It was too good or too bad to last. The death knell took the form of the landlord of the now-prime-location off-Loring Park building calling for new lease terms. Sometime last year B and I went to the Loring Café for The Lunch and found it closed. The windows were plastered with signs from the "Friends of the Loring" asking for the public’s support in their negotiations with the building owner. What were we exactly supposed to do? Call the owner and convince her/him/them that late rent checks (one heard that that was the source of the problem) were a small price to pay for keeping an institution going? We went to Jerusalem’s for lunch instead.

A year or so before then, however, the Loring Café spun off a sibling establishment, the Loring Pasta Bar in Dinkytown by the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus. And, more recently, the bar side of the Loring Café and Bar reappeared in transmogrified form almost next door to the Pasta Bar under the unlikely and possibly misleading name of the Kitty Cat Klub. This week (actually last week, we’re sorry to be late with our reviews!) we had lunch at the former and coffee at the latter.

A place like the Pasta Bar has been a long time coming to Dinkytown. With college profs and grad students in profusion—the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is one of the largest universities in the country in terms of its student population—the neighborhood should be able to support more than burger joints and Asian eateries.

The Pasta Bar has two entrances, which can be confusing. B and I were waiting for each other in different parts of the same restaurant. The main entrance is through a bar area, a playful, whimsical space with curios, artifacts, and found objects displayed here and there and embedded into walls and the bar. The bar wasn’t exactly busy at this time; just a man with an acoustic guitar, alternating sips of coffee with chord progressions. The profusion of plants and the floor-to-ceiling south-facing windows make this an appealing spot to wait for your lunch companion to show up.

The space used to house a drugstore, but has been completely refurbished. About the only extant signs of the former use are the painted glass panels wrapping around the outside of the dining room repeating the one word, "drugs." With the Loring it’s not exactly aspirin that comes to mind.

The main dining room is large and has a balcony to boot! There’s a music stage as well and live music is a regular feature. It turned out that the aforementioned bar patron was practicing for his lunchtime engagement, and we had pleasant Spanish guitar music accompaniment to our meal.

Although there are many reminders of the old Loring in the new incarnation, the quality of service isn’t one of them. The menu features the motto "Guaranteed Friendly" and our server was indeed friendly and helpful.

The lunch menu is quite extensive, with about a dozen appetizers (including the old Loring’s signature artichoke ramekin and also a phó, grilled asparagus, and some salads), four pizzas (e.g., spinach and walnut pesto with tomatoes and smoked mozzarella), a dozen pastas, which can be ordered as half-size, half-price primis, and almost as many entrées, which include three steaks, lamb chops, scallops, and duck leg and thigh. The name of the restaurant and the menu may highlight pastas, but this is more than an Italian restaurant. The pastas include a coconut curry chicken (served with rice, actually) and shrimp pad thai. Over a dozen wines are available by the glass. Prices are moderate, and students can get 50% discounts between two and five o’clock.

B and I split a smoked duck salad to start—our server was friendly enough to split it for us. It consisted of spinach and radicchio leaves, a mild parmesan or parmesan-like cheese, a generous, I’d even say too generous, helping of pine nuts, and tender strips of duck. The dressing was a light pomegranate vinaigrette.

For my main dish I ordered the penne with crimini mushrooms, partly on the strength of our server’s assertion that it was the best dish on the pasta menu. And it was very good. The gorgonzola cream sauce it came with wasn’t heavy or cloying but had a nice nutty flavor; a good handful of raisins were also in the dish, providing regular minibursts of sweetness.

B was debating between potato gnocchi with sausage and the coconut curry chicken for his entrée and went with the latter, also after consultation with the server. But in his case the recommendation didn’t pan out. The curry was, curiously, spicy yet bland, almost as if the chef had substituted cayenne pepper for salt.

