Since the City Pages’ Best of the Twin Cities issue just came out, I nominate The News Room—the downtown Minneapolis restaurant that was our lunch destination this week—for a "Most Inventive Restaurant Décor" award. It’s really very cute. The walls feature blowups or actual pages of newspapers from around the country, organized by newspaper section ("Travel", "Sports", "Business", etc.). Most of the news featured are from real paper issues, although there’s also one dated in the 1940s with a banner headline, "Nixon Resigns," and the Business section/room has pages from the Madison satire periodical, The Onion. So, sitting in the bar area as we were—the Travel section—you could, for example, read about Amelia Earhart taking off for her round-the-world flight or about the first powered flight (which, incidentally, took place exactly a century ago).

Other aspects of the décor also follow the newspaper section theme. The bar itself is a two-masted sailing ship with a buxom mermaid at the prow, reading a newspaper placed to keep titillation under wraps. The Sports section features a bank of TV monitors tuned to different sports channels or programs. There are monitors in the bar area too, although they weren’t tuned to The Travel Channel but to the "Strongest Man in the World" competition. As yet another thematic touch, our table doubled as a display case for blocks of large wooden type (for headlines from another era, perhaps).

With all of this going on, is it any wonder that food seems an afterthought in News? The menu consists of 15 salads, soups and chili, a few appetizers, and a dozen plus sandwiches, these last coming with a choice of home or French fries, stock chips (whatever that may be), or fruit (all "an no extra charge," the menu generously informs us).

We shared one of the appetizers to start, the crab cakes. Just the evening before I had had the wonderful crab cakes at Prima, a favorite neighborhood restaurant: the golden-crisp crust bespeaking perfection (Prima’s décor is nothing to write paragraphs about) even before the delicate, lusciously tender inside met the palate. The memory was to the detriment of the News version, which are served for some inexplicable reason sitting in a saffron olive oil sauce that renders the whole dish soggy and wet.

For my main dish I chose the "Chicago Style" Italian beef sandwich. Some options come with this selection: sweet or hot peppers, cheddar or mozzarella cheese. I went with the latter in each case. The "hearth baked roll" turned out to be rubbery and spongy. Worse, the whole plate had a layer of jus at the bottom—possibly the server had had a turbulent journey from the kitchen and the small container for dipping had sloshed over. As a result, the bottom of the sandwich turned to mush soon enough. The roast beef was well done, to the point of grayness. In addition to the mozzarella and the hot peppers—a combination that worked well, the mildness of the former complementing the spiciness of the latter—the fixings included pieces of carrots, celery, and pickled cauliflower.

I ordered home fries with the sandwich, thinking comfort food. Instead, they were infused with an apple-sauce flavor that I found distracting.

With the ship-bar as centerpiece for the entire restaurant, the alcoholic beverage selection doesn’t suffer from neglect. About 20 wines are available by the glass and 80 beers can be sampled. I had a glass of the Rancho Zabeco Heritage Vines zinfandel—lots of black fruit, hint of walnut, quite nice. My concluding espresso, however, was too creamy, almost buttery. One would have thought that the lemon peel that was sitting in the espresso—a faux pas in usual circumstances—would have imparted some necessary acidity, but no such luck.

The service didn’t merit any headlines either, the tag-team operation of several waitstaff resulting in delays on a couple of occasions that, for lunch anyway, would be considered unduly long.

When I said original I meant it in the Twin Cities context. I have dined at another newspaper-based restaurant/bar in Port Elizabeth (South Africa), The News Café, although a franchise,  has a much more interesting menu. Hopefully this isn’t a patented concept or legal missives will soon be in flight between Johannesburg and Minneapolis!

The restaurant is laid out in sections like a newspaper. The walls and colonnades are covered with blowups of newspaper pages with actual news; however, I couldn’t tell if the newspapers were real or fake, especially when president Nixon’s resignation appeared in a paper dated 1941! The sections are travel, sport, business and etc. The bar, which if you haven’t already guessed, is the sport’s section with a whole row of televisions; which were, on this day, focused on the "World’s Strongest Man Competition". The bar itself is a twin-masted schooner with a mermaid perched on its prow – a lady who would not be out of place on a certain page in the Sun tabloid; in this case modesty is preserved by an open newspaper. A surprising amount of care has been taken in the décor, which includes old wooden printer blocks on each table. Now if they’d only paid the same close attention to the menu.

A & I shared an order of the crab cakes, which were wet for some inexplicable reason (possibly infused with oil) but still managed to preserve some flavor if not their crispness. Other appetizers include Cajun popcorn, kabob (chicken, mushroom, pineapple), margarita flatbread and won tons (jumbo shrimp and cream cheese). I had a glass of the Bridgeview Pinot Noir (raspberry, cherry with plum overtones) from a list of ten reds by the glass. The menu must change occasionally; however, the one we had dated back to February 2003 and is divided into salads (Asian steak, blackened chicken, chicken Caesar, caprese chop (greens, buffalo mozzarella), raspberry, Greek chop, sundried chop, spinach, shrimp, goat, cobb, fruit and apple), soups (three daily and a chilli), appetizers (see above) and sandwiches (tuna, red, white & blue steak, "Chicago style" Italian beef, antipasto panino (prochutto, pepperoni, artichokes), California panino (chicken, bacon, cheddar cheese), gobbler panino, blackened Caesar wrap, pesto chicken, Rueben, turkey, pork po’ boy (pork in barbeque sauce), club, burger and fish n chips. If you want something other than a sandwich you’re out of luck. I chose the red, white and blue steak sandwich not out of patriotic reasons but because it seemed the most interesting thing on the menu; consisting of shaved ribeye, grilled onions, red & green peppers and bleu cheese on a torpedo roll. All sandwiches come with a choice of "home"—what does Vincent, next door, make of this—fries, hand cut fries, stock chips, or fruit. I had my sandwich with the hand cut fries, the later tasting like cardboard or paper (A’s advise to add salt didn’t help). The sandwich itself was only marginally acceptable – the ribeye shavings stringy and chewy (possibly overcooked) with more than acceptable fat and the whole sandwich being soggy to the point of mush.

The service was friendly if somewhat disorganized. We were waited upon in turn by servers who kept going on breaks. It took too long to get our bill, which was $49.00 when finally delivered.

I suspect the raison d'être of The News Room is the bar and the sport’s loving, beer drinking patrons it can attract. The food on offer may only be there to justify the terms of the liquor license. It might also be attractive to the late night drinkers or to set a drinking base for the happy hour crowd, which by the way commences daily from five PM to seven PM with two dollar pints of the featured beer that changes daily. The competition for the dwindling entertainment dollars is going to be fierce with The Local across the street and any number of bars up and down Nicolett that serve better food.

All in all the place merits a visit for its exotic décor if nothing else, but if you imagine that this is the sort of place where Daniel Schorr might be found chatting with the secretive "deep throat" then you’ll leave disappointed.

B