Joe's Garage

Joe's Garage
1610 Harmon Place, Minneapolis 612-904-1163

Exploring the Garage

The Grotto on the Park

In one of the fields in which I work there’s a paradox of sorts that is often discussed in journals and articles. It goes by the phrase "exploration or exploitation." The idea is the following. In order to improve the performance of any "system" (be it a machine or business or biological organism) we must conduct experiments whose outcomes we cannot predict beforehand. However, as long as we’re exploring, performance will suffer—most of our experiments aren’t likely to be successful. In a continuously changing environment, we don’t know what strategy to exploit until we have explored many possible ones; yet the process of exploring novel strategies itself keeps us from excelling.

This is a rather profound insight, as insights go in theoretical fields, and it has widespread application. I don’t believe I’ve ever come across a paper discussing its relevance to restaurant operations, but eating at Joe’s Garage I wished that the proprietor had taken some learning theory or control science courses in college!

Joe’s isn’t a one-car garage. What sort of burger would you like? You can get beef, pork, lamb, chicken, fish, and vegetable varieties, each with distinctive toppings—the vegetable burger, for example, comes with whipped feta. In the mood for pasta or risotto? There are several of each. And who said bread, pasta, and rice are the only starches that can serve as a base for a dish? You can have mashed potatoes in a number of unique ways. If you like your potatoes deep-fried, order fries at Joe’s and you get a choice of four or five different accompanying sauces.

Thai, Caribbean, Middle-Eastern, Italian, take your pick. Or don’t. Your waitperson will also tell you (a trifle brusquely if you get the same one we did) about the specials. This day they included a smoked salmon bagel sandwich, a reuben, and (by way of contrast?) a pork dish that B can tell you more about.

It’s hard to know what to pick when faced with this overwhelming variety. Jambalaya risotto with Andouille sausage, shrimp, and chicken sounded interesting … I should have known better. The risotto, in a Creole tomato sauce, was, well, gloppy The sausage and chicken were overcooked as well. The shrimp came grilled and skewered; they were done right, but flavorless. I also had a mixed green salad with a balsamic vinaigrette. It came with herbed croutons (nicely crunchy) and two large tomato quarters (a nice idea only when tomatoes are in season).

Joe’s has an extensive wine selection for lunch, with about ten reds by the glass. I had an Oregon pinot that I found acceptable but B did not (but then he’s a cabernet guy).

The eclecticism extends to the architecture and interior design as well. The restaurant is on three levels, each with a different feel and theme. We were on the top floor, which had some kind of distressed concrete floor (think garage) and deep blue walls with gouges that could have been made by a bad driving-in job. One side of the room had a (real?) garage door that led to a rooftop dining area. This was closed (it being Minneapolis and only April), but prominently displayed "Best Rooftop Dining" certificates from the local press attest to its popularity in our fleeting summer. The views from the rooftop, and from where we sat, are quite spectacular. We could look out on the rose windows of the Minneapolis Basilica, the downtown skyline with the IDS tower, and the (on this day snow-covered) Loring Park.

As someone who finds most Twin Cities restaurants lacking in adventurousness, I find it hard to give Joe’s Garage a thumbs-down. And indeed I expect—partly by how well the place was doing for lunch with apparent regulars—that one can have a positive dining experience here. It’s just that the good things are hard to find in the hodge-podge menu. Joe’s needs to curtail the variety and focus on what works. It’s time to turn from exploration to exploitation.

Joe’s Garage lies a pleasant amble across Loring Park from my office. So the astute reader may well wonder why it hasn’t been reviewed sooner? Perversely that very proximity has kept us out of Joe’s Garage, as we were seeking our culinary adventures further afield. This past month (or so) I have been engaged in a project for a client at some distance from my office, which has made coming back here more attractive. In fairness, I have already visited this restaurant on a few occasions: casual lunches, hurriedly consumed, on weekends while working in my office.

Joe’s is located on a street that is home to the Loring Café (perhaps our next week’s review…?), Ruby’s café and avant-garde art galleries. This area lies fashionably between downtown and the bohemian uptown, with several large churches, and of course the Walker/Guthrie complex. This area wasn’t always so: Anthony Burgess, working on a Guthrie script in the early 70s, remarked that the "Place was surrounded by churches and if they wanted the Guthrie to succeed they’d better build a few bars." Well they have and Burgess would have approved. Joe’s Garage occupies a small two-floored building – it wouldn’t surprise me if the building originally did house a garage – which has dining areas on both floors, with a marvelous second floor patio area open in the summer. The views from here can be terrific: look westward and you see the Basilica (reputed to be one of the oldest in North America) and eastward lies Loring Park. The restaurant’s anteroom is decorated with pictures of automobiles and old license plates hang on the walls; this presumably is the rationale for the name, but the idea wears thin as the automotive theme is (thankfully) abandoned for a more languorous grotto look. The walls are painted a light blue with art displayed for sale by local artists. The floors have an intentional grimy look to them, with black streaks, as if one too many oil changes have dribbled on to the floor over the years!

The menu is very slight with the usual assortment of sandwiches and salads. The specialty of the house appears to be mashed potatoes (garage food…?) which can be served with toppings that range from grilled chicken to Thai curry. Look for the specials that vary everyday. Some of the other items on the menu are fettuccini carbonara with spicy cappacola ham, Jambalaya risotto with Cajun tomato and Andouille sausage and red Thai curry risotto. The wine list is adequate and priced reasonably. I ordered pork tenderloin cooked in a special wine sauce served with the (ever present) mashed potatoes. Normally I would never order such a dish for lunch; I did it to save A from having to order it. A, you see, acts as if he’s a defrocked rabbi and feels compelled to order any pork based dish on the menu! I had a glass of Peachy Canyon Red, which came in a Greek-bistro style glass and was quite good. The pork had a purple hue to it – as if the pig had died in an apoplectic fit – caused, we were told by the waitress, by the wine sauce. My dish was terrible, the pork was too dry and the sauce only made it worse. The meal was not improved by poor service; our waitress and another were covering the entire second floor and seemed to be harried beyond the call of duty. Our bill came to about $41.00. I probably will eat the occasional late lunch here but it will only be on weekends when I am working and even then it will be a quick dash to eat an order of mashed potatoes covered with red Thai curry.