The Rake Magazine

Category: Blog Post

  • Arrivederci, Brix

    Italy is out, Texas is in.

    A visit to the website of Brix Wine Bar & Bistro confirmed a tipster’s report: Brix Bistro & Wine Bar in Saint Louis Park has closed, and will be replaced by Laredo’s Tex-West Grill & Cantina, a "Tex-West" theme restaurant:

    "Laredo’s
    will feature unique Tex-West entrees, authentic Mexican dishes &
    mesquite-grilled steaks in a fun, energetic atmosphere. Laredo’s
    Cantina will feature our soon-to-be famous Margaritas & ice-cold
    cerveza. We promise to be fun & affordable, but still provide
    great service with only the freshest ingredients on our menu.f you like the local food in Austin, TX, San Diego, CA and Cabo San Lucas as much as we do, then you’ll love Laredo’s! We are shooting for an early March opening."

    The ownership remains the same: the Collins Restaurant Group, which also owns the adjacent McCoy’s Public House.

    I’ll reserve judgment until I visit the new restaurant, but this seems like a real shame. When when I reviewed Brix, soon after it opened, I was impressed – and surprised. Brix offered authentic Italian cuisine, prepared with a level of skill and sophistication rarely found on the suburban dining scene.

  • I Wouldn’t Care for This Health Care, No!

    Get with the program, health-care providers of America,
    and get a clue about the prices you ascribe to your services. While you’re at
    it, we wouldn’t mind if you went so far as to tell us the costs upfront. Yes,
    yes; I know the industry if rife with corruption–er, negotiated discounts–and, in fact,
    the prices are subject to much (much!) change. But here’s the thing: Very many
    of your customers are paying out of pocket nowadays.

    For example, me! At this morning’s 8:20 a.m. dental
    appointment (I’d saved enough dough in my HSA), I stumbled into a
    hundred-dollar situation: Apparently, they’ve got these five-year, full-facial
    X-rays for which they insert a progression of plastic doodads and snap a
    dozen-odd pics all around your face.

    "What’s different here?" I asked the hygienist on the fifth or sixth take. I get an
    X-Ray every year or so (I know these run me an extra thirty bucks), but I didn’t
    recall it ever being so elaborate before. It was at this point that,
    finally, I learned I was getting the Cadillac five-year, full-facial X-Ray and,
    even better yet, the hygienist assured me: "The insurance company treats them
    just like panoramic X-rays."

    "I don’t have dental insurance," I uttered icily–or as icy
    as I could be with a damned bite-guard in my mouth. I mean, who has dental
    insurance anymore? That’s, like, so-oo passé.

    I won’t bore you with the details of my temper tantrum, but I
    will say this: I’ve got decent chompers and would’ve passed on the hundred-dollar-plus
    X-Ray had I known about it upfront. This is akin to the time I took my junker Volkswagen
    for an oil change, only to learn, upon picking it up later in the day, that
    they’d replaced the $800 timing belt while they were at it, too. What gives?

  • Stupidity on Two Wheels

    So, it sucks to park
    the car on Hennepin Avenue in the winter – scaling the piles of snow hardened
    into ice, trying not to fall against (or under) the filthy auto, hoping that
    busses and SUVs will not take the car door off (or at least slow down if they do) when you get get the frozen lock
    unlocked … it especially sucks getting
    into/out of a car parked on Hennepin when you’re toting a 10-month-old, however
    good-natured, and all of his attendant baggage. It sucks to do this at least
    twice daily, which you do when you don’t have any other place to put the car.

    But that’s not the
    source of my outrage for the purposes of this here post. The outrage was sparked
    the other day, once the baby and I were safely settled in the car (frozen, poorly designed car
    seats in frozen cars … there’s a topic for another post) and driving this car
    on Hennepin toward Calhoun Square. Shortly we came upon a woman on a bicycle.

    That’s not the
    source of my outrage, either. I’m totally pro-bicycle. I especially have to hand
    it to people who ride their bikes in winter – we should all be so virtuous. But
    I do have to mention that people who bike on icy thoroughfares like Hennepin –
    sans helmets – are, in a word, nuts. Or stupid. Hennepin is already narrow, and
    it’s made narrower still with those aforementioned frozen snow piles on either
    side. And if the conditions are icy for cars, might they be even more so for
    bicycles?

