Victor’s 1959 Café: A revolutionary restaurant

By NATE BURCHELL

Revolutionary Cuban cooking right here in Minneapolis? Victor’s 1959 Café, owned and operated by Victor and Niki Valens, offers a variety of American and authentic Cuban cuisine. Valens, who is Cuban, was taught by his father how to cook, and decided to share his skills with Minneapolis.

Inside, brightly colored booths fill a dining area covered with enthusiastic Sharpie testimonials about the food, the restaurant and the cooks. Where there aren’t scribbles praising the breakfast, there are Cuban posters, pictures of Cuban musicians (who also seem to love eating at Victor’s) and pictures of Cuba.

Victor’s six-year history has earned national fame as a breakfast restaurant. One year ago, a remodeled kitchen gave the breakfast joint room for dinner. Despite a bothersome embargo, Valens has put together a dinner menu that would make Fidel himself proud. The menus can be browsed on the internet, at Victor’s website: Victors1959Cafe.com.

The café offers many vegetarian dishes, and some items can be ordered vegan style. Niki Valens explained that they try to be very accommodating. They cater, host special events and are very flexible with the menu.

Another improvement in the past year is a license to serve wine and beer. Victor’s serves Hatuey, a Cuban beer native to Havana, which is now produced outside of Cuba (and therefore is not banned by the embargo). Or, if you prefer coffee, try out “Victor’s Blend,” designed especially for Victor’s 1959 Café by Victor himself. Victor’s Blend (fair trade, from European Roasters) can be purchased by the cup—fresh ground every time—or as beans.

Valens is striving to be on the cutting edge of technology with plans to replace the asphalt parking lot with Eco-pavers, a new kind of earth-friendly brick. He also plans to install outdoor seating, a water fountain and a garden of herbs and flowers to provide an aromatic atmosphere.

Victor’s 1959 Café. 3756 Grand Ave S., Mpls. 612-827-8948

Hard Times: a collective accomplishment

By MICHELLE LEE

It may not be the smoky haze it once was, but there is still something unique about the air in the Hard Times Café. Maybe it’s the greasy-spoon smell of hash brown remains, lingering in the air and on your clothes for days afterwards; maybe it’s the loud music, mingling the Ramones with equally loud conversation; maybe it’s just the general ambiance of a dimly-lit place that’s open 22 hours a day. Regardless, there’s something luridly enchanting about this place—something more than seitan Fajitas, vegan brownies and what is possibly the strongest coffee in Minneapolis.

Over the years, amid a changing West Bank neighborhood, the Hard Times has remained a key landmark in the city. It’s a place where people of multiple ages, cultures and living situations can dine for very little money and hang out all day without hassle. It also makes a strong cultural statement of its own, being one of the few all-vegetarian restaurants in the city—and, what’s more, a worker-owned collective.

In fact, the café started with a worker takeover of sorts, back in November of 1992. When the previous owner could no longer afford to keep it open, his employees—plus a few more people—decided that they could run it themselves, and chipped in to reopen it as a collective restaurant, according to Sean Sinclair, a collective member for two-and-a-half years.

“We have a lot of food that’s not typical health food; we’re got a lot of really good greasy food,” Sinclair said. “But you can also get steamed rice and vegetables, you can get really good healthy stuff as well.” They also try to get their food locally, ordering as much as possible from local distributors, and “try[ing] to do as much as we can organic,” Sinclair said.

A thriving example of the “no bosses” model, the restaurant runs without a hierarchy. Everyone who works there is an owner or an owner in training, and at weekly collective meetings, they make decisions using consensus. The members gravitate toward working in areas where they have expertise, both in the restaurant and on committees such as financial, personnel and advertising, according to Sinclair.

“We all try to work together as much as possible to get everything done, and it’s nice knowing that you have a personal stake in everything that’s being done, because it is your restaurant, it’s your place,” Sinclair said. “It affects your work ethic, because you’re not doing it for someone else’s bank account, you’re doing it for yourself, and you can directly affect how things are done here, which is really great. You don’t have that in any other place.”
Hard Times Café, 1821 Riverside Ave.,

Mpls. 612-341-9261. hard_x_cafe@hotmail.com http://mn.local.yahoo.biz/hardtimescafe

St. Martin’s Table: kitchen missionaries

By ADRIENNE URBANSKI

Located just next door to North Country Co-op on Riverside Ave., St. Martin’s Table serves up vegetarian meals and political activism. Open since 1984, the café and bookstore is named after Martins throughout history who worked toward nonviolence, including Martin Luther King and Martin of Tours.

