Ten Best Breakfasts in the Twin Cities

Nutritionists and physicians often say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Americans don’t always heed this counsel, especially if they regard the breakfast menu uninteresting and not very tasty, AND they are in a hurry to get to work. But we do have some excellent breakfast dining rooms here, with delicious fare. Here’s my list of the ten best daily breakfasts. (I will post a separate list of best weekend brunches.)

WILDE ROAST CAFE - 518 Hennepin Avenue East (Minneapolis) 612-331-4544

This attractively decorated and warm space has, in addition to coffee/espresso drinks, fine teas, and extravagant hot chocolates, a full breakfast menu including fluffy omelets, corn meal and buckwheat pancakes, waffles, “creme brule” French toast, eggs Benedict, and made-to-order oatmeal. There are also a few unusual items such as a breakfast “burro” tortilla and a breakfast pizza. A terrific breakfast special for $3.00 is available until 9 a.m. every day. The service here is especially friendly and helpful. This cafe has its own free parking lot.

VICTOR’S CAFE - 3756 Grand Avenue South(Minneapolis) 612-827-8948

Victor’s Cafe offers an excellent Cuban-style breakfast in a funky Old-Havana-style series of rooms. The mango pancakes are sublime, and many of the traditional Caribbean specialties are outstanding. It’s noisy, crowded, but fun to eat here. Friendly service, and the kitschy pictorial decor recreating pre-Castro Cuba is worth the trip alone. Prices in this South Minneapolis diner are quite reasonable. Lots of free parking on the street.

BLACK SHEEP CAFE - 705 Southview Boulevard (South St. Paul) 651-554-0155

This comfortable space and excellent coffeehouse also offers outstanding and made-on-the premises breakfasts that include steel-cut organic oatmeal, egg dishes, a selection of morning baked goods and fine teas. The coffee selection and service is world-class. It's a bit of a trek to South St. Paul, but relatively easy to
get to via the thruways. Lots of free parking in their own lot and on the street.

MANNY’S [Hotel W] - 9th and Marquette Avenues (Minneapolis) 612-339-9900

This is Minneapolis’ power breakfast dining room which serves the Hotel W where it is located. It is also the Twin Cities best steak house at night. Being the only restaurant in the hotel, it must serve breakfast (something Manny’s did not do at its former location). But making a gem out of necessity, the kitchen serves a first-rate breakfast steak, short ribs eggs Benedict (a cardiologist should call at your table if you order this delicious version of the classic dish), outrageously wonderful hash browns, fresh squeezed orange juice (promptly refilled by your waitperson) and many other breakfast specialties. Expensive, but large portions and exceptional service. Usual downtown parking problems, but easy to get to if you walk there from your office.

GOOD DAY CAFE - 5410 Wayzata Boulevard (Golden Valley) 763-544-0205

This was designed as a breakfast restaurant (it also serves lunch) next to The Metropolitan, and has a very large selection of traditional breakfast dishes, generously served and well-prepared. The dining room is large and noisy, but this is an excellent and convenient place for breakfast if you are going downtown for work from the western suburbs. A large dining room is frequently full, a bit noisy, but the prices are reasonable. Lots of free parking in its own lot just off Highway 394.

PORTER & FRYE [Hotel Ivy] - 1115 2nd Avenue South (Minneapolis) 612-353-3500

Another upscale hotel fine dining room which must serve breakfast for its guests, and has made its breakfast menu into something special. This is a chef-driven breakfast, a bit pricey as might be expected, but unusual and very delicious dishes, including the best and richest oatmeal in town, home-made breakfast baked goods, and a number of special items. Exceptional fine tea selection. Located close to Orchestra Hall and the Minneapolis Convention Center, there is valet parking, downtown meters, or walk from your office.