    But I’ll hold back
    on the outrage there, even. As a pro-bicyclist, I believe that bicyclists own
    the roads, too. They can ride wherever they want, and if they want to take
    their lives into their own hands by not wearing a helmet and by riding on busy,
    icy streets, that’s their business.

    So
    where is the outrage already? OK: The outrage comes in because there
    was also a child riding on the bike, behind the woman (who was, let’s
    presume, the mother of the child).

    A bit more outrage
    comes because this mother had apparently decided to make things "safer" for the child by putting a helmet on her – but
    she wasn’t wearing one herself. So your kid can become a motherless quadriplegic
    but hey, at least she might possibly retain some or even all of her mental
    faculties should a collision occur on icy, busy,
    narrowed-by-frozen-piles-of-snow Hennepin.

    This
    idea of helmets-for-kids-but-not-their-parents is akin to another source of outrage: How
    politicians fall all over themselves to be pro-health insurance for
    children — but not their parents. So little Susie can have her annual checkup
    and/or cancer treatment, but Susie’s insurance-less mom? She might die because
    she ignores some health problem or
    she might go into financial ruin dealing with said health problem, because she doesn’t have health insurance — leaving Susie
    physically healthy (by some standards) but motherless and/or living in abject poverty.

    But I digress,
    having delivered most but not all of the outrage. There are a couple more bits.

    Bit #1: Watching as this helmet-less mom-with-child runs a red light on her bike on
    the aforementioned icy,
    busy, narrowed-by-frozen-piles-of-snow Hennepin.

    Bit #2: Spotting the same mother and child, 45 minutes later, riding the other way on Hennepin —
    and this time, they’ve taken on another pint-sized passenger. Somebody get me a
    Rolaids.

  • Something Fishy in Woodbury

    I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I drove out to
    Giapponese, the new sushi bar / restaurant in Woodbury. Sushi is everywhere
    these days, including the refrigerator cases of local supermarkets, and since
    the sushi restaurants all tend to get the same ingredients from the same
    suppliers, it has become a pretty generic product. But the name – Italian for
    “Japanese” — was intriguing, and the online menu sounded pretty interesting:
    smoked salmon bruschetta and poki (the Hawaiian version of tuna tartare); and
    some varieties of fish and shellfish that seldom show up on local sushi menus,
    such as kawahagi (file fish, a member of the blowfish family) kinmeidai (golden eye snapper), kohada (gizzard shad) and walu (the Hawaiian name for a variety of escolar, sometimes sold as white tuna.

    When I asked for omakase (chef’s choice), chef-owner Henry
    Chan immediately knew what I wanted, and proceeded to serve up a delightful
    series of courses: raw scallop, Tasmanian salmon, halibut rolled in a thin
    ribbon of cucumber, a whole small mackerel presented as sashimi, and a roll of
    tempura shrimp and avocado topped with tuna. Chan, who grew up in Wisconsin, recently moved here from Eau Claire, where he owns
    the town’s only sushi bar, the Shanghai Bistro.

    Chan clearly has a passion for sushi, and listening to him, he sounds really committed to bringing in the best quality and most interesting varieties he can find. The selection is still pretty limited, but he says that as his sales volume grows, he will be adding more varieties. If you want to be notified when new and interesting varieties of sushi and seafood are available, send him an email at twinscroll@gmail.com. I just got an email yesterday, announcing the arrival of his live tanks (for holding lobster and shrimp), and a shipment of Hamma Hamma oysters from Washington state.

    I’d like to go back sometime to try the Kobe beef steaks – a 16 ounce bone-in New York Strip and a 14 ounce ribeye, both $55. This isn’t the original Kobe beef from Japan, where the cattle are massaged daily and fed rations of beer, but it’s the same breed, Wagyu. Chan gets his beef from a friend who has a herd of Wagyu near Augusta, Wisconsin. $55 for a steak sounds pretty steep, compared to what other restaurants charge, it’s a bargain. Locally, Cosmos has imported Japanese Kobe beef on its menu for $17 an ounce (which would work out to $272 for a 16-ounce steak), and even that is a bargain compared to Craftsteak in Las Vegas. Craftsteak charges $105 for a 14-ounce American Wagyu ribeye, $184 for an eight-ounce Australian Wagyu ribeye, and $240 for an eight-ounce Japanese Wagyu steak – which works out to $480 a pound.