Open only for lunch, the café offers an entirely organic menu with both vegetarian and vegan options. Meal selections are kept simple, with a choice between two soups, usually one vegan and one vegetarian. Vegan and vegetarian sandwiches are offered as well, which usually consist of spreads on homemade bread. Desserts of cakes, pies, brownies and cookies are also offered, and are available vegan. Servers within the café work on an entirely volunteer basis, donating their tips to charity.

“The servers themselves vote on where they want their tip money to go.Typically it’s to charities that work with the problem of hunger,” says Dave Anderson, St. Martin’s general manager.

The St. Martin’s bookstore offers material for both adults and children on social movements, political activism and conflict resolution.

“We’re focused on providing information on nonviolence, as we have a world that is more and more about solving conflict through wars,” says Kathleen Olsen, the bookstore’s manager.

Seward Community Café: a Minneapolis tradition

By NATE BURCHELL

Minneapolis is home to the oldest collectively run café in the nation: Seward Community Café, established in 1974.
JoAnn Blohoviak, an employee/owner, described the café as “a mission-driven business” dedicated to three principles, the first being collective ownership. Each employee earns the same wage and becomes an owner within about a year of beginning work. The employees/owners, of which there are about 10 to 16 at any given point, manage the business by committee. As a member of national and local coalitions of collectively owned businesses, Seward Café contributes to the growing accessibility of organic products. It purchases fair-trade organic Peace Coffee, and even owns stock in its herbal tea supplier. Its mission statement, as well as a menu and other information, can be found on the café’s website, SewardCafe.org.

The second basic principle is community involvement. Seward Café serves as a meeting place for benefits, parties and meetings. The community, according to JoAnn, reaches beyond its Franklin Avenue neighborhood to as far away as Uptown and St. Paul. The café also serves as an art gallery of sorts: every month, the work of a new local artist is displayed on the walls. Seward hosts live music on Friday nights and occasionally on Saturday afternoons. Seward Café is even involved with community gardening.

The final piece of Seward’s mission statement, its food policy, describes their commitment to sustainable agriculture. The café works hard to serve organic and local food as much as possible. Most of the menu is vegetarian, and customers can order any dish vegan. The café even provides options for people avoiding sugar, wheat or dairy products.

Long known for its greasy breakfasts, Seward Café has a growing lunch menu. This includes soup, fresh salads (made of local organic produce), homemade salad dressing and homemade bread (all made in the restaurant with local organic flour). Another new offering is organic pizza on Thursday, Friday and Saturdays from 6 p.m. to midnight, dine-in or delivered by bike.

2129 E Franklin Ave. Mpls, 55404. (612) 332-1011

Café of the Americas: fairly traded food

By NANCY SARTOR

Chef Jeannie Inglehart sits at a table sorting the unsavory-looking characters from a 100-pound bag of black beans. Organic beans and rice are just two of the many Latino dishes served at the café. Breads, muffins, cookies and bars are baked daily on site. Vegetarian and chicken tamales, the most popular menu items, are handmade at La Loma in Mercado Central and brought to the café each day. Soups are homemade, as are specialty drinks like horchata—iced rice milk sweetened with vanilla and cinnamon—and chia—an unusual and refreshing garnet-colored seed drink served cold, and popular in Nicaragua and Guatemala. 

For eight years, Café of the Americas, located in the Resource Center of the Americas, has been serving up homemade delicacies using organic and fair trade products from local cooperatives, selling them at affordable prices and engaging in community outreach activities both in the Twin Cities and in Central America. 

Inglehart extols the necessity of fair trade. “Because the Resource Center is involved with matters of globalization, we are concerned with the workers, that they be paid a living wage so their children can be fed, clothed and go to school,” Inglehart said. “And that’s what fair trade means: that there’s enough money all year round.”  

The Café pays $1.49 per pound for fair trade coffee, compared to an average $.79 per pound that corporate companies pay. Inglehart notes that, “Many of these crops—like coffee and bananas—are seasonal, so if they’re [the laborers] only paid a tiny bit during the season, it means they go hungry the rest of the year. Even if they’re eating rice and beans.” 

A bulletin board on one end of the restaurant is bursting with thank-you cards, letters and postcards from grateful individuals and organizations, confirming Inglehart’s community involvement. She proudly points to a card from Youth Farm, a summer program that teaches children about gardening, cooking and art, and features guest chefs. 

In addition to planning for expenses like advertising, Inglehart figures trades and outreach programs into her overall budget. That includes providing food for pledge drives at community radio stations (KFAI, Radio K and MPR), as well as catering to school groups and other community organizations.  