CHEZ COLETTE/MARKET KIOSK [Hotel Sofitel] - 5601 W. 78th Street (Bloomington) 952-835-199

The hotel serves distinctive and delicious (if pricey) French-styled breakfasts in its main dining room, but adjoining this large main dining space is a small espresso bar and pastry kiosk (offering take-out) with tables and chairs. (You can also take your food to nearby outdoor cafe seating.) Here you can have an espresso drink, regular coffee or fine tea with a very large selection of delicious brioches, French pastries and baked goods at a very reasonable price. I don’t know if it’s worth a special trip to the 494 strip, but if you’re in the neighborhood, the kiosk is a great place for a quick, civilized and tasty small breakfast. Free parking in the hotel lot.

THE NORMANDY KITCHEN [Normandy Inn] - 405 S. 8th Street (Minneapolis) (612) 370-1400

This was once the most important place for breakfast in Minneapolis (in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s), and the grandson of the man who opened it has just recreated it with a first-class chef and an ambitious menu. Specialties include scrambled eggs with smoked trout, banana French toast, yogurt parfait with granola and berries, baked oatmeal with fresh fruit and nuts, and their own pecan coffee cake. It’s a hotel dining room, and pricey, but a delicious and comfortable place to start the day with business associates or friends. Lots of inexpensive meter parking nearby, or a for-pay hotel lot.

LOBBY BAR “LB” (Hotel Minneapolis) - 215 S. 4th Street (Minneapolis) 612-340-2000

Perhaps the best of the daily breakfast buffets in town, this lobby restaurant (not to be confused with the large adjoining Restaurant Max that serves lunch and dinner) offers a substantial buffet every weekday, and it includes an omelet and waffle bar, plus most of the breakfast specialties, including juices, fresh fruit, hot and cold cereals, beverages, and Danish pastries. It’s $15 a head, but if you have a mammoth appetite in the morning (and might want to skip lunch), this is the place. Until downtown street construction is completed, however, it may be difficult to get here except by foot.

DAY BY DAY CAFE - 477 W. 7th Street (St. Paul) 651-227-0654

A bit out of the way, but well worth regular visits is this rustic and friendly restaurant serving hearty breakfasts with a large number of choices. If you can get there between 6 and 7 a.m., a very early bird special includes two eggs, hashbrowns, bacon or sausage and toast for $4.75. After 7 a.m., the same meal is $6.95. Home-made oatmeal with a fresh-made bakery item and juice is only $7.50. There is a variety of egg dishes, pancakes, omelets, cereals, fresh fruit, baked goods,and even a breakfast pork chop or 6-ounce choice steak. The indoor rooms are unpretentiously attractive, but the outdoor dining patio is intimate and splendid. Free parking in front of the restaurant.

Cheap Marble

I was telling my friend Tony Blankley about the depressed state of the stock market these days, and my belief that some stocks, already “bargains,” will be unprecedented investment opportunities when the economy does turn around at some unspecified in the (far?) future.

“There was a lot of cheap marble available after Rome fell," Tony replied with his usual wry wit.

“Yes,” I then said to Tony, “ but many years later, your former countryman Lord Elgin (and many others from several other countries) found that “cheap” marble so valuable they acquired as much as they could and carted it back to their home countries.”

Each of us has a point.

Tony is right that, no matter how high the current dividend and how low the current earnings per share, the “real” value of a stock investment made today depends on the dividend being maintained, and the prospects of the company making profits ahead.

I am reminded of my first class in an economics course I took at the Wharton School of Economics many years ago. The professor, who had also written the course book we used, began the class by saying, “You’re going to hear and read a lot about finance and investments in the next few years here, but I am going to tell you something in one sentence that you should always remember.”

We all held our breaths.

He then said: “The price of a stock is the anticipation of future earnings.”

As I remember, many of us students looked at each other with anticlimactic frowns, disappointed that some arcane and mysterious truth had not been given to us.

And yet here I am, many decades later, repeating his words with the experience of not a little investment of my own that has borne them out over the years, and made them particularly appropriate just now.

My point is that there are some stocks out there paying huge dividends (12% or more), selling at very low earnings per share multiples (five times earnings or less), AND holding cash that is near (or even in excess) of their current capitalization (or total value of the stock). How can you go wrong with a stock like that?

