Vultures are watching you eat? If you’re not picnicking near a fragrant deer carcass, then you must be dining at Hell’s Kitchen in downtown Minneapolis. This breakfast-and-lunch spot is known for its red walls, devilish Ralph Steadman artwork, stuffed vulture mascots, and divinely fluffy yet tart lemon-ricotta pancakes. Those pancakes will remain on the new menu that chef and majority owner Mitch Omer is creating, while some other entrees go to heaven to make room for new ideas. We caught up with Omer to see what life is like in the restaurant underworld.
When Hell’s Kitchen first opened, you had construction problems, money woes, a motorcycle accident, and a break-in. Your first customer dined and dashed. Are things better now?
We just celebrated our third anniversary. All the wrinkles have been worked out, and I just gave bonuses to my staff. About three-quarters of my people have been here at least two years, and half of them since we opened. That’s really unusual for food service.
Why do they stick around?
We pay them a good wage and we treat them good. It’s nothing more than that and it’s nothing less. Though we do give little perks. Everybody who works in the kitchen gets a set of professional knives after they work with us for a year.
Your staff is notably punk and liberally pierced. Is that something you cultivate?
I don’t care about tattoos or piercings–I don’t care about any physical bullshit like that. Sure, most of my staff has tattoos, and I’ve got a kitchen server with more metal in her face than anyone I know. I actually have seen complaints about them on customer comment cards, but I don’t really give a rat’s ass. I throw those comments away. They are meaningless to me. Those customers aren’t looking at the food or the service when they are talking about the way a server looks. This isn’t Perkins.
Surely people don’t go to a place named Hell’s Kitchen expecting a prim and proper wait staff?
No. But I do get some people in here on Salvation Sundays who are taken aback. I’ve got a real passion for old-time gospel music, and we play that on Sundays. Some of our Sunday clientele may be surprised. But I defy anybody in town to say they’ve got better servers.
The food, on the other hand, can get a bit hoity-toity.
I think the food speaks for itself. We were operating in the black our first year, which never happens in the restaurant business.
Have you had any dud menu items?
I tried special items for Weight Watchers, Atkins, and South Beach diets, because my mom and everyone else seemed to be going on them. But that’s not the way I eat, and I think it came through, because I didn’t sell shit. So now I don’t offer anything low-fat. The trends go on, but they go on around me. I cook my French fries in lard because that’s the best flavor that you can get. I do food for my tastes and my tastes only.
So now you’re changing the menu. Were you getting bored cooking the same things?
No, because I have incredible specials. I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants where the specials are what you’ve got too much of in the freezer. That’s not how I do it. I really make the specials special. Money’s no object and the quality of the food is no object. One of the most popular specials is a Wellington Benedict. I deconstruct a beef Wellington: I take pate de foie gras, a certified Angus beef tenderloin, I put it on brioche, I make a black truffle hollandaise. All of those are pricy ingredients, so people end up paying twenty dollars for a breakfast entree, but they can’t find it anywhere else.
Do you plan to open a second circle of Hell?
We go to Puerto Rico every year–my wife is from there. If I had the money, I’d open a second restaurant in San Juan. I don’t see any other place where I want to spend that much time. We get people calling from Seattle, San Francisco, New York, saying, “You’ve got to open here.” No, I don’t. I’m happy with what I’ve got. Food service beats the shit out of people. It just absolutely wears them out, but I’m having the best time of my life.
Hell’s Kitchen is located at 89 10th St. S., Minneapolis; 612-332-4700; www.hellskitcheninc.com
Leave a Reply