A fairly amazing-sounding Better Beer Society brown bag series event at Butcher & the Boar, some revised menus at local restaurants, a local foodie’s epic Mother’s Day feast, tasting notes for Summit Pilsner and Steel Toe’s Provider, the Star Tribune’s Taste 50, and a new urban farm in Minneapolis.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Kim Ode asserts that rhubarb is having its moment.
While this might be a convenient position for a person with a newly released book called Rhubarb Renaissance (MNHS Press, $16.95), it’s also one that sustains scrutiny — not only is rhubarb gloriously in season at the moment, it’s having a resurgence on the menus of Upper Midwestern restaurants that are scanning their own backyards for ingredients with a connection to the local landscape.
Just two examples: On a recent visit to The Bachelor Farmer, we enjoyed the bright bite of pickled rhubarb in a dish of roasted pork belly, sunny side up pheasant egg, and pea shoots; and The Black Forest Inn is featuring an asparagus and rhubarb strudel as part of its Spargelfest menu [PDF].
“Chefs are looking across the horizon and asking, ‘What aren’t we using?’” says Ode, who is also the author of Baking With the St. Paul Bread Club and a features writer for the Star Tribune. “And local local, of course — there are things we’ve discarded here, in Minnesota, as too homely and corny.” “Bebop-a-rebop, rhubarb pie,” she adds, a convenient musical shorthand for the tart vegetable’s humble status.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
We recently joined Ode and her husband, woodworker and photographer John Danicic, in their Morningside home for a five-course meal of rhubarb. A rhubarb feast may sound at first hearing like an awful lot of the fibrous red stuff, but it really wasn’t — the meal had a sense of flow, progress, and even drama. And therein lies the story.
We kicked off our meal in the kitchen, with a prosecco cocktail spiked with a sweet / tart rhubarb base, and noshed upon rows of gorgeous crostini with goat cheese, prosciutto, and rhubarb chutney.
“Rhubarb is just such a good foundation for a chutney,” Ode says. “With a lot of chutneys, there’s so much going on that it just becomes … a chutney. You can’t identify it as a, say, blueberry chutney. So the first time I did it, I completely lost the rhubarb. So I bumped it up.”
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
The result is a talented supporting player on a stage filled with stars: “There are your chutney flavors, a little goat cheese and cream cheese combined to take a bit of the edge off the goat, and then prosciutto because… it’s prosciutto,” Ode says. (She then points out that the stuff she’s using is made in Iowa, by La Quercia.)
Like the rest of the elegant-with-a-twist recipes in Rhubarb Renaissance, the crostini were simple to assemble, and had an admirable sense of balance. They were creamy and crunchy, bright and salty — flavors and textures pulling at one another but ultimately in harmony. That rhubarb can be both savory and multidimensional may come as a surprise to some readers, but that idea is really at the heart of Ode’s book; while Rhubarb Renaissance features dessert recipes (including one of the best sweet-tart crisps we’ve tried in years), desserts are somewhat beside the point.
Ode recalls: “When [Minnesota Historical Society Press] said: ‘Can you do rhubarb?’ I said ‘I know rhubarb.’ Then they said: ‘Well, what we’d really like to do is explore the savory side.’ And I said: ‘What savory side?’ That’s where it took my out of the church cookbook upbringing and caused me to ask: “Well, what can you do with it?’” Continue reading Kim Ode, Author of Rhubarb Renaissance »
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Ten years ago native New Yorkers Randy Ng (below left) and Michael Ding (below right) were friends in Brooklyn who regularly played basketball together and daydreamed about opening a dumpling shop. Both men are of Chinese heritage, so for them, making dumplings was a family affair — a part of Chinese New Year, and a staple of any family event.
By 2009, Ding was disenchanted with his job on Wall St. and approached Ng seriously with the idea of pursuing their dream. Madison, Wisconsin, seemed the perfect location. Ng had left his job at an educational startup and had moved to Madison the previous year, and Ding was himself an alumnus of UW, returning annually to attend Badgers games. They both were looking for a change.
Mandie Haberman / Red Gecko Studio
The team knew that they had dumplings down, but that dumplings alone couldn’t sustain a business. They turned to friend Conrad Seto, a self-taught, self-proclaimed ramen fanatic, who had spent five years studying the “art of the noodle.” His personal passion turned into a career as a consultant / chef, hosting ramen pop-up dinners regularly in the San Francisco Bay area at Flavor Restaurant. Ng and Ding flew Seto to Madison to host a 20-person tasting to help gauge the city’s reaction to ramen; it was a success.
