urbanfoodie

healthy-habits asked: Also, I currently live in WI and am moving to Minneapolis soon. What are your favorite places to eat? I'm up for anything, especially "hole in the wall," vegetarian and/or ethnic places! Thank you!

Hi there, welcome to the Twin Cities! There is no shortage of good food in lots of different niches. Here are some of my faves (in no particular order):

• Dong Yang in Columbia Heights/NE Minneapolis. In my humble opinion, this is the best Korean food in the Twin Cities, cooked in generous home style by three ajummas (older, auntie-type ladies). It is no frills, reasonably priced, and feels kind of random being in the back of a grocery store. This is probably the place I eat out at most in the TC because I am obsessed with Korean food.  (Confession: I was kind of sad when City Pages named it the Best Korean of 2010 cause I liked how it felt like my secret gem).

• Babani’s Kurdish Restaurant in downtown St. Paul. It’s super cute, family-owned, reasonably priced, and Kurdish. 

• Evergreen Chinese on Eat Street/Nicollet Ave in Minneapolis is another favorite. My brother liked it so much, we went twice during his visit (little post here). Their offering of vegetarian dishes/fake meat is pretty good. Warning: food coma highly likely.

• Want Chinese food that’s not quite so divey but very spicy and delicious? Check out Little Szechuan in St. Paul. I also recently tried and liked Grand Szechuan in Bloomington, where the chef was formerly at Little Szechuan (at least that’s what the ad in City Pages said).

• Fasika Ethiopian in St. Paul. The Twin Cities being home to many East African immigrants, there are lots of options. But Fasika is my favorite and where I took my vegetarian brother when he came to town. I’m always amazed at how un-busy it is here whenever I’ve gone.



• Town Talk Diner is another place that I often take visitors. Inventive craft cocktails (though if that’s more your thing, there’s the Bradstreet Craftshouse in the Graves Hotel) and “adult malts.” American diner food for the foodie set (e.g., frickles and cheese curds w/ bacon ketchup). 

• Tanpopo Noodle Shop in Lowertown, St. Paul is also probably one of my top five most frequented restaurants in the TC. Agedashi tofu makes me go to mush. Nabeyaki udon soothes the soul. Be sure to check out the times cause it has somewhat odd hours, and they also recently stopped serving lunch.

• Peninsula Malaysian on Eat Street/Nicollett. Another favorite and a frequent place my friends have birthday dinners. Roti canai appetizer and anything with their house-made tofu (silken style in the Queens Tofu dish, ughhhhh) make me drool just thinking about it.

• Sea Salt Eatery. Summertime in the Cities is never complete without a bike ride down to Minnehaha Falls and a well-earned stop at Sea Salt. Fish tacos in Minnesota! Insanely huge po’ boy sandwiches. An impressive selection of refreshments and local brews and beverages (e.g., Crispin Cider, Summit on Tap) and an even more impressive stock of hot sauces (seriously, it’s ridiculous). The lines get long during the weekend and even during the regular meal time hours during the week. Really great for family-watching.

• Hmongtown Market’s Food Court. Just like any food court, the setting is no-frills and the food is CHEAP (I got a whole fried fish for $6!). But unlike the Mall of America, you can feast on authentic Hmong and Southeast Asian food. Check out the fresh papaya salad prepared in front of you and customizable to your preferred tastes ($5 for a huge serving!). Other highlights: various sausages and balls of meat, white fish steamed in banana leaves. Here’s a video to give you a brief tour (originally from Minnesota Monthly, found on the Marketplace’s About page):

I’m always discovering more new places and new favorites (send me your suggestions!), so consider this list a living document and in no way exhaustive.  You asked this question a while back, so hopefully you can still find it helpful! Hope to read more about your favorite places as you get settled in your new home!

You Deserve It!

fightwithknives:

Lord knows I understand that marketing is about responding to stereotypes because “data shows a certain group of people will always act a certain way.” The thing about good marketing is that you’re not supposed to admit to those terrible stereotypes; you’re supposed to find a way to stereotype without being a complete fucking asshole.

In this week’s City Pages, a local restaurant consultant named Jonathan Locke comments on “the Veto Vote” or the “picky eater” in the construction of a restaurant’s menu, and it turns out that this “picky eater” is the lady— the woman in the party, in general.

Locke explains that restaurants often can make concessions to the “veto vote”—the picky, hard-to-please diner in nearly every party who will rule a place out before setting foot through the door—as long as they don’t go too far and alienate their core customers. He uses the example of one of his early clients, Buffalo Wild Wings. When the local chain got its start, the restaurants were all about dude food—even the management referred to it as “gut luggage”—being inhaled by a demographic of young men ages 25 to 35. But they were losing business when the guys’ wives and girlfriends weren’t able to find things they wanted to order. So Wild Wings now serves five types of chicken-topped salads and a list of what they dub “You deserve it” desserts.

Locke explains what he calls the “lady food” logic, which pairs lighter, smaller-portioned items such as entrée salads, fish, and chicken breasts with voluptuous, high-fat desserts. “Because a lot of your customer base is going to order something really disciplined for their entrées simply because they’re looking for that dessert, and they won’t be able to reward themselves otherwise,” he says.

SEE LADIES BE ALL LIKE EATING CHICKEN AND FISH SALADS BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO GET FAT BUT REALLY THEY DO BECAUSE THEY LOOOOOVVVVEEEE DESSERTS. YOU DESERVE IT, GIRLFRIEND.

Usually I’m better at channeling my annoyance beyond sarcastic capital letters, but the article’s author, Rachel Hutton, chose to print that fine example (without commentary? do you really eat grilled chicken and fish and desserts every time you go out, Rachel?) as the sole example of the picky eater. I understand they’re not saying “all women” and just the “lady” stereotype, but there are better words for it, like “the person in the party who doesn’t want to eat chicken wings because it could be a man or a woman.” And, you know, keeping the “lady” wording wouldn’t be so terrible except:

But, Locke cautions, a restaurant like Wild Wings doesn’t want to court women diners so hard that the guys won’t come in. “You need to appeal to as broad a swath of potential customers as possible, while still maintaining a lean and distinct identity,” he says.

So you are, actually, talking about all women and not just “ladies” and controlling them on your menu via grilled chicken salads. You are saying that you can manipulate the number of female diners in your restaurant by featuring “you deserve it” desserts. Because women are such picky eaters that they go for chocolate every time (ack!).

And men are such awful, wing-eating pigs that they don’t go to places where there are a lot of women because god forbid you dip a celery stick into blue cheese right next to a table of single ladies having cosmos. Buffalo Wild Wings’ diners are so frightened of being emasculated that they would never go into a restaurant with too many women!

It would have been so easy to make a point about picky eaters without including the gender stereotype, but Locke and City Pages ran with it and now if I ever step into a Buffalo Wild Wings (I won’t) I will wonder if I am too many women for the guys. 

Fightwithknives hits it out of the park with this one.