Minneapolis’ Cold Comforts

MINNEAPOLIS -- It was like Las Vegas without gambling; New Orleans without gumbo; San Francisco without cable cars. December in Minneapolis without snow?

Thanks to some weather weirdness, our December trip to Minnesota lacked the vital ingredient. Ultimately that didn’t last, and by late last month the Great Cosmic Auditor had balanced the meteorological books. The nighttime temperatures were falling below zero, and snow flurries were in the air. But we were gone by then.

Minnesota is that coffeepot-shaped state at the top of the Mississippi River. For people like me, born and raised in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and 100,000 ice-fishing houses, crummy weather defines who we are. Today’s Minneapolis has an international image of Scandinavian-American efficiency and sometimes even hipness. But when I left there in 1971 and would tell people where I came from, I’d get a stare, followed by, “Gets cold up there, I bet.”

Ya, sure. We are Minnesotans: the Cold, the Proud.

We congratulate ourselves, believing that frigid, snowy weather builds character. Snow is part of our identity, like the Mississippi River that slices through Minneapolis, jokes about the state legislature, Gov. Jesse Ventura and tuna-noodle casserole in the Lutheran church basement.

What if you don’t do cold? Well, confidentially, lots of Minneapolitans don’t either. But if they can’t pack up the RV and stay in Tucson until the spring thaw, they find lots of fun things to do in Minneapolis’ great indoors.

When my wife, Janice, and I looked out the window of our descending airplane and saw grassy lawns and unfrozen lakes on a December afternoon, we panicked. How would we cope without adversity?

We managed. We revisited all those Minneapolis delights that are comfortably under roof. The cross-country skiing, ice fishing and all of Minnesota’s other outdoor winter sports would have to wait for another visit.

A favorite indoor refuge is the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, just a snowball’s throw from downtown. Its brochure claims, in language readily understood by us farm kids, that it has eight acres of galleries. In those indoor fields the seeds of art appreciation germinate and are nurtured. It’s where I saw my first Van Gogh (his “Olive Trees”) and Cezanne (his “Chestnut Trees”).

One of the most beautiful images we could see within a frame, however, was the view through the institute’s north windows toward downtown Minneapolis. Particularly after winter’s 4:30 p.m. sunset, Minneapolis is a rich picture. The office towers are lighted, and the steamy plumes from their heating plants snake across the sky.

The IDS Center, designed by Philip Johnson, John Burgee and Ed Baker, is the tallest building in the group, but the I.M. Pei US Bank Place is the most striking, although from some angles it resembles a giant electric pepper mill. Cesar Pelli’s Norwest Center shows sturdy grace.

We also made our annual pilgrimage to the Walker Art Center. There has been a Walker for 100 years, although its present structure dates only to 1971. On the western edge of downtown, the Walker is probably best known for Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s giant, whimsical spoon and maraschino cherry (“Spoonbridge and Cherry”) in its adjacent sculpture garden.

Inside, its contemporary contents constantly challenge one’s assumptions of what art is or was, and cross boundaries between visual and performing arts. It is the kind of place where works of art might incorporate a refrigeration unit (by Pier Paolo Calzolari) that keeps a coat of frost on the work’s metal surface or a head of lettuce (by Giovanni Anselmo) that decomposes, both part of an exhibit called “Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972.” The only thing I can say with certainty about the Walker is that by the time you go there, it will be different.

If it all seems a bit heady, I have just the place for you. Across the Mississippi by St. Anthony Falls, the 25-foot natural hydraulic engine that gave birth to Minneapolis as a logging and milling town in the mid-19th century, is the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. Its curators have assembled dozens of gizmos, many of them seized by the Food and Drug Administration, that promised to enlarge whatever was too small, reduce whatever was too big or otherwise cure whatever ailed you, from heart disease to snakebite. From the bloodletting devices of the 1790s to the “immortality rings” of last year, every device there but one is a failure.

