Author: Jeremy Iggers

It’s a scene enough to bring tears to a restaurant owner’s eyes. As
we dined Friday night at the new Favor Café (the former Restaurant Miami), 913 W. Lake St., one party after another walked in the door – mostly young women
dressed for a night of partying. Some of them sat down at tables, while others
headed straight for the bar. And each time, the owner or a waiter had to inform them
that, even though there was a well-stocked bar in plain sight, they could not
order a drink – the restaurant is still waiting for its liquor license. (Our
waiter said he hoped it would arrive in a week or two.)

And each party then turned around and walked out the door.

The food is traditional soul food and Cajun-Creole fare –
fried chicken, fried catfish, seafood gumbo, po’boys stuffed with catfish or
shrimp; salads topped with Cajun shrimp or chicken, plus chcken wings, hot
dogs, a cheeseburger, and various deep-fried items – zucchini sticks, onion
rings, French fries, hush puppies.

My Southern fried chicken dinner wasn’t bad – the chicken was deep-fried instead of
skillet fried, and some pieces were meatier than others, but the flavor was
good, and the accompaniments were classics: collard greens, candied yams and
macaroni and cheese. If you like traditional American plain cooking, you’ll
probably like the Favor Café. We were disappointed, though, with the Creole
shrimp salad – the lightly breaded shrimp were plump and tasty, but there was
no trace of any seasoning beyond salt, and the salad consisted of iceberg
lettuce, sliced tomatoes and shredded American cheese.

Favor Café also offers an all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch with
live music for $18.95, including cooked-to-order omelets, catfish, fried
chicken, turkey sausage, and biscuits and gravy.

The old Miami Vice pastel blue and pink color scheme is
still in place, but the walls are now hung with Afrocentric art, and the 80s
disco sound track has been replaced by mellow R&B tracks from the same era.

The previous owner sold the restaurant after he ran into trouble
with liquor license violations, but I hope this won’t delay the new owners getting a license; they are likely to have a hard time making it on food sales alone.

The first time I visited Gandhi Mahal, the new Indian
restaurant at 27^th and E. Lake St., was before it was actually open
for business. I introduced myself to the owner, which seemed like the right
thing to do at the time, since I wasn’t reviewing the place, and I wanted to
ask a lot of questions.

But it was a case of Not Thinking Ahead, since I should have
predicted what would happen the next time I visited the restaurant, a few days
after it opened. The owner greeted me with an effusive welcome, and proceeded –
with the best of intentions – to send one dish after another to my table. This
created the kind of dilemma I try to avoid: I still believe in paying for my
meals, even though I no longer have a lavish expense account – or any expense account, actually. I didn’t
want to be rude, so I insisted on paying for a lot of food I hadn’t
ordered. And I took a lot of pictures.

When I went back with some friends yesterday to sample the
lunch buffet, the same thing happened again, but this time the owner insisted
that he just wanted to show me some of the new dishes on the menu. Since the
platters didn’t arrive until after we had finished our lunch, I didn’t sample
the dishes, but just took some more photos.

At any rate, based on what I have sampled so far, my verdict
on Gandhi Mahal is mixed, but there are a couple of options on the menu that make it definitely worth a visit.

The owner is trying to create an image for Gandhi Mahal that
sets it apart from the many other Indian restaurants in town that all serve the
same three-pot repertoire of rogan josh and chicken tikka masala, etc.– but the efforts aren’t entirely successful. The names of some of the dishes are
a bit more elaborate, but much of the menu is basically that same stuff you get
everyplace else.

On the plus side, they have done a very nice job remodeling
the space, which is now adorned with Indian arts and crafts, and a lot of
photos of Mahatma Gandhi. The menu finesses the fact that Gandhi was a strict
vegetarian by noting that portions of the menu are dedicated to "a strict
Gandhian diet" – which, translated into English, means that, just like every
other Indian restaurant in town, they have some vegetarian dishes on the menu –
but not as many as some of other local curry houses.

I wasn’t impressed
with the lunch buffet – at $9.99, it’s more expensive than most, and the
quality and variety were only average. But the individual entrée items I
sampled were actually quite good – including a shrimp coconut curry ($17), and
(if I remember correctly), chicken tikka masala ($12) and lamb korma ($14).

