The Rake Magazine

Author: Jeremy Iggers

  • Crowdsourcing the Citizen Cafe

    Citizen CafeWanna be a restaurant critic? Wanna be a citizen journalist?
    Let’s try an experiment. The Citizen Café is opening tomorrow, at 24th
    Ave.and 38th St. in south Minneapolis. Instead of just me writing a
    review (which I will do eventually), how about all of you readers out there
    visiting the restaurant and sending me your impressions. You can either post
    them online as comments on this post, or send them to me as emails, to Iggers@rakemag.com.

    You don’t have to write a full-blown restaurant review,
    though you can if you want to. Don’t bother with star ratings, either (I always
    hated those), but do use lots of adjectives and adverbs. There’s no prize or
    payment or anything, just the glory of being quoted in Breaking Bread. I’ll read
    through your comments, and combine them into a collective review – and will add
    some comments of my own. Of course, keep in mind that it isn’t really fair to
    review a restaurant the first week it opens, so go prepared for the usual
    opening week screw-ups, and don’t be too harsh. Deadline for submissions is
    Sunday, June 29.

    To whet your appetite, here is what we know so far: Chef-owner
    is Michael McKay, who opened the Sample Room in northeast Minneapolis, and
    still owns a piece of it. The Citizen Café will be open six days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner –
    closed Mondays and Sunday night. The menu is basically classic American fare
    made from scratch – McKay says he’ll make his own catsup from fresh tomatoes,
    and stuff his own sausage. For breakfast, McKay will offer scones, muffins,
    quickbread, homemade gravlax, and a Citizen Breakfast – two eggs over easy with
    hashbrowns, toast, your choice of meat, and a basket of breakfast breads ($6).

    The lunch menu adds salads and sandwiches – ranging from a
    Reuben to a shrimp po’ boy ($7-$11), while the dinner entrees will range from
    pot roast ($13) and brick chicken ($12) to braised short ribs ($15) all served
    with Yukon gold mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. The most expensive
    entrée will be a $17 certified Angus strip steak

    The Citizen Café is open Tuesday to Thursday 7:30 a.m. to
    9:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 8
    a.m. to 2 p.m. Website coming soon: www.citizen-cafe.com
    .

     

  • A Taste of Brazil; Japanese in Stadium Village

    Nibbles and tidbits:

    This one sounds too good to miss: Monday night, (June 16),
    French Meadow Bakery and Café is hosting a five course Brazilian dinner, with
    live Brazilian jazz and Brazilian-inspired fashions. Cost is $50, including
    organic/ sustainable wine pairings. It’s a benefit for KBEM, Jazz 88 FM, so at
    least part of the ticket price is tax-deductable.

    The dinner is being prepared by French Meadow’s Brazilian chef
    Fernando Wanderley, so it ought to be pretty authentic. Courses include a wild
    ramps and sweet corn soup; hearts of palm salad; potato dumplings with Wild
    Acres duck confit, and dessert of papaya with crème de cassis, but the real star of the evening is going to be the entrée, moqueca de peixe – red snapper
    cooked with peppers and onions in a palm oil and coconut milk sauce. It’s a
    specialty of Bahia in northeastern Brazil, where the cuisine and the culture
    have a strong African influence. Bahian cuisine is one of great undiscovered
    cuisines of the world, and you can get a taste of it on Monday night.
    Vegetarian options are available.

    Seating is limited. For
    reservations, go to www.jazz88fm.com
    and click on the RestauranTour link.

    Japanese restaurants seem to be
    popping up all over these days, and the latest to join the ranks is Azuki, a tiny
    storefront squeezed in between Chipotle and the Oak Street Cinema, on Oak
    Street in Stadium Village. I am terminally bored with sushi, which has become
    the ultimate generic food – it’s basically the same stuff whether you buy it at
    a fancy sushi bar, the deli case at Lund’s, or in bulk at Costco. A local
    Chinese-American restaurateur tells me we can see a lot more sushi bars opening
    in the next few years as the owners of all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets switch
    to sushi, which has higher profit margins.

