Small ego, big city

It may have a modest reputation, but the vibrant arts, leisure and business scenes in Minneapolis are anything but.

Minneapolis would simply be a cold Omaha, as the cautionary humor goes, if its citizens weren’t so dedicated to sustaining another legend—the city’s touted quality of life.

Before arriving, businesspeople who’ve been transferred here demand hardship pay, but after settling in, they learn the scoop and soon refuse to leave. It’s not that cold and snowy: The airport rarely closes, street plows are aggressively proactive and virtually all downtown buildings are interconnected by above-street glassed corridors called skyways, rendering an overcoat unnecessary.

The Swedes and Norwegians, who led the wave of settlers here, think nothing of it. True, the more recent arrival of the Hispanics, Africans and Vietnamese who currently contribute to the local sizzle may have other opinions. These welcome newcomers provide an eager workforce and add vibrancy to the burgeoning restaurant scene.

Thanks to the city’s status as corporate headquarters for a number of Fortune 500 and 100 companies with social consciences, this white-collar town eagerly supports the arts, social betterment projects and environmental concerns. A number of highly regarded colleges and universities contribute to the creative, intellectual and social vibe and fuel the staff of hometown corporations like 3M and Medtronics, as well as research hospitals. The renowned Mayo Clinic is only 90 miles south.

The downtown core is bisected by the Mississippi River, whose banks were once lined with the flour mills on which the city’s early economy flourished. Today, the center isn’t marked by 9-to-5ers hurrying home to the suburbs. Instead, it’s lively day and night with loft- and condo-dwellers spoiled by all the shopping, dining and entertainment venues within an easy stroll.

Two miles south of downtown along the Hennepin Avenue corridor lies Uptown, a hip enclave of trendy shops and eateries bounded by the city’s legendary chain of lakes—themselves circled by user-friendly biking/running paths, swimming beaches, tennis courts and skating rinks (all free).

Almost everything you may have heard in Garrison Keillor’s NPR reports about “moral Minnesota” is true, so business dealings are forthright. They toe the line between formal and informal (“earnest” and “pragmatic” are the operative descriptors), and appointment times are honored. Traditional business garb still reigns, and folks begin the day early and take work home in their briefcases around here.

Can-do city

Minneapolis and St. Paul are so closely interwoven that visitors become perplexed about boundaries—but Minneapolis is different, in all except geography, from St. Paul, the state’s capital and its twin city. While St. Paul grew from more patrician “old names” of Irish-Catholic descent who made their fortunes in the logging industry, Minneapolis was founded by pragmatic Scandinavian Lutherans, who viewed its many pines and lakes as reminiscent of their homeland. They used the same Mississippi River (the informal, but not always accurate, dividing line) for milling flour from the nearby prairies.

Today, Minneapolis remains a modest, can-do city, where the city’s many well-off locals keep sailboats and summer homes on outlying lakes, but otherwise shun ostentation. The joke is that women save their furs for traveling and wear cloth coats at home. Thus, despite a crop of trendy young designers, you’d never call Minneapolis a fashion-forward city.

Gracious homes—but not McMansions, how vulgar!—surround the inner city’s chain of lanes, where notoriously high property taxes keep all but plutocrats from settling in. The Lowry Hill neighborhood overlooking the Walker Art Center is also filled with lovely Victorians, mingling with Prairie-style spin-offs of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The city’s non-elitist philosophy extends to its flourishing educational and arts organizations, supported in attendance by their funders and the hoi polloi. Jeans may be worn to the symphony or opera, where fans are not shy about cheering the international talent onstage. Traveling Broadway shows try to make a go of it here, but wider support is granted to the abundance of avant-garde local talent, ranging from hometown-boy-made-good Prince and the Coen brothers to the Francophile Theatre de la Jeune Lune and Children’s Theatre, both recent Emmy winners for “best regional theater.”

While some mock St. Paul as a big small town, and a stuffy one at that, those epithets fail to cling to Minneapolis, with scores of new public buildings designed by a worldwide Who’s Who of architects. The air is clean and clear because, whether for good or for ill, there’s not much industry (except the high-tech sort). Buoyed by excellent institutions of higher education, professional and creative types flourish; many award-winning ad agencies call Minneapolis home.

Underlying this quiet spirit of success is a citywide belief in giving back. Case in point: retired senator Mark Dayton, heir to a vast department-store fortune, accepted no salary for his public service. His liberal policies were typical of most Minneapolitans’. This is the state that elected Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone, and Minneapolis recently sent Keith Ellison to the House of Representatives as its first Muslim member.

Of course, there’s a flip side to this apparent dedication to what’s right: There’s a dearth of flashy nightlife, with few dance clubs, casinos, or late-night anything at all. Everybody is at home by 10 p.m., watching the local news.

Hotel scene

Large brand-name hotels are clustered near the airport—the best is Hotel Sofitel—and downtown, where choices include the Hyatt Regency, the Hilton near the Convention Center and Marriott City Center. In the past few years, these chains have been augmented by several more sophisticated hostelries, such as the Chambers Art Hotel, so named for the real-estate owner’s avant-garde art collection on display, not to mention the art of dining onsite at Jean-Georges
Vongerichten’s Chambers Kitchen and Graves 601 Hotel, across the street from the Target Center, a major athletic and concert venue named for the corporation that calls Minneapolis its home base.

Downtown dining

Within the Hyatt (but locally owned) are two outstanding restaurants for heavy-hitting business entertaining: Manny’s Steakhouse, boasting waiters with New York attitude pushing carts of choice beef as “show-and-tell” menus, with equally grand cru wines to match; and Oceanaire, with the look of a 1930s ocean liner and a menu of the freshest fish, enhanced by a premier raw bar.

The noted French architect Jean Nouvel has designed a brand-new edifice for the esteemed Guthrie Theater, this one aside the river — worth a trip to ogle the design and the skyline, as well as enjoy the performances. The building houses a top new restaurant, Cue, which features regional heartlands food with a singular up-tempo twist. A block away, Spoonriver is the latest venue of Brenda Langton, a chef/patron who’s made a name for herself serving organic and primarily vegetarian cuisine in a cosmopolitan fashion.

Near Orchestra Hall, anchoring the south end of the pedestrian-only shopping avenue called Nicollet Mall, is the home of the renowned Minnesota Orchestra and, right across the street, the city’s best French restaurant—superbly inventive, never stuffy—called Vincent after the handsome owner. Or you can act like a savvy local and seek out tiny 112 Eatery, an intimate, renovated brick storefront where the town’s top chefs hang out after a night manning the line. Solera, in the epicenter of the Hennepin Avenue theater district, serves up classy Spanish tapas and elite sherries in a Jetsons-like setting that mirrors the beautiful people who swarm here.

Overlooking downtown’s pretty little Loring Park, complete with duck pond, is Café Lurcat, boasting a gardenlike patio and designer settings where you can savor modern riffs on regional fare from its observation kitchen. In the eye-catching new Walker Art Center across the pond stands 20.21, the Wolfgang Puck restaurant where the Asian-inspired food is as forward and eye-catching as the museum’s art—and the equally arty clientele. Speaking of art: If your transactions take you to the University of Minnesota campus, that silvery silhouette you’ll spy on its riverbank is the Frank Gehry–designed Weisman Museum (333 E. River Road), which features prominent local artists.

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Inside the Minneapolis Guide

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Writing about her favorite city (and, fortunately, her hometown) is a labor of love for Minneapolitan CARLA WALDEMAR.