Saturday, May 19, 2012
Harriet Brasserie won their liquor license this week, clearing the way for dinner service.
Linden Hills' newest restaurant, Harriet Brasserie, is but a babe in arms, but already the positive reviews are starting to roll in. So far, they've only just secured a beer and wine license, so dinner service is still off the table—pardon the pun—for a little while longer. The Twin Cities Daily Planet's Jerremy Iggers: I ordered the crawfish and grits ($13), a impossible rich concoction of crawdad tails, andouille, avocado, sliced radish and red pepper, accompanied by a creamy cheddar cheese grits. "Tucker," writing on Urban Spoon: The menu was very enticing and different from what I have seen around Minneapolis. You can see the collision of the owners' international backgrounds in every aspect of the dishes. I had the crab benedict which…
Temporary site up and running.
After a rogue coder going by the nom d'internet "HellFire" defaced the front page of the Downtown Journal earlier this week, Southwest Minneapolis residents have been at a loss when looking for stories from its sister publication, the Southwest Journal. Both websites have been temporarilly taken offline while Minnesota Premier Publications staff repair whatever internal damage the attack caused, and disarm any thing the hacker left behind. Well, wait no more! Friday afternoon, Sarah McKenzie, editor of both publications, told Patch over Twitter that for the time being, you can still find all her reporters' fine work at a temporary Wordpress site.
Friday, May 18, 2012
We're renowned for our tight neighborhoods. But sometimes, those connections are longer-distance than we think.
On a quiet corner in Tangletown sit two quintessential Minneapolis neighborhood shops. Despite their status as local favorites, you'd never guess that both owners have a 1,500-mile commute to work. Lisa Gilroyed of Artsy Digs lives in California with her husband. When she's not working a full-time job in California and raising two kids, she surfs between New York wholesalers, Los Angeles flea markets, and Minnesota barn sales to find the art, "shabby chic" furniture, and assorted decorative odds and ends that fill her popular store, like old back-light eye charts or a pair of vintage water skis. Neither that nor her limited hours—one multi-day sale per month—have stopped the neighborhood from embracing her. "We'll be here in the evening, …
Zinia Folk Arts opens today.
At long last, you can finally get skeletons dressed as mariachi players without having to travel to Mexico! Zinia Folk Arts is opening at the corner of 50th and Bryant, across the street from Patina, George and the Dragon, and The Malt Shop. That may sound trite or sarcastic, but we mean every word of it—as we wrote back in March, owner Anne Damon regularly traverses Mexico, searching for curious, interesting, and funky pieces of folk art to bring back to Minneapolis. And these are no ordinary pieces of folk art. Many of the artists she buys from have their work in major Mexican museums. When we interviewed her just as her plans for her Lynnhurst shop were starting to gel, she told us about one such meeting: On her last (trip), she found…
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
City Council aproves Linden Hills restaurant permits.
Two Linden Hills restaurants got good news from the Minneapolis City Council on Monday afternoon, just in time for prime dining season. This spring and summer, Naviya's Thai Brasserie will be sporting a new four-seat, two-table patio on 43rd Street. Perhaps more exciting, though, is news that the Harriet Brasserie now has a liquor license. The decision means they will soon open for dinner service, to the probable delight of the neighborhood. Both permits were granted at Monday's meeting of the Regulatory, Energy, and Environment Committee. What better news to hear at the outset of a week that looks to be mostly-sunny, and mostly warm, eh?
A relic of history shows up when old sign is taken down.
As the landlords of now-closed Shorty and Wags prepare to find a new tennant for the 38th and Nicollet space, their remodeling efforts have uncovered a piece of history. "For those of you old enough to remember the old Art Songs Wings at 38th & Nicollet, the racist sign was just uncovered," Kingfielder David Brauer tweeted Tuesday afternoon, along with the picture above. The yellow sign and its decidedly tasteless caricature of an East Asian man once belonged to an old tennant, Art Song's Wings. The restaurant is now based on University Ave in St. Paul. "What are you people eating? Honestly, get in your car now. Your life in incomplete. Art Song's is the greatest place to eat in the Twin Cities," wrote one reviewer on a Yelp! page for the …
Monday, May 14, 2012
Local Republicans readying for Paul's appearance Friday.
See updates below. Ron Paul is set to speak at the Minnesota Republican convention Friday, and party activists in the Fifth District are preparing for a possible Paul win—with one local activist saying "I get the feeling I'm witnessing history." Paul is poised to make a strong showing in Minnesota after congressional-district conventions gave him 20 of 24 available national delegates. The Texas congressman was denied a speaking slot at the 2008 state convention, but has proven a popular candidate and speaker here since—turning fans away, for example, from an over-capacity speech in Arden Hills shortly before Minnesota's 2012 caucus night. On Monday, Paul announced his campaign would stop spending money in states that haven't yet held …
Residents of Bryant are asking Kingfielders for help.
Southwest Minneapolis may be a jungle of restaurants, farmers' markets, and grocery stores, but cross the interstate to the Bryant neighborhood in South Minneapolis—just across from Kingfield—and you're in a food desert, according to the federal government. Bryant resident Eric Weiss and his neighbors have set out to change that, trying to attract convenient, affordable, and healthy food options to the neighborhood—possibly even a grocery store. US Department of Agriculture statistics say that of the 1,500 or so people in the area with poor access to affordable, healthy food, 255 are low-income. Worse, 20 percent have no car to drive to stores like Cub at Nicollet and 58th, or Aldi at Franklin and Bloomington. "Midtown Exchange is great, …
Thursday, May 10, 2012
City, business group working overtime to make sure construction won't hurt Lyndale, Kingfield.
Nicollet Avenue. 10 blocks of craggy, hard-on-the-coccyx asphalt in desperate need of repair before it reverts to its all-dirt roots. But with the road being rebuilt starting this week, one block at a time until Oct. 2013, will business owners be able to survive the impending disruptions? "What's the first thing you think of when I say 'Central Corridor," Matt Perry, head of the Nicollet-East Harriet Business Association (NEHBA) asked Patch. "You think 'construction,' and your brain thinks 'I'm not driving that.' That's exactly what we want to avoid." Instead Perry and Jen Borger, a NEHBA staffer helping businesses weather the construction, said the association is trying to make sure customers realize they still can get to whatever …
Farmers say more markets means more work for less pay.
Just last week, Patch reported on a new farmers market in Linden Hills, and on concerns that the market would strip the Fulton Farmers Market of its customers, the Pioneer Press is reporting that the Twin Cities might be reaching its limit for farmers markets. "There is a sort of diminishing return," said Rob King, a professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. "As (farmers) go to more and more markets, it takes a lot of time for them to do that. And as the number of markets grows—and if it grows faster than the number of —then we may see a new market cannibalize an existing market. For the individual farmer, this looks like a life spent running from one event to the next, hoping they'll be able to sell…
Bob in Boston
12:27 pm on Friday, May 18, 2012
Doesn't make any sense to call Ron Paul the underdog when he's already won more delegates than Romney in 10 states including Romney's home state! It's Romney who's the underdog at the conventions - it's only the media and the GOP establishment who keep saying Romney's the winner! more ›