Soul: Some restaurants got it, some don't. It's a difficult thing to nail down with any certainty—in general, it's easier to talk about the technical execution of various dishes, the benchmarks of the cuisine, and the executive chef's CV. The question of "soul" just kind of lingers in the background.
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There are, of course, rare and spectacular cases where the passion for food and hospitality is so pronounced that you can literally taste it. The newly opened Citizen Cafe of south Minneapolis doesn't merely have a sense of soul; it feels as though the stuff was poured into the building's very foundation. Chef-owner Michael MacKay (formerly of the Sample Room in Northeast) and his wife, Seaen, have hit all the criteria of a great neighborhood restaurant, right out of the gate: reasonable prices, a simple, well-balanced menu with an emphasis on doing things in-house, and a serious dose of passion.
Menu items are simple—pork pot roast ($13), a selection of salads, a Reuben ($8)—but all have some in-house twist, such as house-made corned beef on the Reuben. If there are any shortcuts being taken in the kitchen, four visits weren't enough to detect them.
A shrimp po' boy ($11) was ravishing, composed of a soft bun containing greens; small, delicately fried shrimp; a smoked-tomato aioli; and bits of diced tomato. Generally, the combination of a bun and fried food can be enough to create a carb torpedo, but the eye-opening brightness of the tomato kept the dish surprisingly light.
Another high note on the seafood front was the pan-seared sea scallop starter ($8). It came with a cilantro-cashew pesto butter, and it was hell on earth trying not to inhale the damned thing.
Here and there, technical executions fell short. Some of the pot roast came out fork-tender, but some of it was pork chop-like in texture, and a bit of it was downright gristly. The house-made, country-style pâté ($5) had a surprisingly light consistency and delicate texture, but it overwhelmed diners with its sheer bulk and downright ugliness. Still, nobody gave up and cheaped out on ingredients—the few mistakes were honest.
Citizen Cafe does breakfast, too, and it's an unmitigated delight—from the complimentary berry scone before the meal to the perfectly caramelized onions in the corned-beef hash ($7) to the mellow, slightly chewy pancakes ($6) served with real maple syrup, whipped maple butter, and a little house-made pork sage sausage.
Finally, about dessert: If you live in or even visit New York for any length of time, you soon acquire the native New Yorker's prejudice against cheesecake from anywhere else. Therefore, it's significant to note that Citizen Cafe's cheesecake could actually stand its own against the best in the boroughs. Unlike many of its Midwestern peers, it's not a wall of Lemon Pledge-tainted cream cheese; instead, it's a fluffy, light yet substantial, richly flavored wedge lined with a caramelized brown-sugar crust as delicious as the cake. Not only is it worth going back for, it's worth calling before you go just to make sure it's in stock, and worth begging for if they're out.
"Citizen Cafe for the People" is the motto on the eatery's business cards. Before dining there, you might assume some kind of political or even condescending twist to those words. But if you taste the food, you'll know they're for real.
