Eating righteously: Southside Pride’s guide to local virtuous restaurants

There are few needs more basic than food, few rituals more fundamental than breaking bread together. Americans eat out more than ever before—but much of that growth has been in fast food restaurants, an industry that has grown 1,833 percent in the last 35 years. But there is a movement in the other direction, for restaurants that are family-owned and part of a community, places where you can relax with friends.

On the heels of our cover story on Virtuous Businesses (March 9, 2005), Pulse of the Twin Cities is focusing on 10 local restaurants that are the antithesis of fast food. Some of them use solar power, others use organic products, still others offer health care to employees or give to charities. Every one is different, but all of them make the Twin Cities better.

Hard Times: a collective accomplishment

By Michelle Lee

It may not be the smoky haze it once was, but there is still something unique about the air in the Hard Times Café. Maybe it’s the greasy-spoon smell of hash brown remains, lingering in the air and on your clothes for days afterwards; maybe it’s the loud music, mingling the Ramones with equally loud conversation; maybe it’s just the general ambiance of a dimly-lit place that’s open 22 hours a day. Regardless, there’s something luridly enchanting about this place—something more than seitan Fajitas, vegan brownies and what is possibly the strongest coffee in Minneapolis.

Over the years, amid a changing West Bank neighborhood, the Hard Times has remained a key landmark in the city. It’s a place where people of multiple ages, cultures and living situations can dine for very little money and hang out all day without hassle. It also makes a strong cultural statement of its own, being one of the few all-vegetarian restaurants in the city—and, what’s more, a worker-owned collective.

In fact, the café started with a worker takeover of sorts, back in November of 1992. When the previous owner could no longer afford to keep it open, his employees—plus a few more people—decided that they could run it themselves, and chipped in to reopen it as a collective restaurant, according to Sean Sinclair, a collective member for two-and-a-half years.

“We have a lot of food that’s not typical health food; we’re got a lot of really good greasy food,” Sinclair said. “But you can also get steamed rice and vegetables, you can get really good healthy stuff as well.” They also try to get their food locally, ordering as much as possible from local distributors, and “try[ing] to do as much as we can organic,” Sinclair said.

A thriving example of the “no bosses” model, the restaurant runs without a hierarchy. Everyone who works there is an owner or an owner in training, and at weekly collective meetings, they make decisions using consensus. The members gravitate toward working in areas where they have expertise, both in the restaurant and on committees such as financial, personnel and advertising, according to Sinclair.

“We all try to work together as much as possible to get everything done, and it’s nice knowing that you have a personal stake in everything that’s being done, because it is your restaurant, it’s your place,” Sinclair said. “It affects your work ethic, because you’re not doing it for someone else’s bank account, you’re doing it for yourself, and you can directly affect how things are done here, which is really great. You don’t have that in any other place.”

Hard Times Café, 1821 Riverside Ave.,
Mpls. 612-341-9261. hard_x_cafe@hotmail.com http://mn.local.yahoo.biz/hardtimescafe

St. Martin’s Table: kitchen missionaries

By Adrienne Urbanski

Located just next door to North Country Co-op on Riverside Ave., St. Martin’s Table serves up vegetarian meals and political activism. Open since 1984, the café and bookstore is named after Martins throughout history who worked toward nonviolence, including Martin Luther King and Martin of Tours.

Open only for lunch, the café offers an entirely organic menu with both vegetarian and vegan options. Meal selections are kept simple, with a choice between two soups, usually one vegan and one vegetarian. Vegan and vegetarian sandwiches are offered as well, which usually consist of spreads on homemade bread.

Desserts of cakes, pies, brownies and cookies are also offered, and are available vegan. Servers within the café work on an entirely volunteer basis, donating their tips to charity.

“The servers themselves vote on where they want their tip money to go.Typically it’s to charities that work with the problem of hunger,” says Dave Anderson, St. Martin’s general manager.

The St. Martin’s bookstore offers material for both adults and children on social movements, political activism and conflict resolution.

“We’re focused on providing information on nonviolence, as we have a world that is more and more about solving conflict through wars,” says Kathleen Olsen, the bookstore’s manager.

