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Photo by Robb Long
Common Roots owner Danny Schwartzman
By Carla Waldemar
Common Roots owner Danny Schwartzman knows what it takes to make a great bagel There are bagels for the masses — those fluffy circlets favored by those who like their coffee pale as their wintry skin — and then there are Danny’s bagels. Danny Schwartzman’s are the culinary Loreleis of the trade, luring innocent patrons of the chain establishments into the deep weeds of New York-style bageldom. They’re celebrated at his Lyn-Lake café-cum-community center called Common Roots. These burly babes, my friends, work magic on your diet. They provide calorie counts in minus numbers if you consider the dental aerobics and marathon of palate sensations every workout provides. They’re the kind an existential poet would ponder — if we had any such deep thinkers in South Minneapolis: beautiful in their bumpy, irregular, lightly browned surface and a physical pleasure to bite into with a firm, sturdy, stiff-upper-lip-type crust that yields to a soft and pliant — dare we say voluptuous? — interior.
That’s the kind of New York bagel Danny grew up with on the East Coast. “My everyday breakfast,” he says. After graduating from Macalester College, where he was a grass-roots organizer, he was faced, he says, with the customary dilemma of “What do I do with my life? Time to get serious.”
Or not. Why not put those collegiate, ivory-tower ideals into practice and have fun at the same time? Why not open a café that proffers what’s good for one’s body, for local farmers, and for the environment, while serving as a gathering place for community groups? The place is also a sounding board for some of those loco-vendors to host sampling events, such as Organic Valley Co-op, which supplies the cream cheese that flows from those bagel slices.
The rounds are fabricated the time-blessed, traditional way — boiled, then baked (and that’s baked daily, from scratch), utilizing Swany White Flour Mills’ product from Freeport, Minn., a pinch of malt from Wisconsin, our own terrific local water and Ames honey. Only the salt and yeast make a longer journey.
Why are these beauts the best around? Says Danny, “The biggest thing is, they’re made fresh every day, with no preservatives or additives — no long words on the ingredient list. Beyond that, it’s not very complicated. I had our bakers work on the recipe and technique to get it the way I like it: hard crust, soft inside; good, solid bread flavor, not bland. And we stick with the basic flavors” (read: no basil-sun-dried tomato) — plain, onion, poppy seed and sesame (sesame’s the most popular and Danny’s particular favorite).
Sure, he knows about that fabled place in Montreal where they paddle the bagels into a wood-fired oven, and he’s scoured New York’s Lower East Side. Conclusion: There’s no single model of perfection. “There are lots of New York styles. These are made the traditional way, from scratch, with good, local, organic ingredients.” That’s the secret to success, and once it got out, so did the word. Take a number. Common Roots Cafe
2558 Lyndale Ave. S.
871-2360
commonrootscafe.com
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Art beat // Closing and opening
By Dylan Thomas
Art of This leaving current space, but won’t cease to existLYNDALE — A few weeks before they planned to shutter their Nicollet Avenue art space for good, John Marks and David Petersen of Art of This Gallery reflected on “Open Summer,” their ongoing, open door, last blast summer project. A free-for-all residency program that eventually enrolled 80-some artists, the slowly percolating “Open Summer” was building steam as it headed into its, and the gallery’s, grand finale at the end of August. And for all the potential pitfalls in telling some seven dozen people where the gallery key is hidden, about the worst thing that happened all summer was when someone spilled salsa in the refrigerator and never cleaned it up.
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On the mat // Green yogis in Linden Hills
By Sarah McKenzie
Devanadi Yoga, a new studio near Lake Harriet, is a trailblazer in the local yoga community. The small 525-square-foot studio, tucked behind the Bruley Center on West 43rd Street in Linden Hills, is the first yoga studio in the state to be certified by the Green Yoga Association for its environmentally friendly efforts. The studio’s green practices include using non-VOC paint, controlling the thermostat to keep the building energy efficient and encouraging students to walk, bus or bike to class. Tanya Boigenzahn Sowards, studio director/owner of Devanadi Yoga, said being green is “core value of the studio and it ties back to the yogic philosophy of doing no harm.” “Minneapolis frequently ranks as one of the top green
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Everyday gardener // Q&A
By Meleah Maynard
Struggling tomatoes, rain barrels and rootbound plantsEven though spring started in earnest in March this year, it still seems like summer is going by too fast. So, fast, in fact, my inbox has been a bit stuffed with questions. As always, I’ve replied directly to people who asked for help with various things. But here in the column I’m going to cover some of the questions that seem likely to be of interest to a lot of gardeners. By far, the questions I’m getting most are about tomatoes, so I’ll start there. Q: My tomato plants look good and have a lot of flowers, but I’m not getting a lot of fruit this year. What’s going on?A: It’s been too hot for tomatoes to set fruit
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Flavor // A smokin’ sensation on Nicollet
By Carla Waldemar
If you’re wondering what caused the traffic stand-still on South Nicollet the other evening, let’s just say I should have kept my window shut. When passing cars got a whiff of possibly the best aroma in the galaxy — I’m talking about barbecue, of course — they halted to demand, “Where’d you get that?” At C&G’s, of course. Greg Alford launched C&G’s Smoking Barbecue exactly a year ago; the anniversary balloons in the otherwise-Spartan, clean-as-a-whistle hole in the wall provided the only touch of whimsy in this serious business. Greg was born in Louisiana, which may explain his superior taste in food. He grew up in Detroit, one of 12 kids whose mamma set him to cooking when he was 5, he
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Wild city // Eating the yard
By Mary Jean Port
I love August. It is so lush. All summer, as I nurse the garden along, I anticipate these eating days. We now have too much of everything: tomatoes, green beans, heat, humidity, and also thunder, for those of us who have a dog frightened by it. I have been working our piece of ground for 14 years, and have good soil to show for it. Back when we first started, my husband was more of a lawn guy. He liked the idea of a garden, but drew a line in the grass with his toe. Don’t dig up anything beyond here, he said. So I dug my first of what are now 10 beds, and planted the pumpkin right on his line. The vines ran out of the garden and took over the whole backyard. My husband good-naturedly threw up his hands. We started with vegetables, and
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Kid rock
By Sam Lane
Twin Town Guitars hosts a camp that gives young musicians a chance to play and perform in a bandMore than 60 excited, camera-toting fans packed Cause Spirits and Soundbar on a warm August afternoon waiting for two headline bands to take the stage. The hotly anticipated musicians weren’t well known. They weren’t 20-somethings trying to strike a record deal. They weren’t middle-aged men trying to relive their youth. They were kids, ages 8–17, who spent prior weeks at Twin Town Guitars, 3400 Lyndale Ave. S., preparing for their first concert. In an economy where budget cuts deal constant blows to public school music programs, the owners of Twin Town have spent the last three summers providing a haven for aspiring
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