    But I liked Azuki. Service is fast
    and friendly, prices are very reasonable, and there is more to the menu than
    sushi. My lunchtime tempura bento box included a couple of pieces of
    batter-fried shrimp, yam and taro, plus a California roll, a couple of gyoza
    dumplings, salad and rice ($9/ $12 dinner.) I didn’t taste my companion’s pork
    katsu donburi – a big bowl of rice topped with egg and friend pork cutlet, but
    it looked like the genuine article ($7/ $10 dinner), and there is a lot more
    that I would like to try, including the udon noodle soups ($9-$12), and the
    oyako donburi (chicken and egg over rice ($7/$10).

    Azuki Japanese Restaurant, 307 Oak St., Minneapolis, 612-331-9551.

     

    Speaking of the Oak Street Cinema,
    this weekend they are screening The Yacoubian Building, my favorite movie from
    the recent Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Film Festival. It’s a wild
    lalapalooza of a movie, Egypt’s Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film. This blurb
    from the Oak Street Cinema website captures it:

    A microcosm of Egyptian society – with its rich inhabitants living in luxurious
    apartments and the poor on the roof, the businessman who bribes his way to
    power; the rich son of a playboy who only appears interested in prostitutes;
    the relationship between a homosexual journalist and the porter’s son, who
    becomes a terrorist after been rejected by the police academy, and love story
    out of a Forties Warner Brothers musical.

    I don’t know what a movie ticket costs in Cairo, but they sure get their money’s worth.

  • Jasmine 26: A Second Look

    We had a delightful dinner at Jasmine 26 last night — a
    dramatic improvement over my visits last summer, shortly after the Vietnamese
    bistro at 26th and Nicollet opened its doors. Most of the Vietnamese
    staples are offered, like the spring rolls and egg rolls, and pho, for a dollar
    or two more than you might spent at Quang or Pho Tau Bay, or at the original
    Jasmine Deli, kitty-corner at 2532 Nicollet, but Jasmine 26 has a lot more to
    offer — including a date-worthy Zen atmosphere, a full bar, and a more varied
    menu that ranges from sweet potato shrimp toast and a lively banana blossom
    salad to grilled lemongrass baby back ribs and caramelized catfish served in a
    clay pot ($15).

    The appetizer of sea
    salt and pepper cubed tofu ($6), deep-fried and crispy on the outside, silky on
    the inside, is worth the trip all by itself, and the lettuce rolls with shrimp,
    egg, mint and cucumber, tied in a bundle with fresh cilantro are a fresh and
    light variation on the usual spring rolls. The usual noodle stir-fries and
    noodle salads are offered ($10-$12), along with some less familiar options –
    including grilled shrimp tossed with fat udon-style noodles in a very rich and
    savory coconut cream sauce. My bowl of beef stew with carrots and potatoes
    wasn’t quite as lively as the version I had recently at Quang’s, but still good
    enough to be enjoyable. We barely had room for the dessert – tart slices of
    ripe mango in coconut over sticky rice.

    A couple of beers and wines – including Sapporo and Kirin on
    tap, and an Australian cabernet and chardonnay are offered for $3 a glass.After 10 p.m., there’s an expanded list of wine, beer and sake for $3 a glass, plus bargain-priced appetizers, sandwiches and salads (all $4), and noodle dishes and soups ($6).

    Jasmine 26, 26th & Nicollet, 612-870-3800.

  • Are Restaurant Critics Obsolete?

    The 2008 James Beard Awards for best
    restaurant, best chef, best cookbook, etc. were announced yesterday, and
    Minnesota got skunked. We had three chefs in the running for Best Chef Midwest
    – Isaac Becker of the 112 Eatery, Tim McKee of La Belle Vie and Solera, and Alex Roberts
    of Restaurant Alma and Brasa, which pretty much guaranteed that none of them would get
    the award. Wisconsin only had one candidate in the race, Adam Siegel of
    Bartolotta’s Lake Park Bistro in Milwaukee, so the cheesehead voting block had
    their way. Needless to say, Rubaiyat in Decorah, IA never had a chance.

    (Speaking of Solera, please join me at the Rake’s monthly World Flavors dinner party, tonight (Monday, June 9) from 6-8 p.m. on the second floor patio at Solera, 900 Hennepin Ave. in downtown Minneapolis. Cost is $40 per person, including an interesting assortment of tapas and three accompanying wines. To see the menu and buy tickets, click here.)

