Are you a city mouse or a country mouse? Having lived alternately huge chunks of my life in both Minneapolis and the boondocks (suburbs to the west), I can easily say: Yes. I am both. I don’t consider myself to be laden with the need to stake a particular claim. I like to run quiet roads in the suburbs and attend bustling block parties in the city. I’m happy to mingle with both the company of frogs in my actual yard and those in attendance at world-class theater in my metropolitan “backyard.”
But people do like to bifurcate, do they not? I hear it all the time: “There’s nowhere to eat in the suburbs.” Which is not true, for most of them. It’s also not true that the geographic donut surrounding the metro is one flavor—suburbs flavor (a jab often followed by the next: “It tastes spicy like ketchup”). Fine, yes, the city has more thrilling places and fewer Houlihan’s than the subs. Or at least this used to be true.
Just ask Tony Donatell, who’s been out there in the ring all along, topping his Old Fashioneds with smoke spheres and cooking over live fire in Apple Valley. His Volstead House speakeasy in Eagan opened weeks before the Volstead’s Emporium speakeasy in LynLake. From his Whiskey Inferno in Savage to Tequila Butcher in Chanhappenin’, he’s an independent restaurateur putting design-forward eateries on mall pads and reforming Applebee’s like none other. And now he’s wooed Revival’s Thomas Boehmer to join his team as culinary director…