Food Trends: Minnesota-California Fusion

Last night, in honor of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, my wife Pat, for the first time, made Minnesota hot dish: ground beef, canned corn and beans, Tater Tots, the works. I picked up some take-out sushi for an appetizer.

It made me think: how about launching a new cuisine: Minnesota-California Fusion?

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I was born in Minnesota, Walz country, to memories of descending into church basements where covens of blue-haired ladies giggled and stirred giant vats of hot dish and Sloppy Joes, of my jaws clamping down on a Juicy Lucy, created at a bar in my childhood neighborhood: a ground meat patty infused with cheese that oozed through my teeth like magma through cracks in volcanic rock.

Minnesota cuisine was stick-to-your ribs comfort food. Its influence spread worldwide during WWII when GIs brought Spam to the Pacific islands as a gift to starving islanders. The islanders built shrines, miniature airports, to pray for the return of their cargo cult god John From, “Hi, I’m John from St. Paul, enjoy this can of canned meat product.” John was sometime depicted as descending from a helicopter, which became know in Pacific pidgin as a mixmaster blong Jesus. Minnesota Spam stuck to the ribs of Polonesia and Melanesa and is still a diet staple in the islands.

In the 1970s, I rinsed and renewed and moved to Kamala country where I learned to love California comfort food: clam chowder, burritos and the like. But I soon discovered the myriad flavors offered by the little mom-and-pop restaurants that dotted the neighborhoods of San Francisco: Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Russian, Burmese, Japanese, African. A culinary journey on every corner. Later, I tasted California Cuisine, designed to drain-your-wallet rather than stuff your face.

I learned to savor sushi, odd for a guy from a place that regarded overcooking as a form of exorcism.

California politics was as wild as its cuisine. As a journalist, I joined the scrum at Ronald Reagan’s star-studded second inauguration and interviewed Jerry Brown, aka Governor Moonbeam. It was the age of Charles Manson, the fading hippie movement, the Black Panthers, anti-war protests. I reported on the American Nazis, visiting their headquarters trailer camp in California’s Central Valley. A scary lot, who harassed their neighbors, but luckily left me alone despite my thumbs-down review.

California made my head spin, like Beetlejuice.

But Minnesota evolved too: Politics went from Hubert Humphrey, aka the happy warrior, cycled through pro-wrestler/governor Jesse The Body Ventura (who borrowed his last name from a map of California), and landed in the lap of Tim Walz. So too, Minnesota cuisine. Scandinavian and German, ya sure, but also Native American, and flavors of new immigrants: Somali, Hmong, Laotian, Indian, Mexican as well as some new treats: There is a cannabis dispensary in my old neighborhood named Uffda.

Enter Kamala-Tim Fusion. Harris, blending the flavors of her ethnic and cultural heritages: growing up in the same sort of middle class neighborhood in Berkeley that I did in Minnesota, and rising on her personal merits and a good education, and Tim Walz, Minnesota comfort food, a stick- to-your-ribs coach in the Ted Lasso mold with, refreshingly, few empty calories.

What I would I serve in my new Minnesota-California Fusion restaurant? Maybe a lutefisk taco or fried walleye with a clam chowder starter with a choice of a bottle of imported Grain Belt Beer or a Napa Valley Chardonnay.

I would love to see the customers my restaurant would attract. I could probably recognize someone who was “Minnesota nice,” based on their head motions. When Minneapolis-based Norwest Bank took over San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, Wells employees lauded how the Minnesotans were so agreeable, repeatedly nodding yes to their ideas until it was time to make a final decision, to which they frequently nodded no.

Waiters take note: Have patience with the Minnesota ritual of arguing about who picks up the tab: “I’ll do it,” “No, I’ll do it!”, back and forth until the end of the game when the winner exclaims, “Aw shucks, I’ll do it next time.”

I hope that my restaurant would also attract a few San Francisco billionaire tech bros. “This Château d’Yquem goes beautifully with our jello-marshmallow-Cool Whip dessert. Could be worse, don’t cha know.”

I think Minnesota-California Fusion has the potential of being a big hit, “Gnarly, rad? You betcha.”