The Rake Magazine

Category: Blog Post

JP: Even Better Than You Remember

For a long time, whenever people asked me to recommend a restaurant — not by food critic standards, but a personal favorite — I immediately told them to go to jP American Bistro.

Why? It was everything: the simple, clean decor; the mid-priced menu with absolutely drop-dead beautiful, satisfying perfectly-proportioned dishes; the crack staff that provided a level of service you typically cannot find without dropping $500 on a meal. For a year and a half, this was my favorite special occasion place. It’s where my husband and I ate in September 2006, the night before leaving on our honeymoon.

Then, I quit going.

There were three reasons. First, life got very complicated for a while and I simply didn’t have as much time for dining out. Second, I found a couple other restaurants that I loved (even on my off-time) nearly as much. But third — and this is important — I simply hated fighting the construction traffic at Lyndale and Lake.

It’s hard to admit this. I was part of the problem, a little bit of the reason that JP Samuelson and his staff suffered a scare in 2007. The street outside was torn up. The intersection often had a ten-minute wait for a left turn. Business slowed. It was still busy on nights when the Jungle Theater was running a popular show, Samuelson told me. But weekday nights, this once-red-hot eatery ran 1/3 full.

I’m ashamed, and after visiting again over the weekend, downright grateful to all the people who did keep going and sustaining this jewel. Because JP is better than ever.

One thing you should know, if you’re not already familiar with this restaurant, is that JP is one classically-trained chef who doesn’t do guest appearances, radio shows, newspaper columns, or photo sessions. He doesn’t leave the line to schmooze with the restaurant guests. What he does is cook, with singular focus and consistency. (The shot of him, above, with his wife and pastry chef, Cheryl, came from his website and is one of the only such photos I could find.) He’s also a very smart businessman who hires great people and empowers them to run the front of the house.

It works. With one notable exception — which I’ll get to in a minute — JP’s had the same people working for him for years. Andrew Pickar, the dining room and bar manager, and Mark Mckenzie, his head waiter, both take a proprietary interest in the business, caring for the people who walk through the door the way you imagine they might guests in their own homes.

I will cop to the fact that after a year’s absence, both men greeted me by name and stopped by my table. I will also attest that I saw them do the same with any number of other patrons. Once you’ve been to jP two or three times, you’re part of the in-crowd.

There were four of us on Friday, and we sat in the bar, which is a lovely candlelit alcove looking out on Lyndale Avenue. We started with the calamari, a lightly-breaded version spicy Thai dipping sauce and a spun nest of carrot and cabbage strips on top.. . .plus an order of pommes frites with a very garlicky aioli (hands down, my husband’s favorite bar food in the world). Then I had a duck confit salad so savory it had elements of bitter earth, with crunchy thick bacon, radicchio, and a nearly sweet ginger-pear vinaigrette. We also tried the fettucini with braised pork shoulder, onion, charred tomato and parmesan — a warm, smoky winter dish — and the fish special, a trout served with garlic mashed potatoes and a mango salad.

But the best by far was JP’s handmade butternut squash agnolotti in a lemon beurre, tossed with toasted walnuts and pecorino. I love squash and pumpkin pasta, but indulge infrequently because too often its more bread than root, an imbalance that ruins the dish. This was perfect: plump cushions of pasta with a hefty little serving of pureed squash inside — enough so you got the smooth mouthfeel and Thanksgiving flavor. Then a rush of toasty, salty, lemony cream.

I have only one complaint about jP American Bistro, and that has to do with the only original fixture who’s left. Used to be Karl Rigelman, sommelier extraordinaire, saw to the wines there. Now that Rigelman has moved on to the Minikahda Country Club, the wine list at jP has become disappointingly pedestrian.

On the white side, they offer a La Poule Blanche Languedoc and a Saint M Riesling each for $7.50 a glass — mediocre wines at best, which retail for $8 and $10 a bottle respectively, making the markup around 300 percent. As for reds, they have a passable Parker Station Pinot Noir ($8), a Hahn Cabernet ($8.50), and a Milton Park Shiraz ($7).

They also, supposedly, have a Cabardes Pennautier Languedoc, a blend of cab, merlot, malbec, syrah, and grenache, which was the wine I was interested in drinking. After I ordered, however, I was told they’d run out. I asked the waiter for something comparable; he suggested the shiraz. (This would by like my ordering a spinach omelet and his suggesting I have a Caesar salad and T-bone instead.) I declined, and they accommodatingly opened a bottle of Le Jaja de Jau, a French blend — yes — but one that is entirely syrah and grenache, fruity and sweet, sweet, sweet. Imagine you’re craving a square of dark Belgian chocolate and someone hands you a Three Musketeers Bar. . . .

