The Taste 50

The Big Five-Oh is back: Fifty people, products, places and ideas that make Minnesota the place for food fans.

By Rick Nelson, Star Tribune
Last update: May 23, 2007 – 4:46 PM

Pinning down a mere 50 choices in the land of 10,000 flavors isn't easy. We couldn't overlook a hostess with the mostest and a Sicilian liquid-gold connection.

A silent-but-influential radio voice and a cookbook author with a dozen titles make for powerful Gopher State culinary ambassadors.

A taste of the Southwest -- that's southwestern Minnesota -- comes in the form of an organic tortilla chip.

Then there's the tight-lipped anchor of the Walker Art Center's permanent collection.

Let's not forget the state's official fungi. And what better way to celebrate summer than beer-flavored ice cream?

1. Liquid gold

“Won’t you please try my olive oil?” floated the voice over the assembled shoppers. Josephine Mangano’s lilting accent proved to be an effective lure to her luminous and supremely fragrant Valli Dell’Etna olive oil, but this is one product that can speak for itself. Mangano’s top-of-the-line oils are made from olives raised and pressed on her family’s small organic farm in Sicily and happily imported to the Twin Cities. A single taste — heck, even a quick, intoxicating glance — will convert just about anyone to a lifelong customer.

2. In the back, on the left

Shoppers trolling the aisles of Dong Yang Oriental Foods can shop without stumbling across the store’s nearly hidden no-frills counter, where the menu is in Korean (with off-kilter English subtitles) and the abundant, affordable, robustly seasoned fare (spicy thin-sliced beef, intensely flavorful short ribs, whole broiled fish, steaming soups, fried dumplings) rightly draws a steady steam of customers.

3. Rising star

His cooking is imaginative and precise, and his subdued, pearl-toned dining room quietly ignores the “casual elegance” clich�. He’s Don Saunders, chef/owner of Fugaise, the Twin Cities’ most compelling under-the-radar restaurant.

4. A better breakfast

Cultural Revolution isn’t your basic fruit-in-the-bottom yogurt. Organic, non-homogenized milk and butterfat, from a network of Amish family farms in southeastern Iowa, results in a luscious texture, gentle sweetness and modest traces of fruit flavorings. Man, this stuff is good.

5. A chef’s best friend

Focusing on the provenance of sun-dried Italian cherry tomatoes, wild Spanish pine nuts or Wisconsin farmstead cheeses might get a little too inside baseball for John Q. Diner. Still, Twin Citians are eating better because of an ingredients-obsessed guy they’ve probably never heard of: Scott Pikovsky. His 10-year old north Minneapolis wholesaler, Great Ciao, supplies chefs with all the hard-to-find foodstuffs they don’t have the time or resources to forage on their own. “Scott once held a milk tasting, and he took it as seriously as any wine tasting,” said Scott Pampuch, chef/owner of Corner Table in Minneapolis and a loyal Great Ciao customer. “That speaks to Scott’s mission of finding the very best representation of a given product, and that’s why I use him and no one else.” Pikovsky’s latest venture: He and wife Deborah Pikovsky are raising sheep on their new Silver Lake, Minn., farm and, starting this summer, plan to produce raw sheep’s-milk cheeses.

6. Frosty mug, or scoop?

Pumphouse Creamery is making a summer ice cream using Brooklyn Center’s finest: Surly’s sumptuous porter-style Bender beer. “It doesn’t scream 'chocolate’ or 'coffee,’” said Pumphouse owner Barb Zapzalka. “But those flavor tones are definitely in there.”

7. Learning moment

“The succulent mango” teased the headline on the blackboard hanging above the produce department at the Seward Co-op Grocery & Deli. As always, that attention-getter was chased by a highly readable history, buyer’s guide and how-to-use tutorial on the delectable fruit. Such literary license might be an anomaly for supermarket shoppers, but it’s business as usual at the Seward, where a knowledgeable and obviously well-read staff presides over one of the Twin Cities’ most appealing fruit and vegetable selections.

8. Hoot of a hot dish

Not everyone can encapsulate Gopher State zeitgeist on a hot pad, but Faye Passow can. For the 25 delicacies featured in Passow’s hilarious, spot-on Minnesota Principal Hot Dishes by Region oven helper — including Crusty Wild Rice Bake, Hearty Hodgepodge, 4 Can Casserole and Salmon Supreme — are based on actual recipes, gleaned from the mother of source materials. “All you have to do is buy a few church cookbooks,” Passow said with a laugh. “I have a Wisconsin farming background, so I pretty much know that culture.” A “Marvels of Minnesota” line that illustrates quirky roadside attractions is also available, and Jell-O and TV dinner-themed products should hit stores by this fall.

