Restaurant news: A museum tour you can't miss

Hennepin History Museum (2303 3rd Av. S., Mpls., 612-870-1329, www.hennepinhistory.org) has a show aimed at local restaurant history buffs.

The little museum that could, located in a flour milling executive's mansion a block from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, has just raised the curtain on "Hennepin County Dines Out," a modest but fascinating peek into dozens of beloved — and mostly long-gone — favorites: Schiek's, McCarthy's, La Casa Coronado, Freddie's, Ivey's, Minnehaha Grill, Russell Coffee House.

"These restaurants are the place where significant life events happened," said curator Jack Kabrud. "We wanted to provide a venue for people to talk about their memories."

Think of the show as well-organized memorabilia, backed by scholarship. There are matchbooks from the Hasty Tasty, the Waikiki Room and Foo Goo Pagoda Lounge; menus from Harry's Cafe (those were the days: a full-on turkey-and-trimmings Thanksgiving dinner was $1.25, 75 cents for ages 12 and under) and the Sidewalk Cafe at Southdale; serving pieces from the Curtis Hotel; photos of the Forum Cafeteria; a selection of the museum's 100-plus pieces of tableware from Charlie's Cafe Exceptionale ("We could set a table for 20," said Kabrud), and even a ticket to the late 19th-century rooftop restaurant of the Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building, nee Metropolitan Building.

To create the show, Kabrud scoured the museum's extensive treasures ("We have an outstanding menu collection," he said), then fortified that inventory with donations from several sources.

For example, authors Kathryn Strand Koutsky and Linda Koutsky ("Minnesota Eats Out") lent items from their stockpiles, and members of the Piazza family swept through their basements and garages and turned up furniture, dishes, menus and other artifacts from their beloved Hennepin Avenue restaurant, Cafe di Napoli.

Factoids abound. My favorite? Learning of an unseen worker in the Nankin kitchen who processed 20 crates of celery a day through a chopping machine, his labors feeding the dining room's insatiable hunger for the restaurant's famous chow mein, served seven ways.

If past experience is any indication, the show will spark a flurry of restaurant-related gifts to the museum's collections.

"When we did a show on burlesque, people were sending us G-strings and pasties from every corner of the globe," Kabrud said with a laugh.

But the generosity is no joke. "We're going to be here for another 100 years," said museum executive director Cedar Phillips. "A lot of these materials were languishing in boxes in attics, and people are happy to find a secure home for it."

The exhibition runs through April 2015. Look for upcoming events, including a spaghetti dinner around Valentine's Day, with the Piazza family providing recipes. "We're going to bring back Cafe di Napoli, for an evening," said Phillips.

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tue., 1 to 5 p.m. Wed., 1 to 8 p.m. Thu. and 1 to 5 p.m. Fri. through Sun. Admission is $5 adults, $1 for children and seniors (64+). Admission is free on the first Thursday of the month.