Sameh Wadi of World Street Kitchen Restaurant

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Look at a map of Lyn-Lake and you might conclude that World Street Kitchen, the bricks-and-mortar incarnation of the food truck by the same name, has moved into hostile territory. WSK (which had its soft opening last Friday) slings Asian-inspired sandwiches and small plates, but right down the street Moto-i offers Japanese pub grub and house-brewed sake. Just up the block, Nightingale stays open late and dishes up bistro bar food small plates. And around the corner, you’ve got Fuji Ya and its extensive menu of sushi and noodles, to say nothing of Latin-Asian fusion powerhouse Chino Latino further to the west.

The more the merrier, says Chef Sameh Wadi (top), who helms WSK and the downtown Minneapolis fine dining hotspot Saffron. “I’m super excited,” he says. “When people have a like-minded approach to food, it’s really awesome for the neighborhood.”

For Wadi, the competition is a scene, not an obstacle. He sees the neighborhood as primed for his adventurous, boldly flavored style of mix-and-match global cooking. “It’s one of the things at Saffron that I’m worried about,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of independent restaurants around… it’s me, and Isaac [Becker] across the street [at 112 Eatery] and that’s our little circle, and right down the street we have HauteDish. It’s us three, that’s pretty much it. Everyone else around us is a nightclub or shit-slingers.”

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

Saffron is known for dishes like its seafood tagine, its foie gras with medjool date-almond briouat, and its fried lamb brains; World Street Kitchen, by contrast, will echo its truck namesake in terms of moderate price and casual vibe. “I feel like the truck is a special feel,” says Wadi. “Obviously we’re trying to replicate that by having an open kitchen and not having any servers, just having counter service, and having menus hung up there.”

Wadi cooked up a few preview tastes for us last week while his brother Saed put the front-of-the-house staff through some pre-opening training drills. Dishes made by the head chef before a restaurant has been broken in can’t be taken as gospel for the restaurant’s long-term output, but the ideas were both sound and promising over the long term.

As we contemplated a couple of the restaurant’s dishes, Wadi broke down the food philosophy still further: “The menu is divided into two different sections — the health conscious, and the stoner food.”

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

For the former: We tried the Vietnamese noodle salad ($9, above), which was refreshing as a cold lake breeze in mid-August, and a surprisingly straightforward version of the dish, with cold rice noodles, shrimp, pickled daikon, and cucumbers, plus mint, cilantro, basil, green onions, lettuce, crushed peanuts, and nuoc cham fish sauce dressing.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

And we found the aloo tikki chaat ($4.75, above) to be an explosion of flavor, spice, heat, and contrasts, a superman of a dish in a Clark Kent package. The dish appears simple, like a samosa filling turned out onto a plate: “We have potatoes, a little bit of dal, and some garam masala from the Spice Trail — what! what! — we have two chutneys, a tamarind and date chutney and cilantro chutney, a little bit of lime yogurt, and fried sev, which is a [chickpea flour] noodle.”

As for how we found the KFC homage known as the MFC, read on.

THE HEAVY TABLE: For those diners who know what you’re putting out at the World Street Kitchen food truck, how will the brick-and-mortar restaurant be different?

SAMEH WADI: We’re going to take the same concept and crank it up a little. Obviously the kitchen here is bigger — the flattop here is bigger than the entire kitchen on the food truck.

At the truck, the days we put the Bangkok Burrito on, the people who eat the Yum Yum Bowl don’t show up. Both of them are going to be here at the same time.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

This is the first time ever they’re going to be served on the same day. I don’t know what’s going to happen. World peace, because of two foods… ?

HT: So the menu will be bigger…

SW: We typically would have one or two sandwiches on the trucks — here we’ll have six or seven.”

Some dishes are going to be a little more upscale than what the food truck will offer. One of the dishes is a banana leaf-wrapped fish with coconut rice and a marinated radish salad. It’s a little more upscale than [dishes served from] the food truck.

HT: Is this a reaction to the expansion and improvement of the fast casual segment of the market in recent years?

SW: For sure. Even in the fast casual category, big food companies are really raising the bar and helping people understand… people who would usually go to McDonald’s or Burger King or something like that are now stepping up and going to Chipotle or Noodles & Company. I’m not saying those guys do amazing food, but it’s a good start.

It’s just a couple of dollars difference to get something hand-crafted and chef-driven, with good ingredients.

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

HT: This sandwich is intense — a lot of carbs between the biscuits and the fried chicken interior, but the bright flavors of the feta and carrot slaw really keep it alive.

SW: It’s our MFC [Moroccan Fried Chicken sandwich]. You’ll need a knife, a fork, a spoon, maybe even a stretcher afterwards. It’s a buttermilk biscuit with white cheddar and green onion. We have the fried chicken, marinated in North African spices — cumin, black pepper, cayenne, paprika — spicy feta mixed with smoked paprika, and the carrot salad is very traditional in a lot of mezzes, tossed in preserved lemon.

This is our stoner food, right here.

HT: How about the bar options?

SW: We’ll have beer and wine cocktails and sake cocktails. The list was put together by Rob Jones [bar manager at Saffron, formerly at Meritage] and Alberto Blanco [sommelier at Saffron].

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

All the beers on tap are local — the cans come from all over the world. We’ll have a sake-based caipirinha, forties of Miller’s High Life, Mickey’s grenades, other fun stuff like that.

Around us we’ve got a lot of great, beer-centric places; we’re not going to be competing with them. We’ve got the world’s only sake brewpub outside of Japan — I can’t [mess] with that, I’m not even going to try, so I’m just going to have some fun.

World Street Kitchen
World street food in Uptown

2743 Lyndale Ave, Minneapolis, 55408
612.424.8855
HOURS:
Sun-Thurs 11am-midnight
Fri-Sat 11am-1am
CHEF / OWNERS: Sameh Wadi / Sameh and Saed Wadi
ENTREE RANGE: $7-15
VEGAN / VEGETARIAN: Yes
BAR: Wine, beer, sake

Becca Dilley / Heavy Table

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