    Giapponese Sushi
    10060 Citywalk Drive
    Woodbury, MN 55129
    Phone: 651-578-7777


  • Yo Ivanhoe Goes to the Movies!

    Believe me, I fully recognize that a guy pretty much has to
    be a moron and a glutton for punishment to criticize Diablo Cody at this point.
    Either that or he has to be a very, very brave man, a man with the stones of
    Anton Chigurh.

    I’ll plead absolutely guilty on the first counts. As to the
    second, well, yes, ma’am, I do believe I’m your man there as well.

    Let me get some things out of the way before I move ahead
    with my ill-advised temerity (and I’m willing to acknowledge that I have no
    idea whether temerity is always, by its very nature, ill-advised, but I’m aware
    of the possibility).

    I know Diablo Cody is a very smart woman, and based on her
    work I would know this even if she hadn’t let slip in interviews that she has
    the stratospheric IQ of the average postal service Mensan. She’s a sharp, smart character, and almost all of her writing that I’ve seen has been very sharp, very
    smart, and frequently funny.

    The writing in Juno is often very sharp, very smart, and
    very funny. The problem is that it is not the way real people talk; it’s the
    way people talk on television sitcoms, and I guess I hold films to a slightly
    higher standard, at least films that get nominated for Academy Awards –films
    like Kramer Vs Kramer, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Titantic. I
    promise you that I wouldn’t have a single complaint if Juno were nominated
    for an Emmy, particularly if they had a category for the snappy Post-Modern
    After-School Special.

    I understand that the legend has it that Ms. Cody birthed
    the Juno screenplay in the restroom at some suburban Target, washing down fistfuls of
    truck stop speed with two-liter jugs of RC Cola or some such while hunched over a
    laptop balanced precariously on the diaper changing station. Fine, I’ll buy
    that if you really want to make a stink about it. I also believe, however, that
    she had some help from a handful of down-on-their-luck former Different
    Strokes     and Family Ties writers (Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying
    that any of these people were in the women’s room with her). And I’m also pretty
    damn sure that somebody from The Simpsons or The Family Guy sprinkled a
    little fairy dust on the thing before she turned it over to Jason Reitman.

    I have other problems with the movie, yes, but I guess I also have
    a few problems with the mythology that I should get out of the way first. I don’t,
    for instance, believe that Diablo Cody was ever a stripper. I just don’t. I
    know she wrote a memoir about the "experience," but I also know that that
    doesn’t prove a damn thing. Wouldn’t you think if this story were true, we’d
    have been inundated with backbiting and lecherous accounts from former
    co-workers and the habitués of the establishments where she purportedly worked?
    Maybe I’m not paying proper attention –although I think I am, and I think it’s
    hard not to– but I haven’t heard a peep.

    I can’t blame her for coming up with a colorful back-story.
    We all love colorful back-stories. They make the strangers we obsess about all
    the more interesting, and they’re somehow even more interesting if they allow
    us to imagine the strangers we obsess about bare-assed naked and covered with
    tattoos. I’ll admit it: if I had a biography or a resume I certainly wouldn’t
    hesitate to pad the damn thing with all manner of outrageous fabrications. All
    the same, I don’t believe a word of this particular tall tale –don’t believe
    Cody was a stripper, don’t believe she was a coal miner, and don’t believe that
    she was the night janitor in a crematorium. I don’t even believe she’s from
    suburban Kentucky. I mean, seriously people, do you honestly believe there even
    is a suburban Kentucky?

    There isn’t, but if there were, I can pretty much guarantee
    you that sixteen-year-old suburban Kentucky girls wouldn’t be listening to
    Patti Smith or the Stooges or Mott the Fucking Hoople. And I hope to God they
    wouldn’t be listening to Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches, either, because if
    so than the place as I imagine it just got a whole lot more hellish.