I yearn for the days of Rigelman, when wines at jP tended to be unique, well-chosen, and dry. But still, I will return — soon and often. Samuelson is ignoring the wines just as he ignores the press, the hype, and the trends, in favor of producing some of the best food in town. He’s a balls-to-the-walls kind of chef who keeps his head down and cooks, the ultra-chic, leek-and-goose-foam culinary world be damned, getting better (and better) with each passing year.

So the next time someone asks me for my favorite place, it’s an even bet I’ll say it’s jP.

January 19, 2008
THEATER: Particularly in the Heartland

Judging by the size of last night’s audience, there should
be tickets left to see Particularly in the Heartland. And if you happen to be
the type who’s a little tired of our pop culture’s present mood (rampant
cynicism peppered with ironic snark)–in other words, if the Colbert Report
doesn’t entirely resonate, or if the plights of Britney Spears don’t exactly
inspire, in you, a sense of schadenfreude–then this show might be something you’d
care to see.

It stands in stark contrast to the Walker’s initial installment of the annual Out There series: last week’s performance by Miguel Gutierrez and, ahem, "the Powerful People," which struck
me as a masturbatory, self-indulgent piece of artless hipster quackery, passed
off (unsuccessfully) as an exercise in shapes and whimsical personalities
emerging from pattern. Last night’s show, rather, made me feel good about my
place in the world. It’s a sprawling, even diffuse, and loosely-connected play. The basic premise is shamelessly ludicrous: A trio of
evangelical kids, living out in the middle of nowhere, lose their parents to a
Kansan twister, but believe the folks have been raptured. (One kid claims
to have seen it happen.) To make a long story short: The ghost of Bobby Kennedy
shows up, as does a female Wall Street type, and the effect, I suppose, is to
turn an inner eye at our blue-state prejudices. For example, there are plenty
of moments when the evangelical kids make ridiculous statements; the
youngest of the kids, a ten-year-old spitfire named Anna, waxes poetic on her
science textbook, which gives plenty of ink to creationism–and, as an audience
member, you’re already rolling your eyes. We’re accustomed to
encountering the occasional ironic and/or hateful usage of red-state stereotypes.
(The conditioned response is to write them off, focusing instead on the play’s other virtues.)
But in this show, predictable leftism is not what unfolds–not in the least.
Nor are we led to believe the death of Bobby Kennedy was the single event that led
this country into its present mess; even he is painted as a complicated
character, with plenty of flaws as well as strengths. The message seems to be
this: There’s plenty of beauty to be discovered if only we allow ourselves to wander
outside our black-and-white thinking. Also, people–even (especially?) evangelicals–are
essentially good.

In one of the show’s most powerful moments, the cast breaks from
the script and invites the audience to ask questions. What became clear to me
then was that these performers are so entrenched in, and care so much for, their
characters that they can even improvise, while staying in character, with
relative ease-and without hitting false notes. Again, I reflexively thought the
cast would get about the sport of lampooning fundamentalists. But instead,
the play’s sincerest moment came to pass: An audience member asked Sarah–the middle
child, a teenager dabbling in lesbianism–what she plans for her future. The response–to
be a better person "and hopefully see my parents again"–startled me. And so,
finally, I abandoned my hardened expectations and began to feel the play for
what it was. It left me feeling lighter, with a renewed sense of optimism. Go
see it.

January 18, 2008
Raging

Something terrible happened to my family this week.

What it is isn’t important, and I’m not being self-effacing when I say that. Individual calamities mean little but to the people who suffer them. Tragedies occur every day: Little children are struck by cars and killed; young people are diagnosed with hideous diseases; old people die after slowly losing their minds. We assume, generally, that this is the natural order of the world. It is only when it is happening to us that we object.

There are those who learn to make peace with their suffering. They accept and accommodate and make alternate plans. This always reminds me of the maternity nurse who attended me when I was 21 and giving birth to a nine-and-a-half pound baby boy. "Just give in to the pain," she told me. "Work with it. Let it help you." Luckily, my husband at the time — a large man — stepped between us before I could kill her.

And later, when that child was diagnosed with autism (the event which preceded, in many ways, the crisis that took place just three days ago), I read Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People. A rabbi, Kushner wrote this spiritual self-help manual after the death of his own son, Aaron, from progeria. He deconstructed the Book of Job, claiming it proved that God is both benevolent and fallible. To suffer, Kushner claimed, is simply to be fully human. The secret, he said — this man who certainly knows anguish — is to embrace one’s lot and look to God not for help but for strength.

I tried to find solace in his words. But I couldn’t. Because no matter what the circumstances, I fight. Back in the early 90’s, I abandoned Kushner and read the works of a man whose outlook on the world rather frighteningly matched my own. A chronic philanderer and suicidal alcoholic, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas better captured my philosophy, then and now.

