WSK food truck expands to brick and mortar space

Read about one of Shea's latest projects below. This one is gonna be fun! 

Food truck landing a permanent berth
Posted by: Rick Nelson, Star Tribune

 
Street food lovers know World Street Kitchen, the food truck (pictured, above, in its weekday perch at Nicollet Mall and 5th Street in downtown Minneapolis). Or, for their sake, here’s hoping they do. In any event, WSK co-owners (and siblings) Sameh and Saed Wadi have some exciting news.

Coming soon, to 28th and Lyndale in south Minneapolis: World Street Kitchen, the restaurant.
This isn’t one of those we’ve-been-dying-to-turn-our-truck-into-a-restaurant stories. “Actually, we were ready to open a restaurant before we opened the truck,” said Sameh Wadi. “We’ve been working on a bricks-and-mortar place for two years, but when the city opened up the truck licensing, we decided to jump on that first. We’ve been using it as out test kitchen.”

And no, the permanent restaurant — which is going to be located at 2743 Lyndale Av. S. in Minneapolis, in the retail portion of the new Greenleaf apartment building — isn't going to replace the truck. Instead, the restaurant’s kitchen is going to supply its mobile unit.

Wadi (pictured, above), the chef behind the exceptional Saffron Restaurant & Lounge, plans to continue the truck’s globally eclectic and affordable menu at its permanent iteration. “We’re definitely going to keep the tacos, the banh mi, the yum-yum rice bowls, the burritos, all those signature dishes," he said. "And we'll be keeping the prices below $12."

A roomier kitchen — the prep space is 10 times larger than that of the truck’s — means that Wadi can also expand the menu to include the kinds of features that he’s only been able to sporadically offer at the truck, and keep them on the menu for longer periods of time.

“Basically I’m going to be doing food that I love to eat,” he said. “It’s very selfish of me, but for the first time I’m going to cook whatever I want, whenever I want it. Just yummy food.”

Beer and wine will hopefully be part of the mix. The counter-service setup will operate just like the truck: Order and pay at a counter, followed by a short wait until the food arrives. One small difference between truck and permanent location? Truck diners have to improvise a seat or eat standing up; the restaurant will feature a casual 60- to 70-seat dining room. “It’s my idea of the way fast food should be,” said Wadi.
Shea Inc., the Minneapolis firm that directed a much-needed Saffron nip-tuck last year, is designing the new place.

Right now the plan is to serve lunch and dinner. Brunch is also on the docket, in part because Wadi said feels like it's a natural extension of the truck’s existing mindset. The culinary serendipity is already taking hold. Last week, inspiration hit as Wadi and his crew were preparing tacos filled with caramelized lamb belly.
“I made some hash browns, topped them with an egg and used that lamb belly from the taco and thought, ‘We need to be open for brunch so we can feature this item,’” he said with a laugh.

Opening date? By year’s end.

Star Tribune's Taste 50 featuring David Shea

Today's Star Tribune features the seventh annual Taste 50, featuring "50 inspiring, trend-setting tastemakers." This year, our very own David Shea made the list along with some other great friends, clients and industry pioneers. Check out a few here and click on the links for the full 50!

Eight scene-making first-time restaurateurs. Re-introducing a Midwestern supermarket icon, one T-shirt at a time. A game-changing food truck. The place to be before (and after) Twins games. A pair of best-selling cookbook authors, and a pizza slice shop masquerading as a cinnamon roll bakery. A farmers market dynamo and the anti-Coca-Cola. A quarter-century of campus wake-up calls, a victory for North Minneapolis and the comic behind the Twin Cities' funniest fortune cookies. That's right, it's our seventh-annual countdown to 50 inspiring, trend-setting tastemakers. The fun begins here

