Welcome to the first installment of Let's Taco 'Bout Politics, a new series that finds us sitting down with as many 2025 Minneapolis mayoral candidates as possible over Mexican food. Why? Well, it starts with this review of Brito’s Burrito, which led Wedge LIVE! correspondent Jason Garcia to create this crowd-sourced burrito map, which led Ward 11 Minneapolis City Council Member Emily Koski to send the following invitation.
Over the coming weeks, joined by Garcia, we’ll be getting burritos (or tacos, and perhaps even a quesadilla) with as many mayoral candidates as possible. But we’re kicking things off with…
Name: Emily Koski
Current Position: Ward 11 City Council Member
Background: Born and raised in Minneapolis, Koski, 47, was elected to the Minneapolis City Council in 2021, where she represents Ward 11. Her father, Albert Hofstede, served two non-consecutive terms as Minneapolis mayor in the '70s. A graduate of St. Thomas University and mother of two, Koski announced her 2025 mayoral run last December.
What’d she order?: Fish taco from Órale Mexican Eats ($4.75): Beer-battered fried cod on a warm blue tortilla, topped with pickled cabbage, pico, queso fresco, cubed pineapple, and house-made aioli
Jason Garcia: You showed up to picket lines in support of striking MFT workers at Justice Page Middle School and Washburn High School in 2023, and I saw that you voted for the resolution to support the Minneapolis park workers when they were striking last summer. Right now, it feels like Minneapolis is in kind of a turning point in terms of labor and unionization. Could you talk a little bit about your relationship with unions and labor in Minneapolis?
Emily Koski: Absolutely. Our workers are the foundation of our city. And what they do and what they contribute to our city—they’re the unsung heroes. I live near Pearl Park, and my daughter went to preschool there. I’ve coached basketball, and track, and volleyball there. But we don’t go to that park building and have the experience that we do without those workers. My kids go to Minneapolis Public Schools. They both have IEPs. They have that experience… it’s because of those teachers. And so making sure that I support them in any way possible is so important.
So yes, I dragged my kids, every single day, to that picket line. They were at two different schools, so we were kind of going to a few of the different schools in Ward 11—we have quite a few schools here, but kind of honed in on Field and Justice Page and Washburn. Showing up is important, and I think that people know, then, that they have people that they can count on, that they can talk to and listen to. We may not always agree on everything, but they know that I can be approachable, and they’re able to connect.
I think that’s just as important with our small business owners. I was a small business owner, so I understand that you’re wearing many, many hats. What we see today, the food that we’re eating, these are recipes from Saul [Mellado, owner of Órale Mexican Eats]’s family in Mexico. He’s bringing them, and bringing that culture, here to us in Minneapolis. That’s pretty special, right? And pretty incredible. We just saw Saul—he’s also running a cart around, and going back, probably, to do some of his bookkeeping later in the day. They’re catering and doing so many different things. They’re thinking about their marketing and what the next event is. There’s so many different tasks.
I think it’s so important that as leaders and as a city, we’re supporting our small businesses, specifically. And I know that we can do better in that area. I know we can strengthen the work, and really dial in, and make sure that we’re putting those small businesses and locally owned businesses that really want to give back to the community—and they live right here in our community, too—a chance to really thrive. And that’s really making sure we’re thinking about: What are the barriers? How can we be more supportive? And making sure that their voices are at the table in all the decisions that we’re making. .
Em Cassel: You’ve talked about some of the discord and tension between City Council and the mayor’s office. Along those lines, I’m curious if you can talk about the… split, or parting-ways, with All of Mpls. How have things been with you and with them? Is there any communication? How did you find out you were being quietly removed from their website and marketing materials?
Garcia: That you had become a full-on leftist?
Koski: All of my life, one of the biggest things that I’ve always pushed away from is other people putting me in a box. When I came on as a council member—I am an independent thinker. I think about, “What does Ward 11 want?” And I do that through myriad ways. I have monthly meetings, I have office hours. I’m a very accessible, I feel, council member. I’ve done surveys. I’ve found lots of different ways to get information from Ward 11 residents. I think about what Ward 11 wants, and I also think about: What does the city need? And I do that because I know that’s what Ward 11 residents want, too.
