They would grow 4 U: Farmers have high hopes for Prince’s namesake purple potato

In a 1998 interview, the Spice Girls’ Mel B asked the Artist Formerly Known as Prince what she should call him. He decided on “Spud,” but could only offer a coy smile as an explanation.

Twenty-five years later, it looks more like a premonition. Breeders at the University of Minnesota have created a new purple and yellow potato, naming it the Paisley Purple after the artist’s Chanhassen studio. It’s at a handful of local farmers markets and on the tasting menu at Alma, a fine-dining restaurant in Minneapolis. And as the “Purple Rain” musical ends its run at downtown’s State Theatre, the potato serves as a starchy ode to the late artist.

But like the musical and its namesake artist, the Paisley Purple faces a long road out of the Twin Cities. Grocery stores have been hesitant to stock purple potatoes and give them a chance at mainstream appeal, farmers and researchers say. However, the early success of the Paisley Purple has given its creators Prince-like dreams.

“I can see it being on the shelves,” said Maggie Whelan, Alma’s executive chef, “like the potato equivalent to the Honeycrisp apple.”

At Alma, Whelan says they roast the potato with little other than olive oil. It’s important not to smother the Paisley Purple’s flavor, which Whelan describes slightly sweet. Tableside, it comes with a sprinkle of flaky salt, a pat of butter and a story about literal Minnesota roots.

“I gesture to the right, down University to the U,” Whelan said. “But I always talk about how delicious it is in comparison with other potato products.”

Perhaps nobody has known the Paisley Purple longer than Kent Mason, the farmer tasked with taking the initial lab samples and turning them into farmable seed. He got them from the potato’s creator, Christian Thill, almost a decade ago. But Thill, who ran the U‘s potato breeding lab, died unexpectedly shortly after. For years, Mason kept the potatoes alive, unsure if the researchers would ever return.

“Honeycrisp is from three doors down the hall from me. This is the same department. We have the same kind of job,” Shannon said. “We aren’t quite at the apple level yet. We’ll get there.”

Shannon liked the idea of giving her potato a Prince-themed name. But European breeders, she said, already came up with a Purple Rain potato. Someone else beat her to a Raspberry Beret, too. Paisley Purple, she said, was thematic, but also descriptive of the purple tubers with yellow streaks.

That color is perhaps the Paisley Purple’s biggest draw. Most other purple potatoes fade toward gray the moment they’re cooked through, but this one keeps its hues.

Alma’s Lucas Rosenbrook, who first brought the potato to the restaurant, said they were a hit at a recent family gathering on a Sunday. He roasted a few up, topped them with lemon zest and called them Vikings-themed.

The cute potato had a cute name and ample Minnesota connections. But in 2019, the spud was at a standstill. It takes three growing seasons to get a potato from the lab into a profitable product. And farmers were hesitant to risk resources on an unproven potato, especially a purple one.

“We made some purple potato salad at a potluck one day,” Mason quipped. “Nobody ate it.”

But Mason, who’s grown potatoes for more than 40 years, is old enough to remember when yellow potatoes were overlooked for white and red varieties. Now, they’re grocery store staples.

The Paisley Purple grows into a sphere and up to a pound in weight, Mason said, unlike typical purple fingerling potatoes. They’re pretty when they come out of the ground and pretty when they make it to the plate. And that could give them a better shot at grocery shelves, he said.

Shannon’s lab recruited Alma, and Rosenbrook, to the Paisley Purple project, which helped secure a grant to subsidize farmers for their unprofitable years. That let Mason pick up where he left off a half-decade ago. The seeds spent a few years in his greenhouse, and this season, he grew 20,000 pounds of Paisley Purples.

In the past two years, the potato has found its first diehard “fams,” as Prince would say, and they’ve been hustling hard to help it catch on.

Whelan and Rosenbrook have been pitching the potato to any local chef who will listen, even if just 1 in 5, by their estimates, take any interest.