So late yesterday afternoon, in the spirit of Thomas, I poured a glass of Elderton Shiraz 2003 well before the official cocktail hour. I didn’t like this wine, frankly. It’s pricey (a $40, 14% alcohol vintage that someone had given me as a gift) and I’ve no doubt it’s good by objective standards, but it was far too jammy and bold for me. Dark fruit and red licorice flavors marched across my palate like a high school band, raucous and insistent but with no refining grace. I like my wine more subtle — as you know — yet, in the tradition of DT, I drank steadily simply because the bottle was there.

Then I read, as I have so many times:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And as they always have, these words gave me comfort. I’m a Jewish woman who doesn’t know from acceptance. But rage, I get.

January 18, 2008
We're Having a Party!

SPECIAL EVENT
Celebrate Theater All Year

If you only do one thing this weekend, join us for a fabulous celebration of Theater All Year. Start the evening off by kicking back a few Newcastles and sampling the natural and organic victuals of Whole Foods. And then stick around for a presentation by The Lighthouse Group. An artist of the year, an Ivey Award honoree, a Mentor Award winner,
two dancers, and a director will come together to present a clown act,
a dance, and a new drama for the audience. The evening promises to be a hoot.
(Want the celebration to last year round? Treat yourself or a friend to a 6-voucher Theater All Year
package, and check out the available performances.)

Sunday at 5:30 (reception) and 7 p.m. (performance), Illusion Theater, 528 Hennepin Ave., Suite 704, Minneapolis; 612-339-4944; reception free, performance $12 (to reserve
tickets, call Illusion Theater and use
the codeword PARTY).

FILM
Cloverfield

It looks like producer J. J. Abrams (the man behind Lost and Alias) took a few cues from legendary horror-meister Val Lewton. In Cloverfield,
Abrams’s Godzilla-like monster wreaks havoc on New York City—except he
does so at night, and we can’t see a damn thing except shadows and
fleeting images of the beast as things blow apart, casting flickers of
light on the carnage. Abrams understands, as did Lewton when he made The Curse of the Cat People
some sixty-five years earlier, that imagination is the best special
effect—and it’s cheap. The web is already alive with anticipation for
this one. If the trailer is any indication of Cloverfield’s thrill-a-minute qualities, this should be one helluva popcorn flick. —Peter Schilling

Area theaters.

Walk into the Sea

Be
a part of the unveiling of a story that up until now has remained untold.
A Walk Into the Sea is a bittersweet tale about the brief but brilliant
life of Danny Williams, a man who was defined by his stunning work as
a filmmaker in collaboration with the Warhol Factory. Williams
made more than twenty films and designed light shows for the Velvet
Underground, but his relationship with Warhol ran much deeper than that. Now his poetic life story is finally being told by his niece, filmmaker
and director Esther B. Robinson. Robinson offers a glimpse into the
life and works of Danny Williams, but if her documentary makes you crave
more, then be sure to also explore Danny Williams’ Factory Films,
a compilation of the films Williams produced while working under the
Warhol Factory. —Kate Leibfried

Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-375-7600; $8 (members $6).

ART
Closing this Weekend: Michael Kareken’s Urban Forest

Scrap yards and paper recycling form Michael Kareken’s usual
subjects (though he has other, more conventional ones as well—figures,
usually); many of the works in this show depict the Rock-Tenn recycling
yard near his studio. Tough-love limnings of crushed heaps evoke the
huge stone Aphrodite that stood at the old Getty Museum on the Malibu
cliffs, her voluminous draperies blown by a hurricane and torn and
broken by two thousand years. The formal visual qualities of these raw
heaps is exciting in itself, but Kareken also manages to infuse the
drawings and paintings with the pathos of drapery—material that takes
on the shape of that which it clothes, be it divine flesh, the force of
tearing winds, or the mindless crush of waste. These scraps record the
currents of our desires. —Ann Klefstad

Friday 12-5 p.m. and Saturday 12-4 p.m., Groveland Gallery, 25 Groveland Terrace, Minneapolis; 612-377-7800.

Opening this weekend: Dan Havel’s Open 24 Hours

Dan Havel’s latest installation has been brewing for 14 years. Two years after leaving Minnesota for Houston, Texas, in 1991, Havel was working on a site-specific installation at an abandoned adult movie theater where he came across numerous old film reels. Over the past year, he has revisited these reels, pulling together a series of digital prints from the water-damaged ’70s porn films. The result is a fascinating fusion of decay and kitsch. "The colorful surfaces are cracked and scratched, with fractals of pooled emulsion intertwining and framing the various figures, stories, and locations in the films." Certainly not something you see every day, you won’t want to miss this.

Saturday from 8 p.m. to Midnight, Icebox Gallery,1500 Jackson St. N.E., #442 & #443, Minneapolis; 612-788-1790.

MUSIC
Something for Everyone

Lovers of the classics will delight in a perfect fusion of film and orchestra tonight (8 p.m.) at the Sounds of Cinema Festival, where the Minnesota Orchestra will accompany Chaplin’s City Lights — one of the best films of all time.

