January 2009
January 26, 2009Steven Brown is Out At Porter & Frye; Scott Ida and Mystery Chef X Are In
Everyone’s been saying that local restaurant Armageddon would come in January. I guess this is the form in which it arrives: The new G.M. at the Hotel Ivy let Steven Brown go from Porter & Frye last Thursday. I first heard about it that morning, and talked to Brown as he was sitting on a barstool digesting the news: “Now is not a good time to talk,” he told me, and made me promise to wait until Monday, when he would have more information, before I let the world know. I figured that Erik Anderson and Doug Flicker, the former Auriga crew who have been with Brown since day one, would carry P&F forward. (Josh Habiger, a founding part of the all-star crew, was let go a couple weeks ago.) As of today, however, P&F has a new chef, and everyone in the Ivy knows... Read more » Posted on Monday, January 26, 2009 in Dear Dara | Permalink | Comments (21) |
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January 26, 2009J.P. Samuelson is in—at Solera
At last, some happy news. J.P. Samuelson, late of the dearly departed JP American Bistro in Uptown, is joining the Tim McKee and Josh Thoma crew and will be taking over Solera sometime after Valentine’s Day. Of course, this means he will be leaving Nick and Eddie, but I think we can call this a win-win for the Twin Cities dining community. Win One: It frees up longtime Solera staffers to work at new McKee/Thoma projects—the new Barrio in St. Paul, and the forthcoming sustainable seafood project at the former Cue (for more on that: see my earlier blog post). Win Two: J.P. is a great chef with a sensibility that meshes the... Read more » Posted on Monday, January 26, 2009 in Dear Dara | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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January 22, 2009Tim McKee Takes Over The World! (And by that I mean: Cue!)
All the world’s money managers have no idea where to put their money these days—so they flock to gold. And so it is in restaurants. Twin Cities Restaurateurs are flocking to their version of gold: Tim McKee. Last week it was announced that a second Barrio was going into downtown St. Paul. It was not a surprise, given that a second Barrio is as close to a sure-thing as you’ve got in restaurants today—the low price-point on food with high-end booze is very much now. However, I was quite surprised to read Rick Nelson’s scoop in the Star Tribune that McKee was taking over the... Read more » Posted on Thursday, January 22, 2009 in Dear Dara | Permalink | Comments (1) |
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January 12, 2009Really Cold Winters Revealed to be Good For Something
Did you know that your very own Minnesota backyard is perfect for traditional applejack making? I had no idea either—until I got to page 121 of Cider, Hard and Sweet the new book on all things cider-related by Ben Watson (Countryman Press, $24.95). Fascinating. All you do is, you just fill a barrel up with hard cider (the beer-like one, not the Calvados-like one) and, well, I’ll let Watson explain it: “Making applejack involves setting a barrel of hard cider outdoors in the dead of winter. There, in the frigid temperatures (the colder the better), the 75 to 90 percent of the cider that is water begins to freeze. During the day the warmer temperatures allow the alcohol to drain out of the ice, which then refreezes at night, causing greater and greater... Read more » Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 in Dear Dara | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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