THE NEWEST ADDITION to the Hopkins food scene is Gusto Café & Wine Bar (922 Mainstreet), which puts a Euro-Mediterranean twist on the former Nathan’s Bakery Café space. The menu includes paninis and gnocchi, fish specials, salads, and gobs of desserts. Chef/owner Chuck Venables is at the stove again after spending years in the front of the house at Manny’s and Cosmos.
Canadians will delight in finding their famous Nanaimo bars—a crumb crust topped with a layer of custard and chocolate—served at French Meadow Bakery and Cafés (2610 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis, and at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport).
The Marshall Field’s Cookbook is a timely collectible, as all the stores transform into Macy’s this month. The book is a combination of commemorative history and delicious recipes that many of us have enjoyed over the years in the department stores’ popular restaurants. Favorites include Mrs. Hering’s Chicken Potpie, Maurice’s salad dressing, the Boundary Waters restaurant’s wild rice soup and, of course, anything made with Frango chocolates. May these culinary traditions live on through home cooks.
A few more locally authored cookbooks for you to check out are The One-Dish Chicken Cookbook by Mary Ellen Evans, The Spirited Vegetarian by Paulette Mitchell, which was named the world’s best book on cooking with wine at the Gourmand World Media Awards 2005, and Cheap. Fast. Good!, by Edina resident Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross, coauthors of the nationally syndicated Desperation Dinners column, which appears in the Star Tribune.
Sue Zelickson is the host of WCCO Radio’s Food for Thought.