The exception is a shoe store X-ray machine that performed all too well in irradiating kids’ feet. A highlight in every “modern” shoe store of the 1950s, it was intended to show whether a child’s foot fit appropriately into the shoes Mom and Dad had selected. Unfortunately, it did so with a fluoroscope, and, while it was fun to see the tot’s toes wiggling inside back-to-school oxfords, the kid was also getting a harmful dose of X-rays.

I sat under the hood of the phrenology machine and had my personality assessed. Phrenology is the science of determining a person’s character from the lumps and bumps on his head. From the shape of mine the mechanized doctor of phrenology determined that I am deficient in “acquisitiveness,” meaning, I guess, that I should shop more.

We were in the right place. Shopping malls seem so essential to American life that one forgets that they’ve been with us less than 50 years. It was in 1956, in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, that Southdale Center, the country’s first indoor shopping mall, began life. Minnesota weather. Indoor shopping. It’s hard to imagine a more natural fit.

Minneapolis (or to be more specific, its southern suburb, Bloomington) also is the home of the largest indoor shopping mall in the nation. Southdale is still active, but the 4.2-million-square-foot Mall of America is a tourist destination in its own right. It claims to get 43 million visitors annually--more than Disney World, Graceland and the Grand Canyon combined. By comparison, the 3-million-square-foot South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa gets 20 million visitors a year.

The mall seems to have at least one example of every national chain (Nordstrom, United Colors of Benetton, the Sharper Image), plus some uniquely local shops (Lake Wobegon USA, Al’s Farm Toys)--in total more than 500 stores. And it has an amusement park, Camp Snoopy, which boasts a roller coaster, a waterfall ride and 400 live trees, all indoors. As some indication of the size of the mall, Camp Snoopy’s seven acres accounts for only 10% of the mall’s indoor area.

Janice and I strolled along this indoor Main Street, getting lost.

Downtown Minneapolis is turning into a big mall itself. One may work, shop, dine, go to Mass at St. Olaf Roman Catholic Church, attend a Minnesota Timberwolves pro basketball game at Target Center and return to one’s condo without ever setting foot outside.

Minneapolis has linked its major downtown buildings through what is now a five-mile network of elevated, glass-enclosed walkways at the second-floor level. Whenever a new building is erected in the downtown, it is virtually assured that it will be connected to others. Shopping downtown in winter no longer requires us to don mittens, boots, scarf and big furry hat, dash through the slush to the store on the other side of the street, and then take everything back off lest we die of heatstroke.

Instead, Janice and I placidly crossed above the traffic, enjoying the 70-degree indoor climate. Neiman-Marcus, Saks, Marshall Field’s and hundreds of small shops all may be visited without exposure to the elements. It was so easy I worried that we hadn’t really earned any bargains we might find.

Snow or not, December in Minnesota prompts some kind of hibernation instinct to add a layer of fat, so I insisted we go to Al’s Breakfast, a diner on the northern edge of the huge University of Minnesota East Bank Minneapolis campus. It serves only breakfast and only to 14 fortunate diners at a time.

It began life in an alley 50 years ago as a slapped-together shed hardly bigger than a modest ice-fishing house. But beginning at 9 a.m. Sundays, 14 people will be sitting on the stools at its worn counter, 14 more will be waiting to pounce on the first opening, and still more will be standing in a line that spills out the front door and down the sidewalk.

Ostensibly, the attractions are the blueberry pancakes or the bacon waffle, but we went there for the ambience. As usual, Al’s was filled with neighborhood folks, musicians, permanent grad students and anyone who likes breakfast dishes whose names are spelled without a “Mc” in front of them.

Doug Grina, the man behind the smoke and the spattering fat at the grill, traded insults with the customers, the waiters and the unseen omelet chef in the kitchen somewhere in the back. It’s a tradition that started with Al Bergstrom, for 23 years the owner and wisecracking grill captain. Janice and I have been going to Al’s since grad school days, years ago. As usual, we ate the fabled blueberry-walnut pancakes (“wally blues”) and corned beef hash with poached eggs. We have to try hard to spend $15 there for the two of us--and we’re good tippers. On the other end of the dining scale, downtown Minneapolis has restaurants where the ambience and cooking talent match the wallet-lightening prices on the menu. We ate that evening at D’Amico Cucina in Butler Square, a refurbished warehouse near the Target Center with a vast beamed atrium.

