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Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Upon hearing about the recent influx of frozen yogurt shops popping up across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a colleague remarked, “Is this the 1980s all over again?” Though we have yet to see a Flock of Seagulls haircut resurface, he does have a point: The Twin Cities hasn’t seen this many fro-yo places open in quite some time. Just as cupcakes were the rage two years ago, self-serve frozen yogurt — sweet and tart, with toppings galore — is becoming ubiquitous, and The Heavy Table has the lowdown on four shops that let you swirl and scoop your perfect dish. Just be warned: Those cups are generously sized for a reason. The more you add, the more you pay.
The New Kids on the Block
Of the four recently opened frozen yogurt shops we visited, two were home-grown concepts and two were franchises. Tutti Frutti, located in Maple Grove’s Main Street at Arbor Lakes, was first of the four to open in September 2011 by franchisee Kelly Gaspar, who saw an opportunity to dish up a treat she felt was missing from the Twin Cities.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
“We didn’t have a lot of good yogurt, let alone self-serve yogurt, in this area,” Gaspar says. “I did a lot of research, and it came down to quality of product. I found that with Tutti Frutti.”
Another popular national chain, Menchie’s, entered the Twin Cities market in early October when manager Whitney Anderson and her family opened their Highland Park location at the corner of Cleveland and Pinehurst avenues. A University of St. Thomas alum, Anderson had spent a year scouting a storefront and found that even with an autumn opening, the locals were ready for frozen yogurt.
“Obviously, the ideal time [to open] would have been summer, but we’re in this for the long haul,” Anderson says. “We liked that Menchie’s is, at its core, family and community and giving back. It aligns well with our beliefs.”
The holidays brought a third fro-yo concept to the area: The Yogurt Lab, adjacent to the new My Burger near Lake Calhoun. According to manager Marie Tavlin, owners Aaron and Andrea Switz and Phil Becker saw the trend explode on the West Coast and saw an untapped niche here. A Dec. 18 opening, combined with a milder-than-average month, proved to be advantageous for the shop, which welcomed a flood of students and families in its first few weeks.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
“It was a great time with the kids back from winter break,” Tavlin says. “We’ve been doing better than we thought we would with a winter opening.”
And across the river near the St. Paul Trader Joe’s on Lexington Parkway, former restaurant and retail consultant David Brandner launched Free Style Yogurt just last weekend. Like with Yogurt Lab’s owners, he saw the frozen yogurt scene flourish in California and Texas and decided Minnesota would be the ideal location for his first fro-yo venture.
“I love the product, I love the energy in the stores, and I thought I’d really like to do this,” Brandner says. “I wanted to build a brand from the ground up and create a shop atmosphere that would be unique.”
The Heavy Table did an exhaustive, gut-busting pilgrimage to sample the frozen yogurt, discover new toppings, and feel the vibe of each shop. Overall, we found the yogurt quality and flavor selection ranging from good to excellent, but subtle differences among the shops’ offerings exist. While not a strict head-to-head comparison, below we explore the nuances of taste, decor, and cost. While you can’t really go wrong with any of the shops if you’re craving a cold treat, chances are one will fit your style more than others. Continue reading The Frozen Yogurt Resurrection »
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
They’re patacones from Panama to Peru; Haitians call them bananes pesées, and in the Dominican Republic, they’re casually referred to as fritos. But in much of Latin America and the Caribbean, they’re known as tostones, and that’s how you’ll find them on menus across our own Twin Cities. Regardless of its varied nomenclature, the dish can be described simply and invariably as “twice-fried green plantains.”
Especially popular in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, tostones in their most essential form are products of a mere three ingredients: plantains, oil, and salt. The plantains are sliced and fried, then flattened and fried again. Classic preparation enlists a tostonera, a plantain press that produces perfectly rounded and uniform coins. Even without such a handy tool, the process is simple, especially to someone who has been doing it a while. Tony Panelli, chef and co-owner of Caribe in St. Paul, laughed after describing the rather humdrum procedure. “It’s not really an art.”
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Having spent the first decade of his life in Puerto Rico, Panelli has been making and eating tostones since he was a kid. Now they’re a constant on his menu. He may be weary of the things, but he still knows what he wants in tostones: They should be thin, crispy, and made with very green plantains.
