Category: Blog Post

Back about 20 years ago, I wrote an enthusiastic review of the traditional Cantonese cuisine served at the Keefer Court Bakery & Cafe. The little storefront at Cedar and Riverside started as an offshoot of a Toronto Chinese bakery, and the fare reminded me a lot of the food you can find in the restaurants in Toronto’s Spadina Avenue Chinatown: simple and inexpensive rice plates and noodle dishes, plus a good selection of Chinese pastries and buns. Keefer Court closed its 16-seat cafe about 15 years ago to concentrate on its bakery and fortune cookie business, but a big blow-up poster copy of my review stayed in the front window, year after year, until very recently.

The poster is finally gone, but maybe it’s time to bring it back: the bakery recently reopened its kitchen, and now offers a big selection of traditional Cantonese fare, including rice plates, noodle dishes, soups and stir-fries. Only a limited selection is featured on the lunch menu, so be sure to request the dinner menu if it isn’t offered. So far, I have only had a chance to sample a few dishes, including the curry beef brisket rice plate ($5.95) and the chicken lo mein ($4.25 at lunch), but there is a lot more that I would like to try, including the salty pork and duck egg congee ($3.85), the roast duck noodle soup ($4.95), and the salt and pepper beef short ribs ($12.95). Be sure to also check out the bakery counter for the steamed and baked buns filled with everything from barbecued pork and curried beef to ham and eggs and coconut custard.

Keefer Court, 326 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis, 612-340-0937.

ART
Art of the Catacomb

Death, life, ritual, individual identity within the broader scope of the human condition. What else is there to talk about? Feel like talking a bit? Maybe just sit and admire — sit, look, listen. Inspired in part by the Paris Catacombs, Art of the Catacomb, a collaborative project between Denise Rouleau and Mark Roberts, opens today. You’ll see various forms of work in all scales, from several inches to over eleven feet. Catacombs. Mummies. Clay. Sculptures. Labyrinth. Colors. Forms. A collection of images and idea with which we’re all seduced, a mission to inspire and haunt. This is some serious business. Don’t miss it. The exhibit opens today and runs through November 9th, but the opening reception is this Thursday, October 18th (6:30 p.m.).

Noon to 5 p.m., Nina Bliese Gallery, 225 S. Sixth St., Suite 100, Minneapolis; 612-332-2978.

MUSIC
Raise the Black Flag

Taunt me. Lose respect. I’m a sucker for Henry Rollins. (Am I dating myself?) He may be an aging fool at this point, but I love him. I had the rare pleasure of seeing him with his original band, Black Flag. (I say original, but in fact I don’t know that he wasn’t in 50 bands before this.) Oh, Black Flag: “Walking through a world of lies / With a heart made out of stone / I looked deep into my eyes / And I knew I was alone.” Fuckin’ Henry Rollins! Excuse the language, it may not bode well for certain email blockers, but… fuckin’ Henry Rollins! It’s appropriate here. “I try and try / but I can’t seem to pry my mind from the gutter / gutter brain pushin / FILTHY thoughts / dirty hands workin / diggin nails.” Oh, yeah. “Let your fingers do the walking. Let your fingers do the walking.” Sorry, I lose myself. Go if you like. I’d be a shame to miss it. I had the honor of seeing him again in the 80s, in New Haven, Connecticut, and hanging out with him a while after the show. And let me tell you — the man is unique. That’s all I can say. And that face, that hard face.

6 p.m., First Ave., 701 First Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-332-1775; $22.

