I work in Linden Hills in South Minneapolis, and therefore have many tasty lunch options at my disposal. There’s the aforementioned Café 28, there’s Zumbro (which apparently caused a furor in the neighborhood because they posted a “no strollers” sign. Obviously rabid, frothing child haters, them.), there’s the deli at the Co-op (how many vegans does it take to make a tuna melt?), there’s Clancey’s Meat & Fish Market, who serves their sandwiches on a whole loaf of crusty bread. All of these places have excellent offerings for the noontime forager. I haven’t worked here in the summer yet, but apparently it’s also a tradition in my office to stroll down to the Lake Harriet concession stand and nab lunch there, and I’m all over that.

My favorite place in the neighborhood, however, is far and away Great Harvest Bread (not to be confused with Urban Harvest Bread, another place in Northeast with sandwiches and breads and treats. that place is just ‘meh’). I am not usually a huge bread or bakery person, but this place is so awesome that everyone needs to know about it . They have some of the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had, appropriately chewy, filled with chips, flat and large. They also do amazing scotchies and whole wheat oatmeal cookies with the same perfect size and texture. There are amazing blondies, great scones (good scones are hard to find. Thank goodness Moon learned how to make them in school last week), and inspired specialty breads like eggnog in December or ‘Paddy’s Lucky Loaf’ in March, which is chock full of apparently lucky ingredients like nuts, dried fruit and whole grains. This month they even have something called Honey Bunnies, which are honey wheat bread shaped into bunny forms, so charming I can’t decide whether I want hug them or eat them. I haven’t tried the regular loaves, but I’d bet you my lunch money they’re as good as the rest of the items.

All of these qualities mean that Great Harvest is my favorite place to nab lunch most days, though not because I am subsisting on cookies and scones alone. Often. They offer typical deli style sandwiches, available cold or from the panini grill. The sandwiches are perfectly good, but it’s the bread and treats that separates this place from the rest. What really keeps me coming back, beyond the amazing baked goods, is the fact that they always give you a slice of one of the aforementioned baked goods for free. I’m talking huge slices here, too, the kind that would sell for a couple of bucks at your local coffee house. Going in there, the first thing I do is look at the cutting board where they keep the current free sample stock, and start anticipating which one I’ll pick. Then I get my sandwich, and leave with a piece of Kahuna bar (you may know them as 7 layer bars, the ones with the coconut, chocolate, graham, butterscotch and three other layers I’m not remembering) as big as my palm. Or slice of cherry walnut bread, or a piece of savory jalapeno bread. Or whatever other delectable treat is on offer.

This is a business model I can get behind, and apparently a lot of other people can as well, since I just went to their website and see they have other locations scattered around the Cities as well. If you live near one, check them out. I promise, the cookies alone ensure you will not be disappointed.

Oh, did I mention that at Great Harvest you do not need to purchase anything to score the free slice? You just walk right in and they cheerfully cut you off a piece of whatever you desire. Why oh why didn’t I know about this place years ago when I was working for $4.75 an hour at the coffee shop and running with the ramen jet set?

Since it’s getting to be my favorite time of year, ‘eating al-fresco’ season, I have to add to the Cafe 28 Post that they also have a small but charming patio. A walk around Lake Harriet, followed by a glass of wine and the beet salad on the terrace sounds like a perfect evening, so add it to the list of places to eat outside. I imagine on a weekend night it’s nigh impossible to get an outdoor table there, which I suppose is the case at most places, much to my chagrin and to Moon’s delight. For whatever reason, he does not enjoying eating outdoors. Given an opportunity, he will always opt for the climate control, which means that summertime eating is often an exercise in compromise for one of us. Fortunately for me, more and more places have outdoor areas, so the chances of ending up someplace where I can lobby for an outdoor table have greatly improved. Thank you, smoking ban, for the unintended but welcome side effect!

Christie and I had a nice little rare mid-day luncheon recently. Being the food snob that I am, I was forced insist that I cannot and will not tolerate another insipid lunch and some vacuous food assembly line. (cough chipotle cough.)

So where did we go? Café Twenty Eight.

Café Twenty Eight is a small place located centrally in tony Linden Hills in an old firehouse. Stuart Woodman totally bit their rhymes doing the whole fire station thing if you ask me. I hope they are giving the good folks at Café Twenty Eight royalties.

Among the many delicious options presented, I simply could not resist the beet salad. Ok, take a breath for the full title and description: Organic Red, Gold & Chioggia Beets & Warm Goat Cheese slow roasted organic beets on a bed of organic mixed greens with green beans dressed with a balsamic vinegar reduction. I love stuff like this. Does this make me a wanker? Psh, what doesn’t, right? Let me tell you this though… if you want to get someone to eat their veggies, this is the way to do it. What it amounted to was a bed of greens topped with the absolutely perfect green beans, themselves supporting a generous dollop of the warm chevre. Oh yea, and there were some beats on the side, almost an afterthought. Great start.

(Also, just to prove that I am a wanker, I have taken to carrying this with me anywhere and everywhere I go-

That’s right, it is the Unicorn Minimill! I have mine loaded with a nice pepper blend I picked up at the Eastside Co-op. Life is too short for pre-granulated pepper, right? In this day and age, one must be vigilant! How does this tie in with the Beet Salad, you wonder perhaps? Well, it’s inaugural use was this beat salad. Welcome to the family, new mini pepper mill! Here’s to many years together!

Don’t worry, I am not a total wanker though, I didn’t just whip the little buddy out in front of the ‘tron or anything.)