Most chefs would agree with that last part. It’s the green plantains that make tostones, tostones. The unripe fruit is strong enough to withstand the frying, smashing, and frying, and it accounts for the starchiness that defines the dish. So what do chefs do when black specks, the harbingers of ripeness, begin to appear on their plantains? Some may stop selling tostones altogether. Brasa has adopted this practice, switching over to fried sweet plantains until the next green batch comes in. Most establishments, however, must work with what they have. That means the same restaurant may serve tostones of variable sweetness and starchiness, depending on the day.
So maybe tostones aren’t as straightforward as we’d think. As chefs contend with the processes of nature, they can rely on myriad toppings and dipping sauces to create a wholly unique taste experience. Though they must be able to hold their own unadorned, tostones offer a blank canvas and potential for a masterpiece. A recent search for local tostones found three renditions born from three very different approaches.
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
Authenticity at Your Own Risk: Victor’s 1959 Cafe
“Tostones with house mojo” ($4.75)
We felt that these failed on all counts. They looked interesting enough, the lightly golden hue of the tostones scattered with green onion and globs of the jellylike house mojo. It wasn’t pretty, but with the merits of ugly food in mind, we dove in. The mojo instantly overpowered everything in its wake. According to Victor’s, it contained onion, garlic, and lime — the makings of a genuine Cuban mojo. This sauce is characteristically acidic, sometimes made with vinegar in addition to lemon or lime juice. The Victor’s version may have been authentic Cuban, but it was much too astringent for my “yanqui” palate. Continue reading The Tostones of the Twin Cities »
Jill Lewis / Heavy Table
Forget the corn dogs, Sweet Martha’s cookies, and various items on a stick — fried pickles from the Preferred Pickle always have been my favorite Minnesota State Fair indulgence. The crispy, salty coating combined with the briny pickle and a dunk in ranch dressing is nirvana. And until recently, I only reached this level of pickle enlightenment once a year because I hadn’t been able to find a true contender outside the fairgrounds. The now-departed Town Talk Diner featured “frickles” on its appetizer menu, but the skimpy layer of batter draped over the too-sweet pickles failed to excite me. But recently I’ve discovered some local versions that, while not quite achieving Fair fried-pickle perfection, come awfully close. At least they keep my craving in check until the next Great Minnesota Get-Together rolls around.
Blue Door Pub — The Adequate Substitute
Jill Lewis / Heavy Table
Though you’re probably thinking about a Jucy Lucy when you head to the Blue Door, the St. Paul pub offers deep-fried pickles ($6.50, right) as an app, too. Because, you know, you need more grease before scarfing down a cheese-stuffed burger and a pile of fries. While it’s hard to resist the hot, thinly battered chips when they arrive straight from the fryer, their appeal fades away along with the heat. The coating turns soggy as the chips cool, and even the garlic aioli can’t pep up limp pickles. We didn’t even finish the basket, which says a lot. (I don’t like wasting food, especially pickles.) Adequate if you’re desperate, but there are better choices in town.
Town Hall Tap — The Crunch Maker
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
My friend Deanna, who shares my fried-pickle fanaticism, introduced me to Town Hall Tap’s version ($6.50) one recent Saturday afternoon. Though I was skeptical of her claim that they were as good as the Fair’s pickles, I arrived with an open mind and ravenous appetite. While the cream cheese nestled next to the pickle slice initially threw me for a loop, the thick, panko-like crust on each chip made me an instant admirer. How come so few pickle-pushers can get that coating right? Bravo, Town Hall Tap, bravo. After a couple of pickles, I began to appreciate the cooling quality of the cream cheese since there seemed to be a dash of hot sauce thrown in the batter, and the accompanying sweet and tangy blackberry chutney contains jalapeños. But truth be told, that coating was so good that I preferred it sans dipper. These are fried pickles are reason enough to return to Town Hall Tap, but still, they’re the runner-up to… Continue reading Fried Pickles at Blue Door, Town Hall, and Hazel’s »
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
This past June, in the same week that The Heavy Table made its way through 14 Minnesota- and Wisconsin-made pies, the folks at Serious Eats in New York took on an even bigger challenge. The team visited a New Jersey Cheesecake Factory and tried every flavor of cheesecake on the menu. That’s 33 flavors, if you’re counting. Impressed rather than disgusted, we asked ourselves, What would be the Twin Cities equivalent of such a feat? The conclusion: We’d try every dessert at St. Paul staple Cafe Latté.
Why Cafe Latté? Though the Grand Avenue institution boasts an extensive menu of sandwiches, salads, soups, and pizzas, it’s best known for its rich, toothsome, and generously proportioned cakes. In particular, its turtle cake has a devoted following and attention from the Food Network. (You can find the recipe on the Food Network website as well as Cafe Latté’s site.) But as we discovered during our feast, not every dessert is worthy of such lofty praise.