One thing I really like about Gandhi Mahal is the entrée
sampler – you get to choose sample portions of up to six different entrees (the
selection varies from day to day) – for only $3 for the first sample, with
rice, and $2 for each additional sample. The portion sizes seemed generous, and
it’s a good way to explore a variety of dishes. The appetizer sampler is also a
good deal – five different appetizer for $5.

"Probieren Sie mal, Herr Professor," says the guy behind the counter at the market stall, as he holds out a freshly fried felafel ball. "Have a taste." (I guess the beard and glasses make me look like a Herr Professor.) A few feet away, another vendor holds out a green olive on a toothpick. Strolling through the Naschmarkt, Vienna’s open air market, is like running a gastronomic gauntlet. The market stretches out for about a mile through the
heart of the city, with scores of vendors on either side of narrow pedestrian
walkways.

On loan from the Minnesota State Fair: The Vegematic guy!

Most of the fruit and vegetable vendors seem to be Turkish, but you
can also find bakeries, cheese shops, wine merchants, doner kebab vendors,
Oriental markets, and stalls offering everything from artisan vinegars to fresh
pasta, fish, meat and sausage. There are also a lot of little cafes in the
Naschmarkt, offering everything from traditional Austrian Wienerschnitzel and brathaendl (roasted chicken) to palatschinken (crepes) to Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese cuisine.

**Click here for more pictures from the market and take a look at the video (below).**

Zum Alten Fassl, a typical Viennese tavern-restaurant. Image from Zum Alten Fassl website.

Greetings from Vienna, one of the great food cities of the
world. Americans may lump Austrian cuisine together with German cooking, but
Vienna has its own distinctive cuisine, and it’s a lot better and more
interesting than German cooking. In part, this might be because the Austrians
are Catholics, and the Germans – or at
least the northern Germans – tend to be Protestants. The farther south you go
in Germany, the more Catholic it is, and the better the cuisine. I have a whole
theory about this, that I will have to save for another time.

photo by Kobako, used under Creative Commons license.

At any rate, there’s a lot more to Viennese cuisine than Wienerschnitzel
and Wiener wurstchen, (hot dogs, not to be confused with wiener dogs.) The classic Wienerschnitzel is made from
veal, and is actually an adaptation of Italian veal scallopine, but most Wienerschnitzels in Vienna nowadays are made from pork, followed by chicken or
turkey. A proper Wienerschnitzel is supposed to be pounded very thin, breaded
in egg, flour and breadcrumbs, and then pan-fried. Done right, a
Wienerschnitzel should be so un-greasy that you could sit down on it, if you
were so inclined, and not get grease stains on your pants. Wienerschnitzel is
about as ubiquitous in Viennese restaurants as hamburgers are on Twin Cities
menus – even Turkish and Italian restaurants seem to feel the need to offer a
schnitzel for less adventuresome diners. Another popular variation is the
schnitzel semmel, a chicken or pork schnitzel on a bun, which has a strong
resemblance to the classic Minnesota pork tenderloin sandwich.

Vienna is the former capital of the
Austro-Hungarian empire, which made it a cultural crossroads for centuries –
and besides, emperors usually like to eat well, and tend to do a lot of
high-end entertaining. Today, Vienna is still a crossroads – you can hear
dozens of languages on the streets, and find restaurants serving practically
every cuisine in the world. Thanks to an influx of Turkish immigrant "guest
workers" starting in the 60s, the most popular street food in Vienna is the
doner kebab, the Turkish cousin of the gyros sandwich, sold on practically
every street corner for about $5. Pizzerias are nearly as popular.

Last night, I took my son and his girlfriend out to Zum Alten Fassl, a
typical Viennese beisl (tavern-restaurant), for some traditional Viennese
cooking – he had Zwiebelrostbraten, roast beef with crispy fried onions, and I ordered one of the classics, Tafelspitz, tender boiled beef in beef broth, served with carrots, parsnips, applesauce and creamy horseradish sauce (it’s a lot better than it sounds), all washed down with local Gosser beer.