Author: rakemag

A few years ago, when Minnesota author Faith Sullivan’s novel The Empress of One (for which she won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize) had just been released, a friend of ours mentioned that Sullivan had recently accepted an invitation to attend her diddly little neighborhood book group as a guest author. How cool is that? So Minnesotan. Anyway, our friend could not speak highly enough of Sullivan, how stunning it was to hear her read from her work, how approachable she was, how intelligent, articulate, and just plain friendly. All of this makes the thought of attending a reading of Sullivan’s latest work, What a Woman Must Do, that much more alluring. Set in the fictional town of Harvester, Minnesota in 1952, What a Woman Must Do traces the connections of three women: Bess, 17, Harriet, 39, and Kate, 59, all of whom have been affected by the car accident that killed Bess’s parents. The novel pulls readers through the twists of destiny—death, love, and dreams of the future—that threaten to come between the three women. Sullivan, who grew up in Minnesota towns herself, applies her deft talents as a writer with believable authenticity to the rhythms of small-town life, while she concurrently addresses the eternal themes of love, loyalty, and family. Sullivan reads at Ruminator Books in Minneapolis on June 3, (651) 699-0587

Like all great artists and authors, Jules Feiffer was not a fully formed world-class creator until he’d composed a children’s book. Remember that E.B. White, his brilliant colleague and contemporary at The New Yorker, didn’t really gild his impeccable reputation until he’d composed Charlotte’s Web. This rite of passage separating the great from the legendary is now a truism. Everyone from Garrison Keillor to Maya Angelou has put pen to paper on behalf of the pre-school set. And while this is often an exercise in pretension and self-congratulation, Feiffer has been creating award-winning children’s books since 1993. His new book, By the Side of the Road, explores the cliché of the classic family road trip in which an irate dad asks the kids to behave or he’ll leave them on the shoulder. One of them takes Dad up on the threat, and spends the rest of his life right there where Dad left him, growing up by the side of the road. We sense this one’s bound for immortality like Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, or Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Barnes & Noble, Edina (952) 920-1060

We descended on Hell’s Kitchen on a Monday, the four of us, expecting the hellfire and brimstone and everlasting chaos of a kitchen under siege. Or, at least, we envisioned the antipode to the white tablecloth, fresh-flower breakfast place. Why do we expect Hell to be so over-populated? Perhaps Salvation Sundays, with brunch from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., attract a bigger, noisier crowd, confident the gospel music will perfume the multitude of sins right out of the air. This quiet Monday noon we could see right down to the paint-it-black-you-devil floor and the blood-red doors and the fiery licks around the edges. So we ate. We almost made a meal of great bread with salted butter—to hell with special diets—and sweet marmalade and jam and the freshest sort of peanut butter ever. Then we remembered we hadn’t yet become complete gluttons, so we continued with crab cakes and walleye and B.L.T.’s, ham and pears grilled with Swiss cheese, fries and fruit and the biggest, blackest, yes, blackberries you’ve ever seen. We could have made a meal of the side dishes and been no less sinful. So many forms of comfort food, so deceptively simple and tempting, we’ll undoubtedly return to sample more. If the scene is vaguely familiar, remember your last journey to Hell—your previous Night (there is a pungent Bloody Beer Mary to cure what ails you), or your secret tryst in the old Du Jour’s Casual Café. Same place, a couple of familiar faces (they always said that would happen down below), but an entirely new and rakish breakfast/lunch joint on the scene. Check out the art on the walls. It’s no sin to look. Hell’s Kitchen, (612) 332-4700

Going out for breakfast on a rainy Saturday morning, lingering over those third and fourth cups of regular old coffee, chatting with the pretty young waitress about the smell of the rain in spring and the striking beauty of her just-dyed hair—what could be nicer? Key’s Cafe on Raymond Avenue in St. Paul (at the University Avenue intersection) feels like a lucky find, something you can use as filler in conversation later with casual friends or to impress potential dates (“Well, actually, there’s this fabulous little one-of-a-kind breakfast spot I know if you don’t mind a short drive…”). But, alas, it’s just one franchise of nine metro cafes that your potential date probably already knows about. Oh well. But you can have a terrific plate of French toast, crispy hashbrowns, a variety of specialty omelettes, and pretty much every other necessary element of a tried-and-true breakfast diner, including a distinctly Minnesotan egg creation called the Loon Omelet, replete with wild rice, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, and provolone, under a cream sauce graced with onions, garlic, white wine, and mushrooms. Last time we went, we hung out for two full hours and no one batted an eye, even though the place was packed and we ate lightly. But maybe that’s because we dared to ask the waitress just what it was she had done to her hair to make it so spectacular. What we didn’t bother to ask was why the women’s bathroom included a toothbrush and toothpaste on the soap counter. After all, a little mystery is a good thing. Key’s Cafe (651) 646-5756

Tucked away in downtown St. Paul (but then again, what isn’t invariably tucked away down there?), Babani’s is rumored to be the only Kurdish restaurant in the United States. (Quick geography lesson: Kurdistan is a mountainous region occupying 74,000 square miles in southeast Turkey, northwest Iran, northeast Iraq, and northeast Syria—with a population of 25 million people!) Fleeing a Kurdish refugee camp in Turkey, owners Tanya Fuad and Rodwan Nakshabandi arrived in Minnesota and worked at separate jobs until the opportunity to open Babani’s arrived. Meat lovers can enjoy exquisite fare, such as the tawa, featuring chicken sauteed in lemon and spices, baked potato, green pepper, and onion. Vegans will delight in the variety of meatless dishes, including dolmas, biryani, and the Sheik Babani. Forgo your dinner beverage of choice and order the Kurdish lemonade, a sweet thirst-quenching concoction. Perfect, if the weather ever warms up again. Babani’s (651) 602-9964