text by

RICK NELSON

photos by

TOM WALLACE

Sketch artist

Architect David Shea’s first restaurant client was the late Leeann Chin. It was 1978, and, taking his cues from the Asian collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, he transformed a Minnetonka shopping center into a serene, elegant environment — no gaudy red and gold, no clichéd paper lanterns — that shifted the Asian restaurant design paradigm. Chin’s business took off (“It’s always fun to help clients realize their dreams,” he said), and so did Shea’s. Skip ahead 34 years and more than 300 restaurant projects later, and Shea’s 40-member firm boasts a client roster that includes Rick Bayless, Cat Cora, Paul Kahan and Marcus Samuelsson; locally, Shea’s blueprint is all over Barrio, Brasa and Butcher & the Boar, to name just a few standouts. One secret to his success? A well worn frequent-flier account. “You find inspirations everywhere,” said Shea, who logged 170,000 miles on Delta last year. “Being an observer out in the world gives you the opportunity to taste, and touch, and smell, and feel. You can’t get that looking in a magazine or going online.”

Entrepreneurial all-stars

All hail this bumper crop of passionate, risk-taking restaurateurs —all newcomers to the business — who have recently infused the Twin Cities dining scene with a much appreciated jolt of originality:  (From left to right) David Weinstein of Rye Deli, Conrad Leifur and Ann Kim of Pizzeria Lola, Craig Bentdahl of Mill Valley Kitchen, Dean Engelmann of Wise Acre Eatery, Andrew Dayton and Eric Dayton of the Bachelor Farmer and the Wise Acre Eatery’s Scott Endres. Collectively, their rookie efforts boast levels of expertise that often elude more well seasoned practitioners.

Natural-born restaurateur

When Patti Soskin was growing up in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood and all of her friends were playing house, “I was playing restaurant,” she said. Something obviously stuck. Yum! Kitchen and Bakery, Soskin’s mob-scene restaurant, specializes in fresh, wholesome fare that’s served with a side of the philosophies that define Soskin’s life: Choose happy (“That’s one of the lines that my husband uses at home,” she said. “And we do.”). Work hard and be nice to people (“That’s from a poster that my kids got for me,” she said). “The restaurant allows me to do really nice things for people, and I love that,” said Soskin. “Food creates bonds. It heals the soul.”

Check out the entire photo gallery by Tom Wallace HERE. 

Downtown Lunds opening soon!

Downtown Lunds store to open mid-June

by Burl Gilyard, Finance & Commerce

Published: May 22nd, 2012

Contractors carry a metal guard that will be placed around a tree on the sidewalk outside of the new Lunds grocery store on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. The store is set to open June 14. (Photo: Scott Theisen)

Seven years after buying a downtown Minneapolis site, Edina-based Lund Food Holdings Inc. is three weeks away from opening a new Lunds grocery store at 1201 Hennepin Ave.
The grand opening of the 20,000-square-foot store and the adjacent, 4,100-square-foot Lunds Wines & Spirits is set for June 14.

Aaron Sorenson, spokesman for Lund Food Holdings, said that the local grocery chain looked at a wide range of options after buying the 1201 Hennepin Ave. building in July 2005.

“Initially we purchased this site and had plans to build a grocery store here and were analyzing a number of different plans at that time. We were trying to figure out how to potentially operate a multi-level grocery store,” Sorenson said, noting that for a time the grocer was planning for a store in a different nearby site. “We ended up coming back to this site.”

For years, downtown residents and boosters have lamented the lack of a full-service grocery store in downtown Minneapolis. But today, competition is heating up. Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market Inc. will open another downtown grocery in fall 2013 in the 222 Hennepin project.

In addition to its planned store in downtown Minneapolis, Whole Foods also recently announced a new location in Maple Grove and is scouting other locations. Whole Foods spokeswoman Kate Klotz said that the national grocer sees a “great interest” in organic and natural foods in the Twin Cities.

In downtown Minneapolis, Lund Food Holdings ultimately decided that a multi-level store would be too complicated to pursue and instead opted for a 10,000-square-foot addition would allow a single-level grocery store. The original building dates to 1912.

“The single-level design let us maximize space. We were able to do more with the space,” Sorenson said.
The building will also offer 15,500 square feet of office space for lease on the second and third floors. The office space is not built out yet.

