On Valentine’s Day, I was supposed to be somewhere else, not Martina. I had a reservation at a restaurant that people kept telling me was getting posted all over the internet and “needs salt in a bad way” or “is all Instagram no substance.” I thought it might be fun to stare out over that restaurant and be a hater, but… the night before, I just really wanted to go to the bar at Martina, so I canceled the reservation, though, sorry in advance if you see a canceled reservation from me on Valentine’s Day: I’m coming back.
At 4:45pm, I slid on a bright colored mini dress and my highest pink heels (four inches, Choos), a pink velvet coat worn by other women since the 1920s, with the original buttons, and, I hope, more than one person who has gotten the best kiss of their life inside of it. I put on a full face and my contacts, instead of my glasses which I normally wear, and I did my hair. Up in a half pony, cascading down my back.
It was snowing, and look, it hasn’t snowed like that all winter. Christmas snow, not Valentine’s Day snow. My legs were bare, my tattoos out, and my shoes weren’t shoes you can wear in the snow, not really, which fuck it. I had planned my outfit a week ago, put it in my closet, even the light pink lingerie I would wear under it–and I wasn’t changing it. The outfit was the perfect one for the occasion.
I wasn’t meeting a man. No. I was going out alone.
Why? Why wear this? Why go out alone in the snow in my most painful shoes? Why put yourself through a lover’s holiday when you’re single? Because after a year of being single, I have learned that some things you must do for–and by–yourself. Like on my hardest, most lonely days, I put on my most beautiful outfits, peeling the ones I normally save for Michelin starred restaurants out of the back of my closet (I bought this one for minibar) and putting them on over lace and above consignment designer high heels and then I go out and eat decadent meals that feel like a whole love affair.
So: I shut my laptop a little early and went out into the snow, on Valentine’s Day, with the hopes to score a spot at Martina’s bar before 5:30pm, when all the men who didn’t make reservations would show up with the women who love them.
And hey, no shade, but I don’t envy those women, because my future husband would make the reservation.
When I walked in, the bar was already packed with people who didn’t make reservations, with exactly one seat at it. Like it was saved for me by god or whatever. And within two minutes of sitting down, my phone was off, face down, and I had an NA vermouth in front of me in a giant wine glass with a spherical ice cube that when I’m sad I knock back and forth between the sides of the glass and watch like it might be able to heal my heart.
I was sat stuck between two couples, one of them obviously newly in love, with legs tangled and laughter cracking–the other, a love that felt like it was dying. They hardly talked. And I remember, I remember, when I used to sit across from the man I thought I would marry and we wouldn’t talk, I thought it was comfort, and I know now, it wasn’t, not that love is chatty or can’t handle silence, but that love has something to say like, “That tastes good,” or, “Do you like your drink?” or on Valentine’s Day, love says something like, “I’m happy to be here with you in the quiet.”
I have spent so many nights here with tears in my eyes, surrounded by couples, after every single bad date I’ve had in the year (it’s… a lot). It’s gotten to the point that when I arrive at Martina, one of the bartenders slightly deflates upon seeing me if it is their shift because it means I’ve come to stitch myself back together with the panqueque and damn good non-alcoholic cocktails. “What happened,” they’ll ask me, and I’ll tell them something like: he didn’t tip or no sparks or he said Chef Life unironically 12 times or he laughed at me when I told him that I think I have something to say about food or he asked me to sit on his lap at Meritage (I wouldn’t even sneeze in Meritage it’s so stuffy, let alone sit on a creepy man’s lap).
Because look: dating as a single woman who is looking for her husband in 2024 is like you are ice and someone has a chisel in your and every date is one more tap and you just feel that you only have so much time before you shatter into tiny pieces at the hands of men who don’t think your heart is worth a damn. But, and I really do believe this, if after every bad date you go to a place where people slide you a glass of a drink they know you want? That makes each tap a little lighter, it keeps you going a little longer.
So one of the things I tell every single woman I meet is: find a spot to go to after every bad date and get the same drink every single time.
Because it is both the drink that helps but also the remembering, the drink arriving before you say what you want, that starts to make you feel more human.
It’s a wee bit funny, because the first time I came to Martina after I moved home was because a man I briefly dated told me to go because they had a carrot pasta (it’s not just a random suggestion, we’ll get there). I hadn’t gone since I had been back, and it was June, and he told me to go to the patio. It was full, so I found myself at the bar and I immediately felt at home. Like: a man ferried me here then disappeared into the night, like men love to do, but they always leave something behind for me to hold onto. A restaurant or a lesson or a feeling.
For that man, he gave me a giant headache and also (accidentally) the bar Martina, which when people ask me who does hospitality the best in the Twin Cities, I give them two answers: Myriel and specifically the bar at Martina. I sit in one spot, when I can, in front of the left garnish terrarium.
