Coffee Class at Catzen Coffee
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
Openings and closings
The Cabana Club has opened in St. Anthony Main as of Jan. 3; this was covered by Racket’s Em Cassel on Jan. 9. Catzen Coffee, a cat cafe and coffee lab, has opened on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. In early January, Travail acquired the Graze Food Hall in Minneapolis’s North Loop, simply adding “by Travail” to the name, and promising some new food spots. By Jan. 20, they had added Umami by Travail to the choices.
There have been a lot of food and drink businesses reporting extreme financial distress in the past few months. Close to home, Kruze Markit, a popular, quirky cafe and market, closed abruptly. About a month later, with just as little notice (none), the entire Revival group, consisting of four Twin Cities eateries with its renowned fried chicken, closed down.
Changes and other news in the food and drink industry
Big local news: the Co-op Creamery Building, which has not been open to the public for several years, was sold by Seward Co-op to NATIFS, Sean Sherman’s nonprofit that also operates the Indigenous Food Lab. NATIFS reports: Located at 2601 Franklin Avenue, NATIFS Wóyute Thipi (the building’s new name) will house a new counter-service restaurant, ŠHOTÁ Indigenous BBQ by Owamni; a large-scale commissary kitchen to produce Indigenous foods for
Sean Sherman at the former Co-op Creamery
public institutions; NATIFS’ operational headquarters; and a coworking space designed to support Indigenous and other BIPOC businesses. “We are thrilled to expand in this new direction as we continue to uplift Indigenous food systems and support our community,” said Sean Sherman, executive director of NATIFS. “This will be the first space we own, and it will truly be the heart of everything we do.”
In related news, Owamni, Sean Sherman’s restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, started a brunch service in the new year.
A new bar space is being built out at Midtown Global Market and will open soon. Called Game Time, the bar will combine sports viewing on state-of-the-art large screens and arcade and interactive games with sports themes.
If you want to consume your THC and CBD by eating rather than smoking or vaping, and have been disappointed with the taste of some of the “treats,” both liquid and gummy, I have news you can use. Nathel Anderson, a local chef, is behind the recipes and production of some truly gourmet edibles produced by Hemp House for its No Coast cannabis line. Racket’s Em Cassel has the details in a Jan. 17 article.
Also, Racket has introduced a new column called Weedeaters, and it’s all about cooking with cannabis. Written by Joel Swenson, it debuted Jan. 20 with a kickass Chicken Schnitzel recipe incorporating a product called Dr. Dab’s Nashville Hot Chicken
Mill City Farmers Market
Seasoning. Which of course led me to Google Dr. Dab’s and wow! They have some very interesting looking edibles too.
January always brings a bunch of Dry January articles about non-alcoholic adult drinks to the press. Punch, the drinks equivalent of Eater.com, has a great comprehensive guide to all the terminology spawned by the burgeoning NA drink industry. Read it here – tinyurl.com/DKTatSSP-PunchNA.
Winter Farmers Market at Mill City Market
You know there’s an indoor winter farmer’s market from November to April in the Mill City Museum building? Well, now you do, and it’s a pretty big deal. It’s on the first and third Saturdays, and the remaining dates are Feb. 15, March 1 and 15, and April 5 and 19, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (No dogs allowed.) The market has a dazzling array of vendors to check before you go: millcityfarmersmarket.org/weekly-vendor-list.
Lagniappe Catfish des Allemands
Mini-review 1: Lagniappe
On the last Saturday in December, I visited Twin Cities DSA’s new office in the Coliseum Building at Lake and 27th in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. And then I met a comrade, Sam Doten, for an early dinner at Lagniappe, in the same building. I had Jazz Fest Crawfish Monica, a comfort dish of crawfish tails and rotini in a creamy Creole sauce with basil pesto, while Sam opted for the Catfish des Allemands, which featured a dish of rice and crawfish etouffee topped with a breaded fried catfish filet. I showed off my French by relating that Allemands means German. But I didn’t know the actual significance. Sam later related that “Des Allemands” refers to a community, bayou and lake called Des Allemands in Louisiana, also called “the Catfish Capital of the Universe,” according to Wikipedia.
Farina Rossa Pizza at Fair State
Mini-review 2: Farina Rossa pizza at Fair State Brewing Cooperative
As chance would have it, my friend Sam was on hand, along with a dozen or so other comrades, for my second review meal, more of a snack really. Saturday, Jan. 4 we had the annual meeting of the Democratic Socialist Caucus, and our post-convention social was down Central Avenue from the meeting place at Fair State taproom. I wrote about Farina Rossa last month and was eager to try their pizza. It did not disappoint! On every scale – the crust, the topping, even the price, it was phenomenal and is highly recommended.
