The Star of the North

I visited Minnesota last week for the first time in seven years. I bunked for three nights at my college friend Megan's beautiful St. Paul apartment. We ate well (Lucia's, Northeast Social Club, and Victory 44) and executed road trips to Northfield and Duluth. Picking up an old friendship with Megan was effortless. It felt as if we simply stumbled back into a conversation half-finished in June 2002.

Minnesota, too, felt so familiar that I found myself startled again and again. I enjoyed making a few new discoveries, too: Lunalux, a great letterpress shop on Loring Park, and Minnesota Monthly, whose restaurant recommendations courtesy of Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl were key to dinners at the restaurants listed above.

Also of note: the uncommonly charming waiters of Minneapolis. 

Uptown Minneapolis neon.

Autumn in Northfield.

Terrible weather at the exit for Cloquet (the town of my father's birth) en route to Duluth.