Beginning July 12, Café of the Americas will share a booth with Peace Coffee at the Midtown Farmers Market every Tuesday night through October. A presence at the market, and at the annual Green Expo that takes place in May, is important for the Café. Inglehart says her catering business, about 20 percent of the overall operation and her biggest profit center, has been cut in half during the recession that’s plagued the country during this administration. 

Still, Inglehart’s outlook and her commitment to community service are much like her popular chia drink—distinguished, rosy and refreshing. 

Open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Resource Center of the Americas, 3019 Minnehaha Avenue, Mpls. 612-276-0803. Americas.org.

Old Man River Café: Solar- powered coffee

By JAN WILLMS

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

This old truism was recently brought home to Jon Kerr, co-owner with Chuck Dubacek of the Old Man River Café at 879 Smith Ave. S., West St. Paul. A few weeks ago, an older customer reminisced about growing up in the area and finally being allowed to ride his bike as far as the café’s location. It was a drugstore then, and he rode over to get candy. A few days later, another customer who resides in the neighborhood mentioned that his young son had received permission to ride his bike as far as Old Man River Café.

The restaurant has become the first to offer solar-powered, shade-grown coffee. Dubacek and Kerr wanted to try using solar power to roast their coffee beans, and with contributions from the state of Minnesota and about 50 individuals, created the “Sunnyside Project.” The $12,000 solar power roaster went into effect in December 2003, according to Kerr.

The coffee beans are organic and grown in the shade, a process that allows the beans to ripen more slowly.

Old Man River provides a menu of soup, salads, pizza, ice cream and sandwiches and a variety of hot and cold drinks. The family-friendly coffee house also sponsors a Tom Sawyer fence-painting festival in late summer, features a Tom Sawyer mural and plenty of space for children to play while accompanying their parents.

Old Man River provides a venue for all types of musicians to play on weekends, and the free admission draws crowds. This summer, Old Man River will also be the site of rehearsals for “Pike’s Pique, or 200 Years and Still Not Lewis and Clark,” a play written by Kerr for the Fringe Festival. Performances will be Aug. 6-14 at the Acadia, 1931 Nicollett Ave., Minneapolis.

The coffee shop is open seven days a week.

879 S Smith Ave. West St Paul, MN 55118. 651-450-7070
 
Lucia’s: The Queen of Cuisine in Minnesota

By ED FELIEN

Normally this paper avoids royal titles. We are anti-royal, anti-clerical and anti-authoritarian, but while generally maintaining our consistently iconoclastic attitudes, the contributions of Lucia Watson to Minnesota cuisine have to be acknowledged and applauded.

Putting aside just for the moment her food, her other accomplishments would easily earn her our gratitude and respect. People who have worked in her restaurant have gone on to create restaurants of their own that, while never exact clones, share the same attention to detail and presentation of food, the same emphasis on fresh, organic and locally grown produce and the same effortless elegance as their original: The Birchwood Café; Easy Creek in Arkansas, Wisconsin; Bobino’s; Sapor; Grand Bakery; Levain and the catering companies of Beth Fisher and Scott McKenzie. These institutions all owe some debt to lessons learned at Lucia’s.

Lucia Watson is Chair of the Youth Farm Project. She has been active with them for seven years as a buyer, mentor and member of the Board. The project now has a budget of half a million dollars and serves three neighborhoods: Lyndale, Powderhorn and West St. Paul. Summer is the busiest time when they work with 175 kids aged 9 to 13, but the Project is active all year long. They’ve got a greenhouse. They’ve recently started a Project Leads for kids over 13. “We don’t necessarily want to grow,” she says.

Lucia’s first opened on Valentine’s Day in 1985. It took over a plumbing store on 31st Street just off Hennepin in Uptown. With the addition of a wine bar, it now occupies three storefronts. She is adding a fourth adjacent storefront on September 7. It will be a completely separate business from the restaurant and wine bar. It will be a bakery that will feature take-out food and flowers. There will be soups, salads, sandwiches, special butters and olive oils, and they will pack picnic baskets. She wanted to include wines as part of the picnic and off-to-the-cabin baskets, but the Minneapolis City Council in its infinite wisdom wouldn’t grant her an off sale wine license because she was 25 feet inside the 500-foot limit set by Hennepin Lake Liquors. The liquor laws say you can’t have an off sale license within 500 feet of another off sale license, and the doorway of the new shop would be only 475 feet from the front door of Hennepin Lake. It seems strange that they wouldn’t allow her to get an off sale license from the restaurant, the original business, where the door is probably outside the limit, or make some other accommodation to allow her to put a few bottles of wine in picnic baskets. “That’s a great law, if you’re a liquor store,” she said, “I’d like to have that law as a restaurant. No other restaurant within 500 feet.”