St. Martin’s Table, 2001Riverside Avenue, Mpls. 612-339-3920.

Café of the Americas: fairly traded food

By Nancy Sartor

Chef Jeannie Inglehart sits at a table sorting the unsavory-looking characters from a 100-pound bag of black beans. Organic beans and rice are just two of the many Latino dishes served at the café. Breads, muffins, cookies and bars are baked daily on site. Vegetarian and chicken tamales, the most popular menu items, are handmade at La Loma in Mercado Central and brought to the café each day.

Soups are homemade, as are specialty drinks like horchata—iced rice milk sweetened with vanilla and cinnamon—and chia—an unusual and refreshing garnet-colored seed drink served cold, and popular in Nicaragua and Guatemala. 
For eight years, Café of the Americas, located in the Resource Center of the Americas, has been serving up homemade delicacies using organic and fair trade products from local cooperatives, selling them at affordable prices and engaging in community outreach activities both in the Twin Cities and in Central America. 

Inglehart extols the necessity of fair trade. “Because the Resource Center is involved with matters of globalization, we are concerned with the workers, that they be paid a living wage so their children can be fed, clothed and go to school,” Inglehart said. “And that’s what fair trade means: that there’s enough money all year round.”  

The Café pays $1.49 per pound for fair trade coffee, compared to an average $.79 per pound that corporate companies pay. Inglehart notes that, “Many of these crops—like coffee and bananas—are seasonal, so if they’re [the laborers] only paid a tiny bit during the season, it means they go hungry the rest of the year. Even if they’re eating rice and beans.” 

A bulletin board on one end of the restaurant is bursting with thank-you cards, letters and postcards from grateful individuals and organizations, confirming Inglehart’s community involvement. She proudly points to a card from Youth Farm, a summer program that teaches children about gardening, cooking and art, and features guest chefs. 

In addition to planning for expenses like advertising, Inglehart figures trades and outreach programs into her overall budget. That includes providing food for pledge drives at community radio stations (KFAI, Radio K and MPR), as well as catering to school groups and other community organizations.  

Beginning July 12, Café of the Americas will share a booth with Peace Coffee at the Midtown Farmers Market every Tuesday night through October. A presence at the market, and at the annual Green Expo that takes place in May, is important for the Café. Inglehart says her catering business, about 20 percent of the overall operation and her biggest profit center, has been cut in half during the recession that’s plagued the country during this administration. 

Still, Inglehart’s outlook and her commitment to community service are much like her popular chia drink—distinguished, rosy and refreshing. 

Open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Resource Center of the Americas, 3019 Minnehaha Avenue, Mpls. 612-276-0803. www.americas.org.
 
Blue Moon: Building a fan club for 11 years

By Christopher Mitchell

Lisa Berg and Cindy Kangas trade greetings with current and former neighbors at the Blue Moon Coffee Café on a muggy Thursday afternoon, 11 years after they turned the formerly empty building into a neighborhood meeting institution.

The two were afraid at first that the community might not support their business; at that time, coffee shops were seen as fancy and intimidating. Initially, Berg and Kangas had to explain some of the coffee-shop terms to the neighbors. But they soon found neighbors getting to know each other while waiting in line; the shop “wipes out anonymity,” says Cindy. Now, both enjoy hearing customers refer to the Blue Moon as “our coffee shop.”

Many of these customers have since moved from the neighborhood, but still return weekly from suburbs clear across the metro. The shop has many GLBT customers, who find it a welcoming environment.

Blue Moon’s friendly atmosphere is aided by clerk shifts that last five hours, to keep the workers fresh. This is no ploy to avoid offering benefits; they actually provide health insurance to those who work most often. Employees seem to enjoy the shop; Sibby and Chinda have both worked for the Blue Moon since they were legally old enough and now attend college.

Berg and Kangas estimate that 75 percent of their coffee is organic, all fair-traded. They have offered organic coffee since first opening the doors—long before it was economical to do so—but they are more interested in providing a comfortable environment than self-promotion.

The two describe themselves not as business owners but as “shepherds” of a flock that can feel safe, at a coffee shop that invites everyone to feel at home.

3822 E Lake St. Mpls. 612-721-9230