Those looking for a some truly beautiful, indie-alt-folk vocal stylings should head to the Cedar tonight (8 p.m.) for the sweet, lulling songs of Haley Bonar and Pieta Brown. These sexy ladies are topped only by their fabulous voices and stellar song-writing.

Saturday is Janis Joplin’s birthday, so if you’re up for some old-school ’60s rock, you should make your way to Mayslack’s Bar (9:30 p.m.) for a birthday extravaganza featuring Happy Birthday Janis! Several featured performers will pay tribute to the legend, including Monica Heuser and Jill Mikelson from the Ordway’s presentation of Love, Janis, and Andra Suchy and Kari Shaw from local country group The Dollys.

Also on Saturday, Aaron
Smith, Steve Tacheny, Tate Schoeberlein, and Chris Hansen of The Slack
invite you to "a magical night of music and tomfoolery" at the Terminal Bar (9 p.m.).

And on Sunday (4 p.m.), join gospel quintet The Steels in honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a From Every Voice concert at Ted Mann Concert Hall.

January 18, 2008
An American Truth

There are those, here in Boston, who will say that Paul Revere never made his historic Midnite Ride, that he actually sent a neighbor to warn the countryside. And some people will giggle at your naïvety when you mention the Boston TEA Party, as if everyone should be so silly to think that it was actually tea being stored in those rum barrels.

It’s enough to shake a history buff. But if you run back to your historic hotel, where you decide to take refuge in culinary history, you might not be comforted.

I admit that part of the reason I chose to stay at the Parker House was because it was the birthplace of the Parker House Roll and the Boston Creme Pie. I can put up with tiny, cramped, stodgy rooms and early morning construction noise as long as I can get a bite of the past.

I wasn’t expecting much from the rolls. After all, they’re white dinner rolls. But after having to actually pay extra to add one to my meal, the forthcoming roll wasn’t even warm. And you’d think an icon would deserve to be accompanied by more than just a common foil wrapped chunk of frozen butter. Was a small dish of whipped and salted butter simply too much to ask for a national treasure?

And still, it got worse. It turns out that the place which claims honor for the original Boston Creme Pie (a true inspiration for doughnut eaters everywhere) has done the unthinkable: THEY’VE CHANGED THE RECIPE. Instead of a classic 1855 dessert of dense cake and custard, covered with a deeply chocolate ganache, we now have a fluffy, spongy thing covered with coconut and drizzled with white chocolate in a modern spidery design.

And so you lose a little religion.

But I did find faith again in a little restaurant called The Ivy, tucked away down an alley off of Boston Commons. It’s an Italian small-plate restaurant with a nice wine list: any glass $9, any bottle $26. We showed up a little late and asked if the kitchen was still open. The manager at the front was nice enough to run downstairs to check. As we settled into a booth, resigned that we were going to get a glass of wine regardless, he came to inform us that the kitchen had closed. I asked if there was even any bread we could snack on, and he again ran down to check.

Upon his return he informed us that, although he couldn’t cook anything from the grill or the fryer, he’d be happy to whip us up a salad or make something from the saute side. We said we’d be happy with just about anything and would take what ever was easiest. When he suggested the bolognese and brought it to us within a minute, it hit us like a ton of bricks…"Is this supposed to be YOUR dinner?" He had given us the meal prepared for himself. As restaurant people, we all knew the value of sitting down for a hot meal after a night on the floor, shuffling plates, dealing with guests, running up and down stairs … sometimes that meal is the only thing that keeps you going.

Of course we protested, and of course he wouldn’t take it back, claiming he ate it every night and could use a break from it. Wide, flat pasta was richly covered in a pink veal and pork ragu. The soft meat was perfectly done and not a bit greasy, like some bolo can be. With a bite of pasta it was almost creamy, yet subtly tangy with just a touch of red pepper. We ate it hungrily and gratefully. We drank our wine and vented our lives and tipped graciously.

That bolognese is my new Boston icon.

January 17, 2008
Don't Call Me Sweetheart

I just picked up my two children from their school-supported daycare, at which time a young woman put her finger in the air and motioned for me to have a moment with her. I stepped aside and proceeded to listen to her complain that my son had been calling her, and other students and teachers, "sweetheart." She told me that she and some of the other students did not appreciate it, and that this behavior was unacceptable.

I know my face must have resonated with a "you must be fucking kidding" look. Sweetheart! He’s five. If it is not endearing and humorous, it certainly cannot be very disruptive.

I wanted to to tell her that "bitch" and "my ass" are bad words, but "sweetheart" has no malice. One can deduce bad intent if it comes from a greasy man at a bar, but my son is a cute 43-pound Guatemalan boy. (By the way, when I asked him to get on the scale, he said, "OK, honey.")

