a beautiful exploration by recognized Minnesota sculptors and photographers at the Vine Art Center. Experience "the powerful and sensual nature of landscape and figurative work." The exhibition, which runs from May 2nd to June 24th, features work by Will Agar, Doug Beasley, Chris Faust, Roger Junk, Brant Kingman, Jeff Korte, and Nick Legeros. There will be an opening reception this Friday, and an artist discussion panel on Thursday, May 22nd.

    Friday from 6-10 p.m., Vine Arts Center, 2637 27th Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-728-5745.

    Ben Garthus & Greg Priglmeier

    Life is no movie. We have no soundtrack. (Ok. Sometimes we do.) But we sure have plenty of background noise — background noise and visual noise, which somehow play off each other in a most fascinating way. Local artists Ben Garthus and Greg Priglmeier have joined forces to bring us Background Noise, an attempt to capture the cultural, political, and environmental conditions of city life — "traffic patterns, animal behavior, artificial environments and cultural changes." While Garthus focuses more on consumption and by-products, Priglmeier explores unseen connections to our environment.

    Saturday from 7-10 p.m. (show runs through May 31st), Rosalux Gallery, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-803-6400; free.


    Portraits of Mental Illness

    Ok. I don’t usually promote art exhibits at hospitals and coffee shops, but sometimes you just gotta do what you don’t do. May is Mental Health Month, and HCMC — actually, Spectrum Community Mental Health and Inspire Arts — is doing their part by hosting Living Beyond Poster Project: The Portrait Show, featuring portraits of 20 famous and historic figures — ranging from Ernest Hemingway to Jean-Claude Van Damme — who live or lived with a mental illness. Did you even know that Jean-Claude Van Damme has mental illness? (How inappropriate would it be for me to say that explains a lot?) Three of the portraits will be made into posters to raise funds and awareness: Virginia Woolf, Kurt Cobain, and Leo Tolstoy.

    Friday from 4-6 p.m., Inspire Galleries, HCMC Red Building, second level skyway, 730 S. Eighth St., Minneapolis.

    MUSIC
    Greg Brown and the World of Dosh

    Blues, folk, and acustic guitar lovers, check out Greg Brown at the Fitzgerald Theater on Friday. The man has about the sexiest voice imaginable. And on Saturday night, check out avant-rock luminary Martin Dosh at the Walker. They’ve even added an extra performance at 11 p.m. Special guests include Andrew Bird, Jel, Jeremy Ylvisaker, Andrew Broder, and Mike Lewis.

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    Long Day’s Journey into Night

    After having to postpone the opening for a week, due to illness in the company, the Theatre in the Round Players are finally commencing their production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. Considered by many to be O’Neill’s masterpiece (it won a Pultizer in 1957), Long Day’s Journey narrates a fateful, heart-rendering day in O’Neill’s own life, in August of 1912. Directed by Lynn Musgrave,
    this Theatre in the Round production features Maggie Bearmon Pistner,
    Rachel Finch, Rob Frankel, Tom Sonnek, and Wade Vaughn. Expect a lot of
    alcohol and a little bit of morphine.

    Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Theatre in the Round, 45 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis; 612-333-3010; $20.


    Triangle Fire Project

    The Minnesota Jewish Theater Company ends a strong 2007-2008 season with another regional premiere. The Triangle Factory Fire Project
    — directed by Carolyn Levy— tells the story of a fatal fire in the
    Triangle Waist Factory, in 1911, that took 146 lives. Author
    Christopher Piehler (in collaboration with Scott Alan Evans) offers a
    play-by-play of the events, followed by an unappeasing murder trial,
    and a round up of the numerous social and political changes that took
    place as a result.

    Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 & 7 p.m.,
    Hillcrest Center Theater    , 1978 Ford Pkwy.; Saint Paul; $20-$24.

    SPECIAL EVENT
    Wilder Center – Grand Opening Celebration

    Celebrate the grand opening of the new Wilder Center with family fun, entertainment, food, and a community services fair. What is family fun? Well, the fun includes a family photo booth, picture frame decorating, a children’s climbing wall, video games (Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero III), and entertainment provided by Larry Yazzie, American Indian Dance, the East Side Dance Group, and the Walker West Music Academy Jazz Ensemble. Construction was completed earlier this year on the new 99,953 square-foot, four-story Wilder Center. The grand opening celebration will mark the official building dedication and allow community members to learn more about Wilder and its services.

    Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wilder Center, 451 Lexington Parkway N., Saint Paul; free.

  • Ben Garthus & Greg Priglmeier

    Life is no
    movie. We have no soundtrack. (Ok. Sometimes we do.) But we sure have plenty of background
    noise — background noise and visual noise, which somehow play off each
    other in a most fascinating way. Local artists Ben Garthus and Greg
    Priglmeier have joined forces to bring us Background Noise,
    an attempt to capture the cultural, political, and environmental
    conditions of city life — "traffic patterns, animal behavior,
    artificial environments and cultural changes." While Garthus focuses
    more on consumption and by-products, Priglmeier explores unseen
    connections to our environment.

    Opening reception on Saturday, May 3rd, from 7-10 p.m. (show runs through May 31st), Rosalux Gallery, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-803-6400; free.

  • The Figure and the Landscape

    Figure and
    landscape. Sculpture and photography — black and white landscape
    photography, to be precise. What’s the connection? Go see a beautiful exploration by
    recognized Minnesota sculptors and photographers at the Vine Art Center.
    Experience "the powerful and sensual nature of landscape and figurative
    work." The exhibition, which runs from May 2nd to June 24th, features work
    by Will Agar, Doug Beasley, Chris Faust, Roger Junk, Brant Kingman,
    Jeff Korte, and Nick Legeros. There will be an opening reception on
    Friday, May 2nd (6-10 p.m.) and an artist discussion panel on Thursday, May 22nd (7
    p.m.)

    Vine Arts Center, 2637 27th Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-728-5745.

  • A+B=WTF

    On Wednesday, April 30, 2008, Sen. John McCain jumped the
    shark.

    Now, I’ve got a lot of respect for the man. He’s always been
    something of a straight shooter. And when a man spends time in a POW camp and
    can’t raise his arms above his shoulders as a result, I’m inclined to cut the
    guy some slack. But in a campaign stop in Pennsylvania yesterday, McCain claimed that pork
    barrel spending caused the 35W bridge to fall down go boom    . Pork barrel
    spending didn’t cause the bridge to fall. All reports up until now point to
    trade school engineers from the 60s who were likely too baked to carry the
    damn one. And given how commonly politicians have taken the "If I say it, it
    must be true" approach this campaign season, I would’ve much rather watched the
    GOP’s candidate for president actually jump the Mississippi on a
    motorcycle     than listen to a man formerly known for candid statements trying to score political points by holding court whilst spewing
    forth a toxic slurry of obfuscating crap that would rival the noxious sludge at
    the bottom of the Mississippi itself.

    But why do candidates feel so comfortable hocking these
    juicy loogies of misinformation at us? They know that the words
    tumbling forth from their forked tongues are simply a devious combo of smoke,
    mirrors, and sweet pandering nothings that smoothly caress the genitalia of
    their base constituencies, thus lulling them deeper into a bullshit-induced
    trance, right? Most blame television for forcing politicians to compress complicated
    issues into easy to digest bites. TV conditioned people to want
    their news spoon-fed – meaning whoever screams the loudest with the most glib
    sound bite generally is regarded as the prophet of truth. This applies even when the person screaming the loudest is the crazy fucker having a dance
    party in his underwear in front of Block E.

    But the honest truth is that the blame for the sorry state
    of affairs that is the American political system falls squarely on the eagerly
    nodding culture whores known as American citizens. It’s us. We’re the reason Jeremiah
    Wright’s sermons make such effective weapons in a campaign. It’s our fault John
    McCain feels justified in using the deaths of 13 Minnesotans to make an
    unrelated point about earmarks. And it’s my own damn fault I’m wondering why Al Franken
    couldn’t find a nice Jewish uncle to keep his books. We’ve become a
    society of listless zombies who claim to be too busy to understand the issues
    at hand, but also refuse to devote any of that precious time to information
    that may contradict opinions or worldviews developed by listening to the chorus of malformed mewling
    creatures     polluting the public dialogue.