From there they were off and running, taking a 10-day research trip to Japan to sample ramen for Ng and Ding’s soon-to-be restaurant, Umami Ramen & Dumpling Bar. Umami, the Japanese word loosely translated as “savoriness,” is accepted worldwide as the fifth basic taste along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Ramen is now Japan’s national dish. Originally adopted from Chinese La Mian (hand-pulled noodles), it became popular after World War II when there was a shortage of produce and an abundance of wheat flour from the U.S. government. The Japanese adapted the dish over the years and took it to a new level as ramen. “In Japan people really respect you if you can master tonkotsu-style ramen made from pork bones,” explains Ding. “It takes more than 14 hours and has many steps. It’s the opposite of how you learn to cook in French culinary school: bringing it to a hot rapid boil, and knowing just when the right time is to add the aromatics.”
Ng and Ding took more research trips to Taiwan for recipes and to New York City for inspiration from restaurants whose aesthetics they wanted to emulate. Their discovery and acquisition of a restaurant space sealed the deal and turned their year-and-a-half-long journey into a reality. Working with an architect responsible for designing a Wisconsin Tibetan temple, Ng and Ding created an unusual space with an element of surprise. Starting with a converted house with a patio, formerly an 1880s blacksmith’s shop located on Willy St., they created a homey Japanese restaurant with an urban edge. It recently won an award for historic preservation from the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation. Continue reading Randy Ng and Michael Ding of Umami in Madison »
Crystal Liepa / Heavy Table
Vincent may be the only local restaurant more thoroughly intertwined with its founding personality than Corner Table was with Chef Scott Pampuch. Pampuch drove the restaurant’s relentlessly seasonal and local menu, enforced its standards, and worked the room like a champ — dine there once and you knew him, dine there twice and he was an old friend who could hook you up with foraged mushrooms.
When Pampuch departed last summer for fame and fortune (Dara’s recent profile on him is a fine recap of his current projects), Corner Table’s demise or radical transformation seemed to be a foregone conclusion. Previously loyal diners ducked the place. “It will still take time to recover from the void that Scott left on the name of this restaurant,” says 29-year-old owner Nick Rancone (above, left), who purchased the place with his wife Chenny. “We knew it would take time, and the hardest thing about that is sticking to your guns, and right now we don’t get to share what’s going on here with as many people as we’d like on a weekly basis.”
But stick to his guns he has. Backing him up from the kitchen — or leading the charge, if you prefer — is 32-year-old Chef Thomas Boemer (above, right), a rambler with Minnesota roots, a lover of Low Country cuisine with a Southern upbringing, and a survivor of a Las Vegas trial-by-fire under the tutelage of renowned Chef Alain Ducasse.
Crystal Liepa / Heavy Table
The food is first-rate, the pork belly (above) still the best in the Cities, the plates edited and balanced with wit and grace but without pomp or fussiness. A recent meal at Corner Table (at the suggestion of the Lucid Brewing guys) was persuasive enough that we stopped by Corner Table yesterday to chat with Rancone and Boemer.
HEAVY TABLE: What was the restaurant under Scott [Pampuch], and what is it now… or what is it becoming, at least?
NICK RANCONE: It was always a very collaborative restaurant. I think Scott put a team together better than a lot of people do in town — he was very adept at procuring and utilizing talented people. I think that’s a very admirable trait for someone to have, to have that eye for talent.
It was really on the front end of farm-to-table. He had always done it on a radical edge of the thing, and he was unrelenting in his standard for that.
Crystal Liepa / Heavy Table
The restaurant and the menu was always related to that hyper seasonality and that locality thing. To take that and keep that mentality relevant — there was a tradition, a legacy almost, that he put forth. The menu would change a lot and he explored a lot… to continue on with that mindset is important. That’s the legacy we wanted to perpetuate.
THOMAS BOEMER: Scott laid down the groundwork for what Corner Table is, over the last seven years, and we want to take it that next step. We want to refine it… to take that feeling, that service, that food to the next step. The local aspect is part of that. He was a huge part in this town in showing people what is right in our backyard.
The next step is me believing that the awareness is there is to dial it in and focus. That’s going back to the purveyors and getting the very best of what they have through developing the relationship and having very high standards.
I see us as a strong, European-influenced, technique-rich approach to classic Americana. That’s Low Country, that’s Minnesota cuisine… I’ve been all over the United States and you can never get more American than a piece of pork belly. It’s so immediately identifiable. You see it and you imagine the flavors.
HT: But where do you guys diverge from Scott’s method of doing things?
Crystal Liepa / Heavy Table
TB: Nick’s presence is a huge factor in terms of what’s different. I’m in the back, and I get to stay there. Now, I love to talk to people, we have people come in the kitchen and we get to connect, and we have a fun bar crowd: We had someone come in recently at 5 o’clock and leave at 2am, which is just crazy.
