Provision Community Restaurant: Now Open – Minneapolis, MN

Provision Community Restaurant: Now Open – Minneapolis, MN

A new pay-if-you-can restaurant is open in Uptown.

The former Salty Tart bakery on Harriet is being put to good use. Provision Community Restaurant is now open in the space. After more than 2 years in the making, the eatery will serve its first meals, without presenting a single check.

Anna Wienke has worked almost every position in the restaurant industry, and is the driving force behind this project. This restaurant will feed you dinner and weekend breakfast, and if you can pay for it, great … if you can’t, also great.

Anna is following the lead of the One World Everybody Eats organization, which is a non-profit dedicated to supporting the pay-what-you-can restaurant model as a way to build community and fight hunger. They have over 50 independent cafes in their network around the world.

“This is about creating a space for the community to come and get nourished, whether that be with healthy food or human interaction.” This isn’t a just a soup kitchen that feeds the homeless, though anyone is welcome, there’s no checking of ID’s or proof of hardship needed. It’s for anyone who might be down on their luck, need a good meal, or some human connection to break out of isolation. “I would see these people at St. Stephen’s who would go to work all day, then come back to the shelter because they had nowhere to go. Or the elderly lady in line at Target who seems to talk your ear off because she’s alone at home, this is a place where they can have a break, can sit down to a meal with others, and not have to worry about anything.” Everything is served family style and all of the 30 seats are at communal tables. More…

BY STEPHANIE MARCH

MSPMAG.COM

One Croissant at a Time: Black Walnut Bakery – Minneapolis, MN

One Croissant at a Time: Black Walnut Bakery – Minneapolis, MN

After years of wholesale baking, the maker of the Kouign-amann to end all Kouign-amanns is finally getting her brick-and-mortar location.Until now, Black Walnut’s been supplying all five Spyhouse locations and One On One Bicycle Studio in the North Loop with wholesale baked goods. But, quoting ourselves: “When the melt-in-your-mouth pain au chocolat inevitably helps Botcher land a standalone home, you can bet there will be a line out the door every damn day. We’ll be at the front of it.”

And would you look at that! Mere months later, Botcher — who started selling her superlative pastries at the Minneapolis Farmers Market in 2013 — has found herself a permanent place in Uptown.

According to the Strib, Black Walnut’s brick-and-mortar shop will open up in a retail-slash-residential-slash-office complex at the corner of Hennepin Avenue and 32nd Street. “It’s the perfect location,” Botcher says. “Uptown could use a good bakery, to be honest.”

In addition to the croissants and scones you know and love, Botcher’s move from communal kitchen to a store of her own will allow her to have cakes and pies, and she tells the Strib there’s “a lot of R&D in the works.”

When we profiled the “powerhouse” baker earlier this year, we noted that she’s a damn hustler, a one-woman show for the majority of her career who works just about every day but Christmas. “I’ve always wanted to have my own business, and it’s been a path that I’ve been on for a long time,” she said then. (So perhaps our prediction that she’d soon open a shop for herself wasn’t Nostradamus-like after all.)

Until then, remember: Those cookies and croissants are available daily at Spyhouse and One On One.

 

STARTRIBUNE.COM

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