"Our favorite new food city" is the teaser headline on the cover of the August issue of Food & Wine magazine. Modest Minnesotans would probably never dare to connect that headline with Minneapolis, but there it is, on page 26: "America's Best - and Best-Priced New Food City."
"I lost my heart to Minneapolis and its awesome restaurants, bars and bakeries," writes Kate Krader, the magazine's restaurant editor. "I loved the impressive avant-garde food scene that's not at all pretentious (in fact, it's the opposite of pretentious) ... plus, it's hard not to adore a city where such good restaurants are so inexpensive, at least when you're used to New York City prices."
Krader gives shout-outs to Travail Kitchen & Amusements ("the country's most entertaining avant-garde food," wrote Krader), Victory 44 (the price of the restaurant's tasting menu, with wine, is the equivalent of "the cost of a couple drinks when I'm in Los Angeles"), the Bachelor Farmer ("superstylish"), HauteDish ("a swanky vibe straight from the 1950s"), Saffron Restaurant & Lounge ("modern Mediterranean"), Tilia (chef Steven Brown is "a local hero") and Rustica ("my bakery hall of fame").
Meanwhile, the New York Times also dropped in on Minneapolis this week, with food writer Julia Moskin exploring the city's wave of New Nordic cooking, swinging from the Bachelor Farmer and HauteDish to Fika (the lovely new cafe at the American Swedish Institute) and St. Paul's Izzy's Ice Cream.
My favorite line? Moskin's description of Bachelor Farmer chef Paul Berglund as "a serious 35-year-old who could not possibly look more Scandinavian."
