view from my seat at the bar follows me (hi, I’m Kirstie) around as I eat through my hometown (Minneapolis) and across the country, searching for food that makes me feel something.
What is this project?
This is restaurant culture writing, not review. I do two things.
I write portraits of restaurants centered around people.
I try to send people who are going out to eat once or twice a year to the places that I think are extraordinary and special.
What’s your bias?
Every writer as a bias even if they don’t tell you (and they don’t normally: tell you). Here’s mine: I am looking for food I can’t find anywhere else in the United States done damn good. Think the best Hui food in Columbus (Xi Xia), inventive dishes like Pumpkin Spice Pasta (Mint Mark), beet shaped into a rose and served with white chocolate (Jeune et Jolie), or a vegan dessert tasting menu (HAGS). I am also looking for places doing the standards better than anyone else. I don’t write as influencer and I don’t write to be a part of the food scene or to be liked by industry folks—I write to recommend the most special restaurants I find, as a person who eats all the time, and tell you what ain’t worth the hype. I write about food culture, which includes both aspects of my life and critique of the current state of influencers and the industry as a whole. My focus is writing for diners, something I think most food writing has lost in 2024.
Wait are you a vegetarian?
No (but that’s recent). I eat vegetarian about 90% of the time and vegan about half the time so most of the time I’m writing about what I eat. I was vegan for close to a decade and vegetarian long before that. I just like vegetables and I don’t eat factory farmed meat. And if you’re serving me vegetarian plates (I won’t judge you if you say our menu cannot accommodate vegetarian diners), they should be good. I used to be vegan and vegetarian (well over the majority of my life). I care very deeply about sourcing and order meat from time to time from restaurants whose ethics and farms I trust. I have a very small selection of places where I locally get my own meat from. Visiting a small family farm is actually what changed my mind about being vegan—but that’s a story for another time.