Tony’s point is that you could go wrong if our current economic straits don’t improve because the current “stimulus” and “bailout” strategies being legislated by the Congress at the urging of the Obama administration don’t work. (I for one don’t think they can.) Then earnings would fall, dividends would be lowered or eliminated, and cash would be devalued by accompanying inflation. (Inflation happens when the government prints lots of money to pay for stimulus projects and to bail out banks, failed investors and industries.)

There is a lot of neo-socialist rhetorical nonsense going around these days asserting that the current crisis demonstrates that capitalism has failed. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it was the free market which finally blew the whistle on the phony mortgage banking system and caused it to crash. It was not capitalism that collapsed, it was a corrupted banking system that employed unintelligible instruments such as derivatives poorly understood by most of those who managed and invested in them; and enabled a few scoundrels and charlatans to steal money from trusting investors. Incompetence, lack of diligence and greed has abounded, but it was not a whistleblower who broke the news to the public, it was the free market system itself through the stock market and other institutions which did so.

Mr. Harry Markopolous of Erie, Pennsylvania did warn about the Madoff fraud years in advance, but no one with power over the stock market (in both the Clinton and Bush administrations) paid any attention to him. It was only after the stock market declined and individual investors needed cash that the fake scheme was revealed. (Similar but smaller frauds are now being revealed worldwide.) Many “whistleblowers” (and even some elected officials) warned for years that Fannie Mae loans were unsound, but it took the stock market correction and the economic downturn to demonstrate in concrete terms that this was so.

While we can’t be critical enough of the incompetent government, banking and investment bureaucrats who allowed the current state of affairs to happen, we cannot avoid placing a fair and proper responsibility in the current crisis on the public at large which took easy money, reckless credit and cheap promises uncritically and at face value.

A free market has no emotions. The failures and emotions are supplied by individuals, the small number in charge and the many who invest. Our economy is still the most vital in the world, and our system is the best yet devised. We must fix its shortcomings and defects, punish wrongdoers, and protect the public as best we can. I think the Obama administration wants to do the right thing and help people, but the current stimulus and bailouts strategies actually make the economic crisis worse. The free market is already telling us this, and eventually the president and the Congress will have to listen to it.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of cheap marble around. I’m skeptical about the short term, but my inherent optimism tells me a time for positive new investment and growth will return. Meanwhile, caution and skepticism needs to replace blind trust if the system which brought us to prosperity is allowed to repair and revive itself.

C.P.A.C. Start to Finish

The recently-concluded Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC began brilliantly and ended with a thud. The organizers deserve the credit for the former, but have only themselves to blame for the latter.

I attended all three days, and heard many of the speeches. A distinguished number of conservative leaders, commentators and thinkers were invited to come and to speak. Much of the discussion was upbeat, inspired by recent expressions of voters at the polls, a trend which gives Republicans and conservatives considerable optimism for the upcoming national elections in 2010 and 2012.

One of my favorite parts of CPAC is the large exhibition hall where conservative groups, institutions and publications reach out to the thousands of conservatives attendees (most of whom are under 30) with books, tapes, brochures, pamphlets, buttons, bumper stickers, other souvenirs and personal interaction to advance their causes and products.

Apparently, the Conservative Union (which funds and produces CPAC) has been applying less and less control of this part of the program. I have attended CPAC three times now (but not last year), and I have noticed more and more fringe groups exhibiting. I am not speaking of the Tea Party and its supporters which I consider a genuine grass roots conservative movement, and whether you agree with it or not, deserving of praise for their efforts. On the other hand, the movement led by Congressman Ron Paul, for example, has actively insinuated itself into the Republican Party for several years now. This is, at base, a libertarian movement which goes over the deep end in its ideas about foreign policy. Ron Paul, who once was the Libertarian Party's candidate for president, won a congressional seat as a Republican. Many thoughtful and sincere libertarians feel that Mr. Paul distorts many true libertarian ideas. Other groups and individuals exhibiting at CPAC expressed extreme views, many of them obsessed by conspiratorial theories and whacked out ideas.