But I don’t have to come out here … Scott was this personality, and this presence, but with Nick here, I don’t have to fill that void, and my focus is, from start to end, being with every plate of food that passes through here. And that’s a plus. With Nick’s presence here, Chenny’s presence here, that’s two people focusing on that integral part of people’s experience.
And I think Nick is poised to be one of the new wine gurus here in town — we change the menu and the wine menu constantly. We reprint the menu two, sometimes three times a week and he’s keeping up with the wine menu. If you order a dish and you want the perfect glass of wine to go with it, he will tell you what that is and why it’s so wonderful.
HT: The concept of cooking farm-to-table, which includes working with animals that you have a somewhat personal relationship with, is key to what you’re doing. Is it old hat? Has everybody caught on to it by now?
NR: It’s weird to us because we’re so immersed in it that we sometimes lose sight of it. Last week we were carrying a pig in — a 180-pound hog — which is a weird, awkward thing to carry… right in the front door in the middle of the day, and these two older ladies were walking down the sidewalk and they were just like: “That’s a real pig!”
I was getting crushed by this thing. I’m not a butcher, that’s not my body type. But I’m like: “Where do you think the pork chops come from?” Continue reading Thomas Boemer and Nick Rancone of Corner Table »
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Mayor R.T. Rybak recently wrote that the “business of Minneapolis is beer.” With alcohol statutes being adjusted and the brewery boom in full swing, the city’s new brewers face a real challenge in trying to distinguish themselves from one another.
Believing they’ve found the right niche are Eric Biermann (left, above) and Jon Messier (right). Armed with 15 years each of home brewing experience, and Biermann with additional training by the American Brewers Guild, they’ve opened Lucid Brewing in Minnetonka.
Lucid’s focus will be attempting to walk the treacherous line between craft beer flavor and macro-brew drinkability. Their flagship ale, Air, is so light it may not appeal to committed hopheads. That said: Their upcoming double IPA, Camo, definitely will. Camo even manages to retain very a light profile, despite weighing in at 9 percent alcohol.
Currently, Lucid is only available on tap (a bottling line tops their list of future brewery additions). Air is available at Lucid’s current accounts now. Camo was officially released last Friday, and will be proliferating in the coming weeks.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
We stopped by the Minnetonka brewery for a pint of Air and Camo and a quick chat.
HEAVY TABLE: How is it that a brewery can have the phrase “Clarity in Thinking” in its marketing tagline?
JON MESSIER: [laughing] If you have “Clarity in Thinking,” you’ll have “Excellence in Drinking,” because you’ll have a Lucid.
ERIC BIERMANN: You work your job, it’s crazy, you come home, and you want to relax. But then you have the kids, you deal with them and whatever else, finally get them to bed, and then you have that brief moment of lucidity — when you can unwind and relax. It’s about that moment of clear thinking.
HT: In The Tap, we alluded to a “pro-am” brewing program at Lucid. Tell us more.
EB: Jon and I both come from the homebrew world, and there are some amazing home brewers in the area. We’re hoping we can be that place to help them build their recipes, not just for competitions, but hopefully to bring to market.
JM: We did a Kickstarter drive, it was very successful. So we’re going to upgrade our brewery and get another tank to allow for amateur brewing. We can’t just brew crazy chocolate-vanilla bean porters on a whim. But in a one-off batch, paired up with a homebrewer who will share the cost, I mean, why not?
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
EB: If they’re really serious, we can register their brand, help brew some pilot batches, get it out there, and get feedback before doing the huge batch.
JM: And we already have some people interested in doing this. [Lucid] is a dream come true for two homebrewers. Why not help the community that helped us?
Lucid Air
ABV: 4.5%
Style: American Ale
EB: There’s a hole in the market for easy-drinking craft beer -– ones lighter in alcohol that are sessionable. Air has enough flavor to appeal to the craft drinker, but also a light feel to hopefully bring in some Amstel or Stella drinkers.
HT: It is extremely light. You get some malt up front and the carbonation keeps that flavor on your tongue, until the finish, which is very clean.
JM: Even when we sampled this out to bars, they were saying it was a little too bitter to be considered a light beer.
HT: Wait, really? [Note: Air is the least bitter craft brew you’re ever likely to taste.]
JM: It all has to do with perception. For people who are Bud Light drinkers, they’re more heightened to the presence of bitterness.
