Diner's Yearbook
| By Mecca Bos |
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To employ a somewhat over-used quotation: One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well. Whether you’re a great big deal or really no one at all, life is filled with love and sometimes hate, crying and laughter, working, reading and maybe a little writing, dreaming. Another year of dramas, big and small—and none of it could have taken place at all without the fuel of food. If you’re fortunate, you have not only dined but dined well. Here are a few notable moments from the year in local food:
Minneapolis Gets a Real Deli: Be’Wiched
The seams on my jeans are working overtime, and that’s because I’ve just finished a double pastrami (house-cured and smoked) on rye (baked in house) with pickled cabbage and coarse-grain mustard. The chef-owners of this amazing place, Mike Ryan and Matt Bickford, are alumni of the finest restaurants in town, including La Belle Vie, Solera, jP American Bistro and Restaurant Alma. And now they’re making your sandwich—the best damn sandwich in town. Tuna confit, pulled pork—and lots more—each one made with the same high-integrity ingredients sourced at the finest restaurants. “We’re putting composed entrées between two pieces of bread, because a sandwich is the perfect food. This is a four-star experience without the four-star price tag,” Bickford says. Don’t you just love this city?
The seams on my jeans are working overtime, and that’s because I’ve just finished a double pastrami (house-cured and smoked) on rye (baked in house) with pickled cabbage and coarse-grain mustard. The chef-owners of this amazing place, Mike Ryan and Matt Bickford, are alumni of the finest restaurants in town, including La Belle Vie, Solera, jP American Bistro and Restaurant Alma. And now they’re making your sandwich—the best damn sandwich in town. Tuna confit, pulled pork—and lots more—each one made with the same high-integrity ingredients sourced at the finest restaurants. “We’re putting composed entrées between two pieces of bread, because a sandwich is the perfect food. This is a four-star experience without the four-star price tag,” Bickford says. Don’t you just love this city?
The Accessibility of Good Food
Foodies have been lamenting the loss of some of our finest eateries—Auriga, Levain, Five. And while saying goodbye is hard to do, the places that have arrived in their wake—Café Levain, Harry’s, The Bulldog N.E.—are serving a perhaps more noble mission than their illustrious predecessors: bringing food with integrity to the masses. Even the world’s most remarkable dish is so much rubbish if no one is there to eat it.
Foodies have been lamenting the loss of some of our finest eateries—Auriga, Levain, Five. And while saying goodbye is hard to do, the places that have arrived in their wake—Café Levain, Harry’s, The Bulldog N.E.—are serving a perhaps more noble mission than their illustrious predecessors: bringing food with integrity to the masses. Even the world’s most remarkable dish is so much rubbish if no one is there to eat it.
Brasa
Chef Alex Roberts has managed something remarkable in our current dining climate. His much-revered fine-dining bistro, Alma, remains, still doing a robust business, even as he reinvents the idea of fast food. At Brasa, quality is nary a hair below that of upscale Alma, but it all gets wrapped up with a no-muss quickness. I predict every neighborhood will be clamoring for their very own Brasa.
The Local Food Movement
Two groundbreaking books in particular—The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2006) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (HarperCollins, 2007)—had a life-changing effect on the American diet this year; and unlike fads like the Atkins Diet, this one may actually be for the best. Both authors demonstrate with great poignancy that it’s no longer enough to trust the term “organic” stamped across your bag of pre-washed greens. For the good of the economy, the community, the farmer, the planet, the animals and not least of all our bodies, we must once again get back in touch with our food on a local level.
Two groundbreaking books in particular—The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2006) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (HarperCollins, 2007)—had a life-changing effect on the American diet this year; and unlike fads like the Atkins Diet, this one may actually be for the best. Both authors demonstrate with great poignancy that it’s no longer enough to trust the term “organic” stamped across your bag of pre-washed greens. For the good of the economy, the community, the farmer, the planet, the animals and not least of all our bodies, we must once again get back in touch with our food on a local level.
Steven Brown
Much ado was made when Steven Brown, one of the Twin Cities’ most acclaimed fine-dining chefs, went to work for Harry’s Food & Cocktails, a fashionable yet casual burger-and-beer place in downtown Minneapolis. “Steven Brown is flipping burgers,” carped many foodies, in the tone of someone with a lingering bad taste on their tongue. Added to that, the burgers turned out not to be the very best in town. Then, in only a handful of weeks, it was rumored that Brown was acting only as a kitchen consultant at Harry’s, and next the leak that he would be leaving burgers behind. Gourmands can rejoice in reports that he will be back to flipping foie this month at the new Ivy Hotel in Minneapolis.
Much ado was made when Steven Brown, one of the Twin Cities’ most acclaimed fine-dining chefs, went to work for Harry’s Food & Cocktails, a fashionable yet casual burger-and-beer place in downtown Minneapolis. “Steven Brown is flipping burgers,” carped many foodies, in the tone of someone with a lingering bad taste on their tongue. Added to that, the burgers turned out not to be the very best in town. Then, in only a handful of weeks, it was rumored that Brown was acting only as a kitchen consultant at Harry’s, and next the leak that he would be leaving burgers behind. Gourmands can rejoice in reports that he will be back to flipping foie this month at the new Ivy Hotel in Minneapolis.