At 20,000 square feet, the store will be the smallest grocery store operated by Lund Food Holdings, Sorenson said. An average Lunds store is about 40,000 square feet, he said. Lund Food Holdings currently operates 10 Lunds stores and 11 Byerly’s locations in Minnesota, most in the Twin Cities area.

Sorenson said that the new Lunds store will follow the urban model set by its store at University Avenue and Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis, which opened in 2006. That store is about 26,000 square feet and has a strong focus on “grab and go” foods.  The Hennepin site will include about 80 surface parking spaces.
“Similar to Northeast, there will be an emphasis on prepared foods. It is absolutely a full service grocery store,” Sorenson said.

Lunds Wines & Spirits will be in a separate building at 1208 Harmon Place. A rain garden/patio seating area will be between the two buildings. Sorenson said that Lund Food Holdings operates eight other liquor stores.

Whole Foods Market recently opened its fourth local store in April at a location just a few blocks from a Byerly’s store along France Avenue South.

“It’s happenstance. That location was perfect,” Whole Foods spokeswoman Klotz said about the store’s proximity to Byerly’s in Edina.

When looking at new store locations, Whole Foods looks at a range of factors, she said. “We look at the ZIP codes of people who shop our current locations and how far they’re traveling to get to our stores,” Klotz said.

The new Lunds store in downtown Minneapolis called for adding a 10,000 square foot addition to the first floor of the building at 1201 Hennepin Ave., which dates to 1912. (Submitted rendering: Shea Inc.)

According to Hennepin County property records, Lund Real Estate Holdings LLC paid $3.7 million for the property at 1201 Hennepin Ave. and $1.5 million for the building at 1206 Harmon Place – the tax address for the liquor store property — in separate deals in 2005.

The 1201 Hennepin Ave. property is historically known as the Reno Motor Company Building and was home to a number of automobile showrooms until 1950, when it was converted to office space. The building was later known as the Billy Graham Evangelical Center. Lunds bought the building, which is within the Harmon Place Historic District, from the Billy Graham organization.

Matt Lindstrom, a spokesman for the city of Minneapolis, said the value of the building permits at the sites is $5.2 million for the Lunds store and $1.435 million for the liquor store.

The project team for the downtown Minneapolis Lunds store included Minneapolis-based Shea Inc. as the project architect, Golden Valley-based Zeman Construction Co. as general contractor, and the Minneapolis office of Cresa as real estate consultant to Lund Food Holdings.

A city of Minneapolis analysis of U.S. Census Bureau statistics shows 29,725 residents living in the core areas of downtown in 2010. That’s an increase of 56 percent since 1980. Meanwhile, many new apartment buildings are being planned for downtown, which will add more residents to the area.

“The downtown population has increased a lot,” said Herb Tousley, director of real estate programs for the University of St. Thomas. “If it’s done right, there is a market for these stores.”

Finance & Commerce reported in February that Lund Food Holdings has plans to raze its Edina store and replace it with a new store, additional retail and 163 market-rate apartments. And in downtown St. Paul, a 27,000-square-foot Lunds store is slated for the long-delayed Penfield apartment project, which is now close to starting construction.

“We’re looking forward to that project officially breaking ground and getting started,” Sorenson said of the downtown St. Paul project.

Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Goodman has been a strong advocate of the downtown Lunds store.

“From the point of view of someone who lives downtown, this is like a dream come true. It’s been a long time coming and I commend Lunds for sticking with it,” Goodman said. “They’ve really done a remarkable job of maintaining some of the cool historical features of the building. … I think it will be really good fit for the neighborhood.”

Butcher & the Boar reviewed by the Strib

Rick Nelson reviews Butcher & the Boar this week and gives it 4 stars!! Read all about it right here. And thanks, Rick, for the shout out to Shea on the design! 

Restaurant review: A carnivore's dilemma

by: RICK NELSON , Star Tribune
May 16, 2012 - 3:27 PM

photo by Tom Wallace

Which meat to eat? It's a tough choice at Butcher & the Boar, chef Jack Riebel's palace of plenty.