EB: We kind of had to mimic the bitterness of a macro beer to keep it palatable… I don’t expect we’re going to be replacing Bud and Miller taps any time soon, but we wanted to give people something similar to that if they want something local. Continue reading Jon Messier and Eric Biermann of Lucid Brewing »
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
“Automatically putting green olives in a Martini is like always having to wear a tie when a gent puts on a shirt and jacket. Do what you want and feel like.” -Johnny Michaels, North Star Cocktails
Johnny Michaels’ bartending philosophy is simple: It’s all good. There’s no right way, there’s no correct style. But he certainly has a noteworthy style of his own, which is distilled into the pages of North Star Cocktails (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $19.95, with photos by Heavy Table’s own Kate NG Sommers), a stylish manual that unlocks the secrets of some of the town’s finest libations.
In the early days of American bartending, the very idea of writing down one’s drink recipes was out of the question. A barman’s concoctions and techniques were sacrosanct. To give them away was considered akin to a magician showing the audience the trap door or the secret pocket holding the dove.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
But in Michaels’ case, having his recipes doesn’t even get you half-way home. North Star Cocktails is not Bartending 101. One needs a very well stocked bar to produce one of the drinks at random. Almost all the recipes include some sort of pre-made syrup, tincture, or infusion, as anyone who’s seen the row of plastic squirt bottles on the bar at La Belle Vie can understand. The book would be best used as a resource for batching one or two featured cocktails for a special occasion.
Many of Michaels’ standout drinks from La Belle Vie, Masu, and Barrio are included, interspersed with his commentaries on life behind the bar. Joining his recipes are those from the other local standout drinkmakers who comprise the Northstar Bartender’s Guild. The book is informative, off-beat, self-deprecating, and genuine, just like the man himself.
We stopped by La Belle Vie for Two Tastes from his menu and some sage bartending wisdom. And as any good bartender would have us do, we got right to drinking.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Taste #1 — Handsome Devil
Heavy Table: In the book you write “Every now and then, you get lucky, and for this one, I thank the Powers That Be.”
Johnny Michaels: Yeah, this one’s just over the plate. For the amount of time I think about this stuff — every drink should be that good.
HT: The Devil Mix — how much experimentation did it take to land on the final formula?
JM: Well someone wanted an Old Fashioned for a wedding — not just the standard whiskey, bitters, and sugar, but the muddled one.
HT: Wisconsin-style!
JM: Yeah, but we couldn’t have muddled them fast enough. So I kind of made a similar mix, it still has an orange and cherry in there. I adjusted the EQ after a while, it’s sweet, salty, and spicy with a kick to it. Continue reading Johnny Michaels of Northstar Bartender’s Guild »
Lars Swanson / Heavy Table
Jason Schoneman is making his mark on the Twin Cities beer scene two bottles at a time. In the corner of his St. Louis Park brewery sits a tiny two-line counter-pressure bottle filler. He mentions that he’ll be awake bottling late into the evening in order to meet demand at his two retail accounts. If the future popularity of his beers is at all proportional to their quality, he’s going to need an equipment upgrade pretty soon.
One of the newest additions to the Minneapolis brewery boom, Steel Toe Brewing has already developed quite the following in its first few months. Wednesday evening, we snagged the last two bottles of Steel Toe’s Size 7 IPA from the cooler at Four Firkins. The clerk even intimated (or in his words, blasphemed) that Schoneman’s Rainmaker Double Red Ale gives Surly Furious a serious run for its money. Allow us to be unequivocal — it does.
So far, those who have gotten a hold of his brews have likely tried the Provider Golden Ale and, easily his most popular beer so far, the Size 7 — an intensely juicy and citrusy IPA. “The key with this beer is what I call ‘clean bitterness’ not this harsh, lingering bitterness,” he says. “It’s packed with hop flavor but it’s not over the top.”
Lars Swanson / Heavy Table
We sat down with Schoneman at Steel Toe for Two Tastes of the ales you may not have tried yet. You can taste them for yourself at the brewery tonight for growler sales between 5:30 and 7:30 (he plans to expand those hours in the coming months).
HEAVY TABLE: So, the state government shutdown was unkind to you — there was an issue with an uninspected boiler before you could start brewing?
JASON SCHONEMAN: Yeah, but in a way, it was good for us. We got a lot of work done that we probably still wouldn’t have gotten done. So it hurt production for a bit, but in the end, we’re making beer.
HT: So growler sales are going quite well it sounds.
JS: Yeah, growler sales are great. At Four Firkins, they’re going through four cases a day on the last shipment I sent them. People are really getting into it.
HT: What’s your current output?
JS: In September I was in full production, pumping out beer as fast as I could to have a stockpile. I think once things settle down, it’ll be 45 barrels per month for the first year. Continue reading Jason Schoneman of Steel Toe Brewing »
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