What’s In A Name
By Mitch Berg
“What if someone built a restaurant named ‘Swastika’?”
It wasn’t a question I ever got to ask the owner of Uptown’s late, lamented (?) Soviet-themed restaurant. I wasn’t going to ask the waitstaff or the bartender; they’re working stiffs and they don’t need to care one way or the other. But when friends asked me to meet there, I was a little uncomfortable; nobody would attend, much less open, a restaurant named “Swastikas”. You could probably sneak a few themes through: Blutwurst und Boden, or maybe Ein Fork, Ein Stein, Ein Menu.
But Hammer and Sickle? A direct reference to the emblem of one of the three most lethal regimes in history?
I went – long story. Great selection of vodka, and the best piroshki I’ve had since the Vomit Comet killed off the late, great “Russian Tea House” on University Avenue. It wasn’t my party, didn’t need to make a fuss…
…but I wasn’t especially pained to see that the concept has apparently gone to the great restaurant Lubyanka in the sky.
But when one door closes, a window opens. Maybe.
Another new restaurant, this time on the East Side of Saint Paul, gets into funky historical and cultural turf – maybe.
Juche is the official ideology of the North Korean regime. It’s Stalinism with a Korean accent. In terms of cultural and historical overtones, it’s a simple word that, viewed through a Nork lens, is as loaded as Lebenraum or Wrecker.
Not viewed through a Nork lens, it’s not entirely unlike the idiomatic and unobjectionable-to-admirable Finnish maxim of Sisu – self-reliance, grit, determination, stoicism.
And I’d love to figure it out. So, long story short, I guess I know where I’m eating next weekend.
March 30th, 2023 at 12:26 pm
They had food? So, not themed after the Holodomor.
March 30th, 2023 at 12:46 pm
Well said. A restaurant named “Juche” should serve grass and wood shavings and rat parts in honor of the historic menus found in North Korea. Same basic thing with Hammer & Sickle, and really, we’re naming restaurants after genocidal regimes….why?
March 30th, 2023 at 1:08 pm
North Korea’s borders are possible the most apparent borders on Earth when viewed at night from space. Considering the average St. Paulite’s opinion of the DFL’s
Blackout Bill overall professed energy plan, St. Paul is the perfect location for a North Korean inspired restaurant.
March 30th, 2023 at 4:37 pm
There used to be a Ruskie restaurant on Cathedral Hill, across from Frost’s.
It’s gone, probably.
Anyway, who wants to pay 7.875% tax for a $7.00 beer to share air with leftist scumbags?