I am so taken aback that this women has nothing better to do than to rat on a little boy who is trying to be funny. I informed her that there are a lot more destructive behaviors to focus on than a child saying "sweetheart." This daycare worker just would not let it go. She argued that if she or any children did not want to be called sweetheart by my son, he should follow their wishes, and that this needed to be addressed.

I don’t know what makes me more angry — the fact that this woman is just being STUPID (a word my son is not using) or the long-term effect of not letting a five-year-old be OK with who he is. What’s next? Not using the word "love" or "friend"? No, I know: the word "honey."

January 17, 2008
Spaghetti Red and a Seductive Nose

"Don’t you find," he said, "that there’s a funny taste of
chicken coops in Rhone wines? Especially Beaucastel."

"Chicken coops?" Was he pulling my leg?

"Even the great wines, you know, have a whiff of chicken
coops. It’s well known."

I offered him a glass of the Beaucastel. I tasted it
again, now frantically looking for traces of sublimated chicken coops. The
waiter winked at me, was he suggesting I’d been had?

"Taste it?" he said. "A bit poopy, eh?

"Well, I said, "maybe I can taste chicken coops."

I couldn’t taste anything of the sort. But we swirled and
sipped and agreed that the chicken-coop element gave the wine its complexity."

Lawrence Osborne, The Accidental Connoisseur, North Point Press, 2004.

Whenever I read those florid descriptions of wines – "a
direct and seductive nose overflowing with floral notes, gingerbread, cocoa,
candied cherries, a mouth which is spherical, sexy, fleshy – , in wine
reviews or on those little tags at the wine store, I have two reactions:

1)
I wish I could write like that.

2)
Are these guys just making that stuff up?

I’ll admit it, I’m no expert on wines. I know what I like –
big, full-bodied reds, mostly – but unlike my esteemed colleague Ann Bauer, I
don’t have much of a vocabulary to talk about it. And I can appreciate the
difference between a $10 bottle of Cabernet and a $50 bottle, but I usually
don’t think the difference in experience is worth paying for – at least if I am
paying. And when I see a $50 price tag on a bottle of wine, I also start
thinking about people who don’t earn $50 a month.

My wine career has been a never-ending search for cheap
drinkable plonk. In the 80s and 90s, it was focused on the wines of Romania,
Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia – remember Avia and Premiat? , These days it
has shifted mostly to Spain, and the garnachas and tempranillos and monastrells
in the back left corner of Hennepin-Lake Liquors.

Every once in a while, though, a cheap wine jumps out at me
as something out of the ordinary. I first discovered
Bonny Doon 2003 "Il Circo" Ruche
di Castagnole Monferrato on a wine list at Taste Wine
Bar (that quirky little spot hidden inside The Newsroom), and liked it so much
that I started looking for it, with no luck, at local bottle shops. Then, last
week, I stopped in at Gigi’s for their happy hour, and lo and behold, the
featured $3 happy hour red is Il Circo Ruche.

I happily drink a
glass and a half, and return the next night for Gigi’s Thursday night cheap
date spaghetti special – two plates of spaghetti, garlic toast, and a bottle of
wine for $25. The spaghetti was great -the red sauce with spicy meatballs
robustly spicy (vegetarian also available), and the noodles actually al dente.

And sure enough, the red wine was Il Circo Ruche. This time
around, I tried to figure out just what it is that I like so much about the wine,
put it into words, but I got absolutely nowhere. I try out all
those words that wine writers use – blackberries, leather, hints of cinnamon
and passionfruit, but none of them seem to fit,. Mainly, it seems complex but
balanced, but that doesn’t say very much.

The label on the
bottle said that ripe Ruche was redolent with roses, but I couldn’t for the life of me smell anything
that tastes like roses. Complicating things further, Carol, who was sharing the
bottle with me, didn’t taste anything special about this bottle at all. So I
cork up the last quarter of the bottle, and bring it the next day to Ann, who
really is good at describing wines. "Cherry and cassis with a touch of
dark honey;" Ann reported back the next day," a resinous flavor that becomes cigar-like as it warms; undertones
of earth, but very dark, no peat at all.
A dry, almost dusty finish. That
thing about roses? I didn’t get it at
all — unless you count the dusty, earthy scent and flavor, which reminds me of
DECAYING roses."

A tip from a friend research led me to Robin Garr’s
wineloverspage.com, where Robin Garr’s posted his 2005 tasting notes on the
Bonny Doon Il Circo Ruche, "an Italian red grape so obscure that it’s only
grown in a few small villages in the Castagnole Monferrato hills northeast of
Asti in Piemonte."

Wrote Garr: "This is a very dark purple wine with a bright
reddish-violet edge. Luscious aromas offer a benchmark example of Ruche with a
heady, rosy floral scent accented with warm brown spice. Rich and full in
flavor, tart red fruit and spice, mouth-filling and plushy on first impression,
but a firm core of acidity carries it into a clean, medium-long finish, with an
unusual, intriguing hint of caraway seed and light tannic bitterness
lingering."