Budget and time limited our selection to $75 worth of treats (individual slices range from $4.50 to $5.50), but considering that we purchased nearly every cake, cheesecake, and tart in the bakery case on a recent Sunday, we think we got a more-than-representative sample of the sinful and sugary slices Cafe Latté offers. And with a pot of hot coffee at the ready, we dug in — tasting, debating, and, surprisingly, agreeing on almost every favorite.
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
Best Chocolate Dessert
We sampled four chocolate desserts — Cafe Latté’s famous turtle cake (above), the chocolate buttercream cake, the chocolate chocolate cake, and the chocolate cupcake — and came to the conclusion that all followed the same basic cake recipe. But the dark, cocoa-rich cake didn’t receive universal raves. We found that it was the topping and filling of each slice that ultimately made it a satisfying dessert.
The chocolate buttercream cake was the standout — the light, moderately sweet frosting was on par with the sugar level of the cake and added an appropriate amount of moisture to each bite. Though some felt the buttercream was a bit grainy, overall the cake was the most successful of the bunch. The turtle cake, on the other hand, was often cited as too sweet, depending on how much fudgy frosting and caramel sauce each taste tester got on his or her piece. Deemed a “good milk-and-cake cake” by one, the turtle also was called “unsatisfactory” by another — the same person who said the chocolate buttercream “satisfies the id.” Continue reading Heavy Table’s Dessert Picks at Cafe Latté »
Tags: Cafe Latte
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
We here at the Heavy Table got a plaintive letter from Las Vegas earlier this month. A pair of Minnesota expatriates had a Christmas crisis on their hands: “We have to tell you that we have searched high and low and have not been able to find anything even close to the Tom and Jerry batter we both so fondly remember. Most people here don’t even know what a Tom and Jerry is!”
Indeed! Will there even be snow in Las Vegas this Christmas? Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?
Meanwhile, in Duluth, another scary scenario was playing out: Duluthians, partisans of their own Connolly’s brand of Tom and Jerry batter (see our story on Connolly’s, here), were unable to find it on the shelves. Readers of the local blog A Perfect Duluth Day started trading news of sightings. And then, the bad news came: Upper Lakes Foods was unable to find a manufacturer for the batter this season. They’re hoping to line someone up next year. So, no Connolly’s for anyone, whether in Vegas or here.
The Heavy Table team decided to step in. While we couldn’t include the beloved Connolly’s in a taste test, we could at least help Roy and Kathy in Las Vegas and all the people of Duluth find the best replacement. We decided to test the two most common brands of batter, in the Twin Cities at least, against a couple of homemade recipes.
Kate N.G Sommers / Heavy Table
First, some background. If you didn’t grow up in Minnesota or Wisconsin, you’ve probably completely given up by now on trying to figure out why anyone wants to make batter out of a cocky cartoon cat and his cheeky mouse nemesis. If you are from this area and your family did any entertaining at all around the holidays, then you’re also wondering what the fuss is about: Doesn’t everybody already agree that your dad’s recipe / favorite store-bought brand is the best?
A Tom and Jerry, in the drinking sense, has nothing to do with cats and mice. It is, according to the Dictionary of International Food and Cooking Terms (Myra Waldo, 1967), “a hot frothy alcoholic drink made with beaten egg yolks, stiffly beaten egg whites, rum, sugar, boiling water, bourbon, and spices, served in mugs with a sprinkling of nutmeg.” Most modern aficionados replace the water with milk and the bourbon with brandy.
Online sources, from Wikipedia to Esquire, all seem to agree that the Tom and Jerry was created as a publicity stunt in the 1820s by the English writer Pierce Egan, to promote his book Life in London, and was named after the main characters. The drink was once common enough across the country that vintage “Tom and Jerry” bowl and mug sets are common finds in antique shops and on eBay — and in Minnesota grandmothers’ china cupboards.
But one mystery we couldn’t solve was why Minnesota and Wisconsin seem to have made the Tom and Jerry their own while it has faded into obscurity in the rest of the country. Yes, it is cold here around Christmas time, but it’s cold in New England, too. Any theories are welcome.
