During the pandemic, the folks behind The French Hen Cafe on St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill operated very conservatively. Because they own their building, the restaurant was able to stay closed for long stretches of time, even as others in the area figured out a way to pivot to takeout or delivery.
Still, general manager Madeline Rivard and co. didn’t want to stay idle forever. “We wanted to do something to create hours for the people that needed it and try to do some semblance of the sales we were doing previously,” she explains. “It was the middle of a beautiful summer, so we decided to do an alley-side pizza takeout.”
That idea sprouted into Moonflower Pizza, an ad-hoc kitchen on the back patio, where guests could come through and pick up pies without going inside.
“It took off so well that we quickly started making plans to put a pizza oven inside,” Rivard says.
“Quickly” would end up being “over the course of years.” While they started speaking with architects and making plans for a full renovation throughout the winter of 2020-21, the team knew they’d be up against assorted pandemic woes, from shortages to supply chain woes. And once they started looking for contractors, “nobody wanted to touch the project with a 10-foot pole,” Rivard laughs. “We now understand how difficult it is to renovate an operating restaurant in the city of St. Paul, in a building, no less, that’s over 100 years old.”
There was the logistical mess of getting a 3,000-pound pizza oven in the building and figuring out how to ventilate it; there was, as there always is, the lengthy permitting process. Finally, almost five years to the day after introducing Moonflower Pizza 1.0, the concept returned to The French Hen in September, where you can find it on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings.
Diego, who was the head pizza chef during Moonflower’s pandemic pizza pop-up, is back at the helm, overseeing the production of pies like the Marg ($15), a classically excellent pizza margherita on which the soft, house-made mozzarella really shines. The Sgt. Pepp ($20), is the kind of pie you’ll think about later, with briny pickled red peppers, crispy circles of Lowry Hill pepperoni, and Cry Baby Craig’s cane syrup. (A new application for Cry Baby Craig’s? In the year of our lord 2025?) Like every pie on Moonflower’s menu, it’s thoughtful, delicious, and fresh.
And is there any combination of words in the English language more beautiful than “If you’re into spice, we’ve got a killer Calabrian chile crunch made in house”? Moonflower’s is made kind of like a traditional chili crunch, but swaps Worcestershire for soy sauce and adds in some other staples from the kitchen to give it its own flair. My dining partner and I spent our meal sliding the metal ramekin back and forth across the table like we were keeping score in one of those hook and ring toss games.
Moonflower’s menu will shift with the seasons; pies like the Ah Shucks, with sweet corn and caramelized onions, have already come and gone. Rivard says eventually they’ll do a few entree and pasta specials, “but the main thing, always, will be pizza.”
That hulking pizza oven itself, which you can watch as it emits perfectly done pies in the open kitchen, is an adorable multicolored marvel, and there’s a cute story behind its design. The French Hen serves everything on Fiesta ware, the dishware brand known for its colorful red and green and blue plates and bowls.
“A shelf collapsed over the winter and we broke half of our plates, and I hung on to it, ‘cause I just didn’t know,” Rivard says. “I was like… ‘What if we tiled the pizza oven with this?’” They eventually did, painstakingly arranging the plates to make a pattern from the broken glass. (I failed to get a photo of it, but you can catch a glimpse of the oven in this Instagram post.) “I think it’s very us,” she adds.
Looking for other pizza suggestions? Rivard is an artichoke fan; she recommends the Proscuit Your Shot ($20), with a name right out of Bob’s Burgers and a Creole mustard vinaigrette that polishes the pie off. (She also recommends that you try it during happy hour, from 5-6 p.m. every day Moonflower is open.) Eventually, she says, the plan is to add additional days of service—with Moonflower growing in scale while brunch remains independent—and it’s possible they’ll start to use the pizza oven in other applications during the day.
“But Moonflower is kind of its own blossoming-in-the-night thing, as French Hen blooms during the day,” Rivard says.
Moonflower Pizza (at The French Hen Cafe)
Address: 518 Selby Ave., St. Paul
Hours: 5-9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday
