The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Fast and Fabulous

    Our story begins with a hungry young lass on her way to lunch at a new restaurant. She’s dragged along her lunch date to see what all the fuss is about, but upon entering the establishment, she feels a certain unease. The place is packed, and she is assured by a less-than-sweet hostess that the wait is a solid forty-five minutes, even for a bar table. A generally unfriendly atmosphere causes our heroine to grab a takeout menu and leave, sputtering a fabricated story about returning for dinner another night with some large—very large—group.

    But she’s still hungry, and her date is getting cranky. While she straps him into his car seat, she is forced to make a decision: She’s losing time, losing a three-year-old’s patience, and losing ground in the battle for a good lunch. It may be time to settle. Heading to a nearby place we’ll call Smartguy Bagels, she orders a standard PB&J for her date and a chicken Caesar salad for herself. With her first bite, she discovers the chicken is still frozen. Alerting the good people at the counter to this tragedy, our plucky girl watches as the chicken is lifted off the salad, tossed into the microwave, then plopped back onto the greens. It is this display of fast-foodsmanship, coupled with one more bite of alternately searing-hot and semi-frozen chicken, that leads our defeated young woman to conclude: It is what it is.

    Yet, there is a happy ending of sorts to this tale. The plight of our stunningly beautiful heroine grows increasingly rare these days, because of the hottest trend in the restaurant industry: fast-casual dining. Coined in the mid-’90s, “fast-casual” or “quick-casual” describes restaurants that fill the niche between fast food and casual dining, between McDonald’s and TGI Friday’s. These restaurants offer expedited service, but with better food and a more comfortable ambience than fast-food outlets. Diners usually order at a counter, with the food either picked up at said counter or delivered to the table. Not a surly hostess in sight.

    Not that I think this tolls the death knell for full-service restaurants. People still enjoy being tended to and consulting with knowledgeable servers. But frequently, the quick café fits the bill: when you’re running late, when you have kids in tow, when you refuse to eat in the car, when you want something healthier than fast food—which means most of the time for most of us.

    Big players on the fast-casual scene include the familiar Panera, Noodles & Company, and Pei Wei Asian Diner, a chain mostly present in the Southwest but with a few outposts here.

    In addition, the fast-casual trend has caught the eye of local culinary types, so the local scene promises to get better and better. Tim Niver and Aaron Johnson, the boys behind Town Talk Diner, are shopping for a site for a fast-casual Italian restaurant; and Alex Roberts, of Restaurant Alma, is opening Brasa, a saucy, south-of-the-border-flavored rotisserie joint in Northeast Minneapolis, sometime this summer. I desperately want to name two other industry players who are looking and scheming, but they still need their day jobs, so all must remain hush-hush for now.

    Not that there isn’t already plenty of fast and fresh food available around town. Lucia’s Bakery & Take Home is one of the more recent and welcome additions to the market. Pop in for some sweet or savory crêpes, freshly made soups, and daily bread specials. Most of her sandwiches feature meats and ingredients from local farms and producers (as if you’d expect anything less from Lucia). Meanwhile, at Yum Kitchen and Bakery, the menu changes about every three weeks—a distinct departure from the big chains’ fixed menus. You’ll always find innovative sandwiches, like the hot turkey mole with manchego cheese, and they’re courting the dinner crowd with entrées like seafood stew and ribs. Take home a whole chicken dinner with two sides if you’d like.

    Pizza, of course, fits the fast-casual bill to a T. Punch Pizza, which started as a full-service restaurant in St. Paul, has expanded over the Cities with express locations. Simply order your Toto pizza (this model is beautifully smothered with prosciutto, arugula, crushed red pepper, and goat cheese), and, by virtue of that nine-hundred-degree wood-fired oven, it’s ready in a flash. Slower to arrive, but bigger, are the classic New York-style pies from Snap!, like the Snaparooskie, piled with sausage, pepperoni, onion, green pepper, and mushrooms.