If you’re in my favorite spot when I arrive, I’m so sorry, but I am definitely staring daggers into the back of your head.
I sit here because it’s right by the corner spot, where you can see the dynamic between potential lovers a little better than the side by side. So many of the stories in my book are stories of other people’s first dates or break up conversations in that spot. And I also sit here because it’s in front of the garnishes which glow in the dark and feel like, in some way, a dining companion.
One of my good friends, on a night when his heart was broken, told me, “I don’t want to sit in front of the terrarium tonight I want space to spread out,” because even he knew where I sit–and we’ve only been to Martina together one time. He knows because if you follow me on Instagram, you can see photo after photo of me in the same spot, with the caption, Always and forever Martina, with NA vermouth and potato churros and some kind of pasta which–
I think that the pasta at Martina is a sleeper. Everyone always talks about other places to go to get pasta and even other regulars I meet at Martina order from other places on the menu, but the pasta? It’s special.
Like: this year, every time I saw a carrot pasta on a menu this year, I ordered it. Mostly, I was bewildered. Sometimes, I was actually a little bit pissed.
Because most carrot pasta is bad.
It’s too sweet, with no depth, and I don’t know why we’re putting ginger in it, guys, it’s not a Thai carrot soup. Or there’s so much pepper it’s like carrot-cio e pepe but without the cheese. Or people put sage in it and it’s not butternut squash. Or they just serve it as carrot, plain, with some yogurt? Why? Why did this pasta happen? Or they douse it with poppyseed like it’s a fucking lemon muffin, and it’s like, what are we doing here and now I need a toothpick and you could have made soup with the carrots instead.
It came out of nowhere, carrot pasta everywhere all over the country. One of the things about being someone who travels to eat instead of staying at home is that I see trends roll through like waves. And carrot pasta? It has somehow become “in.” It became a bit of mine, so much so that when I went to Tenant which doesn’t have a menu ahead of time and I got carrot pasta, I just sent the photo of it to other people and said, “I didn’t even look for this one,” and got laughing emojis (theirs was average, it was fine).
I recently read a post from a chef who said he hates when writers share stories about bad food and should just elevate the good, because those restaurants will die on their own. But before they did, people with limited cash go and eat there, sometimes at acclaimed restaurants where you spend $35 for a plate of carrot pasta that is dreadful.
And so: I think that critique of bad restaurants is actually important, and I think that it builds trust, though I understand why chefs don’t like it—who likes the people who judge you? I can name a list of all the carrot pastas (most of them) I hated or thought were just okay and I don’t think it’s wrong to do that, I think it means when someone tells you something is special, they mean it’s special.
Of all the carrot pastas I’ve eaten this year (it was over 30 and most of them should have never hit the menu), there are only two that I thought were special.
The first belongs to Mint Mark. I ate it the first time I went to Mint Mark (since then, I’ve traveled four hours one way to Mint Mark to eat six separate times) and it made me stop eating and look around me. “Fuck,” I said. That’s the review. Fuck.
The second was Martina’s potato gnocchi, which has carrot and serrano. So I was there and I was eating the pasta and I texted the man I was flirting with at the time and I said, “To the edge,” which by that I meant salted to the edge, and that? That’s one of the best compliments I can give you, because it means you’re brave enough to take it there and it means you’re confident that you won’t miss. And most restaurants? They don’t take it there anymore–or they miss and go over the edge. Then I texted that man, “Special.”
He said, “You’re special.”
I exited the chat because men love to say things like that to you right before they break your heart.
He did by the way: break my heart.
But, on Valentine’s Day, that’s not what I ordered, though I considered it. It’s such a dear thing to me, something I love, so I thought about ordering it on the day of love. Instead, I ordered the only pasta on the menu that I hadn’t ordered yet: the celery root ravioli, vegetarian.
Now, the first reason I hadn’t ordered it before is that I find that most dishes in which you can modify them to remove the meat tend to be undersalted and well, honestly, mostly pretty sad approximations of the dish as it was intended (look, I will never, ever, ever get over that Demi served me a–a single–totally under seasoned baby artichoke instead of a literal whole lamb chop for a main). And hey, I get it, the dish was meant for meat! I just wish restaurants didn’t offer it if it was gonna be kind of shitty. Just give me fewer, better options or at least treat me like a woman who likes to eat and not Gwyneth Paltrow.
And the second reason is that, well, I’ve had a shit ton of broken beurre blanc this year. I’ve had a shit ton of broken sauce period this year from restaurants with enough talent in the kitchens that they shouldn’t be sending out plates with broken sauce.
