Bloggers Blogging about Blogs

Yesterday I fell down another rabbit hole thanks to Andrew Zimmern's blog. Say what you will about his personality or TV show, but this guy's blog has become ground zero for inside news of the Minneapolis food scene. It was on here that the big kerfuffle between him, Anne Bauer at the Rake started.

This post was in response to Kathie Jenkin's "Small Bites" review of the new Steven Brown venture at Porter & Frye. There's this perception that Kathie Jenkins is a lazy writer. I've also heard before that she seems to have it in for fine dining. I'm torn because Kathie is probably the only food critic in town that would ever bother wandering into Skinner's and finding that it's actually a great little neighborhood joint with good pizzas and, as she discovered, the most ludicrously sized nacho order in the metro.

Also, she liberated me from feeling like the only person who didn't get what the big deal was about Russell Klein's food was when he was at W.A. Frost. All three times I went there, I was so disappointed by my meals that I either wanted to cry or throw those stupid cracker bread sticks at somebody.

But that's neither here nor there, unlike most of the commenters after Andrew's post, I know nothing about the inside business of running a good restaurant. And, unfortunately, nobody pays me for this, so I do write a bit like Kathie, in that I usually only go to a place once before reviewing it.

But you don't come here for the professionalism, do ya? Nah - I'm lucky if you come here at all with the serious lack of writing and insight I've been giving you lately. There were all kinds of $ tumult at our little St. Puddlian home. Things have calmed down now (and I won't be moving back to Mpls this year), I can go back to eating out on a semi-regular basis and I will try to continue to give you the completely biased, lazy writing you've come to expect from me.

Just one more thing. Lenny Russo and Doug Flicker are fucking rock stars and anyone that doesn't agree with that is a moron.

What Russo has done for Saint Paul is a gift from the culinary Gods. The man is crazy enough to take the local eating thing so seriously that he creates art out of what most people would have considered provincial country folk food. What he has created, does and is committed to nurturing is something so outstanding, so precious that even hyperbole fails me. All this - and I can't even afford to eat in the main dining room! I have to take small plates over at the wine bar and still - STILL I'm always charmed by what arrives before me. I can wonder what a wild boar fromage de tete is, but have faith that the plate that is placed before me will contain something to make my every taste bud sing. The man is a mad genius. He actually makes me proud to be on this side of the big river. And if Kathie Jenkins can't recognize that, then she probably does need to have her head examined.

Sigh. I feel so much better now.