As mentioned, for coffee we walked down a couple of doors to the Kitty Cat Klub. This is a larger space than the Pasta Bar, with several rooms of chairs and couches, mostly old and overstuffed and mismatched, and looking especially inviting after a pasta lunch. A small music stage exists here too, and there’s live music every evening. Food is available as well, and one can order from both the Pasta Bar menu and the menu from Annie’s Parlor, the landmark Minneapolis burger and malt shop which is located directly above, on the second floor of the same building. But Kitty Cat doesn’t have the look and feel of a restaurant. It’s more the sort of place you’d go to during the day if you wanted to work on that philosophy paper, discussing perhaps how the postmodern turn, with its tendency toward overwrought pluralisms, has liberated the protagonist from traditional unitary conceptualizations; and yet, by discarding the evolutionarily vetted guidance of a (at least putatively) successful culture, rendered the justification of thought and deed that much more important and, simultaneously, that much less tractable.

We may have lost one Bohemia but we’ve gained two!

First a few lamentations about the old Loring. It was a unique place. The restaurant was only marginally good (the menu almost never changed). The bar was brilliant, where you were just as likely to hear Edith Piaf as something from the Spanish Sahara. The furniture and fixtures appeared to be from a dozen Victorian estate sales and were used to decorate a space that was a former car dealership. There was marvelous art on the walls—some of it acquired, possibly, in lieu of cash payment for a bar tab—which was jealously guarded; I remember trying to buy some and was archly told that it "belonged to the permanent collection". On Saturday mornings a loose affiliation of poets and artists used to meet there under the somewhat pretentious name of "The Ophelia’s Pale Lilies". I used to belong to this group until Jason decided that poets were lousy customers and booted us out. Thursday nights at the Loring were "International", where the clientele represented the United Nations and we learnt that drinking and a good time can be had in any language. But enough of nostalgia let us speak of the New Jerusalem.

Trying to find this restaurant should be easy, it’s huge. But the outside is deceptively marked as a "Drug Store". There are two entries; should you choose the one on 4^th street you could be in for a longish wait as there are no hosts on that side. I came in from that side, whereas A wisely chose the 14^th street entry. The look and feel of the old place is attempted with a fake wood and brick façade. The ceiling is extremely high. Much of the fixtures from the Loring have survived the transition. In one corner there is a small raised stage from which the diners can be regaled with music. On this day it was classic guitar. There is an open floor with tables strategically located. Don’t let the host lead you to the small round table, purportedly for two – it isn’t large enough for one save two.

The menu retains items from the bar menu of the old Loring. The appetizers list the tried and (if you’re drunk) true Artichoke Ramekin; Shrimp Toast; Calamari; and the Smoked Duck Salad that I shared with A. The salad was fresh and the strip of duck tasty. There are a dozen wines by the glass but one is hard pressed to say if they’re fairly priced or not since the wines that are available by the glass are not available by the bottle. I had a glass of the Pinot and was reasonably satisfied with it. The main courses are divided between Pastas and Pizzas. Intriguingly the pastas listed a Coconut Chicken Curry, which I had. There was nothing remotely pasta about it: strips of chicken served on rice and drizzled with a hot but otherwise nondescript sauce. The interest in my meal faded after the first mouthful. I tried the real pasta that A had ordered and found it much more to my liking. Some of the other items on the menu are Portabello Mushroom Ravioli; Spaghetti with Mussels; King Crab Spaghetti; and Potato Gnocchi with Italian Sausage. Our bill came to $45.00.

We decided to retire to The Kit Kat Club for our post lunch coffee. The club is a couple of doors down from the restaurant and is unfortunately named. Both A & I are extremely fond of cats (A has three while I make do with two) but to me this name conjured up visions of "adult entertainment". The club is located in a huge, cavernous space underneath Annie’s Parlor, and food from above may be ordered here. The space is divided into rooms; each room has its own color scheme and décor motif. We had our coffee in the blue room. This should become the true descendant of the bar side of the Loring Café but alas! Poor Jason has had to make compromises for his youthful patrons: there is a room with video games and a large TV. Would this have happened at the old place? Perish the thought.