Folks of the Bryn Mawr and Cedar Lake neighborhoods, lend me your ears because I have the scoop on the best restaurant news to come your way since—well actually, since the age of the dinosaurs, as far as I know.
It’s this: Sparks, the new restaurant by Jon Hunt, chef and owner of significant south Minneapolis Italian restaurants Al Vento and Rinata (in the old Giorgio’s space).
Here’s the skinny on Sparks: It’s going to be small, 35 seats in the winter, 35 more in the summer on the patio, going in to the old Bryn Mawr Coffee Shop space. The food will all be inspired by, and come out of, the wood-burning pizza oven: “No fryers, no grills, no nothing,” Hunt told me. What can you make with a wood burning oven? Pizza, naturally, but also roasted chicken, barbecue ribs with a special sauce that Hunt has been working on for, he tells me, years. There will also be Mediterranean and Tunisian dishes, courtesy of one of Hunt’s business partners in the venture, Amor Hantous. One exciting detail for Mediterranean food fans: Hunt will be making homemade wood-fired pita breads in his woodburning oven. More details: Sparks will have a beer and wine license, expect good tap beers, and wine prices which will start, and stay, low. Think glasses of wine at $5, $6, and $7, globally sourced from Hunt’s childhood home of South Africa, and also South America and Europe.
When will Sparks open? “Sooner than you think,” Hunt told me. “I’m crisping pancetta in the kitchen here right now. By the end of the month. The only trick now is not to tell anyone, we’d like to open quietly.”
Whoops.
230 Cedar Lake Rd. S.
Sparks on Facebook