9. A splendid partnership

Every week for the past 12 years, the half-million listeners of public radio’s “The Splendid Table” soak up the splendid vocalese of host Lynne Rossetto Kasper. What they don’t hear is the program’s unheard voice, which belongs to producer Sally Swift. From her downtown St. Paul studio, Swift writes, edits, books guests and chases down the countless details required for keeping an audio food-fest humming on 178 stations nationwide. The show started when Swift, bowled over by Kasper’s seminal “The Splendid Table” cookbook, proposed a platform for getting the author on the airwaves; the two have been forging a melodious duet ever since. Come next spring, Swift’s profile is about to jump, thanks to the launch of the show’s first cookbook: “The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories and Opinions.” Authors? Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift. “We’re an 'and,’” said Swift. “No one but Lynne would be generous enough to do that.”

10. - 11. Street scene

Thanks to Jason McLean, owner of the Loring Pasta Bar, and Richard and Larry D’Amico, co-owners of Cafe Lurcat and Bar Lurcat, for jazzing up the milquetoast Minneapolis streetscape with a pair of eye-catching restaurant marquees.

12-17. Six superlative summertime sweets

12. Seven-minute icing and scads of coconut are the essential building blocks for an extravagant layer cake at Yum! Kitchen and Bakery.

13. The title dessert at Blondies Cafe — thick, buttery, packed with chocolate — explains why they didn’t call the place Brownies.

14. Lucia’s Restaurant pastry chef Annamarie Rigelman is at peak performance when she’s turning out fruit crisps. Unless she’s turned her attention to fruit pies. Then it’s a tie.

15. The amusing assortment of bite-size cookies at 20.21 is a clever tailor-made reflection of the restaurant’s made-to-share emphasis.

16. Talk about a signature dessert: The Town Talk Diner’s chocolate-hazelnut waffle is crowned with a fetchingly pink scoop of cherry ice cream.

17. Laura’s Candy’s S’more Kits, made in St. Peter, Minn., bring a big dose of class to any campfire, what with honey-molasses graham crackers, fluffy marshmallows in 13 flavors and a Vahlrona chocolate bar.

18. Cheese whiz

Forget about Triscuit giveaways at Rainbow Foods; smart sample grazers know that the place to be on Saturday mornings is at the LoveTree Farmstead stand at the St. Paul Farmers Market, where cheesemaker Mary Falk chats up would-be buyers and sweetens the deal with enticing shards of her aromatic, intensely flavorful raw-milk, cave-aged cheeses.

19-20. Bring on the ban

On Oct. 1, Minnesota restaurants and bars will finally go where their counterparts in 19 other states have gone before them: smoke-free. Kudos (or brickbats) belong to Rep. Tom Huntley (DFL-Duluth) and Sen. Kathy Sheran (DFL-Mankato) for sponsoring the legislation that made the ban possible. Now, how about getting wine and beer into supermarkets?

21. All aboard

It’s hard to imagine a more delicious commute than Metro Transit’s route 21, which runs the length of newly spiffy Lake Street in Minneapolis, linking diners to Cafe Barbette, Bryant-Lake Bowl, jP American Bistro, Fuji Ya, Me Gusta, the stalls inside both the Midtown Global Market and Mercado Central, Ingebretsen’s, Town Talk Diner, Craftsman, Longfellow Grill and many other notable stops.

22-23. A gold medal park

Outdoor noshers have a fabulous new picnic destination: Gold Medal Park. Here’s the plan: Drop by the grab-and-go case at Spoonriver for a turkey-mango chutney sandwich, a blue cheese-walnut-apple salad or a chicken quesadilla (don’t forget a refreshing bottle of Vignette soda, made with pinot noir or chardonnay grape juice). Hike up the park’s observation mound, take a seat on one of the Brazilian hardwood benches and soak up the breathtaking riverfront view.

24-27. New faces in town

Sure, 2007 started off as a tough year for restaurants, with the closing of Levain, Auriga and Five Restaurant & Street Lounge. But the industry is constantly reinventing itself and this year is no exception, with such promising newcomers as Saffron, Bank, Little Szechuan and the Good Day Cafe appearing on the scene. And there are more hopefuls on the horizon, including Brasa Rotisserie (by Restaurant Alma’s Alex Roberts), Red Stag (from Kim Bartmann, owner of the Bryant-Lake Bowl and Cafe Barbette), Nick & Eddie (Doug and Jessica Anderson, of Au Rebours) and Via (by Mission American Kitchen’s Anoush Ansari and Hadi Anbar).

