If I haven't already harped on the subject, downtown Minneapolis has been a food desert for the working class since COVID. Since before COVID. First the Arby's shut down, then the Taco John's shut down, then the original Walkin' Dog shut down... The last place for working class stiffs to afford a meal is Dagwood's, which, thankfully, is still jumping but it's a hike for anybody who works at, say, Target Center.
Recently, Two Mixed Up moved into the space formerly occupied by Spice Shack, across from the Ginelli's. Two Mixed Up offers an eighteen dollar burger. I have read and reread their menu. There's no mention as to whether fries or anything are included. Just left to believe that you're going to pay eighteen dollars for a burger when directly across the hall is a six dollar slice of pizza. Open for about two weeks now, I feel like they're only now seeing some consistent business from what I see on my regular walks past them.
A couple days ago opens up PaperBoy, like one building over from Two Mixed Up. The few blurbs I found about the place mention a chef from some restaurants (I can't afford) expanding into the skyway. I pass by it pretty much three or four times a day. The menu is in the window. The prices are not. The menu is online. The prices are not. So, a chef is expanding and not posting their prices. I pretty much knew that my people in the blue tunics with the spray bottles would be priced out of there.
And I was right. My sandwich (which we'll get to), which came with nothing on the side, was priced at fifteen dollars. After tax and tip, it came to nineteen dollars and twenty one cents.
And across the hall is a wildly popular (seriously, line down the hall, we're talking here) sushi joint.
Two Mixed Up is three times the price of Ginelli's.
PaperBoy is twenty five percent more than Takatsu.
The working class are being priced out of eating lunch downtown.
SO! What did I get and how did I justify paying for it?
I tell you, it's like this: I found a stellar deal on a blackface Fender Twin Reverb, anxiously put in the order since I just got my holiday bonus, and woke up to find out the amp had been double-sold and I would be refunded within three days. So now I have this extra money laying about. I could afford a fancy pants sandwich, like the Pistachio Paradise, listed on PaperBoy's menu as:
Mortadella, Stracciatella, Pistachio cream, Pistachio
I mean I also wanted the Fiorentina but how can I pass up this many pistachios?
I get over there and the staff are very friendly. A woman slices open my bread - I preferred the edges, they had just the right amount of chew and crisp to the them - shmears on the pistachio cream and the stracciatella, and hands it off to a dude who takes a wheel of mortadella - good mortadella with the pistachios in it, and fresh slices the meat right onto my sandwich. Meanwhile, dude who rang me up says, "It doesn't come on the sandwich but I recommend a little arugula salad."
I say, "OK," simply to acknowledge his recommendation.
Next thing I know, dude at the meat slicer is piling on some arugula, cracking some black pepper on it, and dressing it with olive oil. The sandwich is then closed up and handed back to our aforementioned beautiful woman who wraps it and I tell her to skip taping it shut. I tell everybody to have a good holiday and find a spot to sit down.
The mortadella was good and fatty and garlicky, the stracciatella was creamy and cooling, the pistachio, eh, could have been bolder, it was still good but I'm looking for a bold flavor with pistachio. (Maybe I've had too many pistachio ice creams. Maybe my brain just goes to that place when I read "pistachio") The arugula salad was actually a great add-on so, in case I'm not whispering into the void and you, a Minneapolitan with twenty dollars you can just burn, read this, remember to ask for a little arugula salad on your Pistachio Paradise. But the real crazed clown terrorizing a city until stopped by a vigilante forced to break his own moral code and... Wait. I think the "K" word violates community guidelines. No, not the K slur, the K word. You know, the word for when Tony used Danny as a vessel to start growling about red rum. Please tell me you get that reference. Blogger has sucked all the fun out of my tangents. Anyway, the bread was... Yeah, that thing I was going to get into. I don't know. The bread was... Um... Let's see, Nic Cage lost his hand, that's a bread thing... Um... I'm trying to say the bread was good. I've been spoiled by some real good bread this year.
The problem is, however, that I'm never going back to this place because I honestly cannot afford twenty dollars for a sandwich, no matter how good it is. I've had a lot of favorite places I've had to stop going to because, well, I can't afford them anymore. It's just hard economic facts.
I have a hard time telling you to give them your money, even if every ingredient was of a particularly high quality. Even if I find myself perfectly full an hour later. Not stuffed, not even just overly full, just full. Satisfied. I don't know, if you find yourself in the skyway with a twenty dollar bill you were otherwise going to blow your nose into, get yourself a treat but there's no way this thing is going to be a regular thing.
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