    My real problems with Juno, I suppose, can be boiled down
    to this: If it’s trying to be subversive it doesn’t work. And if it’s not trying to be subversive it doesn’t work either.

    There’s too much telling and not enough showing, too much
    lazy shorthand about virtually every character, and by the end I don’t feel
    like I really know or care about a single person in the entire movie (well,
    maybe I cared a little bit about the dad and step-mom, even if they didn’t seem
    remotely real to me). The stammering, dorky boyfriend –played by the same
    stammering dork who played the same stammering dorky character in Superbad— is, we are told, "cool." He’s in a band. He also, I presume, likes
    the same sort of impossibly hip music Juno likes. Yet all we see him do is run
    around in shorts and a sweatband. The poor, improbably fertile dork does
    nothing but run and run. Is this supposed to be a metaphor? And, yes, one
    canned moment of sweetness passes between Juno and the dork, but other than
    that the kid doesn’t much seem to understand the gravity of the situation, and
    we get absolutely nothing in the way of character development that would allow
    us to see him through Juno’s eyes. She just tells us that he’s the coolest guy
    she knows, and we pretty much have to take her word for it.

    I’d also love to know what’s up with Juno’s best friend. Who
    is this girl? Does she not seem like exactly the sort of vacuous nobody that
    someone like Juno would openly mock? At any rate, she’s ultimately nothing but
    what she seems, because we get exactly nothing about her to form anything but a
    surface impression.

    And does not Juno have a little sister in this film? Am I
    imagining that? And if I’m not imagining it, why does Juno have a little
    sister? Why is this kid in the movie? Get rid of her. Let some other movie
    adopt her. She serves no purpose.

    I’m pretty sure I could go on and on (just as I’m pretty
    sure that Diablo Cody –whoever she really is– is going to have a long, fine
    career and that her pending horror film will be exactly the sort of riot she’s
    most suited to write), but my ultimate problem with Juno was that in the end,
    in what felt like a terrible cop-out to me, the cute-as-a-button smartass turns
    her baby over to the one pathetic person in the entire film who is most ill-equipped
    to live in the world Cody’s characters inhabit.

    And as long as we’re on the subject of the Oscars,
    and since I know you come here expecting regular, sharp criticism of the
    current state of the cinema, I may as well offer some impressions of a couple
    of the other nominated films I paid eight dollars to see and did not much
    enjoy.

    I love Cormac McCarthy. I generally enjoy the Coen Brothers.
    And I wish like hell I hadn’t seen No Country For Old Men. It’s like McCarthy
    and the Coens teamed up to write an episode of the Andy Griffith Show for the
    End Times:

    Deputy rushes into the room,
    clearly agitated:     Sheriff! A truckload of Mexicans turned up just outside
    of town and they’ve been shot all to blazes! You wanna drive out to take a
    look?

    Sheriff is sitting at a table in
    a diner, squinting at the newspaper and shaking his head incredulously.
    He hesitates, and doesn’t look up from the paper:     No sir, I don’t believe I
    do.

    In No Country, just as in this country, the world is going
    to hell in a hurry. Evil, inexplicably represented by a man with a bad haircut
    and a pneumatic cattle zapper, is an unstoppable force. The poor, old,
    beleaguered Sheriff just can’t be bothered anymore to do anything but mope
    around and offer homespun philosophical ruminations. The crafty Vietnam vet who
    finds the satchel of cash comes up with all manner of crafty maneuvers to
    outfox his pursuers, yet never thinks to transfer all that money into a
    slightly less distinctive –not to mention cumbersome– carrying case. Woody Harrelson shows up and displays
    remarkable skills of clairvoyance in locating both the man on the run and the
    money, but then –just like that– he’s dead. Then –just like that– pretty much
    everybody else is dead as well, except for Evil, which still walks among us
    dragging his pneumatic cattle zapper, and the poor, old, beleaguered Sheriff,
    who right up to the bitter end offers homespun philosophical ruminations to anybody who’s still alive to listen.

    That’s about it. The whole thing looks awfully nice, though,
    I’ll give it that.