So Robin Garr did discover the rosy floral scent in 2005,
but Ann and I couldn’t detect it in 2008, That actually makes sense, since Garr
predicted that the floral scents would soon fade from the young wine.

Of course, there are lots of factors that influence how we experience the taste of wine, as this story from Bloomberg News illustrates:

"Volunteers in California who were given sips of wines with
fake prices said they preferred the cabernets they thought were
more expensive to the ones they thought were cheaper about 80
percent of the time, according to the study published … in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…. In a follow-up experiment eight weeks after the original
study, patients were given the wines to taste without any
suggested prices. Most chose the $5 wine as their favorite, (a researcher) said."

January 17, 2008
Heartland Wonders

THEATER & PERFORMANCE
Particularly in the Heartland

Part of the Walker’s Out There festival of experimental theater, this show, by a youthful New York City ensemble called the TEAM (Theater of the Emerging American Moment)
defies rampant cynicism by presenting a work of resounding optimism.
Set in Kansas, the action unfolds within an evangelical household. The
parents have just been killed by an awful Kansan storm, but the
children believe the rapture has taken them. What’s surprising about
this work, especially in this age marked by Colbert Report satire,
is how the TEAM avoids irony in painting its portrait of the earnest,
often anti-intellectual culture of Evangelicalism. Instead, their
feel-good show teems with rigorous dance and movement, sincere
character study, and even wholesome Stephen Foster songs. —Christy DeSmith

8 p.m., McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-375-7600; $20 (members $16 & $14).

PERFORMANCE
The Force Is With You

Fun equals…physics? For
all of you non-believers out there, here is a show that is out to prove
that physics is not the stuff of long lectures and tedious equations,
but the stuff of zip and pizzazz! Physics Force, an entertaining
physics demonstration team from the University of Minnesota, will perform
their annual Physics Circus today in Northrop Auditorium. This
is a unique opportunity for people of all ages to learn a little more
about the face-paced world of physics and to be entertained at the same
time. Be sure to get there early because tickets are free and
there’s a high probability that this show is going to generate some
electricity! —Kate Leibfried

7 p.m., Northrop Auditorium, 84 Church St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-624-2345;

free.

SPECIAL EVENT
Jazz, Art, and Wine

Join us for Gallery Grooves, The Rake’s monthly art, jazz, and
wine event. Socialize and discuss the latest jazz with Kevin Barnes
from KBEM, view artwork for sale, and enjoy wine info and sampling courtesy of The Wine Company. This
month, view illustrative paintings by Joel Barkley at the Minneapolis
School of Flower Design. Barkley’s collection of artworks, both fantasy
and realism, represent a sampling of his imagination. —Jennifer Havrish

7 p.m., Minneapolis School of Flower Design, 79 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 877-322-5666.

MUSIC
Old School Freight Train

Acoustic music is undergoing a revitalization.
Look out! It’s a bird. It’s a… train? Well, sort of. Old School Freight Train is the name of an up-and-coming acoustic band
that is playing at the Cedar tonight. The band
combines thought-provoking lyrics with captivating melodies, soulful
vocals, virtuosi instrumentals, and imaginative arrangements. Blending
folk, jazz, soul, pop, bluegrass, Latin, and Celtic, Old School Freight
Train offers a unique musical experience. Just like the locomotive
in the 19^th century, Old School Freight Train is being called
the "next big thing," and it would be a shame to miss this exceptional
musical performance. —Kate Leibfried

7:30, The Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-388-2674; $17.

January 17, 2008
The Strip Club Steak House

^{Thanks to Rich Goldsmith for the use of his camera, and for his photos.}

The Strip Club finally opened last night in Saint Paul, and while it perhaps lacked the expected tits-and-ass show, many a mouth was watering throughout the evening.

I must confess, I had absolutely no intention of going — after all, this is Iggers and Bauer turf I’m stomping on here, and they’re hardly run-of-the-mill opponents. But several email exchanges later (the power of the internet), I found myself with boots in hand. Maybe I was swayed by the misguided idea that three or more people wanted to see me. (I’m sure they hardly cared, but it’s so hard to tell with you stoic Minnesotans. Perhaps it’s merely a convenience to think so.) Maybe I finally caved into a self-imposed sense of responsibility to get out more and offer first-hand accounts. Or maybe I just needed a drink.

Thanks to Max Sparber and Courtney Mault, I got one. (And you can blame them, and a few other, for this post you’re getting as a result.)

