Minnesota nice: Minnesota and St. Paul are more than happy to fulfill the needs of vegetarians - includes a guide to vegetarian restaurants, food co-ops and farmers' markets in the area

Vegetarian Times, Jan, 1996 by Drew DeSilver

There's a never-ending rivalry between the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Minneapolis' self-image as a hip, sophisticated urban center clashes with St. Paul's vision of itself as a gritty, unpretentious industrial town. (In truth, both characterizations apply to both cities.)

So intense is this sibling rivalry that sharing is out of the question. As a result, there seems to be two of everything. The University of Minnesota has two campuses, one in each city. There are two daily newspapers and two "alternative" weeklies, each of which can barely conceal its disdain for its rival. Interstate 35, Minnesota's main north-south highway, splits into two roads as it approaches the Twin Cities--one for each city, of course. Each city has a professional baseball team, and these days it can be hard to tell the major-league Minnesota Twins from the minor-league St. Paul Saints (the Saints are the team that has a nun-masseuse giving fans backrubs during games). And natives smugly assure newcomers that there are only two seasons: winter and road construction. (This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, as it leaves out mosquito season.)

Even for vegetarians, the Twin Cities present two faces. At first blush, Minneapolis and St. Paul don't seem particularly veg-friendly. There aren't many all-vegetarian restaurants; the most famous (or infamous) local dishes are tuna hot dish and lutefisk, a jellied fish dish; and the year's biggest social event is the Minnesota State Fair, at which everything, it seems, is breaded and/or deep-fried in lard, including the ice cream.

But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, delicious vegetarian meals ranging from simple to gourmet are in ample supply in the Twin Cities. Even though some of the Cities' most beloved and popular so-called vegetarian restaurants, such as Minneapolis' Cafe Brenda and St. Paul's Old City Cafe, serve fish dishes, and Cafe Brenda even started serving chicken last year, both eateries offer a plethora of excellent vegetarian meals. And nearly every restaurant in the area goes out of its way to offer at least a few inventive vegetarian entrees, not just salads and steamed vegetables.

In case this all seems too good to be true, vegans take note: Minnesota is big dairy country, and trying to find no-meat, no-eggs, no-dairy dishes in mainstream restaurants can be a frustrating and unsatisfying experience. The food in Minnesota still reflects the state's Scandinavian and German heritage.

On the other hand, the Twin Cities have a handful of excellent all-vegetarian restaurants, and most Italian and Asian restaurants either have a couple of vegan entries on the menu or are willing to improvise. Vegans will find plenty to eat at the restaurants in the bustling Hmong and Vietnamese neighborhoods, as well as in the many Afghan, Middle Eastern and east African restaurants.

So why are the Twin Cities so accommodating to vegetarians? After extensive research, I've developed four theories:

1) Minnesota Nice. This expression refers to the fact that Minnesotans go out of their way to be polite and pleasant. When you ask a stranger for directions and she not only gives them to you, but draws a map and offers to lead you to your destination, that's Minnesota Nice. Because of this inclination to be helpful, when vegetarians ask for meatless meals, most restaurateurs try to accommodate them. Even the "New York-style" deli downstairs from my workplace, which made its reputation on sandwiches piled high with corned beef and pastrami, has a big sign outside announcing its garden veggie burger. " That's Minnesota Nice," says Craig Cox, an editor at the Minneapolis-based Utne Reader. "It's a very helping culture. "

2) Co-ops. The Twin Cities were a bastion of the co-op movement in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. At the movement's height in the mid-`70s, there were at least 30 co-ops in the metro area with thousands of members. For many of those members, the co-ops were their first exposure to organic and unprocessed foods, or then-exotic fare like tempeh and basmati rice.

"Food, feminism, phylosophy--they were all bound up in the co-op movement," says Cox, who has detailed the rise and decline of the Twin Cities co-op movement in Storefront Revolution: Food Co-ops and the Counterculture (Rutgers University Press, 1994). "It was a very politically charged environment here in the early `70s, and I suspect the political aspect of food drove people to think about their corporate diets and start looking for alternatives."

Eventually, the co-op movement collapsed in a welter of ideological disputes, infighting and no-holds-barred competition among stores and warehouses; fewer than 20 co-ops survived the "Co-op War" and the ensuing shakeout. But the movement left behind a large number of educated eaters who, even if not vegetarian, demanded enough meatless meals that restaurants realized it was in their be interest to start offering them.

3) Lots of college students. Student tend to be more open to new ways of eating than their elders, and many people first learn about vegetarianism at college. In addition to the U (the University of Minnesota) there are a dozen sizable colleges and universities in Minneapolis and St. Paul alone it's no coincidence that three all-vegetarian restaurants, and one of the original food co-ops, are located on Riverside Avenue between the U's West Bank campus an Augsburg College.