    Step out of the rut and try Sea Salt for seriously high-quality fast fish. A po’boy or a grilled marlin taco with a side of clam fries in Minnehaha Falls park will heal any memories of bad lunch. Or step away from the burrito and check out Kabobi in Eden Prairie. Meats, seafood, and vegetables, fire roasted in the Persian tradition, tucked into flat bread with brilliantly spiced sauces and snappy sides should be a welcome change for any palate.

    One quick-casual joint I’d be happy to have in my neighborhood is The Bad Waitress. With a snarky twist on fast-casual, diners grab a table and fill out their own ticket (choosing a monster or superhero name as an identifier), which they bring to the counter. The food delivered is comfortably familiar and always tasty. If I lived nearby I’d be there for the pumpkin pancakes at breakfast, the grilled-cheese deluxe at lunch, and the mac & cheese at dinner (plus late-night hot dogs).

    According to the National Restaurant Association, Americans will spend some $150 billion this year at quick-service restaurants. As for our amazingly witty heroine, we can be assured that her portion of the bill will be spent thoughtfully. No longer satisfied to accept “what is,” she’s quite excited to see “what will be.”
    SHOP TALK

    Get ready, get set … summer festival season is kicking into gear. Whether you’re planning to brine cabbage for Henderson’s Sauerkraut Days (June 22-24), toss back a rhubatini at Lanesboro’s Rhubarb Festival (June 2), or train for the milk run during Willmar’s West Central Dairy Days (June 1-15), check in at ExploreMinnesota.com to get all the tasty details … Beginning June 7, the Mill City Farmers’ Market will be open Thursday evenings from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Given their track record with the Saturday morning market, this could make Thursday the tastiest night of the week … When it comes to learning the basics of baking bread, you can’t get much more basic than the class at Historic Fort Snelling on June 9, which focuses on the brick-oven and iron-kettle baking techniques of yore. Plus, while your bread bakes, you can churn butter and make preserves for that freshly turned loaf (www.mnhs.org) … Classic cars go nicely with burgers and shakes, wouldn’t you say? With the coming of summer, these nostalgic treats can be enjoyed at such throwback joints as St. Paul’s Dari-ette Drive-In (1440 N. Minnehaha East, St Paul; 651-776-3470) and the Minnetonka Drive-In (4658 Shoreline Dr., Spring Park; 952-471-9383), both of which play host to hot-rod buffs and the onion-ring cognoscenti alike.
    CUISINE SUPREME

    Saffron
    A table here will soon be as prized as the spice for which it is named. Saffron’s brightly colored and inviting dining space has already attracted a small but loyal group of devotees, but the masses can’t be kept from this kitchen’s delectable dishes for long. Playing with traditional Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavors, the cooks devised a menu with contemporary edge. A beautifully pale veal-tuna carpaccio is touched with brown butter vinaigrette and hazelnuts. The salmon-clam tagine celebrates fennel. The blue-crab salad with avocado balances the heat of curry with a kiss of citrus. Treat yourself to some hibiscus lemonade or the Saffron version of a bloody mary (the Harissa Mary, oh yeah) if you find yourself waiting at the bar for a table—a practice you’ll have to get used to here. 123 Third St. N., Minneapolis; 612-746-5533; www.saffronmpls.com
    Manana
    Nestled on the corner of Seventh and Arcade streets in St. Paul is Manana, a small pupuseria. If you’re muttering “pupusa-wha?” you’re not alone. Pupusas, though popular in El Salvador, are rarely seen this far north. Made with a thick and puffy handmade corn tortilla, they are stuffed with creamy melted cheese and your choice of chicharonnes (chicken) or loroco (a briny vine-flower bud from Central America). You’ll also find fresh Mexican tacos, burritos, and carne asada on the menu, as well as Salvadoran favorites like flaky empanadas, tasty pasteles (beef pie), and crispy fried plantains. Since everything is under three dollars, ordering up a mess of pupusas with chilled rice milk horchata will make you feel virtuously frugal, happily fed, and in the know. 828 Seventh St. E., St. Paul; 651-793-8482; www.mananarestaurant.net www.mananarestaurant.net