[All of Mpls is] an independent expenditure, so I don’t have any direct conversations or communication with them. Through people who tell me—via Twitter, or whatever they see, or an email—I’ll learn whatever they have listed me as, whatever they want to label us that day. They have a lot of different words to describe around 10 of us—10 out of 13, if that helps you understand, like, that means that they just really are not for the council. I think that alone, right there, shows you that this us-versus-them mentality that the current mayor has created is so disrespectful, and it does not move our city forward.
My goal, and who I am, is: I’m on team Minneapolis. Those are the decisions that I’m making, and that’s how I’m moving forward and thinking about how we actually take action for our city. For far too long, I believe, we’ve sat with our feet in the cement on that executive side. We wave at the problem and take no action.
Garcia: I agree completely. I feel like it’s ironic that eight years ago, Jacob Frey was saying a lot of things about how the mayor’s office was being run, and how the mayor’s office wasn’t accountable. I remember when he came to speak at the Ward 5 convention—I was living in Ward 5 at the time—one of the things that he vowed was that he was going to be the most transparent and accessible mayor. And since he’s been elected, I feel like he has really slid. One of his campaign promises about ending homelessness in five years, that gets a lot of recognition. But not a lot of people talk about the fact that he was going around to all parts of the city talking about how transparent and open he was going to be, and how that has not played out. What sort of things would you do as mayor to have that transparency, or have that open communication with your colleagues on City Council?
Koski: That’s a good question. Jacob has continued to overpromise and underdeliver, and I learned that lesson at a very young age, at my first job—I had vendors that would overpromise and underdeliver. I was on the other end of what that feels like, and now I am too as a resident, seeing that. The transparency piece, that is about building relationships and building trust: open communication at all times. I will make sure that we have direct lines of communication with the team and the mayor’s office.
There are many ways that you can do this, and you don’t have to look too far to see different examples of this. St. Paul, they have council liaisons. These are individuals who, that is their direct job, to make sure they understand what is happening with every council member. What are they doing in their ward? What’s new? What’s going on this week? What do they have coming up? What are they finishing? Coordination and project management 101.
The other piece, though, is really getting in the community with those partners, with my colleagues. I have these Ward 11 meetings monthly. I’ve done different forums, different town halls, on specific topics, and I think it’s gonna be really important that I would work lockstep with my colleagues. And I would hope that when they’re doing their monthly meetings, that they would want to invite me to one or two or three—or within an area, whether it’s northeast, or north, or south Minneapolis—these colleagues get together and we do a town hall on a specific issue, and I’m there with them, really building that trust and working together as a community.
I look at them, like I said, as partners. They are the individuals that are getting that phone call, they’re in these businesses, they’re having those conversations. They’re hearing the little details about what’s working, what’s not. And it’s so important to take that information and bring it back to the mayor’s office. Because that’s the job, now, is implementation and execution, efficiency and effectiveness. That’s the executive side. You can’t do that if you aren’t connected, wholeheartedly, to this side.
Cassel: I want to talk a little bit about what we’re eating. At your recommendation, Emily, I am loving this California burrito, it’s really good. And then Jason, at your recommendation, I did the chicken Maria. What did you go with?
Garcia: I went with the California burrito as well, that’s kind of my go-to here. One of the things with a California burrito is it’s so easy to put in fries that are underdone, and then they just turn mushy.
Koski: Oh, theirs are crispy.
Garcia: They stay crispy the whole way through, which is amazing.
Cassel: And then Emily, you did the fish taco. That looks amazing, also.
Koski: It is. There's this pineapple salsa, and I’ll have to go back and confirm with Saul, but I believe the breading that they use is a family recipe. And it’s on a blue corn tortilla, which is also different from their other tacos.
Cassel: I know Órale is a favorite of yours, but when you’re out and about in Minneapolis, either here in Ward 11 or elsewhere, what are some of the other places you frequent?