Also on the list of temptations that tantalized our taste buds was the Tuna Melt. This is how they list such an item on the menu in Linden Hills apparently: Albacore Tuna Melt with a Wee Kick of jalapenos, cilantro & lime juice give a Latin influence to tuna salad, grilled with cheese on sourdough, chips & a pickle. Was it all that? Hell yea, apparently. It may not seem like much of an achievement to get a tuna melt right, but you would be amazed. Christie did suggest that a LITTLE more heat wouldn’t have been so bad. Aaaah, she is learning. One Thai chili at a time, she is getting used to heat.

The third part of our joyous midday feast consisted of the Organic Chicken or Tofu Tacos in Salsa Verde, your choice of chicken or organic tofu, in a La Poblanita corn tortilla with mixed greens, black olives, cilantro, sour cream and gaucamole. For those who may not have been reading long and may not find this obvious, we went with the chicken ones. Little did we know that we were going to get a pair of tacos so overflowing with vegetables and such that we could not even see the tortillas at first! The tortillas were grilled and totally as good as the ones they used to have at Pasqual’s. Awesome tacos. Awesome Lunch. Awesome restaurant.

-shogunmoon

Café Twenty Eight

2724 West 43rd Street
Minneapolis, MN 55410
Phone: 612-926-2800
Fax: 612-926-2804
http://www.cafetwentyeight.com/

Unicorn Pepper Mills!
Alton Brown approved!
http://peppergun.com/

I thought I would start a new semi-regular (or perhaps one time only) column in G&P to review helpful tools and products for the kitchen that are not of the garden-variety, or are of the garden-variety but possess some kind of awesome quality that might not be immediately known to the dabbler, like kitchen knives for instance. Speaking of kitchen knives, I happen to know that our own Shogun Moon is an expert on that subject and this whole review column idea is in part just a clandestine attempt to get him to drop that knowledge on us. I have been using the same fifteen dollar cleaver I bought at Sears for over 10 years now and it always seemed to do the job just fine, so I never thought it was worth it to make the 3-figure investment required to obtain a decent set of knives. But the other day when I was cutting up shallots at the Shogun manor for some collaborative cooking that we were doing, I felt like I had super powers. It really is a beautiful thing to cut through some produce with a quality knife. Anyway, on to my tribute to industrial food wrap.

When working in the kitchen everyday you begin to accumulate a lot of little wads of food-stuffs that need to be stored in the refrigerator: leftovers, extra sauce, prepped produce, etc. Unless you have a legion of lidded Pyrex,Tupperware, or Cambro containers at your disposal, you probably use some kind of food wrap or foil to cover your containers. I have always hated those skinny little rectangular boxes of Saran wrap. They are too unwieldy to use. I usually end up yanking the entire roll right out of the box, or surviving that, the cellophane will not dispense uniformly, causing me to have to perform surgery on the thing to reestablish it’s symmetry. Even if you are one of those annoying people who do everything perfectly and are scratching your head right now wondering just what the hell I am talking about because you are a master of the skinny food-wrap boxes, you have to admit that if you are covering a giant bowl of pasta salad to bring to an office potluck, it is irritating to have to dispense 2 or 3 sheets of wrap to cover the entire thing. Reynolds Food Service Film, or similar product, totally alleviates this stress. Anyone who has worked in food service is probably familiar with these giant boxes of food wrap. They can be purchased for home use from any giant-can-of-tuna style store like Costco, or a restaurant supply company. In addition to being easier to dispense sheets of wrap that are large enough to cover any size container you can throw at it, it also lasts forever. This post is in part a tribute to the box I had that just ran out on Monday. I had it for six years(!) I have not lived in the same location for two consecutive years since moving away from home 13 years ago, but I have carted this box of food wrap around with me for 6 years. Good times.

Last night, Jessica and I were doing some grocery shopping at Lunds when we came across a sign in the dairy department stating that due to unprecedented demand, there is currently a shortage of organic dairy products in this country. This struck me as odd given that organic products are usually 2 to 3 times more expensive then the conventional variety. I would have thought that any increase in demand would be met by the organic subsidiaries of corporate dairy farms looking to take advantage of these trends. After doing a little research this morning, I learned that the principal reason for this is that the costs of organic dairy farming are prohibitively expensive, what with all the treating animals humanely and everything, and since milk is like the human equivalent of oil in this country, non-organic milk demand is also very strong. This does not provide any real economic incentive for conventional dairy farmers to make the switch.

This got me to thinking. You know how some people are putting windmills and solar panels on their property to generate their own power and are selling the electricity they don’t use back to the power company to help mitigate the costs involved? Maybe people could start buying a cow or two to keep in the back yard. You could generate your own milk, and what you didn’t use you could put back into the “Dairy Grid.” Also, this would be a godsend to my slacker friends who have recently bought houses and aren’t so keen on the lawn mowing.

Further Reading:

Are you America’s next top farmer?
Organic farms see soaring demand

So, what do G&P writers mose and shogunmoon do when the skies clear up and the snow melts? We grill of course.

Recent smorgasbord created by us-

Starter: Green Papaya Salad with a nice sweet dressing.

Round 01:
Saigon style Beef Sticks: Sirloin steak marinated in lemongrass, fish sauce, and thai chili’s, homemade peanut sauce, rice noodles, fresh mint and thai basil, accompanied by lettuce wraps. Roll your own, baby!

Palate Cleanser:
Cucumbers marinated in rice wine vinegar and lime juice topped with fresh cilantro.

Round 02:
“Bademiya’s Justly Famous Chile-Coriander Chicken” -Chicken satay marinated in a toasted coriander, whole cumin, and peppercorn, served with a tamerind sauce and a coriander chutney, with dal on basmati rice. We fried up some naan style bread, and basically made tacos out of this.

Bonus Round/Desert:
Jerk Pork Tenderloin, shogunstyle, hand ground into paste with my trusty mortar and pestle. Ok, not really shogunstyle… definitely took it easy on the habenaros for the missus. But, damned good!

That is all

-shogunmoon