The long rib -- correction, the magnificent long rib -- at Butcher & the Boar is so tantalizingly impressive that it's enough to make a hard-core vegetarian flip the switch.

Picture this: a beef rib as long as your forearm, cured in salt and sugar and smoked for eight hours before it hits the kitchen's wood-burning grill, where it's glazed with Tabasco and molasses. The final charred, sticky-and-sweet product boasts more than a pound of ridiculously succulent, falling-off-the-bone meat (it's portioned for two but I had a difficult time sharing), and like so much of chef Jack Riebel's adventurous, confident cooking, it isn't afraid to radiate some serious spice-induced heat.

After competing with me to see who could finish it first, my friend, his law-school vocabulary reduced to that of a caveman's, could manage only two words: "Want. Again."

Same here. That has to be a common reaction at this pathbreaking new downtown Minneapolis restaurant, where Riebel and colleague Peter Botcher are deftly galvanizing a flurry of culinary forces -- Southern regional cooking, Minnesota's generations-deep German-American heritage, barbecue, the snout-to-tail phenomenon, the gastropub movement -- into a previously unimaginable but instantly coherent whole. There is nowhere else like it.

First things first: The charcuterie! Yes, it's true, a diner can't swing a duck liver in this town without hitting some kind of organ-meat-obsessed practitioner, but Riebel and Botcher elevate the craft to new heights. Forget everything known about braunschweiger, because the skilled artisans at Butcher & the Boar demonstrate that the way to go is by skipping pork in favor of Minnesota-raised turkey livers, their silky luxuriousness topped with a layer of chicken fat and bits of black truffles. Who needs foie gras when there is this ultimate tickled-by-a-campfire comfort food?

But that's not all. A zesty summer sausage fattens lean venison with beef suet. Deeply flavorful Texas-raised wild boar is the foundation for both a superb rum-cured, country-style ham and a multi-textured head cheese that's jazzed with pickled jalapeño. Oh, and the pickled beef heart? It's based on Riebel's grandmother's family recipe, and its dense richness is a joy to behold.

Sausages aplenty
At the risk of sounding like a 51-year-old white guy attempting an ill-advised "You go, girl" moment, I've got to say that the extraordinary grilled sausages are Shutting. It. Down. They're hefty things, served beer-hall-style, on platters, and all that seems to be missing are stout German women to deliver them to the table. Fortunately, we get Riebel instead, natty in his white paper butcher's cap and working the heck out of his see-and-be-seen dining room. He appears to be having the time of his life. What's that adage about finding what you love, and then doing it?

On the traditional side of the sausage spectrum, coarsely ground premium Berkshire pork gets blended with diced Cheddar to create the tastiest Cheddarwurst imaginable. But Botcher and Riebel aren't afraid to venture beyond preconceived butcher-shop boundaries, crafting inspired and utterly awesome beef, walleye and pinto bean variations, as well as an unabashedly spicy wild boar version that just might earn top points in my own private ratings game.

The one sausage that isn't made on the premises (although it's smoked in-house) is the footlong hot dog, an utterly delightful über-garnished monster that has forever ruined me for those boring Target Field Twins Dogs.

Other glories await inside this precociousness-free zone. First up: a brined and smoked pork chop as thick as a pre-Internet Yellow Pages. In a characteristic Riebel manner, its uncomplicated pepper, maple and fruit accents enhance rather than overwhelm the juicy meat's intense pork profile. Dense, snappy pickled shrimp, perfumed with bay leaf, become Riebel's irresistible twist on the standard-issue shrimp cocktail.

More than meat
No sane mortal could get enough of the grilled oysters, each creamy bite teased with that woodsy smoke, and the three prime cuts of steak are tops in their class, each boasting a well-seasoned char exterior that yields to a ruby red and brashly beefy interior. Salads -- the kitchen's interests are not 100 percent animal-oriented -- are pretty and unusually well balanced.