The Ron Paulites and the others, of course, have every right to hold their views, speak their minds, and to organize lawfully as a political force. Every presidential election year in New Hampshire and Iowa, "weird" candidates show up running for president. It IS a free country, and they have the right to do so. But the rest of us have every right to regard their ideas as wrong headed and extreme.

During most of the three days of CPAC, many brilliant and inspirational speakers addressed the serious issues of our time, offering creative ideas and thoughtful strategies for fixing the nation's serious problems. They were all conservatives, although some disagreed with other conservative viewpoints. Potential presidential candidates also spoke, and gave attendees and those watching across the nation by television a glimpse of their priorities and personalities.

At the very end, however, CPAC held a presidential straw poll. Less than a third of those who attended the conference voted, and less than ten per cent of those who attended voted for the straw poll winner, Ron Paul.

Liberal opponents of conservatism, and Democrats, understandably seized on this poll result to suggest that CPAC was an out-of-the-mainstream extremist event. Who can blame them for doing so? I think the Conservative Union and CPAC organizers should think long and hard about discontinuing the straw poll in future conferences. If they do not, they will likely again face what happened this year, namely that their hard work will be remembered by an inconsequential
event that will be magnified and exaggerated, and the accomplishments of their conference will be lost in the public perception as a result.

A Last Chance to Reform Debate Format

Two years ago, we put forward a reform proposal for the presidential debates in the 2008 campaign.

Rather than just offer an abstract plan, we decided to present a real format by scheduling a dialogue that included Speaker Gingrich and former New York Governor Mario Cuomo at the Cooper Union in New York City with the late Tim Russert as the moderator. We chose Cooper Union because it had been the site of Abraham Lincoln's great speech that probably made him president, as well as the site of many important speeches and debates since it was built in 1858, and continues to be so to the present day.

There is no doubt that the American public and voters are very interested in this year's presidential and national elections.

A number of haphazard debates were held during the extended primary season which concluded in early June. These debates, without a cogent and effective format, were mostly unsatisfactory, even as they were tuned in by large number of voters eager to learn about the candidates and their positions on the critical issues of our day. But the result, surveying the published and other public assessment of these debates, was that the public who tuned in were mostly turned off.

As we approach the final phase of the presidential election, with the nominee of each party known, and the traditional nationally-televised series of debates of the presidential and vice presidential candidates now being organized by the formal debate commission, we renew our call for a new debate format. There is not a lot of time to do this.

The bad news is that the commission, meaning well, is beset by inertia and lack of of willingness to try something genuinely new.. To change the format would require not only new ideas, but the consent and enthusiasm of the candidates themselves. And it is not only the commission which is overly cautious, but the campaign organizations themselves which are inherently unwilling to take any risks with the entire electorate watching.

The good news is that both the putative nominees, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama, are political figures who have embraced the unconventional in their successful campaigns so far, and have personally practiced and advocated the general format we are supporting.

Senator McCain has made the "town hall" format his trademark, and Senator Obama has repeatedly said he favors a "Lincoln-Douglas debate" format. Although these formats have some differences, they more importantly share the characteristic of an open dialogue or discussion of the issues, open in that the format is not overwhelmed by rules, conditions, limits and caveats, all of which have increasingly diminished the presidential debates of the past, and made them less and less useful to voters (and to the candidates themselves).

The key to any change in the debate format is the willingness of the candidates to recognize that an open format is in their interest, and serves their communication purposes. Senators McCain and Obama each have their own strengths, and we think an open format, negotiated by the two campaigns, offers each a great opportunity in the political competition which will conclude in November.

The number of debates, their location, the kind of live audience, all are open to that negotiation. Tim Russert became a champion of an open format demonstrated by the 2007 Cuomo-Gingrich dialogue at Cooper Union when he served as moderator of it. He played his role perfectly, keeping the conversation moving and orderly, but remaining in the background and allowing the dialogue to bloom on its merits.

Senator Obama has now accepted three conventional debates as proposed by the commission, but left open the possibility of additional debates in a "Lincoln-Douglas" format. Senator McCain has not yet agreed to any debate format, not to a specific number of debates. There is still time, then, to negotiate at least one or more debates in a new format.