The Strip Club — a joint venture between Tim Niver (who greeted us with great enthusiasm) and Aaron Johnson, of the Town Talk Diner, and Chef J.D. Fratzke, previously of Muffuletta — sits in Dayton’s Bluff, on the corner of Maria and 6th Street. The space is beautiful, charming, in fact — smaller and far more refined than the Town Talk, with the elegance of Muffuletta. The main level has a beautiful bar in which I could easily see finding a regular stool, and somewhere around 10-12 tables from which to choose. The decor is simple and elegant — white painted brick loosely speckled with mirrors (a wise choice given the relatively narrow quarters).

To the left of the entrance, however, stands a quaint old spiral staircase leading to the sweet-spot of the house. The second level, a balcony of sorts, overlooks the main floor, gives a fabulous sense of privacy (despite the fact that it contains almost as many tables as its lower half), and brandishes many fine points to admire: a wall of varied glasses (which for reasons I cannot explain, I found quite beautiful); an ornate, seemingly iron, black railing (matching the staircase); and a fireplace embedded into an actually functional door.

This is not the most flattering photo (everyone looks so mean), but you’ll notice the fireplace mantle behind Courtney (left). Try to ignore the hideous blue ribbon on the plant — the only touch of gaudiness to be found. That entire wall panel, upon which the mantle is built, opens up into another room behind it. It is, in fact, a big square door. Precious!

The menu.

Drinks first, of course. The drink menu boasts numerous prohibition-era cocktails: the Joker, the Sidecar, the Old Fashioned — all quite good, though at your typical $8-a-pop prices. Two beers on tap — a great blonde (also at $8) and an unconvincing porter (with a strangely bitter afterbite). Numerous bottled beers. And a great looking, somewhat modest, wine list. The wine list actually surprised me by not emulating every other wine list in town. A nice selection indeed.

The food.

I’ll go anywhere for a good glass of wine with escargot. When I was three years old I took my own bag of snails (from the beach) to a restaurant in Spain and asked them to cook them for me. The waiter took the bag, winking at my bewildered mother, and brought me out a dish of their escargot — which I eagerly devoured, thinking they were mine.

The Strip Club escargot did not disappoint — though, I must say, it’s almost a crime to not serve some bread with which to wipe the plate. (The bread is a bit pricey at $4 a plate — which includes about five pieces.)

This is, of course, just one of many Small Plates offered on the menu — making that regular stool at the bar that much more desirable.

The Lady’s Night Shrimp Scampi, served in a champagne glass, was quite good. And the deviled eggs have a wonderfully spicy touch of curry and chili oil.

Max went nuts over the whole scallions served with the Ploughman’s Lunch — essentially a port wine cheese plate. At least this came with crackers. And the crackers were quite wonderful, though oddly, despite their perfect plainness, they seemed to overwhelm the cheese.

I didn’t try any of the main courses — no strip steak for me — but those that did seemed more than satisfied.

The set-up is great. Steaks come with a choice of eight different toppings (or none, like the one above) — ideal for all tastes. A couple members of our party raved about their steaks, while one lone member seemed unimpressed. "It’s ok." (More stoicism perhaps?)

The burgers were a hit all around.

Cooked to perfection. It’s nice when medium really means medium.

If presentation were everything, I’d have to give it up to the dessert.

Our party ordered this beautiful pear dish.

But when it came time to actually eat it…

They had a little trouble getting the forks in. The pear wasn’t cooked, you see; and pears aren’t exactly the softest of fruits. I’d guess a little baking time — perhaps poaching to preserve the juices — would soften it up, bring out the flavor, and better swathe the chocolate at the core.

Overall, the experience was delightful: the space charming, the drinks intoxicating (and, yes, delicious), the food satisfying, the presentation all-around lovely, and the service absolutely fabulous — but, judging from Tim’s visits to the table and a final round of shots on the house, I gather we may have had somewhat special treatment. A smart man (men, actully, since the other owners were involved), indeed. It’s never a bad idea to treat a group of local bloggers well on opening night! Never a bad idea at all. See for yourself: Aaron’s post, Ed’s post, and Courtney’s photos. Trust me, their photos are far better than the ones here. (Sorry, Rich. Don’t take it personally. Your camera has a better sense of humor.)

January 16, 2008
A Dream Deferred

It was difficult to sleep, yet almost impossible to move. It was easy to be irritated about everything that was of no consequence, yet care about nothing that mattered.

—Richard Flanagan, The Unknown Terrorist

There is no love. There is only proof of love.

—Denis Diderot, or maybe Jean Cocteau

One of the firemen from the station across the alley was peeking in Katherine’s windows. She could hear the crinkle of his heavy yellow coat and the tread of his big rubber boots tramping through her garden, where for years the firemen had been stealing tomatoes and zucchini in the moonlight.

This one, the peeker –Katherine had never actually seen him, yet she nonetheless had a clear image in her mind– was a big fellow, sturdy, and modestly handsome, but old as far as firemen go. She imagined he’d fallen through a roof or two.

Katherine had been a thin, graceful dancer in her younger days, but she’d recently been gaining weight.