    Ratatouille also looks awfully
    nice, but it also sucks. I’m sorry, but I just think it’s a tall order
    to make the whole rats-in-the-kitchen thing palatable, particularly
    when we’re talking about obnoxious rats, and scads of them. I had a
    huge problem with the lazy, jackhammer way Brad Bird and his associates
    named their characters –the snobby food critic is named Anton Ego! Get it?
    There’s also a Gusteau, a Linguini, a Pompidou, a Django, and a
    Skinner. Could you maybe take more than five fucking minutes to name
    your characters before we hand you a Best Screenplay nomination? Is
    that really asking too much?

    And, finally, there’s the sheer ignorance of the main human
    character, Remy. Throughout the entire stinking film the guy has a rat on his
    head pulling his hair and putting him through all manner of contortions making
    the same damn dishes over and over, yet somehow, when the rat disappears, the
    moron doesn’t know how to recreate the recipes he’s made hundreds of times?
    What the hell?

    Somebody in Hollywood –and it might as well be Diablo
    Cody– better send me a check for $24, pronto. I’m for damn sure not going to
    drag my ass out to see Atonement until they do.

  • Open the Door to the World… from your boat

    SPECIAL EVENT
    Taste the Sea

    Enjoy a multiple course tasting menu with our favorite wine pairings monthly at The Rake’s
    World Flavors Tour. This month, join us at The View Restaurant and
    Lounge     for Mediterranean cuisine. Start the new year off right with
    fresh and healthy fare inspired by classic dishes from a cultural melting pot. View Restaurant and Lounge offers its guest an upbeat contemporary dining
    experience with a breathtaking view of Lake Calhoun. Enjoy an evening
    of delicious Mediterranean flavors! —Jennifer Havrish

    6:30 p.m., The View Restaurant and Lounge, 2730 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-920-5000; $40 (includes a multiple-course tasting menu and wine pairing), make your reservations here.

    THEATER & PERFORMANCE
    A Million Men March through the Door

    A wise history teacher once said, “There is the ‘you’ you are, the ‘you’ you think you are, the ‘you’ others think you are, and the ‘you’ you think others think you are.” Every human has layers of identity, each of which is oftentimes hard to embrace or even acknowledge. In Emigrant Theater’s latest production, Blue Door, an African-American math professor struggles with his identity and what it means to be black during the heated time of the Million Man March. This is a play about culture and finding oneself amidst the complexities of everyday life. The regional premiere of the award-winning Blue Door should not be missed by anyone who enjoys probing life’s deep questions. You have until Sunday to see it, but I’ll be going this evening in order to give you a full report. —Kate Leibfried

    7:30 p.m., Guthrie Theater, 818 S. 2nd St., Minneapolis; 612-377-2224; $18 to $34.

    SPECIAL EVENT
    If I Had a Pony, I’d Ride Him on My Boat

    No doubt about it: Minnesotans have a thing for boats. I have lived near oceans for most of my life, and never before have I witnessed such a thriving boat culture. It’s the middle of winter, and here we are, dreaming about our boats. What is it about lakes? I mean… you can’t actually I go anywhere… not really. We’re such a pragmatic people here, and yet this seems to escape us. Perhaps it appeals to our escapist — yet too pragmatic to escape — tendencies. And let’s be honest: It’s below zero out there; escaping seems a solid proposition. Join the dream at the Minneapolis Boat Show, today through Sunday.

    5-10 p.m., Minneapolis Convention Center, 1301 2nd Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-335-6000; $10.

  • Heath Ledger Dead at 28

    This afternoon, actor Heath Ledger — of Brokeback Mountain, A Knight’s Tale, and more recently of I’m Not There fame — was found dead in his Manhattan apartment, allegedly (for a time) an apartment in Mary Kate’s building. Yes, that’s right, one of the Full House twins.

    [[That’s how rich the old gal is — not an apartment, but a building. Dressing young girls these days pays. Who’s going to say "No" to daddy’s little girl? I want. I want. Ok, hun. Train ’em young.]]