    Naviya’s Thai Kitchen
    Dwelling in the shadow of a Richfield water tower, this restaurant retreat endeavors to create dishes that heal the body and soul through the traditional five flavors (hot, sour, salty, sweet, bitter). Somehow “creamy” might be added to that list, as a taste of Naviya’s lightly herbed cream-cheese wontons is certainly palliative, and possibly addictive. The lunch buffet offers a nice sampling of the regular menu, including a pungent coconut lemongrass soup. The Bangkok hot plate features a lovely abundance of garlic. The crispy fish cakes come replete with a zingy, sweet-and-spicy cucumber sauce. Heck, the teas alone are reason enough to visit. Check out the oolong graced with an essence of orchid, or splurge on a pot of pu-erh vintage cave-aged tea. 6345 Penn Ave. S., Richfield; 612-861-2491

    Read Stephanie March’s blog at www.rakemag.com/today, find more restaurant reviews at www.rakemag.com/restaurants

  • Fresh Pink Innocence

    End-of-term gifts from one’s pupils are a recurrent pleasure of professorial life. Like the boarding-school boy who thanked the aunt for the bottle of cherries pickled in brandy, one enjoys them not only for themselves but also for the spirit in which they are given. Only once have I been given an apple (and then in a spirit of irony). Port, of course, is always welcome.

    Some of the offerings that have thus come to ornament my office enjoy an oblique, even recondite significance. There is the plastic McNugget that for nearly twenty years has been ever ready to perform the function kindly envisaged by its thoughtful donor, namely to differentiate between two senses of the present participle neuter of the Greek verb “to be.” Unadorned, the McNugget is mere Being, pure Essence. But accoutered with his little ten-gallon hat and his red-and-yellow McGunbelt, he becomes a Specific Being, That Which Is.

    The token of appreciation that most often catches the visitor’s eye is my Plastic Action Figure of Pope Innocent III. His Holiness stands about six inches high in a maroon vestment, pallium, and triple tiara. He holds up a number of fingers in a gesture, perhaps of blessing, and has at hand a scroll reading, “Filii Hohenstaufenin, osculamini asinum meum.” I guess this is meant to allude to Innocent’s political manipulation of the Holy Roman Empire; rendered roughly into the vulgar tongue, the words might mean, “Sons of the Hohenstaufen, you are kissing my donkey.”

    Innocent must be one of the least aptly named of all Roman pontiffs. He gave ecclesiastical backing to the unspeakable Fourth Crusade of 1204, which one historian has called the last of the barbarian invasions. Its knights never went near the Holy Land; instead they appropriated Constantinople, the venerable capital of the Christian Emperors of Byzantium, who had formed an intelligent symbiosis with their Muslim neighbors.

    Look westward and Innocent’s effect is no brighter. The Cathars are not heroes of mine, a set of dismal dualists who denigrated the flesh and whose promotion as early avatars of modern hedonist (sorry—liberal) theology is (shall we say charitably) difficult to understand. But whatever the Cathars’ faults, there was no need for Pope Innocent to fire up knights from northern France to invade the Cathar region—what is now southwestern France but was then a distinct land with its own language, the langue d’oc (so called because its word for “yes” was oc rather than the French oui). One of the northern aggressors was so ferocious that he exhorted his subordinates, who could not tell Cathar enemy from innocent bystander: “Kill them all; God will recognize which ones are His.”

    The city walls of Carcassonne, one of the great Cathar strongholds, no longer echo with the clash of swords. They were extensively rebuilt in the nineteenth century by the Gothic fantasist Viollet-le-Duc, and breathe a heavily romanticized version of the last enchantments of the Middle Ages.

    A reassuring reality is to be found a few miles northwest of Carcassonne. The Château de Pennautier is the leading winemaker in the small, relatively new appellation of Cabardès and its 2004 rosé, available for about $12, is a proper summer tonic. It is made from Syrah and Grenache grapes, varieties one most associates with the Rhône valley, but it is much less heavy than most Rhônes.