Saffron
It will come as no surprise to readers of this column that I think of Saffron as the most interesting restaurant opening of the year. Heck, I’ve already come clean: I’ve got a crush on this place. In an eating landscape leaning toward ground beef and fried potatoes, chef-owner Sameh Wadi and his brother Saed throw caution to the wind and open an envelope-pushing concept. Sameh, a student of Tim McKee (La Belle Vie and Solera), plates food with the precision of a Fabergé jeweler and mixes Middle Eastern fare with fine-dining sensibilities.
It will come as no surprise to readers of this column that I think of Saffron as the most interesting restaurant opening of the year. Heck, I’ve already come clean: I’ve got a crush on this place. In an eating landscape leaning toward ground beef and fried potatoes, chef-owner Sameh Wadi and his brother Saed throw caution to the wind and open an envelope-pushing concept. Sameh, a student of Tim McKee (La Belle Vie and Solera), plates food with the precision of a Fabergé jeweler and mixes Middle Eastern fare with fine-dining sensibilities.
Thom Pham
It seems like a bit of schadenfreude to include Thom Pham’s uncanny troubles in a list like this one, but if we pretended it wasn’t interesting, we’d be lying. First the eccentric owner of the trendy eateries Azia and Temple gets dined and dashed on, twice, in a single night. He manages to apprehend the suspects until help arrives and goes on to local-hero status in the papers. A few short months later, he is badly beaten while leaving one of his restaurants—all amid a tide of real estate confusion. By all accounts Pham is an all-around good guy, and by his accounts these problems are merely coincidental. Here’s to hoping he stays comfortably out of the news for a while.
It seems like a bit of schadenfreude to include Thom Pham’s uncanny troubles in a list like this one, but if we pretended it wasn’t interesting, we’d be lying. First the eccentric owner of the trendy eateries Azia and Temple gets dined and dashed on, twice, in a single night. He manages to apprehend the suspects until help arrives and goes on to local-hero status in the papers. A few short months later, he is badly beaten while leaving one of his restaurants—all amid a tide of real estate confusion. By all accounts Pham is an all-around good guy, and by his accounts these problems are merely coincidental. Here’s to hoping he stays comfortably out of the news for a while.
Landon Schoenefeld
And if we were looking to be entertained, we needn’t have looked any further than the peripatetic antics of “Colonel Mustard.” First, young Landon Schoenefeld (trained in some of our most acclaimed kitchens) gets instated as head chef of The Bulldog N.E. To much acclaim, he elevates mere pub fare to the kind of thing that sets epicures fairly atwitter in delight. Just months later he gets axed for squirting mustard at a bartender in a spat over a salad. Shortly thereafter he is restored his title of executive chef, this time at Uptown darling Barbette, breathing fresh air into the neighborhood stalwart and steadying its sometimes spotty quality. Schoenefeld then resigns from his post at Barbette, stating that he can’t take the 100-hour work-weeks anymore—at least for someone else’s dream. He plans to get some R&R and then open his dream, Flavor Country, sometime in 2008.
And if we were looking to be entertained, we needn’t have looked any further than the peripatetic antics of “Colonel Mustard.” First, young Landon Schoenefeld (trained in some of our most acclaimed kitchens) gets instated as head chef of The Bulldog N.E. To much acclaim, he elevates mere pub fare to the kind of thing that sets epicures fairly atwitter in delight. Just months later he gets axed for squirting mustard at a bartender in a spat over a salad. Shortly thereafter he is restored his title of executive chef, this time at Uptown darling Barbette, breathing fresh air into the neighborhood stalwart and steadying its sometimes spotty quality. Schoenefeld then resigns from his post at Barbette, stating that he can’t take the 100-hour work-weeks anymore—at least for someone else’s dream. He plans to get some R&R and then open his dream, Flavor Country, sometime in 2008.
Top Five Dishes:
Here’s my extremely scaled-down list of 2007’s best dishes—and oh my, was it the pits to narrow it to only five. Some of you will disagree with my selections, but I’m only one very opinionated girl, with one very big appetite, and these are my personal standouts.
Here’s my extremely scaled-down list of 2007’s best dishes—and oh my, was it the pits to narrow it to only five. Some of you will disagree with my selections, but I’m only one very opinionated girl, with one very big appetite, and these are my personal standouts.
1. Veal and tuna carpaccio, brown butter
vinaigrette, hazelnuts and preserved
lemons: Saffron.
2. Veal tenderloin with foie gras, napa cabbage
and Banyuls reduction: La Belle Vie.
3. Grilled Wisconsin bison bratwurst with
toasted caraway seed sauerkraut and house-
made grainy mustard: Heartland.
4. Seared duck breast on a bed of duck confit,
preserved lemons and celery root slaw: Five.
5. Tom yum soup: Amazing Thailand.
vinaigrette, hazelnuts and preserved
lemons: Saffron.
2. Veal tenderloin with foie gras, napa cabbage
and Banyuls reduction: La Belle Vie.
3. Grilled Wisconsin bison bratwurst with
toasted caraway seed sauerkraut and house-
made grainy mustard: Heartland.
4. Seared duck breast on a bed of duck confit,
preserved lemons and celery root slaw: Five.
5. Tom yum soup: Amazing Thailand.
It’s been one delicious year. +
Photo: Highlight No. 1 for 2007: Minneapolis gets a new deli. For real. It’s called Be’wiched, and it’s owned and operated by chefs Mike Ryan (left) and Matt Bickford. And it’s really very good. Photo by Sara Rubinstein
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