    The facts — as reported on the internet (sometimes this clarification is necessary):

    • He was found in Mary Kate’s building.
    • Mary Kate is one whacked out gal, with quite a dark cloud around her.
    • [[I can no longer find the info about Mary-Kate’s apartment, leading me to believe either she has the world’s greatest publicist, or the New York Times made an oops.]]
    • Ledger was found naked and unconscious on the floor near a bed.
    • A bottle of pills was found on the bedside table.
    • The bottle contained both prescription and non-prescription pills.
    • The masseuse was on the way.
    • Ledger left behind a child. [[Probably should have left the pills alone. If a child ain’t a reason to live, then…. ]]
    • Ledger expressed "dissatisfaction" with his own work.
    • Kurt Cobain also expressed "dissatisfaction" with his own work. I heard the two compared today.
    • (Ledger would have made an AWESOME Joker!)
    • Legder was working on a Terry Gilliam film.
    • Johnny Depp almost went crazy working with Gilliam on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
    • Gilliam is from Minnesota.

    You take it from here…

    Read these stories.

    TMZ — they have multiple posts.
    Times
    UPI
    Observer
    Yahoo News

  • There Will Be Blood, There May Be Disappointment

    I finally saw Paul Thomas
    Anderson’s There Will Be Blood last
    week. I was impressed, but the twelve others in the audience didn’t seem to digest
    it as well. Several left during the less exciting last hour of the film. Others
    derisively asked "whose idea was it to see this movie?" as they were leaving.
    It is a divisive movie to be sure, not unlike No
    Country For Old Men    , but it is one with such a beautiful cinematic power
    that I couldn’t help but think the others had sadly missed the point. Here are some notes on the "point" of the film, as I see it.

    The film’s incredible opening
    sequence simply and brilliantly sets up the long story to come, and it burns
    with cinematic genius. The sense of danger in the oil wells is palpable and
    overpowering. The still landscape shots are reminiscent of Antonioni, and like his environments they carry a menacing weight that reflects the characters that inhabit them. There are shocking scenes of violence (not superfluous or overly
    grotesque), that set up the psychic landscape of the film — a place where the
    worst can happen instantly and where men wait nervously for it to happen. The
    stunning soundtrack swells with atonal screeches of orchestral strings and
    textures. Imagine Penderecki’s "Threnody For The Victims Of
    Hiroshima" played against the ominous presence of a Sergio Leone
    desert. Johnny Greenwood (Radiohead’s guitarist) creates a sound world that embodies
    and accentuates the dread and the sense of potential in what Willa Cather
    called “the raw materials out of which a country is made.” PT Anderson’s visionary
    and seemingly effortless direction is enough to carry the film alone, but he
    also has an enthralling script and at least two magnificent performances to
    work with.

    At dualistic odds are self-made oil baron
    Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a young preacher (Paul Dano). Each of
    them is drunk with power and self-gratitude. Each of them worships his own self-destructive god. The towering presence of Plainview’s oil derricks even
    mirror that of a crucifix, and they attain a sort of overbearing presence of
    control as all life and activity centers around them. Part of this is thanks to the set
    and costume designers who create an ascetic, yet richly evocative landscape.
    One scene, in which an oil derrick explodes with both tragic and promising
    consequences, is a marvel of cinematic design and direction. The camera moves
    swiftly, in what feels like a single tracking shot but actually isn’t. It captures so many events, right before your eyes and with so many implications — both
    physically and psychically transformative — that we are left breathless.

    The film’s thematic scope is as narrow-mindedly focused as its main character (speaking almost exclusively to the nature of
    power) and yet its breadth seems so epic that it exacts a mesmeric reverence
    out of the land, the oil, the men, the business, and the pursuit of power.
    Unfortunately, the idea that Anderson could have done something with a deeper political metaphor is present. But Blood is a film about a very specific
    man with a single-minded and self-destructive desire for power, not the nature
    of the oil business, capitalism, or even Christianity. The parallel between the two men and the two
    power structures they represent is understated — which may be good, because any greater
    social or political theme would have detracted from the incredibly magnetic
    performances of Day-Lewis and Dano.

