Uptown's latest is a Cafeteria with a view When Parasole Restaurant Holdings opens its Uptown Cafeteria and Support Group (3001 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls., www.uptowncafeteria.com) on Tuesday, the company will have nearly 1,000 seats at the intersection of Lake and Hennepin. "Yeah, we've bet the farm on Uptown," said Parasole's Phil Roberts, referring to the company's nearby Chino Latino and Il Gatto franchises.

The new restaurant -- which isn't a cafeteria, by the way -- has about 200 table, bar and counter seats on the street level, part of a recently completed Calhoun Square addition, plus another 200 a few floors up on the roof, accessible by a glass-walled elevator. Downstairs, the full lunch-dinner menu includes "food we love to eat, so there's no real rhyme or reason to it," said Roberts.

That means chef Jeff Anderson (a vet of the company's Salut Bar Americain in St. Paul) and his crew will be preparing chicken and waffles, salmon with soba noodles, shrimp fried rice, Cheddar biscuits with honey butter, walleye/sweet-corn fritters, a hot turkey-mashed potato sandwich and beef goulash over poppyseed spaetzle, along with daily specials such as chicken chow mein and an all-you-can-eat Friday fish fry. Upstairs, an indoor-outdoor bar will serve a more modest small-plates menu along with great city views. The restaurant will also offer weekend brunch (I'm looking forward to sampling the house-made Pop-Tarts).

Like all Parasole properties, this one has a very distinct look. Roberts, ever the showman, describes it as "a cross between Howard Johnson's and a '56 Chevy," with lots of retro glazed white brick accented by HoJo's distinctive orange and blue ("We say 'pumpkin' and 'turquoise,'" Roberts said with a laugh), plastic wood-grain paneling and Naugahyde-covered saddleback chairs.

Another crossroads where the company has big plans: 50th and France in Edina. Come November, the former Tejas will become Mozza Mia, which will feature a mozzarella bar and a pair of wood-burning ovens turning out pizzas, roasted vegetables and a daily oven-baked pasta. The kitchen will be run by Vittorio Renda, whose résumé includes Buca di Beppo and Pronto, Parasole's former Italian restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.

Why Italian? "We didn't want an Italian Salut [Parasole's five-year-old French-American hot spot just around the corner] -- we didn't want to eat our young," said Roberts. "We want this place to be dive-y enough so that it's almost chic, so the Edina folks will feel like they're almost slumming."

Sign of the times I was unaware of the global pine nut crisis until I stepped inside my friendly neighborhood branch of Punch Neapolitan Pizza (210 E. Hennepin Av., Mpls., www.punchpizza.com) and saw a sign noting a recent price increase.

"Pine nuts have tripled in price over the past nine months," said co-owner John Soranno. "Our costs right now are about a penny a pine nut. Isn't that insane?"

Yes. Smaller-than-expected harvests have resulted in the price increases, which have forced Punch to raise prices 12 cents on their small "Punch" salad, and 25 cents on their large version. "We're wedded to pine nuts -- it's a key part of the salad, and there's no substitution for them," said Soranno.

"We hope our customers understand. They've been great so far, and we're hoping that the next crop comes in better, so we can lower the price."

RICK NELSON