    It’s a pretty safe bet that most of the people who voted for
    Bartolotto’s have never been to the 112 Eatery, and vice versa, but the Awards
    are a tremendous publicity machine for the restaurants involved, and like they
    say, people who enjoy sausages or the law, or restaurant awards, should never
    see any of them being made.

    I used to get these James Beard Award ballots every year,
    and dutifully fill them out, flipping through page after page of restaurants I
    had never been to, and many I had never even heard of. Is
    Canlis in Seattle more deserving of the Outstanding Service award than Vetris
    of Philadelphia? How many people are there on the planet who have actually
    dined at both of these restaurants more than once? Don’t get me started.

    But it did remind me of a topic I have been thinking about,
    which is whether the internet is making professional restaurant critics obsolete.
    Here’s what I am thinking:

    1)
    Professional restaurant critics are very expensive. Back when
    I was at the Star Tribune, my dining expenses often ran to over $1000 a month,
    as I recall, and I would guess my colleague Rick Nelson’s tab was similar. We
    were the envy of our colleagues. We were supposed to visit each restaurant we
    reviewed at least twice, with dining companions, and sample a total of eight
    dinners. Most restaurant critics work for newspapers, and as newspapers enter
    their death spiral and cut staff and budget and newshole, somebody in
    management must be looking at that budget line, and wondering. I predict that
    five years from now, there will be a lot fewer paid critics around.

    2)
    Restaurant critics are an artifact of the gastronomic
    revolution that started around 40 years ago, when most Americans had never
    heard the word pasta. They needed experts, or thought they did, and so people
    like me, (who really weren’t experts, except in relative terms) got jobs as
    critics, which instantly elevated us to the status of experts. But nowadays,
    the public is much more knowledgeable about food, and much more skeptical about
    what they read in the newspaper.

    3)
    We know more than you do, but collectively, you know more than
    we do. As predictors of whether the public will enjoy a particular restaurant,
    experienced professionals like Rick or Dara or myself are much more reliable
    than the average local food blogger. And we know a lot more than the typical
    amateur – we can give you background and detail and insights that will enhance
    your dining experience.

    But now, thanks to the internet
    and the digital revolution, it is possible to aggregate the collective wisdom
    and dining experience of thousands of diners. And as New Yorker magazine writer
    James Surowiecki argues in The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter
    Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies
    and Nations     (which I haven’t actually read), when you put together a
    lot of individual opinions, the crowd often does get it right. A lot of the
    individual comments in the Zagat restaurant guides may be inane, or just plain
    wrong, or based on one atypical experience, but on balance, their thousands of
    reader/reviewers get it right. (By the way, you can help contribute to the
    collective wisdom of the Twin Cities dining community by signing up as a Rake
    Restaurant Rater    .)

    (Confidential to Anonymous: thanks for the spelling correction.)  

  • Midtown Goes Downtown; Great Deal at Saffron

    A little taste of the Midtown Global Market will be making an appearance on the Nicollet Mall this Saturday night, as the Minneapolis Mosaic kicks off a summer of multi-cultural arts and entertainment. Manny’s
    Tortas, La Loma
    Tamales, Pham’s Deli and Holy Land Grocery and Deli will all have stands
    on the Nicollet Mall, selling everything from spring rolls to shawirma.
    For the full program of Minneapolis Mosaic activities, check out
    http://www.minneapolismosaic.com/. The party runs from 6 to 10 p.m.,
    with over 40 entertainment acts.

    Elsewhere downtown,one of my favorite Twin Cities restaurants, Saffron, is offering a three course $35 dinner special, with optional wine pairings for an additional $15. The offer is good Monday through Friday from 5 to 10 p.m., through the end of this month.

    Chef Sameh Wadi’s menu starts with chilled asparagus soup with yogurt cheese and olive oil crostina, accompanied by a glass of Juve y Camps Cava. The main course is duck breast with cauliflower, sultanas and preserved lemon, served with a Guenoc Petit Syrah, followed by a dessert duo of passionfruit curd tart and sorbet, with a Palladino Moscato D’ Asti.