On to the tasting. We tasted Flaherty’s and Mrs. Bowen’s brand batters, both easy to find in grocery stores and liquor stores, against a rather simplified homemade recipe, one that involves mixing the entire drink on the stovetop, rather than making a batter to be mixed with liquor, and also included the rather untraditional butter in the ingredients.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
I’ll cut to the chase: Mrs. Bowen’s was the best of the bunch. Flaherty’s, although it listed eggs as the first ingredient, lacked any eggy flavor. It was all milky sweetness, and rather too much of each. The homemade drink, on the other hand, wasn’t quite sweet enough. It was richer, thanks to the butter, and had a nice thick texture, but it lacked the depth that additional spices might have added.
Mrs. Bowen’s had a more balanced flavor, just sweet enough, and it held its foam nicely. It wasn’t, however, the ideal Tom and Jerry for the Minnesotans among us (who admitted that they had grown up with the “one in the red container,” i.e., Flaherty’s). And it wasn’t something that the non-Minnesotans were eager to adopt as a new holiday tradition.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
So we dug back into the Heavy Table archives and found a piece from last year on the beloved, elusive Connolly’s. It included ingredients for an updated Tom and Jerry (and Audrey) as featured on the fun and plucky TheDairyShow.com. Find the full recipe here.
And there it was, right in front of our noses the whole time. A drink Minnesotans and transplants could all get behind. The foam floating on top of the thickish bottom layer was just right. The additional spices gave it a fuller flavor, the bitters a little bit of depth. And the addition of cognac in place of brandy gave it a little more Happy New Year! So, merry Christmas to you, Roy and Kathy in Las Vegas. And to you, bereaved citizens of Duluth. Christmas just got a little brighter.
And, for those of you who need a little alone time with a great cocktail to make it through the tail end of the holiday season, here’s a simplified single-serving adaptation.
Tom and Jerry for One
1 egg, separated
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1 oz rum
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of cardamom
¼ cup hot milk
¼ oz brandy
freshly grated nutmeg
Warm a mug with hot water. Beat the yolk with the sugar and spices until thick. Stir in rum. Beat the egg whites until very stiff. Fold the whites into the yolks. Pour into heated mug and gently stir in milk and brandy. Top with freshly grated nutmeg.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
It’s tough to get a bearing on Uptown’s dense cluster of Thai restaurants. They often seem so interchangeable – ubiquity confused with uniformity. In an effort to begin distinguishing them, what better litmus test than Pad Thai? It’s the spaghetti and meatballs of Thai cuisine, an ever-present standby, a simple dish that’s hard not to like. Lightly stir-fried noodles with chunks of meat and veggies, flavored by peanuts, cilantro, a tamarind-based sauce, and some spice – it’s a simple canvas that leaves ample room for personality.
The general consensus is that True Thai in Seward is one of the current standard bearers for Thai in our metro. So we spoke with Anna Prasomphol Fieser of True Thai to get an expert opinion on what makes for truly good Pad Thai. (The Heavy Table has previously commented that Anna’s Pad Thai “will enhance your understanding of the dish’s true potential.”) That was not an overstatement. Her Pad Thai strikes the perfect balance between sweet and spicy with its rich, enveloping sauce. The big chunks of flat chives and crispy bean sprouts create a nice balance to the thinly sliced, flavorful pork. The noodles are light but substantial enough to hold up the rest of the flavors.
“Dry radish and tamarind are very important as Pad Thai must be salty, sweet, and sour,” says Fieser. “Many restaurants soak the noodles in hot water before cooking. This makes them mushy. You should instead soak the noodles in cold water overnight to get the proper al dente firmness. You then blanch the noodles in hot water just before cooking in a hot pan with cold oil.” True Thai’s well-known success with this dish provides a great control sample on which to judge the pretenders to the Minneapolis Pad Thai throne.
This truly blind tasting was conducted by seven eager participants feasting on take-out Pork Pad Thai (though one restaurant did not offer pork as an option) from the five restaurants closest to the Hennepin-Lake intersection. The judges were asked to write notes on the dishes’ appearance and aroma, quality of the noodles, vegetables and meat, and the spice level (all were ordered with “medium spice”), then to assign an overall score of 1-20. The results are listed here from last to first place.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Sawatdee Express ($6) 1404 W Lake St, 612.825.4054
This author was skeptical whether the order we received for our taste-off was representative of the normal product at Sawatdee Express. It took a return visit to confirm our fears: Their Pad Thai is extremely sub-par. This review does not speak for the Pad Thai at their numerous sit-down locations across the metro, nor their Express location in the downtown skyway. What is clear is that their Uptown location is in serious need of technical re-adjustment. Continue reading Uptown Pad Thai Showdown »
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