28. Where no co-op has gone before

Shoreview, Bloomington, Plymouth and Hudson, Wis., all have at least one thing in common: All are without a natural foods co-op (or a Whole Foods Market, for that matter). Enter Fresh & Natural Foods. Owners Kerry Larson and Bill Fogerty have been expanding their organic, health-conscious grocery store chain at a fast clip, moving from one store to four in just five years and introducing everything from locally raised grass-fed beef, hundreds of bulk food items and a host of gluten-free foods to a huge swath of Twin Cities-area shoppers.

29. Better half

Chef Isaac Becker gets most of the props — and rightly so — when the foodescenti wax rhapsodic over his buzz-worthy 112 Eatery. But Becker’s spouse and business partner Nancy St. Pierre, in her capacity as the restaurant’s front-of-the-house smoothie, deserves a hefty chunk of the credit for making the toughest table in town also one of the most enjoyable.

30. Enough said

No foodie’s refrigerator is complete without a magnetic version of painter Robert Indiana’s says-it-all paintings. They’re a cornerstone (the paintings, not the fridge magnets) of the Walker Art Center’s permanent collection.

31. Ain’t love grand?

When Antonino Coppola fell for Aura Brown, it wasn’t just the Italian from Sorrento and the Minnesotan from Duluth who benefited. Their marriage resulted in a compelling reason beyond Canal Park and Glensheen to visit the North Shore: Coppola Art Imports. Coppola — a third-generation ceramics merchant — is a charmer, and his lakefront shop is piled high with a treasure trove of hand-painted ceramics and tableware sourced from all over Italy and Sicily.

32. Cookbook queen

Prolific ought to be Paulette Mitchell’s middle name (actually, it’s Gwendolyn, and she’s not fond of it). It suits a dynamo who has produced a dozen cookbooks since 1984, each one brainstormed and tested in the culinary think-tank otherwise known as her inviting Edina kitchen. Mitchell’s work has often embraced one of two themes: envelope-pushing vegetarian or quick preparation. “There’s always the question of whether cookbook authors follow the trends or set them,” Mitchell said. She probably does both. Mitchell’s influence extends beyond cookbooks, with a busy schedule as a television and Webcast host and producer and as a cruise-ship cooking instructor. Not that Mitchell will be traveling much this summer. She’ll be in her kitchen, formulating “15 Minute Gourmet: Timeless Recipes,” scheduled to appear in bookstores in fall 2008.

33. Hell’s hotcakes

The restaurant might be called Hell’s Kitchen, but its lemon-ricotta hotcakes are pure heaven. “Here’s some maple syrup, although you won’t need it,” said our server. You know what? She was absolutely right.

34. A frozen find

Ignore the clutter of Lean Cuisines, Toaster Streudels and Hot Pockets in the supermarket freezer case and go straight for a winner: La Loma tamales, made by hand in Enrique and Noelia Garcia’s south Minneapolis commercial kitchen.

35. Green acres

Another trend worth heralding is the growing influx of young people into small-scale farming. Their passion is pumping new energy — and delicious new products — into local farmers markets and natural-foods co-ops. One example: 26-year-old Michael Noreen, a regular at the Mill City Farmers Market in Minneapolis. “I know a lot of people my age who grew up urban or suburban who don’t know anything about this kind of life but want to find out about it,” said Noreen, a Hastings native who is raising about 40 different crops on his Burning River Farm near Osceola, Wis.

36. Setting sail

When the room looks plucked out of a 1930s Cole Porter musical, can a floor show be far behind? Not at the Oceanaire Seafood Room, where a seat at the raw bar provides a fine vantage point for watching staffers as they nimbly shuck fresh bivalves. And enjoy the city’s best shrimp cocktail — jumbo, succulent things, with a gutsy horseradish-laced cocktail sauce — a genre-defining crab cake, a plate of Sinatra-smooth smoked trout, creamy coleslaw and a campy, show-stopping baked Alaska.

37. Windy City export

In the we-can-dream department, wouldn’t it be great if Macy’s installed a branch of Frontera Fresco in its Nicollet Mall store in downtown Minneapolis? From the day this quick-service lunch counter opened in the former Marshall Field’s State Street flagship, smart Chicagoans have been lining up, and for good reason: The fresh, robust and inexpensive street food is the work of Mexican food authority Rick Bayless.

