Happy on the Inside

Clicquot Club Café
2929 E. 25th St., Minneapolis
612.724.4700
www.clicquotclubcafe.com

Usually when you talk with people who own restaurants you hear the same old same old: The ice machines are more fragile than spider's webs, the staff is two bats short of a belfry and the ingrates are the only ones earning money off this pooch, the city inspectors have unhappy home lives and take out their frustrations on the innocent, the suppliers are extortionists with their thumbs on the scales, and if the restaurateur knew then what he knows now, he would have done something less stressful with his life, like cross-border bounty hunting. Heard it before? I hear it weekly.

So it was quite a surprise to phone up Bryan Maher, co-owner of the Clicquot Club Café, which he and his partner Aaron Olson opened last winter deep in the residential part of the Seward neighborhood, and listen as he said, "I am living the dream with the Clicquot Club. It's been all about following a dream, and then living it. We are so lucky, so happy. We have had a phenomenal summer, it totally blew away and overwhelmed any expectations we had. I'm having the time of my life. It's such hard work, I am on my feet scrambling all day long, but I go home at night and I'm tired and I love that. I'm constantly entertained, and I don't live in a cube anymore. All the people you meet, the social aspect, building relationships, that's what makes this so outstanding. It's why I call it a dream, no one should have a life this good."

Well, pour balsamic on my head and call me a salad, no wonder the Clicquot is such a success: Irrepressible joy is an irresistible force.

The Clicquot is a little coffee shop with benefits that accomplishes more in its modest square footage than many full-fledged restaurants ever do. (Right now those benefits are all food-related, but they hope for a beer and wine license next winter.) The Clicquot has grilled sandwiches good enough to go head-to-head with those at our most famous Minneapolis bars and diners: The Genoa Pepe Rossa ($6.95), for one, is stuffed with spicy Genoa salami, peppy roasted red peppers, balanced with sweet, fresh mozzarella, and grilled until the thing becomes a tasty, spicy, shirt-staining mess. The Panino Bolzona ($7.95) is a hot roast beef sandwich swimming in peppery gorgonzola and garlic-fired aioli; it's craveable as rain in drought.

If grilled sandwiches don't appeal to you (there are loads more, plenty of them vegetarian), please know that the Clicquot has a better weekend brunch than most full-fledged restaurants in town. The sausage and cornbread tostato ($8.95) is a giant plate brimming with seared mouthfuls of sausage crowded in with grilled onions, sweet roasted bell peppers, crisp roasted potatoes, oven-dried tomatoes, and eggs, all of it united with a drizzle of rich, eggy hollandaise sauce and concealing a treasure of fresh cornbread. Eureka! There's a new brunch in town.

Their French toast is another brunch gem, weighty with eggs, light with fresh cooking, and served with real maple syrup—it's a wonder that there isn't a line out the door. (I suspect there will be; the brunch is brand new.) When the line does go out the door, know that you won't be waiting dully: The Clicquot Club has coffee so good that they've won one of our region's few Golden Cup awards from the Specialty Coffee Association of America. The place has indoor seating; outdoor tables; kids' meals; chef-made takeout; pizzas for eating onsite or on the road; fresh-squeezed orange juice; three kinds of lemonade; Tea Source tea brewed right, with the leaves floating freely in large contained areas in pots in order to release their most subtle aromas and flavors; Cuban coffee; and, if that's not enough for you, a full-on sculpture garden.

Seriously, a sculpture garden. There's a small garden full of Adirondack chairs and umbrellas to one side of the café. This little park hosts a lily pad-bedecked bubbling fountain and a prominent collection of large metal work by the local sculptor Jaak Kindberg. I dined there one evening, consuming my plastic basket of toasty, mellow, sweet, and just right grilled cheese (from $3.95) en plein air, the humble dairy catching the scent of fall in the wind and making me feel as Midwestern and happy as corn, and I thought, Boy howdy, this is some place.