    Saffron is at 123 N. 3rd Street (across the street from the 112 eatery); call 612-746-5533 for reservations.

  • Cafe Agri: Slow Food, Puritan Style

    Café Agri opened last Saturday in the former My-T-Fine
    Bakery space at 43rd and Bryant Ave. S. in south Minneapolis. That’s
    Agri as in agritourismo, the new Italian
    (and Spanish) vogue of rustic farm-stay vacations where you get to crush
    the grapes with your feet and milk the sheep and eat hearty meals with crusty breads and sausages
    and fettucine and pasta.

    Except you won’t find crusty breads or sausages or fettucine at Cafe Agri. Nor olives or sun-dried tomatoes or anchovies or even garlic.

    Café Agri is the brainchild of Fabrizio Ciccone, who at
    various times has been a partner in Nochee and Arezzo, and still owns Aura in
    Calhoun Square.

    "As Italians," Ciccone explained in a press release, "we
    appreciate the fresh ingredients and country life that combine to bring the
    Agritourism concept to life–that’s why we’ve used it as our inspiration to
    bring this restaurant to Minneapolis."

    This is a restaurant with a mission: "We hope that you join us in learning more
    about how our food is produced and how our food choices affect the rest of the
    world. We purchase as many ingredients as possible from local producers,
    including local fish from Wisconsin and Minnesota. We’ve also partnered
    with the Slow Food movement which is founded upon the concept of eco-gastronomy
    – a recognition of the vital connections between plate and planet."

    Except for one fish entrée, the menu is
    entirely vegetarian, and a lot of it is vegan. Ciccone recently became a
    vegetarian himself, and the menu has an aura of zealous purity about it. Except for Sonny’s ice cream, everything on the menu is prepared without refined sugar, wheat flour, eggs, butter, (and very little other fat or oil).

    The ravioli and crostini are advertised as gluten-free (what does
    that have to do with eating locally or saving the planet?). There is no butter – and very little other fat or oil, but there is plenty
    of tempeh and tofu – as in the hazelnut asparagus and seared maple tofu ($12),
    and fennel-ginger tempeh with sweet onion.

    The mention of Slow Food is a bit misleading – this menu comes out of a
    totally different tradition. The Slow Food people are omnivores – they
    eat meat and dairy and wheat breads and butter and eggs – everything in
    moderation – but they are very principled about where their food comes
    from and how it is produced. Cafe Agri’s cuisine comes out of the old
    puritannical American health food / food faddism tradition that goes
    back to Sylvester Graham and high colonics. (Chef Dan Alvin was previously chef at Ecopolitan, the raw foods restaurant in the same tradition.)

    I can’t say that I enjoyed the few dishes I tried – "crostini" made of unleavened flax "bread", served with a spread made of kale (I think), black beans and onions; grilled vegetable tempeh ($4); a nightly special of roasted red potatoes, asparagus and eggplant, prepared with minimal sauce or seasoning ($12); and a dry "spicy yam hash" topped with a lot of red heirloom beans ($10).

    But I am not the target audience for this restaurant. This is not food for hedonists. This is food for people who regard their diet as an important part of their spiritual journey and treat butter, sugar and flour as defilements of the temple of their body.

    There seem to be enough devotees of this kind of cuisine in the Twin Cities to keep Ecopolitan in business, and I expect that they will also enjoy Cafe Agri.

    Wine and beer arrive in July.The wines will all come from
    Etica, the local company that specializes in fair-trade wines.

    Cafe Agri, 4300 Bryant Avenue South, Minneapolis, 612-822-3101.

  • A Tip on Thai: Bangkok Thai Deli

    Finding good Thai food in the Twin Cities isn’t easy — the best I have found recently has been at
    True Thai on Franklin Ave. E. in Minneapolis.
    I have been very disappointed with what I have tasted at the Thai
    restaurants in Uptown, and though I have only sampled a few dishes at Otho and
    Kindee, and the re-opened Ruam Mit in downtown Saint Paul, none of them seemed
    to get it quite right. (My usual test is to order a hot and sour tom yum soup
    and a green curry, both complex and pungent dishes; too often, the green curry
    is bland and insipid, and the tom yum is out of balance, or missing some of the
    essential ingredients, such as straw mushrooms, or galangal or lemon grass.)

