Secrets of the City

Lazy Lightning points out a piece in MSP Business Journal about the ongoing success of the St. Louis Park-based Buffalo Wild Wings: Strong sales helped lift Buffalo Wild Wings Inc.’s profit by 50 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period a year ago, the restaurant chain reported Tuesday.

Lazy Lightning wonders about this: If you take a look at any of the other local restaurant surrounding Apple Valley’s BW3 and sample their wing offerings, you’re going to find meatier wings, better tasting sauces, and lower prices. Why is it that people are not flocking to Major’s or Rascal’s instead? They offer the same mix of ambiance and food (sports bar) but their food is quite a bit better.

Heavy Table provides a work-in-progress list of local restuarants for people concerned about issues such as whether they compost, if they provide vegetarian options, and if they use locally grown food.

City Pages’ Rachel Hutton spends a night with the men and women in costume: It doesn’t take long to forget that you’re wearing spandex, or at least that’s what Captain Awesome tells me. And he’s right. After about half an hour, I don’t even notice that I’m covered neck to ankles in a bright pink bodysuit with a silver lightning bolt on the chest. I borrowed the suit, which previously belonged to Pink Thunder, from Galactic Pizza’s stash of retired superhero costumes. Whizzing along in one of the Lyn-Lake shop’s new two-seater electric cars with Awesome, I also forget that I’m wearing a bulbous white crash helmet. That is, until I look out the window and notice that people are staring.

Upton Sinclair’s landmark book, “The Jungle,” exposed Americans to the horrors and unsanitary conditions of the nation’s slaughterhouses. The New York Times, in a Michael Moss article dated 3 Oct, investigates the causes and consequences of a 2007 outbreak of E. coli in Minnesota, and elsewhere, due to contaminated ground beef marketed by Minnesota ag giant Cargill. The victim interviewed in the article, whose life was forever and tragically altered, is Minnesota resident Stephanie Smith.

[FTA:] The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria. Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

TC Eats tries Ubuntu.
We Got Served goes to Good Day Cafe.
The Heavy Table publishes a recipe from Tampopo.
Aaron eats pizza at Pazzaluna.

A downtown worker found a special new protein item on her pre-made salad at Au Bon Pain in the City Center Skyway last week.  Here’s a picture, not for the squeamish. 

The New York Times is not very impressed with Andrew Zimmern’s new show, “Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre World”: So what does he explore in Cuba, the subject of his first episode? Cigars, old American cars, boxing and baseball, rumba and salsa, a May Day parade, and Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s honeymoon suite at the Hotel Nacional. If this is the fringe, then “The Godfather: Part II” was science fiction.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak discusses his Homegrown Minnesota initiative (”an initiative to develop recommendations for the City of Minneapolis to improve sales, distribution and consumption of fresh, locally grown foods to positively impact the health, food security, economy and environment of our City and the surrounding region”) with the Heavy Table: In this past decade, city tap water consumption has plummeted as people have switched to bottled water. There’s something deeply wrong with a system that takes bottled water from Fiji – which, by the way, has no public water system – and ships it halfway around the world in plastic which has to go into a landfill to people who could get quality water by simply turning on their tap. The system is ridiculous.

The Uptown Mpls blog looks into the possible (and, seemingly, increasingly likely) closing of the Uptown Bar: Is the Uptown Bar “historic”? I have mixed opinions on this point. I’m a strong believer in historic preservation, probably more so than many people in Uptown. I also like the Uptown Bar’s building, I like its sign, and I like its significance to not-so-distant Uptown history. At the same time, businesses come and go. That’s life, like it or not.

Your thoughts on the potential end of this venerable institution?

The MN State Fair has finally updated their online Food Finder. And, as usual, the early press reports from a few weeks ago left out some of the more interesting new treats: chocolate-covered watermelon on-a-stick; Funnel Cake Fries (funnel cake formed like french fries and served with chocolate dipping sauce); a new Harry Singh’s Carribbean booth in the Food Building; and beignets at the Ragin’ Cajun. Seventy-five listings for the “on-a-stick” category, and 85 listings when you search the keyword “cheese”! So, what’ll you have?