Who could have guessed Kanye West was headed for a media storm and a major melt down? 

Steve Marsh, that’s who: ’At the end of Kanye West’s Glow in the Dark concert at Target Center last night; after Kanye’s spaceship triumphantly returned to earth (yeah, literally); after he did all the hits and publicly eulogized his mother; after he brought out Lupe Fiasco to duet on a searing version of “Touch the Sky”; after the greatest arena rap concert that’s ever been performed; the crowd was treated to a bizarre encore: From the lip of the stage, in front of his orchestra pit, Kanye went on a stunning, nearly twenty-minute rant against the media. ‘He told his 10,000 fans that after witnessing what they had just witnessed, go out and read the reviews, and watch the coverage, and be skeptical of the haters’

And, yowzer, Kanye is doing his best to have haters.

Though, there’s no hate from Marsh who made a tear well up in my eye with ‘ I’m going to tell you what we all saw, objectively, to the best of my abilities:  We just saw a Great American’

Ofcourse, in Minnesota Kanye’s spaceship landed on time.  

Flashing Lights

Which Minnesota concert was your biggest letdown and which was your biggest inspiration?

 Come on, you can tell me.

Dear readers,

Today marks… well, not quite a year, but something yearish about the amount of time I’ve been writing for Metroblogging.

This site has given me a chance to develop my writing, irritate readers, and wolf down a variety of delicious and not-so-delicious items in the interest of expanding the public’s dining knowledge.

But now, for better or worse, City Pages has decided to unleash me on their cheap eats beat and yet-to-be-launched dining blog. This promises to be an all-consuming thing, and I’m therefore — with a heavy heart — hanging up my Metroblogging lanyard.

First and foremost, thanks to Erica for recruiting me, and giving me this ongoing opportunity to post sometimes poorly conceived and rambling missives about food. It’s been a lot of fun working with you.

And to my readers, and the rest of Metroblogging team: Thanks a million. I’m looking forward to following the ongoing Metroblogging action as a spectator and wry-but-sympathetic sideline commentator.

Best Regards,

Jim

Were I to start a punk band, and were that band to record a track entitled “Geriatric Fuck Riot,” we’d shoot our video in Heidi’s at 8pm on Thursday night. The damned place was swamped — swarmed, really — with agitated well-heeled fifty-somethings practically moshing in the restaurant’s miserably conceived lounge / dining room / waiting area / changing room / flaming mess. Bodies were packed ass-to-ass, making the first two tables miserably besieged little islands of food service swimming in agitated patrons waiting to be seated.
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It’s been a while since my last post, but the holiday season has taken its toll. Eggnog. Cranberry-infused vodka. Redeye. Nine or ten different kinds of Christmas cookies, including spritz (plain), spritz (colored), gingerbread (frosted), gingerbread (unfrosted), fruitcake cookies, rumballs, tuile cookies… oy… I’m starting to have calorically damaging flashbacks just enumerating the richness of the 2007/2008 holiday season. So, on with the reviewing.

Be’Wiched

Where does a dude get a decent sandwich around here? I’d maintain that the corned beef at Fishman’s glatt kosher deli will do in a pinch, even if it doesn’t quite reach the tender and flavorful heights of what they’re serving up in Brooklyn (New York) or Brookline (Massachusetts.) And The Brothers deli in the Skyway has some good stuff going on. But there hasn’t really been a definitive answer.
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I responded to a recent comment on my Red Stag post with a rather testy and defensive reply affirming my God-given right to tee off on the service of a newly-opened restaurant.

Upon further consideration, I was neither sufficiently testy nor defensive enough. If a restaurant opened with half-finished walls and paint rollers strewn around the aisles, or poorly executed food, or a policy of charging people to split appetizers, you’d want to know about it. You’d be right as a customer to feel that you were being poorly served, and I’d be right as a critic to mention it in the context of an overall evaluation.
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Despite growing up and going to college in Madison, WI, I was more of a coffee-shop guy than a bar guy until well into my twenties. Part of it was that Madison had (and still does have) a meat-headed student drinking culture that can go head-to-head with whatever Padre Island dishes up during Spring Break. But most of it was that the city had a number of great, medium-sized independent coffee houses that served decent coffee, played serious music, and would, for the modest price of a croissant and cup of joe, allow poor students to hang out for hours and study. Here I want to shout out to Cafe Assisi before it went co-op and got terrible (the Ellis Felker glory years were ‘94-’96 or thereabouts) and Cafe Michaelangelo, which is still going strong. Also: Cafe Palms, in memoriam (it burned down along with the rest of the Hotel Washington complex in 1996.)