    To be fair, all of these judgments are based on very limited samplings; now
    that I am spending my own money when I dine, I am reluctant to return to a
    restaurant a second or third time in hopes of getting a better meal than I had
    the first time around.

    So I was really delighted to get this tip from a reader:

    Hi Jeremy. I work at the University of Minnesota and there are a few
    people from Thailand there and they had been telling me to try a restaurant
    that is on University Ave down toward the Capitol. It’s called Bangkok
    Thai Deli. Although I have never been to Thailand, they tell me that the
    food is as close as you can get.

    I went there a few times and it was phenomenal. Very tasty dishes;
    flavors that I have never experienced at other Thai restaurants in the area,
    and very classic cilantro, lime, basil combinations you would expect
    also. It is inexpensive as well; when I was there last we ordered three
    dishes and the bill was well under $20.

    315 University Ave, Saint Paul, MN is the address. It is kind of a
    dodgy looking building but the people inside will give you some of the best
    service you’ve ever had. I’m always pleasantly surprised at the level of
    kindness I encounter there.

    I followed up on the reader’s advice and stopped by yesterday. The place
    looks pretty much the way Kevin described it: a well-stocked Asian market with
    a big dining room off to the side. The décor is minimal, unless you count the
    color photos of menu items, on the wall behind the counter. A handful of diners
    were watching Thai music videos on a small television.

    I was on my bike, and ordered takeout, so I had to avoid the really sloshy
    dishes, like tom yum, but overall I was pretty impressed. My green curry with
    beef was lively and complex, made with baby Asian eggplant, kaffir lime leaves
    and fresh basil. My other entrée order was apparently misunderstood – I had
    asked for stir-fried Thai banana with shrimp ($8), but got a dish of stir-fried
    beef with red and green peppers – lively and very tasty.

    Bangkok Thai Deli, 315 University Ave. W., St. Paul, 651-224-4300.

    While I waited for my takeout order, I wandered a couple of doors away to the 88 Oriental Foods Deli, 291 University Ave. 651-209-8388, and ordered a couple more dishes from the cafeteria counter in the back of the store. The Laotian-style tom sam (shredded green papaya with garlic, tomatoes dried shrimp and fish sauce, $3.49) was pungent and delicious, and the combo special has to be one of the best deals in town: a generous mound of rice with two toppings – I chose the chicken curry and stewed pork belly – for $3.99.

    On my way over, as I pedaled down University Ave. I spotted a big banner outside
    Krua Thai Restaurant (432 University Ave., St. Paul, 651-224-4053) advertising Thai boat soup. Then, on the menu at Bangkok
    Thai, I saw Thai boat soup listed again. I was intrigued, so I asked the guy
    behind the counter, but the language barrier got in the way. Still curious, I
    googled "Thai boat soup" when I got home, and found the following description
    on the Chow.com website:

    Boat noodle is a Thai specialty that is … well, it’s not for the easily
    frightened. True boat noodle is deeply beefy, funky, with hard assaults of
    tang, sourness, spice, sweet, and good… Boat noodle style gets its
    characteristic cloudy appearance and extrafunky flavor from its primary
    thickener, beef blood. But once you’ve had it funky, you can’t go back to the
    clean stuff. You’re dirty forever… It’s kind of like sucking nectar directly from
    the mouth of the goddess of the Thai…"

    I can’t wait to go back. If you get there before I do, please drop me a
    line, and tell me all about it.

     

  • Curry Up! and Kabobs

    I seem to have gotten on an Indian cuisine kick lately – not
    just Indian restaurants, but also grocery stores, where I can buy those
    colorful Indian sweets, made with condensed milk or lentil flour or sesame
    seeds, and flavored with pistachio, coconut and mango and all sorts of spices.
    Patel Brothers Groceries and Video, 1835 Central Ave. N.E., Minneapolis, has one of the best selections in town, but you can also find
    them across the street at Asia Imports, or at South Asian Foods in Fridley.