Koski: So, I have two kids, a sixth-grader and a freshman. So as they get older, they’re advancing in their palates, too. We go out as a family quite a bit for special family nights and whatnot. There’s definitely a lot of bar food: Town Hall Tap, Town Hall Lanes, Buster’s, Órale is a major fan favorite of the family. It’s a lot of that kind of quick, grab-and-go stuff. Heather’s is a new staple in the neighborhood; ie just opened back up, so that’s where we would take the kids for a birthday or something like that, and sit on the patio, Carbone’s—these are my south Minneapolis stomping grounds.
But we are a foodie city! Chimborazo is a place that’s just so good and isn't far from where we lived in Northeast, and Hazel’s there. And if you want a little glimpse into my childhood traditions, it’s Jax. Northeast tried and true. That’s where we go for Easter every year, any special holiday or event. My 21st birthday, that’s where we had our family meal. I have a lot of family that are from California, and when they came to town when my father passed away eight years ago, we brought them to Jax’s bar. That is steeped with family tradition, and I think it speaks to the importance of restaurants that people can lean on and go back to, generation to generation.
Cassel: Jax is one of those places you just can’t imagine not being there. It feels like it has to be there forever.
Koski: And I will say, maybe this goes into a little bit of another conversation, but growing up, as a teenager and in my twenties, especially, Uptown is where I went. And I just thought I was so cool, right? My parents and I, we’d go to lunch at Figlio, and then when Chino Latino opened, that was the place to go with friends. I definitely miss having some of those unique restaurant experiences in that area, where you can shop local, interesting, independent places, and also get a cool, great bite to eat, or they have fun bars where you’re eating peanuts off the floor.
Cassel: I think definitely, you could say Uptown is a microcosm of some of the issues facing Minneapolis more broadly, with regards to businesses that are struggling, vacancies, that kind of thing.
Garcia: There’s also this urge to… with nostalgia comes this sort of version of the past that maybe wasn’t the same for everybody. I think one of the things, having spent a lot of time in the arts and music scene in Minneapolis, a lot of people—especially people who live in nice houses by the lakes now—think of Uptown in a different way than a lot of people who maybe lived in old, ramshackle apartments along 26th Street or 28th Street. We have different views of what it was like.
But I think one of the reasons why those areas—or if you look in some parts of Northeast, parts of Lake Street—part of the reason those areas flourished, especially in terms of creativity, is that rents were low. You were able to afford to live there even working as a musician playing shows, if that was how you brought in money. The rent was low enough that you could take a chance on opening a small restaurant, or a store.
All across the city, we’re seeing people talk about rents for apartments, but that’s also a big driver of failure in a lot of businesses—you have to pay the rent, and the rent is always high. Are there any strategies that you see the city looking at to help businesses and residents as property values have gone up and taxes have gone up, to keep them in their homes, and their businesses, and their areas?
Koski: I think there’s a multitude of solutions there. We’re talking about lots of different pieces—business owners, residential—but I don’t think we can just wait for the market to do its thing. We have to be far more proactive, and I have not seen this administration do that, especially when we think about our small businesses and how we’re stepping in to meet the needs that they have.
The lease is one aspect of their budget. How do we think about creative solutions of co-oping businesses, supporting them with more robust support and education from the city, and really leaning into that? We’ve leaned into big, big developments; how do we lean into the small, local, independent business owners and really hear them and understand what their concerns are? In the last couple budget cycles, one thing that I saw with small business owners is that—we put forth labor standards. These are important for our workers, these are important for our residents, so that they know they are coming into safe spaces, and we know the workers are being treated well, and we know we have high-road employers. All in all, these are good things to have. But as a small business owner, sometimes… we didn’t do a good job of educating them and helping them understand, how do you comply? What does this look like? Talking to them: What’s the barrier to complying?
When we had ARPA funding, I did route some funding so that we could help small businesses with technical assistance in the payroll. Because, like I said, the small business owner, they’re doing 800 things at one time, and when they see a payroll program, they’re like, “several thousand dollars? My kid needs braces!” It’s coming right out of their profits, and they can’t see the return on their investment. We used that to help business owners with a year’s worth of payroll services so they can get used to it, feel what that means, and see the return on their investment.
