Out & About

This past Sunday night, if you had walked into the ballroom on the third-floor of Solera Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, the first thing you would have seen was meat. Four kinds of meat, to be precise – coppa, dry cured ham, black-pepper sausage, and fennel sausage – all made by Mike Phillips of Three Sons Butchers in Northeast Minneapolis. An entire table of meat, enough to feed the several hundred people who had turned out for the second-annual Farm in the Cities benefit dinner. And after the meat, the next thing you would have seen would have been the chefs, many decked out in their whites, ringing the table and joking around as they arranged the twenty-something butcher boards of charcuterie.

This weekend, a collection of all-star Twin Cities chefs and farmers will be coming together for a good cause. Spearheaded by Jorge Guzman, the executive chef at Solera Restaurant, the second-annual Farm in the Cities event highlights the true meaning of farm-to-table dining, all while benefiting a good cause.

What would you do if you heard about a place called Nacho's in the suburbs? Not a chance right? Sounds like someone's excuse to serve monstrous plates of high calorie, cheese smothered food. Now, what if all you did was add the word Supermercado. Nacho's Supermercado. Ok, I suppose it sounds a bit like a joke, but it is real and it is in downtown Hopkins. We simply could not resist checking it out because nothing about the name and location made sense. I was careful not to research it so that our surprise would be complete. What we found, was definitely a surprise, in more ways than one. 

Were there nachos? Nope. Was it a supermercado? Not really. Did they have a tortilla press, excellent barbacoa and three types of tamales? Well, of course. Lucky us…again.

More often than not, the places that serve us the tacos, tamales and the like have been around, some for more than a decade. Reviews have been written, yelp folks have argued about how much things differ from their expectations, and alas, I am old hat. For this review, I have the pleasure of sharing with you some new folks here to satisfy your cravings for corn, beans, cheese and meat. I'm speaking of a modest little eatery on 42nd and Cedar avenue south in Minneapolis: Pupuseria La Palmera. 

We've all gotten this question or a variant of same...

"My mother-in-law... my former high school sweetheart... my old college roommate... my parole officer... an IRS auditor... (insert your favorite)... is coming for a visit. What should I serve them? Or where should I take them to dinner... or breakfast... or lunch, for drinks... or a snack... or for brunch?"

Well, we continue to bounce around the Twin Cities and hope that everyone out there is on board for more Latin eats! With no end in sight and continual support for our efforts from readers, we continue to pick off taquerias, restaurantes and pupuserias with a seemingly insatiable appetite. If you would have told me after our first article that we would potentially still be going when the Winter came back around, well...ok, I was hopeful, I might have believed you...and given you a hug because I love this stuff. As a matter of fact, I love it even more when I can share with others and this past week was all about sharing. My friend John told me about a place in Richfield that I had not been to yet: Andale Taqueria.

We started this Latin eating series for many reasons, but one of them was the idea that we would solve the many mysteries that lie within those places you so often drive by but never stop to investigate. For me, I've always wondered about the large building on the corner of Nicollet and 28th that has so many interesting sign, names and dimensions. Most folks might notice the Marissa's Panaderia sign on 28th. Some might notice the names El Mariachi or El Nuevo Mariachi. Whatever is going on there, I surely had no clue and as often as I am in the neighborhood, be it by bike, bus or auto, it is high time to settle it.

Comfort is a curious thing. It can make you lazy, it can leave you stuck in a rut. It can even make you want to begin questioning something that you once previously loved and were passionate about. It may be too much to say that we are getting comfortable in our Latin eating adventures, but we do have moments where we start to think that we know what we are doing…a dangerous place to be for sure. A trip into the suburbs to visit a total unknown eatery should do the trick and set us straight.

It begins with the word Taqueria. For some reason we have found that any Latin eatery with this word in the title usually means the following things: small, unique, regional, very Mexican and very good. Now, the mere mention of the word can make me hungry.

More than ⅓ of all American children and adolescents tip the scales and weigh in as obese.

Sometimes I like to let the decisions come to me. We still have probably 25-30 Latin restaurants on our list to try. How are we to know what we want or where to go? This time, I let a little luck guide me. I had a few ideas, but as I drove to a meeting in St. Paul I decided that surely I would find something along the way. I decided to enter St. Paul from the crosstown/airport area, which left me driving down 7th street west. Almost immediately, I took in the names in a small strip mall between Davern and St. Paul avenue, and sure enough, the was something called "La Hacienda." 

I drove on to my meeting sure that this was the answer and really hoping that it was not the same folks who own Taqueria La Hacienda in Minneapolis. Of course, Charles was game, so we convened around lunch time and were pleasantly greeted by the owners of this establishment.