FILM
Devastatingly Empty, Handsomely Chic

How do I begin with the last shot of a movie? How can I not? The Passenger has the greatest last shot of any movie ever made. And this is the greatness of Antonioni — that in every film he makes you wander through the desert, groping desperately for any shred of hope for his characters, for you, sitting alone in the darkness of a movie theater, hoping for some divine answers to justify the pride of the characters on screen. And none ever come. No characters have ever looked so beautiful as they sink into the abyss of modern existence. With this film, Antonioni expresses everything you don’t think there’s enough room to say, everything festering inside you, every sharp instinct, retort, comeback, that ends up cloaked in a burlap coat of political correctness, sensitivity, and general consideration for human beings — everything you want to say, but are not allowed to. In L’Avventura, he disappears a woman and taunts us with a hope for answers, for a simple explanation for a disappearance. Fellini may have been the master of semi-surrealist, idiosyncratic, self-indulgent Italian cinema, but it was Antonioni who brought chic to existentialism. No one ever made existential angst look so good, so fashionable. This week began the Antonioni Tribute at the Oak Street. Don’t miss tonight’s showing of L’Avventura. Baby, if you can look so good, who cares that you’re nothing.

7 p.m. & 9:15 p.m., Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; $8 (seniors $6, members/students $5).

Please, Oh, Please, Don’t Let Them Take My Film Noir and Popcorn away!

The Parkway has a new look and feel. No more holes and stains on the screen. No more crappy mono sound. No more filthy seats and musty walls. No more of that “special” Parkway smell. Now it’s time to give the place a another chance and enjoy some of their fabulous film offerings. Tonight marks the beginning of their Monday film noir series. You can’t beat that! Femme fatals, dubious heroics, shadows and light, and fragmented images. Oh, my! Tonight’s kick-off features The Killing — with both Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Sleep coming down the road. Don’t miss these incredible classics. And please, people, come out and support these great efforts, otherwise we’ll keep losing classic cinema venues. And that would just be atrocious.

The Killing

Before Stanley Kubrick dedicated himself to creating “serious” films that viewed humanity with a cold, clinical eye, he made The Killing (1956), a tense little noir about a racetrack heist. Sterling Hayden stars as the mastermind who sets the pot to boiling, and leads a cast of some of the best character actors ever to crawl out from under Hollywood’s rocks. Elisha Cook Jr. plays a henpecked husband whose mouth is his undoing. Horse-faced Timothy Carey and pro wrestler Kola Kwariani are on hand to add some needed color. Pulp novelist Jim Thompson’s dialogue is a model of hardboiled efficiency. And Kubrick’s editing, which fixed the piece into a nonlinear maze, went on to influence a number of filmmakers, most notably Quentin Tarantino. –Peter Schilling Jr.

Parkway Theatre, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-3030; $6.

THEATER & PERFORMANCE
Dead City

What’s with the general death theme today. Well, we certainly are fascinated with it, and it is approaching All Hallows’ Eve. The Red Eye Theater opened its season this month with the Twin Cities premiere of Dead City, and tonight is the last pay-what-you-can show. It’s no surprise, with such a title, that the play is set in New York City. Don’t get me wrong. I love New York (and I don’t mean that lovely young lady on the reality TV show by the same name). Let’s just say if you can’t see it, then at least you understand it smells of death. Why see this play? It’s simple: It take place 100 years to the day after James Joyce’s Ulysses. How can one help but love Sheila Callaghan when she writes in relation to Joyce. What balls! What beauty! Someone give her my number.

7 p.m., Red Eye Theater, 15 W. 14th St., Minneapolis; 612-870-0309; pay-what-you-can.

SHOPPING
Sleek and Chic

OK. So what’s up with this? I received an email from Sepia saying, “Farewell to our Twin Cities friends.” What does this mean? Are they closing? Are they traveling? What’s up, folks? I have to admit, I haven’t made the necessary effort to get these questions answered, but I will tell you this: Go there today, and for the next couple of weeks, and you’ll get 30 to 50 percent off all their merchandise. As if that weren’t enough, you can enjoy the complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres. Whatever it is, it sure feels like a celebration to me. Gotta love my people.