    My other Indian food habit is Indian vegetarian entrees,
    like paneer makhani (curried cheese in tomato sauce) and bhindi do piazza okra
    in a spicy onion sauce), packaged in shelf-stable foil retort pouches and sold
    under a whole variety of brand names, like Priya and Ashoka, for about $2 per
    10-ounce package. I gather they are the Indian Army’s equivalent of MRIs – some
    of them carry the label, “Technology Developed by Defence Food Research
    Laboratory, Ministry of Defence, Mysore, INDIA.” (Insert joke about gas warfare
    here.)

    The latest trend on the local Indian food scene seems to be grocery store-restaurant combos: Patel Brothers has the Hyderabad House right next door, Asia Imports has a little snack counter called the Bombay2Deli, and South Asian Foods has a little cafe hidden inside the grocery.

    My latest discovery on the Indian restaurant and
    grocery front is Curry Up! in Maple Grove, a big new grocery store offering
    fresh produce, lots of packaged goods, a little sweets and chaat (snack)
    counter, and a counter-service café in the back. The menu offers staple North
    Indian and South Indian dishes, vegetarian and with meat, plus some regional
    dishes that you don’t usually find in the US, like peppery Chettinad chicken
    from Tamil Nadu, or a famous Gujarati specialty called Undhiyu.

    I have only sampled a few dishes so far, but I have enjoyed
    everything I tried, including the massive masala dosas, crisp lentil flour
    pancakes stuffed with a spiced mixture of potatoes and peas; the spicy sambar
    soup, and the spicy Hyderabadi eggplant. The selection of dishes offered on the
    $6.95 lunch buffet is limited in variety, but above-average in quality. I am
    eager to go back sometime soon and try some of the other items on the menu,
    including the chaat, a bunch of different kinds of street food snacks made with
    crunchy lentil flour wafers and noodles, yogurt, chick peas, onions, cilantro
    and spices. When I was there, the owner mentioned that they can also cater
    chaat for parties – a couple of their employees bring all the ingredients, and
    make the snacks to order.

    I also had a chance to stop by last weekend at another old
    favorite – Kabobs, a little strip-mall storefront at 7814 Portland Ave. S. in
    Bloomington. The place is tiny, and nearly every table was taken, so I ordered
    take-out. I have had the kabobs before (beef, lamb and chicken, $7.99-$10.99),
    and they are terrific, but this time I decided to concentrate on the vegetarian
    side of the menu. The aloo baigan, a potato and eggplant curry, was extremely
    hot and spicy, but the bhindi masala, baby okra in a tomatoey sauce was
    pungently flavorful without being overwhelming. At $4.99 for a big serving,
    these dishes are an incredible bargain – and much tastier than the versions
    that come in retort pouches.

    Apparently, Chinese cuisine is in vogue in India –
    many of the grocery stores carry Indian versions of Chinese noodle dishes,
    packaged ramen-style, and Kabobs has a whole section of its menu devoted to
    Indo-Chinese dishes, including Szechuan beef and chicken ($6.99) , but I opted
    for the chili gobi, ($5.99) a dish of breaded deep-fried cauliflower florets in a spicy
    tomato sauce – delicious.

  • Shiraz Update: Fish Kabobs, Belly Dancer, and More

    I stopped in at Shiraz Fireroasted Cuisine for dinner the
    other night, to check out the new menu and the belly dancing, and at 8:30 on a
    Saturday night, the place was nearly empty. That’s really a shame, because it
    is a charming little restaurant, with good food and an ambience of Persian arts
    and crafts that’s stylish enough for a date. On earlier visits, I grumbled
    about the lack of vegetarian and fish entrees, but that flaw has been fixed — they now offer salmon kabobs, a spinach pie, and a couple of meatless Persian
    stews.

    Maybe Persian cuisine sounds too exotic, but it’s really
    not: the heart of the menu is the grilled kabobs of beef or chicken. There are
    a few more exotic items on the menu, like the fesenjan, chicken in a
    pomegranate and walnut sauce, and the gheimeh, a beef tenderloin stew with
    yellow lentils and dried limes, but many other dishes are familiar from other
    Middle Eastern cuisines: hummus, eggplant dip, stuffed grape leaves.

