Category: Food and Drink

  • Artful Nosh

    Art-A-Whirl makes me hungry. Maybe it’s walking around all the inspiring art that makes me think I, too, am a starving artist. Maybe it’s all the pondering and provoking of thought that starts my tummy a-grumbling. Or maybe it’s the wonderous lack of cheese curd trucks combined with the knowledge that I’m surrounded by some…

  • Bird is the Word

    When I first came to Minnesota twenty years ago, I had never taught a class larger than ten students—mostly I had conducted the one-to-one tutorials that are at the heart of the Oxford system. My first term here I was given a class on the Roman Republic that numbered some seventy souls. The learning curve…

  • Restaurant Rage

    Last winter, over the holidays, a restaurant manager I know clocked what she wryly calls the “Best Five Minutes Ever” of her career. Just seconds after punching in, she was called to the bar to break up a couple of brawlers. While showing one-half of the drunken duo to the door, she came across a…

  • Restaurant Decor

    Does anyone remember the House of Breakfast? It was this little counter-service joint run by two Eastern European women out of a house-front in South Minneapolis. The omelets were decent, the pancakes were fine, but that’s not why you went. It was the walls. Near the counter you could read the menu, which was scrawled…

  • Top Jello

    Tiffani is getting railroaded. I finally saw the “reunion” episode of Top Chef the other night, and I seriously couldn’t sleep afterward. Tiffani is being cast in the role of the villain. Don’t think for a minute that just because it’s Reality Television that there aren’t people behind the scenes working the events into “story…

  • Maternal Appetites

    Nothing quite says “Thanks Mom” like a giant fruit peacock. Screw brunch. Seriously, don’t you think you’re pulling a fast one on your Mom by taking her out for brunch? First of all, there’s little or no effort put by YOU personally into the meal. Secondly, by making it the morning meal, it’s like you’re…