eat + drink

Peter's Grill, which has been serving rhubarb pie, club sandwiches, vegetable soup and other lunch-counter classics in downtown Minneapolis since 1914, quietly closed July 1.

The lights may not be permanently off, however. "It's all so preliminary at this point, but there are a couple of groups at present waiting in the wings to see what happens and reopen it as Peter's Grill," said Hans Okerstrom, director of property management for Equity Commercial Services, the restaurant's landlord. One of them, said Okerstrom, is former owner Peter Atsidakos, nephew of Peter's founder Peter Atcas, who sold the restaurant to Cyril Davies and Daphne King in 2003.

HOOTERS OPENS

"The tenant mix assembled by [Block E developer] the McCaffery development group is hardly a ho-hum suburban lookalike. ... We are getting the national-caliber tenants and first-class hotel we have long sought. Block E will be everything we had hoped for and will bring new visitors and energy to Hennepin Avenue," wrote former mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, former city council president Jackie Cherryhomes and former city council member Joan Campbell in a Star Tribune op/ed piece in March 2000. Could Block E's biggest political supporters have imagined Hooters, which just opened its third Twin Cities location on Block E's skyway level? One pleasant feature: a small but swell tree-tops patio with views of Butler Square and Hennepin Center for the Arts.

AROUND TOWN

Uptown Minneapolis is down two chains but soon to be up one. Both Pan- era Bread and Einstein Bros. Bagels have closed, but Blue Sky Creamery, makers of a particularly luscious ice cream, will open this month at the former Einstein Bros. location at 1513 W. Lake St.

Punch Neapolitan Pizza and Rachel's are under construction across the street in former Bobino quarters. Not content to be the old guy on the block, Kramarczuk Sausage Co. (215 E. Hennepin Av.) has given itself quite the spiffy makeover.

RICK NELSON