What we learned—because these businesses were not trying to not comply—they just didn’t know. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. Some of them had a payroll system, but they assumed that that payroll system would just automatically know, “You’re in Minnesota, you’re in Minneapolis, and these are our regulations.” But they weren’t. There’s some additional work. Some of it was just tweaking and supporting in that way.
And what we learned was that for a lot of these businesses, it was the bookkeeping. And that is—they want to be culturally specific, you want to build trust with your bookkeeper—and so we’re actually working on phase two now, of that. It’s those types of programs—these are micro, you know, $100,000 at a time—that help dozens of business owners. Those types of programs that we need to be thinking about, and being more innovative and creative about.
But that does mean we’ve got to get them at the table and have discussions about: what is it? Is it regulation that’s a barrier? Is it zoning, that we’re inhibiting your ability to flourish here? We need to think about, what can we do to shift or change that? Is it the unintentional result of another policy that we put in place? To me, it’s really getting into the meat with these business owners.
Garcia: One thing that I would want to ask you is that I’m sure, having a sixth-grader and a freshman, you’re probably just running in all directions at all times, but when you are at home, is there anything that is your go-to to cook at home? When John was trying to get you on the Wedge LIVE! Podcast for so long, I was like, “Tell her I’ll do a cooking segment with her. Maybe that will sweeten the deal.”
Koski: OK, so, my evolution of cooking—and if you ask me, versus my family, you might get a different answer, so I’ll just put that out there—my evolution of cooking has shifted. At one point, I stayed at home with my kids, and I meal-planned like nobody’s business. I had all the recipes ready to go, starting Sunday, and everything was creative and fun. I was trying all sorts of recipes from different blogs and whatnot. As the family and myself have gotten busier, we’ve become a Costco household: “What does Costco have?”
Cassel: Hey, we’re for Costco—they’re keeping DEI…
Garcia: They just came to a tentative agreement with the Teamsters union…
Koski: Yet another reason—however, I’m gonna have to buy more things in bulk. I was gonna go shopping this weekend for some essentials, and there are some places that I may not be shopping at, and my husband’s like, “Well you can go to Costco!” and I’m like, “Well, I’m not sure that I need 500!”
But I do believe, and some friends would say, I think I make a mean salad and salad dressing. That’s been kind of my go-to thing these days, where it’s easy, I can throw—look at what’s in the fridge, seeds, what herbs are around, what balsamics? I just made one last weekend that was a peach balsamic with garlic and a lemon olive oil. There’s nothing, like, there’s no rocket science to it, but just a couple of these different flavors with the right amount of salt and pepper, and that peach balsamic was key.
Garcia: You’ll have to send us the recipe.
Koski: I don’t know that there’s a recipe—I just told you the options! Now you have to mix and decide what you want. My husband did some maple syruping last year, so we had our homemade maple syrup that you could toss in there.
Cassel: I do think that “Cooking with Koski” would be a good segment.
Koski: I like Cooking with Koski! This could be fun. I did take a cooking class down at Bellecour, and it was so fun. You just learn how to use knives differently. And I think, “Oh, I want to do this.” We made a whole pie! From scratch! You think, “Oh this is so easy, I’m going to do this,” and then you get into your routine, and you’re like, “Hm, I really need to concentrate on that.” But my husband and I do enjoy cooking—we have a Blackstone, and that’s been kind of our go-to, easy thing. You can make fried rice on there, bacon, eggs, everything, all on this big grill. Smashburgers, whatever. That’s been a fan favorite when we have people over. With the salad.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Also, due to a recorder malfunction, my first question for Koski—the very obvious “Why are you running for mayor?”—does not appear below, nor does her very thoughtful answer! Technology! It fails us again! For more of that context, find Koski’s recent conversation with Wedge LIVE! Here.
Coming Soon in Our 2025 Taco 'Bout Politics Minneapolis Mayoral Q&A Series…
- Reverend Dr. DeWayne Davis
- Sen. Omar Fateh
- Brenda Short
- Jazz Hampton
- Howard Dotson
- and current Mayor Jacob Frey…?