She was joking. I reminded her that when Kim Bartman of Bryant Lake Bowl opened the Suburban World as a dinner theater just around the corner from her restaurant, Lucia bought her staff tickets to opening night because two of her staff people were in the show. That is the kind of generosity of spirit that is uncommon among restaurateurs and defines her as extraordinary.

By the way, the food is the best in town.

1432 W 31st St. Mpls, 55408. (612) 825-1572

Sonny’s: Ice Cream and more

By TROY PIEPER

Since Sonny Siron opened his South Minneapolis malt shop in 1945, his son Ron and Ron’s partner Carrie Gustafson have taken Sonny’s ice cream and crossed boundaries into new lactic frontiers with unconventional flavors and unconventional health consciousness.

All of the ice cream—in flavors like green tea and ginger root— is completely organic. Siron and Gustafson’s Crema Café at 34th Street and Lyndale Avenue is a sit-down place, but their ice cream is available at co-ops and upscale grocery stores, too. Manager Dan Nelson likes schlepping the ice cream (and sorbet), he says, because it’s so damn tasty, and because of the owners’ dedication to its organic-ness. “They make five- to ten-gallon batches by hand,” he says. And it shows in the taste, according to 23-year-olds Maria and Abbie, who eat Raspberry-Pinot Noir sorbet on the café’s outdoor “Piazza.” Organic is great they say, but it’s the appeal to their Uptown-refined palates that keeps them coming back.

Gustafson and Siron also support local growers, because “buying locally is all about having choices.” But Gustafson criticizes large national and multinational food distributors for “jumping on the organics bandwagon,” and limiting the choices available to small businesses. The organic milk in Sonny’s ice cream used to come straight from the udders of Sauk Center cows to the cafe. But now a company called Horizon buys up that milk, and Siron and Gustafson have to get theirs several states away.

The two ice cream gurus say the future of organic food, as a result of these changes, is shaky. Not long ago, the private agencies that certify food as organic came under the umbrella of (you guessed it) the federal government. Now large organics distributors lobby the United States Department of Agriculture to accept the use of certain pesticides on the foods it certifies. Not to worry, Sonny’s organic ice cream, as well as being delicious, is still pesticide-free.

Cafe and Creamery under one roof. 3403 Lyndale Ave S. Mpls, 55408. 612-824-3868

Bryant Lake Bowl: Where theater meets lunch

By NANCY SARTOR

After a dozen years as the owner of Bryant Lake Bowl, Kim Bartmann defines herself as “a steward of this business.” Her steadfast resolve and Zen-like attitude have enabled her to persevere in an industry fraught with obstacles. From the snail’s pace bureaucracy of the city liquor board to a contentious relationship with a landlord who lacks artistic vision, Bartmann has managed to not only run a successful restaurant, but to build a business that adheres to sustainable practices.

How does she do it? “I get a lot of joy out of this business,” she says. “You have to let go and move on. It’s a life skill as much as a business skill.”

When Bartmann opened BLB in 1993, she was determined to create a business that was sensitive to the environment of the staff. “As a business person, my focus was on doing things differently as far as employees were concerned. That meant [offering] health insurance, flexible scheduling and a more sane work environment than your typical corporate restaurant.”

She was also one of the first restaurant owners to come out publicly—with staff support—in favor of the smoking ban before it became law, believing that, “It’s a worker right issue, a health issue.”

Although Bartmann admits it’s taken years to transition BLB’s menu to nearly all locally based products, it’s a feat she’s recently achieved. The only products not procured from local purveyors are the turkey and the seafood, but those are sustainably harvested.

Beef comes from Minnesota family farmed, grass-fed cows that are butchered and divied up between BLB (burgers) and Bartmann’s sister restaurant, Barbette (steaks and roasts). Pork and cheeses come from local vendors, as do organic eggs and chickens.

Buying local, sustainable products is, “Just really good business,” says Bartmann, who does so for “health issues, environmental issues and issues regarding the humane treatment of animals.”

Besides food and beverage policies, BLB has been a champion of what Bartmann describes as “social entrepreneurship” with its storefront theater, which over the years has included everything from music, dance and theater to comedy and performance art. Bartmann credits former and current artistic directors with implementing the theater’s vision.