One of my favorite things about Minneapolis-St. Paul is that we have a coffee shop culture that is, pound for pound, as good as — or better than — Madison’s. Within walking distance of my place in Uptown there are at least three chain shops and three independents. I’ve found good coffeeshops in Dinkytown, downtown, St. Paul and, now, Northeast.
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In any given restaurant, the front of the house rises and falls on a number of different factors. Consider the following scenario:

1. You call a restaurant on a Friday night, looking for a reservation for two. You know this may be impossible, but what the heck.

2. You’re told that it’s not so busy; in fact, you’re not even allowed to make a reservation. You’re asked to turn up in the next 20-30 minutes and to expect practically immediate seating.

3. You turn up in 20 minutes. Suddenly, there’s a 15-20-minute wait.

4. Make that a 45-minute wait.

5. Despite the presence of three or four hostesses, who repeatedly update you with optimistic reports regarding the status of the remaining “two-tops.”

6. Meanwhile, throughout the process, a vast and desolate tundra of large empty tables stretches majestically across the front of the restaurant.

So it went at The Red Stag, the new environmentally sound eatery by the same folks who brought us the marvelous Barbette in Uptown.

The service quirks continued through the meal. We were informed that the Friday night fish fry featured bluegill, perch and — rather than the typical walleye — a substitution of haddock.
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Pour One Out for Pizza Nea Uptown

Pizza Nea’s Uptown location has shut down for reasons not specified on their website. The mystery probably has something to do with the following tidbit of information: the place was never busy. In fact, it was often deserted. This is somewhat inexplicable as they offered really excellent Neapolitan style pizza, had some reasonable happy hour specials, and boasted a really clean, elegant interior design. Service was always adequate, and it made for a great inexpensive meal. Anyone got any working theories as to why they couldn’t hack it? Anyway, it’s a shame to see it go; now I’ll have to haul ass over to St. Louis Park to eat at Punch. Hmm. Come to think of it, the presence of Punch (and its easily accessible parking lot) just a 5-minute drive down Lake Street might account for some or all of Pizza Nea’s woes.

Brunch at Cafe Maude

Cafe Maude is a remarkably good restaurant — its dinner menu is elegant but unpretentious, engaging and affordable, and classy yet accessible. And the drinks. Holy hell.

That said, their brunch is remarkably meh. With the important caveat that neither I nor either of my dining colleagues ordered a sweet breakfast (such as the French toast or silver dollar pancakes), everything we ordered was just a little bit off. Sauteed flatbread with scrambled eggs, bacon, cucumbers and Sriracha sauce sounded like a home run in theory, but the bread was crunchy (rather than warm and soft as I’d hoped), the Sriracha was a little strong, and the cucumbers added a bunch of moisture to the mix, making the whole dish soggy. Other less ambitious brunch entrees were slightly better, but just conventionally decent. Overall, not a bad breakfast experience, but regular diners have a right to expect a lot more from Cafe Maude.

THE CONTINUING LEGEND OF AL’S BREAKFAST

Singing the praises of Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown is pretty much a redundant waste of breath around here, but I had a meal there this morning that was pretty close to platonically ideal.

A) The counterman had his “get me two rafts in boats with a half-black burro under the sunrise spiked with a toad on it” patter cranked up to 11.

B) Meanwhile, he took a break mid-cookery to get a back rub from the attractive college-age waitress.

C) There are famously 14 stools at Al’s counter, and there were 30+ customers waiting for them to open up. Thus, lots of the: “You three, move over one chair to the left” kind of re-organizations that would never fly at a less storied diner.

D) People kept leaving the restaurant after paying the bill and advising line-waiters what to get. Big shout-outs for the French toast, which was extremely soft, eggy, almond-y and excellent.

E) Me and my two cohorts sat down, ordered, ate and left so quickly that we received a standing ovation from the line. Granted, they had to be standing because that’s how the line works, but it still felt good.

PB&J & FOOD SCIENCE

The peanut butter and grape jelly iced milk beverage on Cafe Maude’s No Alcohol drinks menu is worth ordering — once. It does an excellent job of simulating all the flavor of peanut butter and grape jelly, but it uncannily lacks any of the texture… it is, after all, basically a glass of flavored milk with ice in it. Incredibly high novelty value, but it wears off fast. The Caramel Apple (apple cider spiked with high-quality caramel) is a much better all-around non-alcoholic buy at Maude.
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At the invitation of a friend, I recently headed out to Harry’s Food and Cocktails on Washington Avenue. It’s a big place (it picks up where the defunct Nochee left off) and it smacks of attitude. But was there a soul beneath its flashy design (ala the Town Talk Diner) or merely a carefully-honed business concept (ala, say, Applebee’s)…?

Our experience was quite mixed, so it’s probably best to break this down to some very concrete pros and cons and then stagger toward a conclusion.
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