BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
The stretch of Franklin Avenue that goes through the Seward neighborhood has always seemed to me the perfect urban avenue in many ways. It’s got houses and apartments old and new, long-time residents and constant influxes of new communities, fairly low crime, a bus route or two, some nice churches nearby, the co-op, the Seward Cafe, a stellar hardware store, and a few good bars. And the river is in walking distance. So is the West Bank, if you go north of Franklin and take the walking bridge over I-94 into the Augsburg campus. That’s what I did when I used to live there, almost 30 years ago. And there are more things now, things we didn’t dream of in the 1990s, like a radical little bookstore, and at least two sushi bars, and food trucks. And the Seward co-op is a lot bigger.
Right now Seward and Franklin Avenue are seeing some big changes, mostly for the good. There’s a lot going on here. Let’s start with the co-op. Back in 1972, when the co-op took shape, few people imagined it would grow to be the thriving community center and source of healthful food it is today. Amidst its growth, the co-op has remained true to its ends, never losing sight of its commitment to its owners and the greater community. In recent years Seward has experienced explosive growth, including a new co-op (at 3rd and 38th Street) and a delectable eating establishment, the Co-op Creamery Cafe, at Franklin and 26th. There have been some schedule changes, but they say they will reinstitute evening hours at the café with a different format later this summer. Meanwhile, if you’re a member-owner, drop in before the 2 p.m. closing time on a Tuesday for a substantial Owner Appreciation discount.
A lovely success story down the street is Chef Shack at 31st and Franklin. Starting from a booming-business food truck, owners Lisa Carlson and Carrie Summers opened the dine-in location two and a half years ago. According to the experience of a Southside Pride employee, the locally sourced, sustainably produced food, which they call “farm to table comfort food,” is delicious-times-10, and reasonably priced. (Besides the Franklin Avenue place, a Chef Shack is also open in Bay City, Wis., and its three crowd-pleasing food trucks roam the city: the Urban Donut, Big Red and the Trailer.)
Farther west along the Avenue in the location where the very popular Himalayan moved out of (for a larger space on Lake Street) is the bakery Mon Petit Cheri. Well, I say bakery, and it started out that way, but it has pretty much become a restaurant by degrees. First they added sandwiches, drinks and snacks, then brunch, then oh heck, why not breakfast? Then they got a beer and wine license and now they’re serving full-fledged dinners with cocktails. A month or so ago, they were begging for new waitstaff on their Facebook page. Good problem to have.
For many of the cafes and small eateries along Franklin, getting into the beer and wine and dinner business just makes sense. The Seward Cafe, too, a couple of years ago, just after its 40th Anniversary celebration (covered in this paper), made that move. Despite being a block away from the still wildly popular Tracy’s Saloon (which actually has pretty good food) and being across the street from one of the better sites of the pizza juggernaut Pizza Luce, the Seward Cafe has done very well with its dinner offering, and beer and cider sales are brisk.
In the site of the late lamented True Thai restaurant, its replacement Soberfish seems to be making a go of it. Soberfish is not the only restaurant in town to combine sushi and Thai dishes (Bagu Sushi and Thai on Chicago Avenue springs to mind), but they have made it work, and the interior makeover works very well with the menu to create an ambience that is sophisticated without being pretentious. And then there is that often troubled space just west of the Seward Cafe, where the Seward Co-op was located—between being in the current Welna II Hardware spot (that’s the “stellar” hardware store mentioned above, possibly the best small hardware store in town) and the large purpose-built store it now occupies. I think there was a sushi bar in the dim past there at some point that didn’t last long, but its most recent departure was Verdant Tea, a shop that combined a tea bar with high-end ice cream. Now it’s the home of Encore Sushi and Karaoke. This is a concept that is not yet commonplace in the Midwest of the USA, although it’s decades old in the Far East, and well-established on our two coasts. So we’re way overdue to get it here, since we’re bidding to be the North Coast and no longer flyover land. It seems to be working out. Encore was featured in a recent Star Tribune lifestyle article and is doing a good business. They rent out private rooms, which hold between seven for the smallest party up to 50 for the largest, with a karaoke machine and service. They have karaoke in Japanese, Korean and Spanish as well as English. But you can also just go there for sushi.
The Blue Nile is no more. In fact the whole building is demolished. The property was bought by the Indian Health Board and the only news I have on it is that it’s “being developed.” So watch that space and see what develops. And to wrap up the restaurant and cafe news, a relative newcomer on the block (January 2015) is the Capitol Cafe, 2417 E. Franklin, the first restaurant of Somali-born entrepreneur Scot Isqoox. He was featured on the Facebook site Humans of Minneapolis. Read his amazing story there.
The eastern stretch of Franklin Avenue also holds some cultural treasures, both old and new. A newer one, about six years old now, is Boneshaker Books, just a half block off the Avenue in the Milwaukee Avenue area. This is a radical, but not at all preachy, bookstore. It has a community room, which is usually filled with interesting art exhibits. They will order books for you if they don’t have them in stock, and in true Seward old-hippie fashion, they will even deliver books to your door—by bicycle, not by drone. They have events there, and a book club or two. On June 25 at 11 a.m. there will be an intriguing book club meeting: “For the June book in the Spinning Stories Book Club, we’re reading and discussing ‘Our Way Or The Highway: Inside the Minnehaha Free State’ by Mary Losure. The protests and eventual construction depicted in this book happened less than 20 years ago and are of particular note at the present moment, as history (and the northbound extension of Highway 55) threatens to repeat itself through North Minneapolis.”
One of the older cultural institutions is the Playwrights’ Center, founded in 1971, and housed since 1979 in what was last the Mount Olivet Lutheran Church. The center features “member stage readings” regularly but is also involved in some more ambitious projects. Here’s one to watch for: The most recent recipient of the McKnight National Residency and Commission grant from the PWC, Erik Ehn, has teamed up with 2015 and 2016 MayDay artist Junauda Petrus to create a play called “Queen,” which was further developed into puppetry by In the Heart of the Beast’s Performance Curator Alison Heimstead. A description of the show reads: “A grandmother suffers the loss of a grandchild, navigates grief, and retrieves memory—sharing it in a new world run by, loved by, kept whole by a solidarity of grandmothers.” The show will be presented at In the Heart of the Beast from Sept.23 to Oct. 2.
Let’s conclude our review of the comings and goings on Franklin Avenue with an offering from the Seward Neighborhood Group—Summer Walks Across Seward. Here are just four of them that have a Franklin Avenue connection. All start at 7 p.m. July 6: “Silk Stockings and Social Justice.” Meet at the boulder on the east side of the Franklin Avenue bridge (which is closed, by the way—take the long detour). July 20: “A Sweet Walk on Franklin.” Start at K’ul artisan chocolate shop, 2211 E. Franklin, and end at the Beez Kneez. August 17: “Three Bars on Franklin.” Meet at 2027 E. Franklin, former site of the Blue Nile, for a brief history of bars lecture, followed by a pub crawl including both Tracy’s Saloon and the Seward Cafe. August 31: “The Bridges of Seward.” Meet at the southeast end of Franklin Bridge at the boulder. Paul Backer, project engineer for the restoration of the historic span on Franklin, will talk about the neighborhood’s bridges. If summer construction goes well, we might even get to step out onto the new bridge deck.