“The theater is unique in that it provides an opportunity for artists who might not otherwise be able to present their work,” says Bartmann. “I think that art and theater and music are integral parts of any healthy community. I do what I can do to support that.”

The policy of splitting ticket sales with theater artists encourages them to pack the house. According to Bartmann, nonprofit theaters typically generate about 40-50 percent of their revenues through ticket sales. At BLB, revenue is between 70-80 percent of ticket sales.

Still, the restaurant has financially supported the theater since the beginning, so Bartmann is in the process of obtaining nonprofit status for the venue. She says she’s got a cadre of support from friends and colleagues who are willing to help wade through the mounds of paperwork.

Philanthropically, BLB donates food and gift certificates to “dozens and dozens” of organizations throughout the Twin Cities, including Kulture Klub Collaborative, a Minneapolis based group that pairs homeless youth with area artists.

810 W Lake St. Mpls, 55408. 612-825-3737. BryantLakeBowl.com. Open 8am-1am Daily

Blue Moon: Building a fan club for 11 years

By CHRISTOPHER MITCHELL

Lisa Berg and Cindy Kangas trade greetings with current and former neighbors at the Blue Moon Coffee Café on a muggy Thursday afternoon, 11 years after they turned the formerly empty building into a neighborhood meeting institution.
The two were afraid at first that the community might not support their business; at that time, coffee shops were seen as fancy and intimidating. Initially, Berg and Kangas had to explain some of the coffee-shop terms to the neighbors. But they soon found neighbors getting to know each other while waiting in line; the shop “wipes out anonymity,” says Cindy. Now, both enjoy hearing customers refer to the Blue Moon as “our coffee shop.”

Many of these customers have since moved from the neighborhood, but still return weekly from suburbs clear across the metro. The shop has many GLBT customers, who find it a welcoming environment.

Blue Moon’s friendly atmosphere is aided by clerk shifts that last five hours, to keep the workers fresh. This is no ploy to avoid offering benefits; they actually provide health insurance to those who work most often. Employees seem to enjoy the shop; Sibby and Chinda have both worked for the Blue Moon since they were legally old enough and now attend college.
Berg and Kangas estimate that 75 percent of their coffee is organic, all fair-traded. They have offered organic coffee since first opening the doors—long before it was economical to do so—but they are more interested in providing a comfortable environment than self-promotion.

The two describe themselves not as business owners but as “shepherds” of a flock that can feel safe, at a coffee shop that invites everyone to feel at home. ||

3822 E Lake St. Mpls. 612-721-9230

Pulse of the Twin Cities also recommends the following restaurants. For more information on good local businesses check out the Twin Cities Green Guide (TwinCitiesGreenGuide.org) and the Blue Sky Guide (www.findbluesky.com).

Fireroast Mountain Café
3800 37th Ave S, Minneapolis | 612-724-9895

Birchwood Café
3311 East 25th Street | Minneapolis MN 55406
612.722.4474

Riverview Café
3753 42nd Ave S | Minneapolis, MN
612-722-7234 | RiverviewCafe.net

Cafe Brenda
300 1st Ave. N. | Minneapolis, MN 55401
612-342-9230 | CafeBrenda.com

Pumphouse Creamery
4754 Chicago Ave S, Minneapolis
612-825-2021 | PumphouseCreamery.com

Auriga
1930 Hennepin Ave S | Minneapolis, MN 55403
612-871-0777 | AurigaRestaurant.com

Black Dog Coffee & Wine Bar
308 Prince St, St. Paul | 651-228-9274
BlackDogStPaul.com

Anodyne Coffee @ 43rd
4301 Nicollet Ave S, Minneapolis
612-824-4300 | AnodyneCoffeeHouse.com

Cahoots Coffee Bar
1562 Selby Ave | St Paul, MN | 651-644-6778

GINKGO Coffeehouse
GinkgoCoffee.com | 651-645-2647

Trotter`s Cafe & Bakery
232 Cleveland Ave N | St Paul, MN 55104
651-645-8950 | Trotters-StPaul.com

Mill City Cafe
75 22nd Ave NE, Minneapolis | 612-789-8262

Swede Hollow Coffee Cafe
725 E 7th St, St Paul | 651-776-8810

Sapor Cafe/Bar
428 Washington Ave N, Minneapolis
612-375-1971 | SaporCafe.com

Chet’s Taverna
791 Raymond Ave | St Paul, MN 55114
651-646-2655 | ChetsTaverna.com

Tanpopo Noodle Shop
308 Prince St, St Paul | 651-209-6527 | www.tanpopo-noodle.com