Kafe 421 – Minneapolis, MN (Dinkytown)

GingerVitus had more hilarious stories to tell me before I started my new job, so we decided to meet for lunch again near her work. She chose Kafe 421 and fortunately, I had never been there before – I’m always up for trying new restaurants. This place is kind of a mash of different styles and is borderline upscale, maybe a high-mid-scale environment. Not snooty, but definitely classier than Buffalo Wild Wings.

The place seems kind of small and narrow inside, but it looks like the dining area goes back further into the restaurant than I would have imagined. The menu isn’t terribly large, but is reasonable for a lunch offering. I found a couple of things I wanted to try. There’s a lot of sandwiches, salads, and pastas on the menu. I got it narrowed down to 5 things, then down to three, then finally decided on the Pork Tenderloin Sandwich – roasted pork tenderloin, swiss cheese, thick cut bacon (dur…), spinach, avocado, and scallion may on whole grain bread. I asked for the mayo on the side, since I’m weird about my sauces. It comes with salad or fries and I went with the Caesar salad this time around.


The food arrived quickly, and I was pretty happy to see my sandwich and salad looking delicious. It was now that I realized I had forgotten my camera in the car and politely asked GingerVitus if I could borrow her camera phone to take a photo and e-mail it to myself. Thankfully, she only gave me the briefest of hard times about forgetting things like this, and eventually took out her phone. Thanks GV! The salad was a pretty standard Caesar salad. Nothing to write insane amounts about, but it was very good.

The sandwich was pretty awesome though. I was really happy with it. The meat was really good and the cheese and avocado seemed perfect for this thing. I even started using the weird mayo with the sandwich and it made it better – hooray! The bread was one of my favorite kinds (the kind with all the stuff on the outside of the bread – you know – the seeds and weird bits of stuff) and was lightly toasted. Not like Quizno’s blood-inducing toasted, but just enough to give it some texture. The bacon was delicious as it’s very difficult to screw up and the veggies on the sandwich were very fresh and tasty.

There were enough things on the menu that look appetizing that I’ll likely be back soon. Even GingerVitus’s Spinach Salad looked delicious – strawberries, spinach, pears, gorgonzola, cranberries, walnuts, and orange-sesame dressing – yeah, really. It looked awesome.

Top 5 things about Kafe 421
1. Pork Tenderloin Sandwich
2. Spinach Salad (according to GingerVitus)
3. Really diverse menu with a lot of styles
4. GingerVitus has the most hilarious stories. Everytime.
5. Upscale without being snooty


Bottom 5 things
1. It’s slightly pricey – not outlandish, but not cheap
2. Some of the wait staff looked REALLY surly, enough to comment on
3. There really isn’t anything else bad
4.
5.

www.kafe421.com