4-8 p.m., Sepia, 210 6th St. S.E., Suite 100, Minneapolis; 612-379-0309.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom came out this week with an astonishing pronouncement that pregnant women past their 12th week can safely drink “1.5 units” of alcohol per day — the equivalent of a single, small glass of wine.

This, in my opinion, is bullshit.

No one loves wine more than I. And I’m a great promoter — as many of you know — of moderate drinking for one’s health. Yet, there are two groups of people to whom I would never advocate a drop: alcoholics and pregnant women. So far as I’m concerned, it’s a simple matter of the risk/benefit ratio. For someone with a drinking problem, the antioxidant benefit isn’t worth the risk of ending up on a highway overpass, holding a sign that says “God bless.”

And for pregnant women? Consider this: The single only way to produce a baby with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) — a constellation of disorders that includes mental retardation and various birth defects — is to drink while pregnant. So as far as I’m concerned, in this case the risks outweigh the potential benefits by about a million percent.

I have a son, now 19, with profound autism. I didn’t drink while pregnant; I was, in fact, barely of legal drinking age. But I did consume fish and tap water, take Tylenol for headaches, and live downwind of a plastics plant. If someone were to tell me that avoiding salmon, bathing in pure Evian, suffering through killer migraines, moving to another state, or — for that matter — having every hair on my body singed off with a Zippo lighter would prevent my son’s having to go through the muddy chaos that is his life today. . . .I would do it in a second. Give up alcohol in order to save a kid even the off chance of impairment? I can’t conceive why any woman would do anything but.

But in this case, it’s the scientists I just don’t understand.

The NICE announcement seems like an unnecessary invitation for trouble and heartbreak. Pregnant women are routinely under stress. They’re sick, breathless, exhausted, worried, and often in conflict with their partners. One glass of wine may or may not be safe, but take a woman who’s under severe stress, lower her inhibitions with a little bit of alcohol, and what are the chances when someone refills her glass, she’ll drink that, too?

For what it’s worth, the UK Department of Health agrees with me. They came out against the NICE recommendation, saying it is unsafe for pregnant women to consume alcohol. Their advice remains what is has been for years, that women abstain completely from beer, spirits, and wine for the duration of their pregnancies. And take it from this mother of three: nine months may seem like a long dry spell. But there will be many years ahead for drinking — and many opportunities. When you’re waiting up for a 17-year-old to come home from a late-night party, for instance. Around two a.m., that’s a perfect time.

I strolled across Loring Park last night and popped into Nick and Eddie simply because I saw activity through the windows there. Turns out it’s not technically open to the public yet. They were having a “friends and family” night, and I’m neither. But the practicing staff were nice enough to let me have a look around. It’s a stark black & white space with weird bulbs on stems that protrude from the walls and poke out every which way. The tables are pressed against the walls, so there’s a wide open area in the middle — big enough for people to dance. And what luck. . .I can’t speak for the food just yet, but the sound system in this place is incredible!

It’s called High Emotion Audio, it’s sound science engineered by a couple of Nashville, TN, audiophiles, and Nick and Eddie non-owner Doug Anderson (his wife, Jessica, along with chef Steve Vranian, are the official principals) explained that the music at their restaurant offers “sound that travels at a different rate” from any other place in town. All that black décor? It’s really yards and yards of speakers: 120 mid-range, 120, tweeters, and 24 sub-woofers. This means the music has a rich, ribbony quality; it travels above and below the buzz of conversation. But it never, somehow, interferes with the frequency our voices occupy.

To me, a meal is about so much more than food. I’m auditory and olfactory: sounds and smells affect my restaurant experiences, perhaps as much as the taste of what’s on my plate. Give me a crisp fall night and a woodfire grill, an open kitchen issuing plumes of garlic, olive oil, and white wine. Give me the high emotion sound of 24 sub-woofers putting out music you can hear in your blood and your chest, along with easy, intimate conversation in a crowded room. Give me that any day.

Nick and Eddie, 1614 Harmon Place in Minneapolis, will be open to the public October 19.