My summer was spent sending photo after photo to chefs I have flirted with saying, “Again,” or friends saying, “It’s broken, like my heart.” So I’ve been actively avoiding simple sauces, because it seems to me, most restaurants are putting their back into the weird and the complex (I love it, no shade) and not the simple (which is the real testament of skill, in my opinion). But I knew I was writing about Martina, so I figured, 1) why not? 2) I gotta.
The ravioli that night? When it came out, I looked at it and knew: it was going to be perfect, too.
Since I had that dish on Valentine’s Day, I’ve been thinking about it, the way you might a man when you have limerence in the early stages of dating: it crosses my mind from time to time in a way that takes me by surprise. I even went back for it, less than one week later and looking at it on a menu against some of my other favorite pastas, I ordered it again.
I think when people hear me say I eat to consume things you can’t get anywhere else, they think I mean weird, but I also mean this: a beurre blanc so silky, you go back to get it again in under a week.
I normally get dessert at Martina (the panqueque), but that night, I didn’t. Because I had a second location to go to—with a date this time.
After Martina on Valentine’s Day, I took off the dress, the shoes, the jacket. I changed into black sweatpants, a black hoodie, and a black wool coat (my normal attire) and headed into the snow one more time with my little dog, Mr. Rogers, on a 25 minute walk in the snow to Milkjam for ice cream.
My little dog, originally from the south, discovered this winter that he loves the snow. He ran around in circles as it fell, eating it from the road, his fur completely covered in snow by 10 minutes into the walk. I didn’t put in headphones. It was just me and the sound of Minneapolis in the snow–and then it was people all over Lyndale, slightly drunk and maybe in love, cooing and smiling at my cute little dog.
My favorite person I passed that night was a woman in a teeny, tiny black dress with open toed shoes and freshly painted toenails, also totally unable to conceive of a new outfit, and a man who held a clear umbrella over her head to keep the snow off her long blonde curls. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “Your dog is your date!” Like I have single written all over me (I do, probably, there was definitely a food stain on my pants) or like maybe she never considered that was possible.
And at Milkjam? It was teenagers, too young to get into places like Martina or to even consider them, eating ice cream together in the window. And then it was me and Mr. Rogers joining them like the most natural thing in the world. I love getting ice cream in winter, because it doesn’t melt when you eat it, and somehow, it feels a little bit like magic to eat a cold, frozen sphere in the cold, frozen world.
The walk home was slippery and colder, with the people around me a little drunker, and the moon a little brighter. When I got home, I gave Roger a bath first, then I crawled into one myself with a face mask and NA wine and the knowledge that this, too, is a celebration of love. But when one of my friends who had a date that night told me she wished she had had my night instead of hers, I shook my head, because one thing I have learned this year is how to do beautiful things when you are lonely—
and this was a beautiful thing I did and I was lonely.
I was back at Martina after a bad date a few days later. It was a strange second date in that this person was enamored with an idea of me as someone they might be able to fix (they wanted me to relax more, take it easy, not work so hard—they kept saying that enough for it to be mildly unsettling) instead of seeing the things I love most about myself (hustle, drive, determination, grit) and finding it hot.
After a bizarre date in which they kept saying they’d like to get me to watch TV for an entire day (never gonna happen), I went to Martina, letting the flowers they gave me die on the counter, never hitting a vase. I ordered my favorite drink: the pachamama, closely followed by the incendio as my second favorite.
The non-alcoholic cocktail menu at Martina used to be just okay, but about a month ago they changed over the drinks.
I got to try a couple of them in R&D and I was really excited for the menu to come out. To me, it’s now one of the best programs in the city, full of complex flavors and not-to-sweet drinks that feel like cocktails, sans alcohol, in line with the program at Herbst which is audacious in a way that I love.
I stared out into the bar in a sort of hollow way, fixing my eyes at the back of the restaurant, and when a bartender asked me, “Bad date?” I said, “They said they don’t like people who are pretentious about food and they want me to relax.”
And the bartender made a yeesh face and said, “Not your man.”
When my cute drink hit the bar for me, I got an alert from a different man on my phone, saying he was excited to see me at Bungalow Club on Sunday.
I get asked all the time how I can keep going in the face of the current dating pool which is somewhat heartless and feels like everyone is 45, wants kids, but is “still figuring out” their relationship style, and my answer is the same one I have for when people ask me why I keep eating carrot pasta: I believe one day you will find something perfect if you consume enough of it and that’s what I’m looking for.
I haven’t found perfect on Tinder, but I have found it at Martina—
and I go after every bad date (and Valentine’s Day) to remind myself that there was a moment in time that I thought no good carrot pasta existed and one does exist and it’s here. So after my worst dates, I show up to Martina, because I still believe that love is out there for me, even if on my way to finding it, I need to pick poppyseeds out of my teeth.