    When I first poured this, I found it confusing. The color is a clear carroty pink, the nose subtly sweet. The initial flavor recalled soft fruit, then tannins kicked in, redolent of mild black pepper, and finally came a series of aftertastes, including the slightly numbing sensation that wine folk associate with pear-drops. But for all its lightness, this wine stood up well to a small steak. What I really liked, however, was the way the wine settled into the glass. A day later it was no longer confusing. The wine had achieved the boldness one associates with innocence. It had come together in a combination of sweetness, acidity, and salutary bitterness—as refreshing as a fine, fleshy, pink grapefruit. Now that’s something no student has ever given me.

    Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota and former secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.

    Read more of Oliver Nicholson’s wine selects at www.rakemag.com/restaurants

  • Little Shop of Horrors

    A few months back, it was asserted in the pages of this magazine that Ten Thousand Things has great taste in literature. We stand by that assessment—even now, as the company readies a production of an American musical that to some would appear gauche. The Little Shop story line is about as absurd as it gets. (It is, after all, a spoof of a ’60s B-movie.) But the cult musical boasts an irresistible bebop score as well as a lovable cast of characters. In the hands of Ten Thousand Things artistic director Michelle Hensley, these elements get stripped down to expose their underlying darkness. What’s more, a fine group of local character actors inject nuance into what is normally a big-voiced, Broadway-style production. Writer, actor, improviser, and all-around funny-man Jim Lichtscheidl plays geeky Seymour. Kate Eifrig, fresh off her run as Janis Joplin in Love, Janis, plays Audrey. One of the Twin Towns’ preeminent physical comics, Luverne Seifert, appears as the evil Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. Hensley has a surprise in store for the character of Audrey II, the blood-feeding plant; she isn’t giving any specifics, but teases: “It’ll be very different; it won’t be the traditional Audrey” (i.e., no giant, molded-foam puppet growling “Feed me, Seymour.”). 612-203-9502; www.tenthousandthings.org

  • Hunger

    Emigrant Theatre prefers to stage edgy, often enigmatic new plays by living writers. Therefore, the troupe makes a point of getting to know all the winners of the prestigious Jerome Fellowship, an honor that attracts a national congregation of top dramatists to Minneapolis, where they work in one-year residencies at the Playwrights’ Center. Recently, the folks at Emigrant read a Jerome playwright they particularly liked—New Yorker Sheri Wilner. Equal parts comedy, fantasy, and drama, Wilner’s multifarious Hunger concerns the story of Diana, a woman with a seemingly charmed life. But on the night of her engagement—when she’s spending the night with her fiancé, Adam, in his seaside cabin, and the perfect circumstances of her life seem only further cemented—Diana is left confronting some pretty monumental what-ifs. Does she stick with trustworthy Adam? Or does she strike out on her own in an effort to fulfill her deepest desires? A Prince Charming (of sorts) actually materializes in this instance, so Diana’s quandary isn’t as easily solved as it might seem. 1501 Fourth St. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-6131; www.emigranttheater.org

  • Aftermath

    Minneapolis has long been considered a hotbed of great physical theater, what with the resident clowns, mimes, and mask-makers at Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Still, in the past few years, the city has attracted an impressive fleet of younger physical-theatermakers—many of whom are packed into this single show. Aftermath marks the directing debut of Katie Kaufmann, a Connecticut transplant and theatrical clown who was lured here six years ago by Jeune Lune. This show represents Kaufmann’s toying with the idea of starting a permanent Minneapolis-based troupe. Notably, her inaugural cast includes Jon Ferguson, a recent arrival from Britain who has quickly established himself as an important director of physical plays (including the recent masterpiece Or The White Whale). Together with four others, Ferguson and Kaufmann physically render a camp of tsunami survivors with no memory of what hit them, nor any recollection of their lives before. 1501 Sixth St. S., Minneapolis; 612-341-1038; www.bedlamtheatre.org