    Make no mistake, it is pollution. Yes, Rev. Jeremiah Wright
    said "God damn America."
    In fact, he danced on the altar while a chorus of seraphim drifted down from
    the heavens to sing those very words in a bawdy sea chanty written by the
    Archangel Gabriel himself. It doesn’t matter all that much though, since Wright isn’t
    running for president. Plus, it’s highly unlikely that, should Sen. Obama be
    elected the next president, he’ll take punitive steps against white America.
    Steps like outlawing rugby, New Balance sneakers, Volvos, Joe Mauer and his thrice-damned sideburns or any of the other ridiculous crap we fetishize. But because we’ve spent the
    last two months with politicians and pundits alike regurgitating bile and
    chunky bits of flag-waving rhetoric, Sen. McCain’s health care proposal hasn’t
    gotten the coverage, or scrutiny, it deserves. The lack of details in Sen.
    Obama’s plan hasn’t exactly been called out as a particular failing either. And
    because we’ve been too busy obsessing over what appears to be an innocuous
    accounting mistake on Al Franken’s part, no one has taken the time to marvel at
    the profound stupidity of Hillary Clinton staging
    a press event at a gas station     to demonstrate just how in touch with the
    plight of the common man she truly is while advocating for a gas tax
    holiday     that would save the average American about $30 over three months.

    A well-informed populace is vital to the operation of a
    democracy, according to our slave-owning, and banging, founding father Thomas
    Jefferson. And sad to say, we’re not well-informed. We’re well-indoctrinated. So we debate over whether Obama is,
    in fact, an Islamo-fascist for not wearing a flag lapel pin. We fight over whether McCain’s
    "senior moments" are the result of campaign trail exhaustion or a sign that
    he’ll be in Depends
    before his second term. And we shiver in fear as we wonder whether Hillary Clinton is a creature risen from the
    grave by sheer force of will, determined to win the presidency in order to
    secure access to the delicious babies necessary to sustain her unholy semblance
    of life. And all of that pointless noise pollution goes a long way toward explaining why, in the midst of this
    interminable, abominable election season, our status as one of the greatest and most influential superpowers
    this world has ever known can now be summarized in just under two minutes by Grand Theft Auto IV’s Serbian protagonist –
    Nico Bellic.

  • The Triangle Factory Fire Project

    The Minnesota Jewish Theater Company ends a strong 2007-2008 season with another regional premiere. The Triangle Factory Fire Project — directed by Carolyn Levy— tells the story of a fatal fire in the Triangle Waist Factory, in 1911, that took 146 lives.  Author Christopher Piehler (in collaboration with Scott Alan Evans) offers a play-by-play of the events, followed by an unappeasing murder trial, and a round up of the numerous social and political changes that took place as a result.

  • Camden Workhouse Theater: 'Night Mother

    What do you do if your daughter tells you that she’ll be dead by morning? This is essentially the premise for the 1983 play, ‘night, Mother, by Marsha Norman. Two years ago, when the Camden Workhouse Theater did a staged reading of the play, it was met with a standing ovation. (Yes, it’s that good.) Now, they’re bringing the Pulitzer Prize-winning play back for a full theatrical production, starring Muriel Bonertz and Miriam Monasch. Don’t miss this haunting production about life and death and family. (And if you haven’t seen the 1986 film, starring Sissy Spacek and Ann Bancroft, you might want to follow it up with that.)

    May 2-5, 8-10, and 16-17, all shows at 7:30 p.m., except for Sunday, May 4, which is at 2 p.m., Workhouse Stage, The Warren, 4400 Osseo Rd.; $10 if paid in advance and $12 at the door ($8/$10 for students and seniors).

  • Long Day's Journey into Night

    After having to postpone the opening for a week, due to illness in the company, the Theatre in the Round Players are finally commencing their production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. Considered by many to be O’Neill’s masterpiece (it won a Pultizer in 1957), Long Day’s Journey narrates a fateful, heart-rendering day in O’Neill’s own life, in August of 1912. Directed by Lynn Musgrave, this Theatre in the Round production features Maggie Bearmon Pistner, Rachel Finch, Rob Frankel, Tom Sonnek, and Wade Vaughn. Expect a lot of alcohol and a little bit of morphine.