Enjoying a succession of exquisite Italian-inspired dishes from the chef’s tasting menu--including sea bass delicately cooked in duck fat, lobster ravioli and little beefsteaks with marrow flan--we momentarily forgot that we were in the land of tuna-noodle surprise.

But a few blocks away in the IDS Center is Aquavit, a nouvelle Swedish-American restaurant with a chef who comes from Ethiopia by way of Goteborg, Sweden. Marcus Samuelsson has received a host of accolades, including the James Beard Foundation’s highest “Rising Star Chef” honors in 1999. There is no tuna-noodle surprise on Samuelsson’s menu either, but there is herring, in various modes and marinades. The kitchen staff has a deft touch with, for example, tandoori smoked salmon and wasabi creme fraiche, but really they show what can be done with a fish that usually gets no respect.

Despite such encroachments from foreign cuisines and superstar chefs, it remains possible to eat a traditional, who-cares-about-cholesterol meal in the city. To get a taste of Minneapolis as it was 50 years ago, we went the next night to Murray’s on 6th Street. The home of the “Silver Butterknife” steak, so named because of its tenderness, Murray’s looks like it probably did the night it opened in 1946. The draperies and the chandeliers made me think we were on the set of a 1940s movie. I was pleased to see that Murray’s has changed only slightly.

That butterknife steak (a strip sirloin built for two) was still perfection and huge: We barely touched the au gratin potatoes that came with it. The garlic toast was buttery, hot and crisp; the slab of raspberry pie was as great as ever.

Finally, even though the weather was too nice for it, we continued a personal tradition. Before our son was born, Janice and I used to walk or bike along the banks of the Mississippi. Those are still the best ways to see the river if you want a relaxed view of the Father of Waters while getting an authentic nip at your nose, but our flight would be departing soon, so we drove.

The water freezes in winter, and the river then resembles a broad white ribbon. Janice and I used to talk here of our future. Jobs and colleges and other things that seemed important at the time took us from Minneapolis. I sometimes comment wistfully about the city to colleagues who respond, “It’s so cold and snowy there.”

And now I think, sometimes. But not if you can always stay inside.

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Guidebook: Meeting Minneapolis

Getting there: From LAX, Northwest Airlines flies nonstop to Minneapolis. Delta, United, American, America West and Continental have connecting service with a change of planes. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $198.

Where to stay: The Minneapolis area has dozens of major chain hotels, but here are two out-of-the-ordinary lodgings:

Nicollet Island Inn, 95 Merriam St., Minneapolis; (612) 331-

1800, fax (612) 331-6528, www.nicolletislandinn.com, $135-$170. The 24 rooms of the inn, which is on an island in the Mississippi near St. Anthony Falls, are individually decorated.

Hotel Sofitel, 5601 W. 78th St., Bloomington; (800) 876-6303 or (952) 835-1900, fax (952) 835-2696, www.sofitel.com, $179 and up, but check for lower promotional rates. A 282-room, European-style hotel near the Mall of America and the airport.

Where to eat: Reservations necessary for all but Al’s.

Aquavit, IDS Center, 80 S. 8th St., Minneapolis, (612) 343-3333. American with Scandinavian influence. Entrees $22-$29; try the $65 tasting menu or $20 fixed price lunch.

D’Amico Cucina, Butler Square, 100 N. 6th St., Minneapolis, (612) 338-2401. Italian inspired. Entrees $23-$32; tasting menu $65. Dinner only; closed Sundays.

Murray’s, 26 S. 6th St., Minneapolis; (612) 339-0909. Home of the Silver Butterknife Steak (a double New York sirloin), $78 for two. Lunch and dinner daily.

Al’s Breakfast, 413 14th Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; (612) 331-9991. 6 a.m.-1 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sundays. Typical breakfast is $8.

For more information: Greater Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Assn., 33 S. 6th St., Suite 4000, Minneapolis, MN 55402; (888)-676-MPLS (6757), fax (612) 335-5841, www.minneapolis.org.

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Jerry Haines is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.