38. Grass-fed goodness

Sherwin-Williams’ “Butter Up” paint chip pales in comparison to the lustrously golden Pastureland butter. That gorgeous color — and standout flavor and silky texture — is the result of sweet, beta carotene-rich milk from pasture-raised cows in southeastern Minnesota. No wonder judges at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition have made it a two-time first-place winner.

39. The mighty morel

Minnesota, the first state to designate an official fungus, didn’t settle for any old porcini or shiitake, but mushroom royalty: the smoky, nutty, honeycombed morel. Minnesota writer Jane Whitledge found just the right poetry in this springtime foraging prize:

Softly they come thumbing up from firm ground

protruding unharmed. Easily crumbled and yet

how they shouldered the leaf and mold aside, rising

unperturbed, breathing obscurely, still as stone.

By the slumping log, by the dappled aspen, they grow alone.

A dumb eloquence seems their trade. Like hooded monks

in a sacred wood they say: Tomorrow we are gone.

40. Locally focused shopping

Golden Fig Fine Foods might be small, but the St. Paul store’s ambitions are not. Owner Laurie Crowell’s constantly expanding inventory of locally produced artisan food products (the latest is the strangely compelling dark chocolate-robed fruitcake from Sunrise Bakery in Hibbing, Minn.), including a dozen Minnesota- and Wisconsin-made cheeses, beautiful kitchenware and a number of first-rate house-made products, starting with a zesty tangerine-kissed margarita mix. Crowell is definitely on to something: Her products’ freshness level is high, not a big surprise given that shipping originates maybe halfway across the state vs. halfway across the country or halfway around the world.

41. Taking the cake

Those hosting an open house during the upcoming graduation season should be programming the digits of A Baker’s Wife’s Pastry Shop into their cell phones. Baker/owner Gary Tolle’s mood-elevating sheet cakes, with their moist and springy cake, whipped cream fillings, lavish icings and silly toppers, define the word “doozy.”

42. Cultured dining

Here’s a trend worth applauding. First the Walker Art Center introduced 20.21; then the Guthrie Theater chimed in with Cue. The next wave of Minneapolis cultural institutions venturing into the dining business? The Weisman Art Museum, which is including a cafe in an artful $10 million expansion designed by architect Frank Gehry (opening in 2009), and the Minnesota Orchestra, which is including a restaurant in its $90 million plans to revamp Orchestra Hall and Peavey Plaza, set for 2011.

43. On a roll

St. Paul’s Pearson’s Candy Co. goes through about 200 tons of peanuts a month, the lion’s share presumably forming the basis of its Salted Nut Roll. This company stalwart — a toothsome peanut-caramel-nougat calibration of soft and crunchy, sweet and salty — has been a candy-counter staple since 1933. Today it’s the region’s most popular non-chocolate candy bar.

44-45. Spanish two-fer

Two of summer’s greatest pleasures: a breezy, starry evening on the rooftop deck at Solera, and drinking one’s way through the restaurant’s peerless all-Spanish wine and sherry lists — preferably while seated upon said rooftop.

46. Landmark status

The soaring, teak-paneled lobby of the former Farmers and Mechanics Bank, one of the city’s most cherished rooms, has returned to the public domain as Bank, the Westin Hotel’s style-conscious restaurant and lounge. Glory hallelujah.

47. Boffo barista

Andrew Kopplin has a healthy obsession with coffee, rooting out the finest specialty beans and applying the latest and greatest brewing technology. Customers at Kopplin’s Coffee, his slip of a St. Paul coffeehouse, definitely benefit.

48. Bagging paper and plastic

Leave it to Lunds and Byerly’s to make the definitive reusable shopping bag. It’s sturdy, roomy, waterproof, cheap (just $1.50) and, best of all, it easily folds into a fraction of its full-blown size.

49. Does Doritos know about this?

Lin and Doug Hilgendorf are old pros when it comes to raising and milling a host of high-quality organic grains on their southwestern Minnesota farm. Their tortilla chips, sold under the family’s Whole Grain Milling Co. label, are relatively new, and not to be missed. The Hilgendorfs’ not-so secret ingredient is a high-protein corn, which yields a superior corn flavor. Pass the salsa.

50. Road trip

Even in this era of $3.25-per-gallon gasoline, the 100-mile drive from downtown Minneapolis to picturesque Chippewa Falls, Wis., is a summer day trip well worth taking, especially if the journey culminates in a meal at Native Bay. Chef/owner Nathan Berg shines a klieg light on locally produced foods, the bar taps into a long list of Wisconsin microbrews and, down at the dock, diners can rent pontoons for a trip around lovely Lake Wissota.