Things didn’t always –or even often– turn out the way that people planned. Katherine’s father, who was certainly living proof of this fact, took every opportunity to remind her of it nonetheless. He wasn’t a cold or mean-spirited man –quite the contrary, in fact– and Katherine understood that he intended the words to buoy rather than discourage her. She couldn’t deny, though, that she was feeling a bit discouraged, but she was also a deeply practical woman, and had a keen understanding (or so she believed) of the way the world worked.

Still, she knew that she had lost her life, or at least any life other than the one she had. Her father had always told her that it was never too late, and while this may have been literally true, she also knew that she had become a special case. She was more and more convinced that she was slowly being washed out, becoming invisible.

At some point –it now seemed like such a long time ago– her mother had become ill. She had died very slowly, and afterwards Katherine had stayed on to look after her father and keep him company. This was the way the world in which she lived worked, and she had always accepted that there was a rightness to it. The usual horrors were easier to bear when one had the courage and decency to do the right, simple things, even if they were seldom so simple.

She still carried the life she had once imagined inside her, and it was still as beautiful as it had ever been, and likely more beautiful than it would have been if even a small part of it had been made real. Those old dreams, however, had become in time a very real retreat, and at considerable cost to Katherine’s social skills and comfort level when forced to go out into the world.

She still had her piles of old movies, fashion magazines, and travel brochures, though, and there was still a magic to them that even her retreat had not been able to dispel. She could still quite vividly imagine herself aboard cruise ships and strolling through foreign cities with a smiling, handsome man at her side.

Katherine had now been alone in the big, old house since her father died. The calendar on the kitchen wall still showed the month of his death. It had been almost five years, and she still missed his gentle voice, kindness, and old fashioned manners. In the year before his death he had been bedridden, and Katherine would read to him from the newspaper and from his old favorite books. He loved Sherlock Holmes and Trollope. When she would appear each afternoon with his tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich he would kiss her on the cheek and say, "Don’t you just carry a candle to my heart?"

Her father worried about her. Once upon a time he had built her a large, ornate dollhouse –she was a girl who had from a very early age rejected dolls, dismissing them as "dead children"– and had presented it to her for her birthday one year.

The dollhouse was a beautiful thing. There were tiny chairs and tables and four-poster beds; above the dining room table there was a miniature chandelier, and the living room featured a fireplace and candlesticks on the mantle, a detailed oriental rug, and a coffee table on which were stacked tiny books and magazines. There was even a coat rack inside the front door.

"Who lives here?" Katherine had asked her father.

"That is for you to decide," her father said. "In the meantime, you will live there in your imagination, and every night there will be music and lively conversation and all manner of happiness."

One side of the dollhouse was wide open, and when she was a little girl Katherine would crouch beside it in her bedroom and stare into its still, dark, quiet rooms. It was lovely to her, but there was something about it that also made her sad.

Then one summer she started capturing grasshoppers in the weedy lot of the old abandoned Mormon church at the end of her block, and she would carry the grasshoppers home and place them gently in her dollhouse. She went to the public library and read about grasshoppers in the encyclopedia, and scattered green grass and carrot shavings and green peas and corn throughout the rooms of the dollhouse. She lined one of the four-poster beds with grass, and was delighted to discover a grasshopper drowsing contentedly in the middle of a bed one evening.

Katherine brought home more and more grasshoppers, and they would always disappear after a time, but there were nights where her dollhouse would be trilling into the early morning with their lovely music, just as her father had once predicted.

As she got older, and particularly after her mother’s death, Katherine’s father would often tell her that she needed to get out and meet people. She would answer that she’d never met anyone in her entire life, a petulant statement that nonetheless had some truth to it.

She was shy, and had always believed that she would find her future, and whatever friends she might one day make, somewhere else out in the world. She had never liked to go to church with her parents because there was never anyone there that she knew.

She did take dance lessons for a year or two, studying with an old woman who lived in town and had allegedly once danced on Broadway. Katherine had displayed a natural aptitude for dance, and she had enjoyed the experience and the freedom she felt when she was moving. Eventually, however, she danced exclusively in the privacy of her bedroom, dancing to songs on her phonograph and practicing to to be the person she never became.

One night, after the fireman –whose presence she had still only sensed, but never seen– had been peeking in her windows for several weeks, Katherine realized that she was just lost enough to be stirred by the attention. She was simultaneously tickled and disturbed by how stirred she felt. She felt for the first time in a very long while like a candle had been carried to her heart. The idea that she was being watched, that someone was seeing her, recalled to her the private magic of those long-ago nights when the music of the grasshoppers had filled her room and she had fallen asleep with her head full of beautiful dreams.

Katherine showered, brushed her hair, and went to the hall closet and found her mother’s prettiest dress. She dug out and lit some ancient Christmas candles. And then she put one of her father’s old Strauss records on her phonograph player and she danced.

January 16, 2008