What greater tribute to Tim Russert's memory could there be than to reform the present debate system for the 2008 campaign ahead (as he advocated), and give American voters an opportunity to watch and hear the candidates in a genuinely competitive format as the critical decison is made to choose out next president?

-Speaker Newt Gingrich & Barry Casselman

__________________________________________________

-This Op-Ed was first published in Real Clear Politics on August 10, 2008.

Minneapolis' Bridge to Somewhere

Almost everyone remembers the bridge that collapsed a year ago in Minneapolis. It was the number one story in much of the world for a few days, and a major political story for weeks and months afterwards in the U.S.

Like most events of this kind, public interest in this story faded, to be replaced by other national and international disasters, events and controversies.

I have not been able to forget it, however, because I live only three blocks from where the I-35 bridge once stood, a bridge I had used several times a day for years, and a bridge I would want to be replaced as soon as possible to avoid a severe long-term dislocation of my ability, and the ability of hundreds of thousands of other Minnesotans, to move about this large metropolitan area.

Today, and for the past several months, workers have been toiling around the clock to build the new bridge. Much of this new bridge is now visible, with only the section in the middle, the part over the Mississippi River, not yet constructed and in place. But even that final part should begin to be seen soon.

When the bridge collapsed, many opinions were expressed about how it happened, and how its replacement should be built. The conservative Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty and his administration were attacked for neglecting the problem by local Democrats, especially those in the legislature and who control both houses of that legislature. The public, however, was cheered by the generally quick and professional response by the governor, other state and local officials of both parties, and the federal government which pledged to pay for a new bridge.

Some disagreement about the design of the new bridge arose, particularly about whether to spend an additional $50 million to make the new bridge capable of having a future light rail train cross it in addition to automobile traffic. At the same time, Democrats also advocated raising state gasoline taxes to pay for other infrastructure repair. At first, Governor Pawlenty agreed to these tax increases, but others joined the debate, suggesting that the traditional notion of raising taxes, put forward in the emotions of the disaster, were not necessarily wise. Even Newt Gingrich wrote an op ed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press calling for the governor to eschew new taxes, and to employ the private sector to build the replacement bridge promptly, using cash incentives for getting the job done ahead of deadlines. I also wrote an op ed on
these pages suggesting that higher taxes was not the priority, but that getting the bridge replaced was. I even suggested in that op ed that if the bridge design and contract process were done quickly and well, it might be possible to have the new bridge open in time for the Republican National Convention which will take place in St. Paul the first week of September, 2008. This latter point was received with some skepticism if not derision because it was felt by many that such a large project could not be finished in such short a time.

From my close vantage point I can report, however, the such a target date is now not out of the question. The company overseeing the bridge construction was given significant incentives to finish the job ahead of schedule,and the current target date is the middle of September, only about two weeks after the convention begins. It is at least reasonably possible that construction work could pick up those two weeks.

A lot of persons were responsible for this. Not only Governor Pawlenty but local and state officials streamlined the process after it threatened to bog down in recriminations and elaborate new bridge proposals. Both Democratic U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and Republican U.S. Senator Norm Coleman, and their staffs, worked closely with each other to speed up federal funding. President Bush and the Democratic Congress responded quickly and generously.

This is the way public projects can work well. Yes, it takes money, sometimes lots of it, to respond promptly and and effectively, but unless the contractural arrangements allow for incentives for better-than-expected results, and penalties for results that fail to meet quality and deadlines, the market place cannot do the job the public expects and deserves.

Public officials of both parties, from the president of the United States to the mayor of Minneapolis, whose job it was to get the bridge replaced quickly did effectively use the business market place and the cooperation of organized labor, and the result is one more, but lately too rare, example of how things can work best, and with accountability.

We can argue about how much is necessary to spend on public works, and how we pay for them, but there always will be those projects almost everyone will agree need to be done. Unlike that now-cancelled "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska, we are going to have a bridge to somewhere in Minneapolis soon.

______________________________________________________

-This article first appeared in The Washington Times on May 23, 2008.