    You can check all this out on their website, which also features
    an entertaining video about Persian cuisine, narrated by a very folksy
    Midwesterner.

    Prices are extremely reasonable. The koubideh (skewers of
    seasoned ground beef or chicken, highly recommended) served over saffron rice
    are priced at $10, including flatbread and soup or salad, and the most
    expensive entrees, shish kabobs and the salmon kabobs are priced at $14.
    They’ve got a full bar and a limited wine list, including wines by the glass
    for $6-$8.

    The belly dancing, featured Fridays and Saturdays from 7 to
    10 p.m., was pretty low-key, but it’s hard to play to an empty house.

    6042 Nicollet Ave S., Minneapolis, 612-861-5500

  • Hmong Cuisine, Six Buck Hank, and More

    The menu at the new Red Pepper in Saint Paul combines
    Vietnamese, Thai and Hmong dishes, but since the first two cuisines are pretty
    widely available elsewhere, I decided to try one of the Hmong dishes. Number
    27, sweet pork belly with eggs, turned out to be a savory stew with big chunks
    of roast pork, (not nearly as fatty as I had feared), hard-boiled eggs, red
    bell pepper, fresh pineapple green onions and ginger, in a rich brown slightly
    sweet gravy accented with star anise (I think), served with steamed rice.
    Delicious, and served in very generous portion.

    There is a lot more on the menu that I would like to try,
    including the squash curry, made with butternut squash, bamboo shoots, peppers,
    onions and coconut red curry sauce, available with beef or chicken ($7.50),
    shrimp ($8.50), or a combination of shrimp, squid and scallops for $10.50. The
    whole fried tilapia with sweet pepper curry sauce ($10.50) also sounds
    promising. A friend reports that when she ordered the kow poon, a Hmong/
    Laotian dish made with shredded chicken, bamboo shoots, red curry and
    lemongrass, the broth was delicious, but she couldn’t find any actual chicken
    in the dish. Still might be worth a try, but I would ask about the chicken
    first.

    Otherwise, the menu offers a variety of familiar southeast
    Asian dishes – Vietnamese pho (beef noodle soup), plus variations with seafood
    and crispy pork belly ($5.50-$7.95); pad Thai ($7.50-$10.50); green papaya
    salad ($5.95 / $8.50 with beef jerky), and a variety of stir-fried noodle and
    fried rice dishes.

    Red Pepper Cafe, 864 University Ave., St. Paul, 651-292-8800. Closed Sundays.

    Six Buck Hank?

    Henry Chan at Giapponese Sushi in Woodbury is starting a new
    promotion this Sunday: selected wines for $6 a bottle. Here’s the fine print:
    the offer is open to everybody on Sundays, and to people in the hospitality
    industry on Tuesdays. As soon as the outdoor patio is open – Chan says that’ll
    be a couple of weeks – the offer will be good on the patio every day.

    Don’t expect Chateauneuf-du-Pape at these prices – the
    labels are trustworthy old cheapies like Oxford Landing Chardonnay and Shiraz,
    Penascal Sauvignon Blanc, Stella Pinot Grigio; and Shiraz, Riesling, Chardonnay
    and Cabernet Sauvignon from from Banrock Station, an Australian winery that
    donates a share of its proceeds to environmental causes. Still, a great deal.

    What Would Gandhi Do?

    Coming Tuesday to 27th and E. Lake: Gandhi Mahal, a
    new Indian restaurant, next door to Midori’s Floating World. The menu seems to
    be pretty much the standard north Indian repertoire, but owner Rahman Arshad –
    whose family also owns the Little Taj Mahal in Dinkytown, and several Indian
    restaurants in New York City – is promising some unusual touches, including a
    lassi bar, serving several flavors of the traditional yogurt beverage, plus a
    tapas-like assortment of Indian finger foods. A lunch $9.99 lunch buffet will
    be offered daily, and eventually, live music on weekends.

    The restaurant
    will be decorated with images of Mahatma Gandhi, who might not have approved of
    the meat and seafood dishes on the menu – the Indian spiritual leader
    was a strict vegetarian.