MN Sushi Reportedly Having ‘A Pop Culture Moment’

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.

MN Sushi: The Nation is Once Again Horrified How We Eat

Just like god, Minnesota Sushi is a thing with many names: pickle rollups, Midwest sushi, ham pinwheels, Lutheran sushi. And, according to this trend piece in Eater, the curious dish is having "a pop culture moment." For the uninitiated: These simple little bites have a dill pickle chunk in the center, surrounded by cream cheese, then secured with sliced deli ham. And yes, the finished project does resemble a basic fish, rice, and seaweed sushi roll.

You can find Minnesota Sushi at restaurants like Wrecktangle and Psycho Suzi’s, but the deli concoction is mostly known as a Midwest grillin' and/or picnic staple. Anyway, the rest of the U.S. is just now learning about it thanks to an episode of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, and the fact Jeopardy! shared a recipe on its Facebook page after a contestant encouraged another contestant to give it a try. Now if only we could get the rest of the nation on board with Bloody Mary beerbacks, a regional culinary quirk that's truly worth exporting.

Vikre Distillery Workers Shoot Down Unionization

Last month, Racket broke the news that workers at Duluth's Vikre Distillery were forming a union. Sixteen of the 20+ workers had signed union cards, according to officials with Unite Here Local 17, and they approached an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board with optimism. A simple majority would've meant a freshly minted union shop. “The work environment at Vikre isn’t terrible, but things can always be better," bartender Dan Trewartha-Weiner told us at the time. "It’s very much a growing company, so to be able to get this done early and have a little bit of pull, that will be very nice.” The results of that election came in Thursday: Six workers voted for the union, but 18 voted against it.

What happened? "We're certainly disappointed in the results," reports Anders Bloomquist of Unite Here Local 17. "We went in with 70% of the cards signed. Coming out with the number we got begs a ton of questions about what happened in between those times." His 6,000-member hospitality union has bet big on the craft service industry in recent years, yielding wins (Fair State Brewing), losses (Surly, Spyhouse Coffee), and plenty of TBDs. Unite Here's Sheigh Freeberg, who has helped spearhead union drives throughout the Twin Cities bar scene, says that first contracts at Tattersall Distilling and Brother Justus are close to being hammered out; he says upstart unions at other distilleries sputtered out due to closures (Lawless Distilling) or the elimination of taprooms (Du Nord Craft Spirits).

Mosque Attacks Have Community on Edge

A mosque arson in St. Paul Wednesday was the fourth such attack in the Twin Cities in as many weeks, and Minnesota Muslims are concerned. Sahan Journal reports that a few dozen community leaders met with Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday to express their fears and seek funding that would improve safety at houses of worship for people of all faiths, not just those in the Muslim community. Some sources told Sahan that the spate of crime has them worshipping from home rather than in public. “I cry because all we doing is worshipping Allah, and if they realized that they would know that at the end of the day, we’re gonna feel sad about it—that you’re burning, you’re burning a building that we worship God in, and it’s not right,” Luz Caicedo said.

A Blunty Bravo to the Star Tribune

As you're surely aware, legal weed is on the horizon for Minnesota. You can read a fantastic explainer on what that means for you, the weed using or abstaining Minnesotan, here. To this news, we say: wonderful! We're big fans of the stuff, and even ran an entire week of programming devoted to it. But we're not here to talk about the lurching legislative process or the on-the-ground impact legalization will have in our state. We're here to celebrate the photo choice used to accompany the article mentioned above, which is currently dominating the A1 spot of the Strib website:

Incredible. We applaud the editorial decision; we swoon for photographer Alex Korman's instantly iconic photo Andrew "Reefer Man" Sumner enjoying himself at April's Hash Bash in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Put it up in the rafters with this all-timer of Zygi and the guv.