  • Killer of Sheep

    Shot on location in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the early ’70s, Killer of Sheep tells the neo-realist tale of Stan, an African-American man numbed by the pressure of life in the ghetto and his slaughterhouse job. Director Charles Burnett’s movie is also widely considered one of the finest examinations of children’s reaction to crushing, inner-city poverty. Because Burnett never secured the rights to all the songs comprising his film’s score, the sublime Killer of Sheep never had a commercial release; in fact, during the past thirty years, it has become a well-known but ultimately hidden treasure. It was one of the first fifty films placed on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress and proclaimed one of the hundred all-time greatest movies by the National Film Critics Circle. This long overdue theatrical release is not to be missed. 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

  • La Jetée and Sans Soleil

    At least one critic has dubbed Chris Marker a “cosmonaut”—this in apparent admiration of the French documentary filmmaker’s ability to make other cultures look like products of distant planets. Marker’s documentaries jettison conventional narrative, instead telling stories by way of letter-writing and striking imagery. Sadly, his fascinating oeuvre has rarely, if ever, been seen in this country. But the good folks at Criterion are now trying to remedy this problem by releasing Marker’s two most popular films on DVD. Sans Soleil (1983) involves odd footage of Africa and Japan—images of people and their ceremonies paired with poetic observation. La Jetée (1962), Marker’s sole fictional work, is a thirty-minute photo-roman—that is, a variety of stills culled together—with narration. The movie is a short and stunning science fiction work and noted in this country as the inspiration for the inferior 12 Monkeys. With its striking imagery and haunting story of time travel, love, and the trap of memory, you can watch La Jetée in the time it takes you to sit through an episode of My Name Is Earl, and be moved in ways you never imagined.

  • Knocked Up

    Judd Apatow seems to be everywhere. He was the executive producer of the critically acclaimed television show Freaks and Geeks and the writer-director of The 40 Year-Old Virgin. He will also lend his imprimatur to the upcoming teen sex comedy Superbad. In the meantime, he has produced another ribald farce in the style of Virgin (sans Steve Carell). In Knocked Up, a lovable stoner and budding internet-porn businessman played by Seth Rogen impregnates the Ashley Judd look-alike Katherine Heigl. She’s a gorgeous television personality; he’s a loser with a heart of gold. When they decide to have the baby together, laughs ensue. That’s the formula anyway, and what made Virgin work so well was Apatow’s fondness for Altman-like conversation and his healthy respect for these flawed, immature characters. (A plethora of dick- and boob-jokes didn’t hurt matters either.) Here, though, Apatow seems to think he’s making serious commentary on parenthood. Clocking in at two hours and ten minutes, it’s a bit long-winded. Still, much of the humor won’t be matched by any other movie this summer—in particular, there’s a hilarious passage about shaving one’s privates.

  • Mr. Brooks

    Kevin Costner plays the upstanding Earl Brooks, a family man and business leader who just happens to also be a serial killer with an alter ego named Marshall. Our starring cast includes Costner, Demi Moore, and William Hurt … well, that makes three actors who have seen better days. And yet, Mr. Brooks was written and directed by Bruce A. Evans, the guy who penned Stand By Me and the underrated Starman. Sometimes—not very often, but sometimes—these types make decent, straightforward, and entertaining B-movie fare that’s good for passing a summer evening. They did it a lot during the golden age of the studios, generating movies still watched today (such as Desperate Hours and the original Cape Fear). Who’s to say they can’t still do it today?

  • Joan Armatrading

    You might discount her new, blues-oriented disc (aptly titled Into The Blues) for its pallid genre clichés, but notice that even on this misguided collection a few tunes still shimmer with Joan Armatrading’s trademark emotional hum. For decades now, she has bared her soul with pride and erudition instead of pretense and self-pity, capturing the paradoxical strength of vulnerability with as much visceral nuance as any singer-songwriter (it’s a big claim but no exaggeration). Back to the Night (1975), Lovers Speak (2003), and the others in between are all five-star records. While unfurling her agony, ecstasy, and all the careening within that gamut, this statuesque St. Kitts native will make you grateful for your goosebumps. 651-690-6700; http://oshaughnessy.stkate.edu