Keith Harris and Andy Sturdevant have been meeting for brunch on Saturday mornings for over a decade. The tradition began when they pledged to work out at the Midtown YWCA every weekend, and decided they deserved a reward after that. Somehow, the workout portion of this arrangement fell by the wayside. But they kept eating, and have probably hit about 30 new restaurants a year since then. And yet, despite each man’s savvy business sense, they have never turned their friendship ritual into salable content. Until now. Welcome to Brunch Buds.
Brunch Date 4.5: Marna's Eatery
I (Keith) have a confession: Until recently, I had never ventured into downtown Robbinsdale. Not through any aversion on my part—no matter how widely you roam, there are places you just never happen upon. Partly to correct this omission, Andy and I recently went to Marna’s, which offers promising-sounding “Costa Rican-inspired plates.” And we were not disappointed.
Keith: Andy! It's been a while since we brunch-budded.
Andy: It has been! I only have vague memories of the last few, and a handful of professional-quality photographs on my iPhone to remind me of the last one or two.
Keith: But we'll soldier on regardless. Let's talk about Marna’s, in historic downtown Robbinsdale.
Andy: I’m looking at these photos, and it's all coming back to me. First of all, I want to comment how surprised I was that a committed gourmand like you had never been to downtown Robbinsdale before. Secondly, I wanted to ask if you remember the "North Hat Test" from our earliest brunching days?
Keith: It's hard to believe, I know. And yes, I do! Back when the Dayton boys were boldly rebranding Minnesota as "The North," a decade or so back, you could tell how cool a brunch spot was based on how many "North" hats you saw.
Andy: Yes! You'd go to the chicest brunch places, and you'd see like four or five North hats and know that you were really on the bleeding edge. That's not an accurate methodology anymore, but there's still a similar idea that some restaurants are brunchier than others. And Marna's, I believe, is very brunchy. Very North Hat.
Keith: I'm not sure I've seen a North hat since well before the pandemic. Maybe they'll wind up in thrift stores to be ironically reclaimed by the hipsters of tomorrow.
Here is me, not in a North hat, but supporting the concept.
Andy: Ha! That situates you in a very specific place and time.
The markers of brunchiness change, but brunchiness remains. Actually, when I told my spouse I was going to brunch in Robbinsdale, she threw her pinkies up in the air so fast I thought they were going to snap off. I think her exact words were, "Ooh, Bird Town, fancy."
Keith: But not too fancy for us! What was the very Instagrammable meal that the women next to us ordered? Some kind of egg cake with shrimp on top?
Andy: According to the menu, I think it must have been the arroz con huevo ($14) with habanero-coconut rice, guacamole, scrambled eggs, pico de gallo, and shrimp. And yes indeed, it looked beautiful coming out.
Keith: Ah yes, that's it. Our own dishes weren't quite that pretty, though they were nicely "plated," to use an industry term that I learned on television. I got the honey sriracha sandwich ($13), which was delicious, though the bread got a little soggy from the honey.
Andy: I had the huevos rancheros ($15), which were also beautifully plated. I think this gets to one of your major theses of Brunch Buds, as I have interpreted it over the years, which is that somewhat upscaled renditions of brunch classics with nice plating are often are actually very very good, and as good or sometimes even better than "regular" versions.
Keith: No one wants to admit this, but it's true. You absolutely can improve on the basics.
I also got a homemade soda, which I thought would be too tart for your scion, Redacto, but he kept insisting on sips.
Andy: Yeah, it was a hibiscus soda, right? It had a really subtle, not-too-sweet flavor. Redacto was really enjoying it. He pulled a "sour" face the first time he sipped it, and then when he realized how funny we thought it was he kept doing it. If something's funny once, it's funny ten more times.
Keith: He has definitely reached the age where he knows his audience. But at least you came up with a suitable reward to keep him in check until we finished eating
Andy: I did? What was it? I don't even remember—I only remember having vaguely panicked thoughts along the lines of, "This is really not a great venue for a toddler."
Keith: There were many toy-like objects tempting him.
Andy: Hats off to the artist who made the giant wooden toucan at the door. R was really into that. Unfortunately, one of the hard lessons of toddlerhood is "sometimes restaurants have nice objects at the host station that are literally toys in another context, but are not toys in this specific context and you cannot play with them."
Keith: A lesson he did not quite learn, despite your best efforts.
Getting back to the reward: We promised to all sing the title song from his new favorite movie, Koyaanisqatsi.
Andy: This makes me sound like the worst kind of snobby parent, which I probably am, but Koyaanisqatsi is a great kid's movie! It's 90 minutes of bulldozers and imploding buildings and molten steel and jumbo jets! What kid wouldn't love that?
Keith: Dictate his movie diet as long as you can! Caillou awaits.
Andy: I don't know what that is, and I am not looking forward to finding out. But the kid does love singing "Koyaanisqatsi." He can really drop his voice to that doomy register.
Keith, we're both going to feel really weird when "Brunch Buds" is nominated for "best parenting humor column." For the regional Emmys or wherever.
Keith: Look out Moms Gone Wild or whatever the competition is. But getting back to Marna’s, while it was a very brunchy spot, the prices were quite reasonable.
Andy: Yeah, under $20 for an entree is a steal these days. Did you have a pupusa ($13)? I thought it was excellent, though I have never had a pupusa I didn't think was excellent.
Keith: It was. I came to pupusas late in life and I was immediately like, "Well, of course this food exists, how could it not?"
Andy: I still have this idea from a long time ago that chefs hate doing brunches because it's too one-note and there isn't anything challenging about it, but I feel like with this kind of menu, the chef is having a lot of fun with taking the basic building blocks and switching them up.
I don't know if you can tell what a restaurant's dinner menu would be like based on how they handle brunch, but in this case I felt like I'd be in good hands.
Keith: Oh, also, because I-94 East was closed that weekend I took the city streets back to Minneapolis and it was an enjoyable little jaunt.
Andy: I love going to Robbinsdale. The first time I ate at Travail my spouse and I took the 14 bus up from downtown Minneapolis, down Broadway past Theodore Wirth. When you travel along the old street car lines, the inner ring suburbs feel a lot more, uh, co…co…what's that word? Co-something to the rest of center city neighborhoods.
Keith: I would absolutely go back for dinner.
Coagulent.
Coacervate.
CocoRosie.
One of those, I'm pretty sure.
Andy: That's it, coacervate. "Coacervativity in Urban Planning Paradigms of the Post-City Beautiful Era: A Survey, 1915-1968."
Keith: I'd like to see someone prove us wrong.
We may possibly be reaching the end of this installment of Brunch Buds. Any last thoughts on Marna’s?
Andy: "The generally excellent quality of brunch at Marna's suggests a coacervative relationship to the quality of the dinner menu."
Keith: They'd better add that to their website.
Andy: Two regional-journalism-award-nominated parenting humor columnists can't be wrong.