Riebel could probably fund his retirement by stocking a boutique with all the scrupulously produced house-made foodstuffs that garnish his plates: robust, grainy mustards. Crisp rye-barley crackers, studded with caraway seeds and twinkling with salt. Defiantly addictive beer nuts. A medley of deliriously delicious smoked olives. An extraordinary array of pickled vegetables, each showcasing nuanced degrees of vinegary bite and spicy heat. The topper might be a luscious version of Cheez Whiz, fashioned from an emulsified four-year-old Cheddar.

The vast majority of side dishes are lavished with a level of tender loving care usually associated with showier main courses. There isn't a more impressive plate of grits in the state; goat cheese adds a subtle sour tang, and an artisanal pepper jack cheese gives them their spirited bite. It veers toward slumming to pin the lowly "slaw" label on the complex, crunchy combination of jicama, tortillas, pickled red onion, mint and cilantro, each bite jazzed with pops of allspice and cinnamon. Skillet-browned corn bread, buttermilk-laced mashed potatoes, colorful heirloom carrots drenched in butter, vinegar-kissed roasted cauliflower, smoked beans simmered with the savory burnt ends of those long ribs, the list goes on. And on.

A few missteps
Truth to tell, a few dishes were less than impressive. Glazed chicken and bacon-wrapped turkey both did the trick, but neither equaled the menu's other splendors. A decent cured salmon seemed to have dropped in from an entirely different restaurant, and the beer-battered fries have a trying-too-hard vibe. But what's more significant is what isn't there: Not a burger in sight, and other well-worn requisites of the gastropub wheelhouse -- the locally sourced cheese plate, some kind of Buffalo-ed protein -- are also blessedly absent.

Pastry chef Sarah Botcher's sweets playfully subvert classic expectations. Chocolate-filled marshmallows, toasted on a cedar plank, turn s'mores inside out. A modern-day semifreddo version of grasshopper pie should spark a revival in frozen desserts, if it hasn't already. Best of all, an eat-every-forkful banana cream pie gets a makeover via a tangy ginger-cookie crust and a flurry of gently browned meringue.

The setting, designed by Shea Inc. of Minneapolis, has that rare built-in sense of rollicking good fun. As layouts go, it's hardly revolutionary, yet there's something about the alchemy of this particular setup that exceeds the sum of its familiar components. Most of the room's surfaces are burnished in the deep bronzes and gleaming coppers (including a floor composed of 300,000-plus meticulously arranged pennies) that are native to Kentucky's Bourbon Trail, a color palette that evokes the visual equivalent of dining inside a bottle of single-barreled Knob Creek.

Oh, and if there's one environment where standoffish Minnesotans will embrace the dreaded communal dining table, this is it. As for the sprawling patio and beer garden, it's still a work in progress, but it promises to be this summer's most happening open-air dining and drinking venue.

The whole shebang is a well-earned triumph for Riebel; after years of working for others, having an ownership stake clearly suits him and his prodigious talents. His success can only inspire other chefs who are laboring to convert their dreams into reality.

If their results achieve anything approaching the Butcher & the Boar, then all this diner can ask is, "What are you waiting for?"

Follow Rick Nelson on Twitter: @ricknelsonstrib

Masu named one of The Best New Sushi Restaurants in America

Bon Appetit recently posted their list of Top 10 New Sushi Restaurants in America and Shea-designed Masu Sushi & Robata is on the list!  Check out their summary of Masu (new location coming to the Mall of America) and to view the rest of the list, click on the link below.

MASU SUSHI & ROBATA,Minneapolis,
Katsuyuki (Asan) Yamamoto, the man behind beloved Twin Cities Japanese spot Origami, makes the sushi at this colorful, reasonably priced restaurant. Sit at the horseshoe bar for the best service and fast refills of the excellently chosen sake.

What to Order: Yamamoto is just as skilled with rolls (a Firecracker is packed with shrimp tempura, snow crab, cucumber, avocado, and spicy tuna) as he is with sashimi (try the silky scallop); don't overlook his tasty bowl of ramen.

Good to Know: The menu is sustainability focused, with not a single bluefin tuna in sight.

330 East Hennepin Avenue; 612-332-6278; masusushiandrobata.com
To see the full list, Click Here