    As the film ends, we see the
    natural, logical conclusion that attends a psychopath like Plainview. He emerges out of his alcoholic
    slumber for one last opportunity to one-up his rival, Sunday. Afterward, we are
    left to imagine him crawling back into the alcoholic death that is his huge,
    empty mansion. It’s hard for me to imagine viewers getting upset with
    this ending, although there are sure to be many. It is a pitch-perfect
    transformation of the film’s main subject into the cinematic embodiment of his
    character. Cold, ruthless, abrupt and deceptive, Blood is a dogged parable that
    achieves an awesome power. If the film isn’t perfect (which it isn’t), it
    doesn’t matter because it is awe-inspiringly successful in its execution.

  • Restaurant Redux

    It’s an odd feeling when a restaurant closes. If it had a big-name chef or the affection of local critics, the closing can cause much hullabaloo (as was witnessed one recent winter). If the eatery was not-so-celebrated, as is more often the case, the closing happens quietly, sadly.

    But what of the space? For a while, many of them exist in a ghostly way, hanging darkened signs from former tenants. I remember peeking into the windows of a shuttered sports bar and seeing the napkin roll-ups still set in the booths, just waiting for the big game to begin. I can’t tell you how many pairs of shoes I’ve seen in abandoned kitchens, as if the cooks were shuttled out mid-shift.

    Of course there are the usual post-mortem queries: What happened? Who dropped the ball? Why couldn’t they make it? What went wrong? But at some point my brain starts ticking forward: Who’s looking for a spot? What does this place need? What could this space become?

    It’s so exciting! Aren’t you ready to jump into the most thrilling industry on the planet? There are more than a few potential spots out there right now. There are a few you might never consider (unless you had the passionate, risk-taking hearts of Niver and Fratzke) but there are plenty of safer-bets for the start-up. Even though I usually get paid thousands of dollars for this kind of "concepting" (shyah), in the interest of The Dream and a bit of January-killing, I’m willing to share my million dollar ideas to get you off your duff and looking for angel investors.

    First of all, good luck to anyone trying to open a fine-dining, high-falutin concept in the face of the rumored coming recession. Seriously, it helps to have backers with deep pockets.

    When Cosi closed in Wayzata, it left a relatively clean and newish space but a small kitchen lacking most major equipment. Everyone thinks that area bleeds money, and yet the Punch Pizza and Chipotle that opened last year are the most consistently packed. Filling the void of high quality Asian, the former Cosi could easily become a casual sushi spot like Yumi or better yet a robata/sushi joint like Obento-ya.

    The space on 11th and Harmon that formerly held Willie’s Wine Bar is a tough one. It’s not on a main street and it’s presence is sort of marred by the overhanging skyway. Still, the law school and growing number of neighborhood residents make this a palusible spot, but not for a wine bar. I think that an upscale burger and beer joint might win here. Not big and splashy but cool and easy, cultivating the off-the-beaten-path thing you could make it a worthy hangout for students. Really great burgers and a stacked beer list (featuring hard to find Belgians with a beer club) will draw the neighbors out of their condos.

    The Auriga space deserves to be more than a mausoleum. For ten years it did well as a cutting-edge restaurant, it could do another ten as the same with a new, driven chef. Or it could be lightened up as the modern diner with a killer brunch/lunch, ala the Egg and I meets Town Talk. If there was room for an in-house bakery, I’d even open late-night for post-bar breakfast and cupcakes (our own Magnolia!). There are a ton of young, active people in the surrounding neighborhood, whatever goes in there should do whatever it takes to win those repeat guests.

    If you give me a big bag of money, I’ll share some of the other winners I have rattling around. Of course I can’t gurarantee success with any of these ideas. What sounds bright and shiny to me now, sitting on my couch, could be punched down for a litany of different reasons (permits, liquor laws, recession, tanking real estate values, unruly landlords, etc). But on a blustery winter day, what else would you dream …

  • getdisbugouttame

    I admit that after a lifelong obsession with automotive things, I never really got what the fuss was about Bugatti.

    Until I actually saw one, then sat in it, then started it up at the national automotive museum in Alsace. Its all clear now. Ettore Bugatti was the son of a sculptor who is exhibited in the D’Orsay. His sculptures are macho things, the stuff that one might find in an upscale version of a Tony Montana boudoir–panthers, tigers, that kind of thing. All very emotive, which, in a nutshell defines the classic Bugatti.

    I’ve been so hot and bothered by these cars I have yet to find time to think or write about anything else.