The three co-owners of Northbound Smokehouse: chef Bryce Strickler; manager Amy Johnson, and brewer Jamie Robinson.

It was an ambitious goal. To raise the final amount needed to open a small brewpub in Minneapolis, the owners of Northbound Smokehouse offered investors of $1,000 or more free beer for life. Did it work? Oh, did it ever.

We talked recently with Northbound brewer and part owner of the new south Minneapolis hot spot, Jamie Robinson, who brought us up to speed on how the unique business model is paying off for the six-month-old brewery, and what's coming next.

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Meritage chef Klein talks oysters, French cooking, good and bad meals, and plans for the future

Expect to see the streets of St. Paul paved deep with oyster shells on Sunday, September 30, the date of the second-annual OysterFest, Meritage's bivalve bacchanal. Amid the planning for celebrity shuck-offs and dancing in the street, Russell Klein, chef and co-proprietor of Meritage, took time recently to ponder the meaning of the French restaurant, comment of the role of awards in the culinary world, tell us where he and his wife and co-owner Desta like to eat when they're not eating at what many folks consider the best restaurant in St. Paul, and drop a few hints about what they're planning next.

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Snazzy veg-filled cover!

Just in time for CSA season comes local author (and past City Pages contributor) Tricia Cornell's new book Eat More Vegetables: Making the Most of Your Seasonal Produce to store shelves. Baffled by what to do with all that fall squash or early summer kohlrabi? Cornell has been there, and her book tackles everything from keeping your crisper from becoming a veggie graveyard to advice on shopping at your local farmer's market.

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Michelle Bruch

Jennifer grew up on a farm, but New York-native Eliot had a lot to learn about rural life.

Prima's husband-and-wife operators come from very different backgrounds. Chef Eliot King grew up in New York City; Jennifer Jackson-King grew up on a dairy farm near Brainerd.

Eliot has since embraced Jennifer's rural roots, and he's spending summer mornings raising produce that goes on the menu at Prima each night.

As for Jennifer, she's leaving work to strap on cowboy boots and compete in horse-riding tournaments.

We sat down with the couple to talk about their life after-hours. This is the third in a three-part series. (Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.)

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Michelle Bruch

The Kings are using more produce from their family farm at Prima.

Chef Eliot King and his wife Jennifer Jackson-King are the team behind Prima, a restaurant that's been in business on Lyndale Avenue for 12 years. Two of the couple's other restaurants have since come and gone. Three Fish closed near Lake Calhoun in 2008, and a second Prima location in Minnetonka closed in 2010. We sat down with the couple to talk about what they have learned in their last decade of running restaurants. This is the second in a three-part series. (Read part 1 here.)

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Michelle Bruch

The Kings work long hours to farm food for the restaurant each day.

There was a time when Prima's husband-and-wife team lived down the street from their neighborhood Italian restaurant. Now they're living on a farm outside the Cities, and the restaurant is reaping the benefits.

Chef Eliot King and his wife, Jennifer, are farming vegetables in the morning that make it onto the restaurant menu each night.

Read on to hear why the couple keeps peacocks at the farm, how the honey tastes out of the beehives, and what it takes to run a farm and restaurant simultaneously.

This is the first in a three-part series.

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The four partners of Lift Bridge Brewery are bringing some exiting new craft beers to the Twin Cities in general and Stillwater in particular. City Pages caught up with three of four at the Flat Earth Brewing Company, where Lift Bridge makes its beer — for now. Next on the company's agenda is setting up its own bona fide brewery. [PHOTO CREDIT: Becca Dilley]

CITY PAGES: What was the first beer you guys committed to producing?

DAN SCHWARZ: We started with the Farm Girl Saison because it was a style that not a lot of people were producing. So we did that first."

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Last week, New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni answered reader questions--everything from How do you choose which restaurants to review? to How many pounds have you put on since you started reviewing?

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Those familiar with the tales of Anthony Bourdain know that the restaurant business is intense work. In Fried: Surviving Two Centuries in Restaurants, ex-chef and current teacher Steve Lerach furthers this assertion, weaving tales of the quirky, hard-working, creative personalities he met throughout his 30-plus years working in the Twin Cities, while also exploring the history of dining, going as far back as the reign of France's Louis XVI.

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