Wanna be a restaurant critic? Wanna be a citizen journalist?
Let's try an experiment. The Citizen Café is opening tomorrow, at 24th
Ave.and 38th St. in south Minneapolis. Instead of just me writing a
review (which I will do eventually), how about all of you readers out there
visiting the restaurant and sending me your impressions. You can either post
them online as comments on this post, or send them to me as emails, to Iggers@rakemag.com.
You don't have to write a full-blown restaurant review, though you can if you want to. Don't bother with star ratings, either (I always hated those), but do use lots of adjectives and adverbs. There's no prize or payment or anything, just the glory of being quoted in Breaking Bread. I'll read through your comments, and combine them into a collective review - and will add some comments of my own. Of course, keep in mind that it isn't really fair to review a restaurant the first week it opens, so go prepared for the usual opening week screw-ups, and don't be too harsh. Deadline for submissions is Sunday, June 29.
To whet your appetite, here is what we know so far: Chef-owner is Michael McKay, who opened the Sample Room in northeast Minneapolis, and still owns a piece of it. The Citizen Café will be open six days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner - closed Mondays and Sunday night. The menu is basically classic American fare made from scratch - McKay says he'll make his own catsup from fresh tomatoes, and stuff his own sausage. For breakfast, McKay will offer scones, muffins, quickbread, homemade gravlax, and a Citizen Breakfast - two eggs over easy with hashbrowns, toast, your choice of meat, and a basket of breakfast breads ($6).
The lunch menu adds salads and sandwiches - ranging from a Reuben to a shrimp po' boy ($7-$11), while the dinner entrees will range from pot roast ($13) and brick chicken ($12) to braised short ribs ($15) all served with Yukon gold mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. The most expensive entrée will be a $17 certified Angus strip steak
The Citizen Café is open Tuesday to Thursday 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Website coming soon: www.citizen-cafe.com .
The Citizen Cafe is a welcome addition to the southeast Minneapolis breakfast scene. The area already enjoys The Hot Plate, Caps, Victors, the always closed Colossal Cafe and a myriad of light fare coffee shops and the Citzen Cafe fits in well and places a nice option in the usually dead eating zone which is 38th Street South.
The one page breakfast menu at first is a bit underwhelming but a wide variety of quality food choices combining with tasty coffee makes it a nice addition to the above average to very good eateries in Minneapolis. The steak and eggs, the sage pork patties, scrambles and buttermilk pancakes are very good with the hash browns standing out a bit more than usual. Nice additions include a complimentary scone/breakfast cake sampling, a calming and sensible inside dining area, slightly hip but polite wait staff and the option to head outside to a narrow but very workable patio.
We can always use another nice place for Breakfast and once you get past the very generic building structure in the middle of a generic south Minneapolis corner, things are very good and worth a second and third visit.
I've been to the restaurant twice now, and have experienced the good and very bad; on the first try, the gravlax was delicious, pate' was so-so, Shrimp Po'Boy needed more shrimp and less bread. The second time was for breakfast, and the "corned beef hash" (in parenthesis because it was absolutely the farthest thing from CBH I'd ever had) was just atrocious; the house-made corned beef tasted nothing like it should have - it tasted just like over-cooked beef to us, was served with a few small cubes of potatoes, and swam in a cream sauce. We didn't even eat more than 2 bites.
I'm looking forward to the menu being refined, soon I hope.
I'm a neighbor and am thrilled thrilled thrilled to have the Citizens Cafe open up around the corner. Went there on Friday night. The dining room and patio were both full, with several parties waiting to be seated. Great news.
Service was very friendly and knowledgeable and predictably slow (predictable because it was their first weekend dinner service). The atmosphere and prices are exactly what is called for in a neighborhood restaurant (I've had enough of so-called neighborhood bistros that price their neighbors out). The food was hit and miss (wonderful roasted-tomato blue cheese dressing for the house salad; oddly sweet pulled pork sandwich; delicious and light house-made potato chips; fine-but-uninspiring Caesar, etc.) but absolutely worth coming back to, especially after giving the kitchen a little time to settle in. I'm excited to try breakfast next weekend.
I hear that they're expecting a wine and beer license by August and will start a morning take-out menu for commuters in the next couple of weeks. Yay!
That's the former Maria's Cafe location, correct?
I one ate a fried egg and toast there for $1.99.
Anyhoo...we'll be checking it out within the next week, and I'll definitely share my impressions with you.
Right! Sweet Loraine's! That is the place where I ate cheap eggs and toast.
I think they had a bunch of Mexican items on the menu as well.
I'll be checking out the new place this week.