BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Openings, reopenings, closings, reclosings Just kidding. Well, not really. It is like that sometimes. Anyway, two that have recently closed or announced imminent closing are Grand Catch on Grand Avenue in St. Paul and Dumpling on Minnehaha Avenue. One that will have just reopened by publishing…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Closings in food and drink From Racket.com and other sources we learned that Tin Whiskers, one of the original artisanal Minnesota breweries, is closing this year. Buy up their inventory while you still can, if you’re a fan. From Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, we learn that 35-year Dinkytown…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Now we know what’s going where Augustine’s was A new restaurant under development by a couple with a recognized track record of great restaurants has been announced for the space on Selby Avenue in St. Paul previously occupied by the French bistro Augustine’s. Kalsada, which means…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Resisting diet culture If you feel the alluring pull for a dietary “renewal” every January and have a vague feeling that you’re being played, you need to read this excellent piece by dietitian Christy Harrison in the Eater – “How to Avoid the shameless creep of…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE COVID-19: Both cities implement vaccine, test result checks On Jan. 12, both Minneapolis and St. Paul, reeling from the high rates of new COVID-19 omicron variant cases, announced mandates for restaurants and bars to check either vaccine status or a negative COVID test within two days…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Owamni is everywhere The January issue of The Dish may strike a discordant note. Written, as per the iron deadlines of local journalism, in the dying days of a year too full of dying, it still strives to strike a note of hope for 2022, and…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Restaurant news Have you heard of Goldbelly? I first heard of it last week, when I did a search to find where I could get good latkes without having to make or cook them myself. Of course, I meant to be searching for a local deli…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Restaurant news – BIPOC owners on the rise In New York City and many other major metropolises, pizza sold by the slice is more common, and “slice shops” abound. They are pretty rare in the Twin Cities. Becoming less rare, but still a definite minority, are…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE More great cider! Last month The Dish 2.0 covered a couple of innovative cideries in Minneapolis, and we didn’t even mention Sociable Cider Werks! I apologize for that, and I am going to make up for it by telling you all the cool things Sociable has…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE New eating places and concepts and “new to me” Amazingly, new restaurants and cafes and food service “concepts” keep on opening. Three fairly recent openings, in descending order of grandness (which pretty much relates to price and that pampered, entitled feeling, but not necessarily to actual…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Dining rooms reopened and indoor café returns The Seward branch of Pizza Lucé has opened its dining room. Quite a few other Lucés have been open for indoor and patio dining for a while now. But this one doesn’t have a patio, so that may have…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Where I get information about restaurants In case you wonder where I get information about restaurants, either to pass on news of the restaurant world here or to decide what to review next, I mostly get it from the same place I get a lot of…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE What I did during thepandemic I didn’t fare badly at all. I never ran very low on food, and didn’t even run out of toilet paper, no thanks to my goofy fellow Americans. Delivery services were a lifeline to me, as amped-up food shelves and pop-up…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Tiny Diner 1024 E. 38th St. Minneapolis This is my relationship with the restaurant “empire” of Kim Bartmann—it started way before I had ever heard of her. In 1992, my teenage daughter came back to live with me for her last year of high school. That…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE I grew up in a suburb of Atlanta, Ga., and then at age 17 set up as an independent young woman in a neighborhood as close to downtown Atlanta as possible. (Atlanta famously had and still has almost no residential downtown.) I have always loved food—cooking…
