By Barth Anderson

Hands down: Common Roots Café makes the best bagels locally.

I found this out when I had lunch with Danny Schwartzman at Common Roots Café last August. Common Roots, Danny's restaurant, opened July 9, 2007, with a mission of buying local foods, which was perfect for me, since the August Eat Local Challenge had just begun. I had celery soup and easily the best bagels I've ever eaten in the Twin Cities. Lunch was made with all local ingredients, which is Common roots' mission: to buy and sell as much local food as possible. Even those bagels were largely local.

"I'd say the bagels are in the upper ninety percent for local ingredients," said Danny.

Too often, though, when Johnny-come-latelies jump into to the local food scene, talk about "local" is a cheap marketing angle. But for Common Roots, local is the key to quality. Writers from Rick Nelson of the Star-Tribune to readers of foodie websites like Chowhound have praised these bagels, (and Minnesota Monthly picked them as the Best Bagels of 2007). So I asked Danny the secret, and why it's been so hard to get good bagels in Minneapolis.

He said the café's "local mission" had something to do with it.

"The flour [for our bagels] comes from a local mill," Danny said. "The malt powder comes from Wisconsin. We use local organic honey from Ames Farm. If you want bagels to be good, you have to make them fresh, by hand, on site."

Where the ingredients come from matters?

"Freshness matters for bagels," said Danny with confidence. "That's the key."

Stretchin' the Menu

But good as they are, great bagels do not a restaurant make, and it's certainly easier to run a local-food café in August than it is in December (in Minnesota). Last August, when I first ate at Common Roots, local fare was thick on the menu with local tomatoes, local cucumbers, local lettuce, and the basil was plucked from Common Roots' own window boxes.

"But in winter," Danny told me shortly after Christmas, "we have to be a bit smarter. We stretch out our menu to feature the best local and organic ingredients. When you make everything from scratch you can do that."

For instance, at the time this article was written (late December), the Common Roots menu featured plenty of local dairy, local flours and grains, the bagels, the bread that's baked fresh on site, and the meat is always local - "No exceptions," Danny said. Typically the beef for the café's savory Roast Beef Sandwich, among other items, comes from Thousand Hills Cattle Company. But Common Roots has also bought from a rookie beef producer who graduated from the Land Stewardship Project's Farm Beginnings Program, showing Danny' dedication to nurturing the local food scene.

"We love Thousand Hills' grass-fed beef, of course," Danny said, "but it felt important to support an emerging beef farmer."

But how does Common Roots buy veggies and fruits when the winter winds howl? Does Danny simply revert to buying cheap conventional produce like any other restaurant? What are Common Roots' customers getting in mid-winter?

"Obviously, our preference is for local and locally processed food, but winter makes that challenging," Danny says. Common Roots defines local as food grown within 250 miles of the cafe, and the beer, wine and coffee he sells are all processed locally, even if the ingredients aren't locally grown. "Then we prefer what I call 'regional organic,' which basically means the Upper Midwest. Organic Valley dairy products, for example. They all come from the Midwest organic dairy pool, but outside that 250-mile radius."

Come winter, Common Roots focuses on organic and Fair Trade foods (such as Minneapolis's own Peace Coffee, which is the every day brew at Common Roots). In this dedication to organic, Danny is a good neighbor to the Wedge and its members, since his restaurant's mission matches up nicely with ours.

"Our preferred distributor is Co-op Partners Warehouse [CPW]," said Danny of the Wedge's warehouse, "because they have a phenomenal array of organic produce. Pretty much all our produce that isn't local is coming from CPW."

Even in summer, some of the more established local farmers in Minnesota and Wisconsin request that Danny purchase their items through CPW, which Danny honors because it makes life easier, and thus, more sustainable for the farmer.

"They want us to work with CPW because they can deliver once and that's it. It's one stop for them," says Danny. "So we'll always buy a certain quantity of produce through CPW."

Forty-two percent of all of Common Roots' food purchases were local and 16% were regional organic, for a total 58% local or regional organic.

Not bad for a snowy month in Minnesota.

Gimme a "Here" Beer

And a big part of that local percentage simply has to be beer and wine.

"We do sell a good amount of local beer, yeah," admits Danny.

Even local wine?

"Have you had Minnesota wine? It's really quite good," he insists. "We sell quite a bit, actually."

As a longtime locavore myself, I'm accustomed to the Wedge setting the standard when it comes to eating locally. But it's always struck me as sad that my co-op can't sell decent local beer or wine (Minnesota allows grocery stores to sell only 3.2 beer and malt beverages). The microbrew movement of the eighties was a precursor to the Eat Local trend, after all, and I dream of a day when I can buy a six-pack of Surley and some Wedge brats with one check.

But until then, locavores can have a local beer at Common Roots alongside their Kadejan chicken sandwich made on a "best in town" bagel.

Common Roots café currently has six beers on tap, five from Minnesota breweries (Surly, Brau Bros, Flat Earth, and Finnegans, which donates to non profits) and the sixth from Milwaukee (Organic Lakefront Beer ESB). All beer is on tap, of course, since kegs minimize environmental impact (refillable, less delivery). The wine at Common Roots is either locally grown and produced, or from Etica, a Minnesota importer that specializes in Fair Trade wine.

Happy hour is from 4-6pm Monday through Friday, by the way

The People Have Spoken

Is all this effort at sourcing good local product paying off?

Danny says, "All noticeable demographics are excited by what we do because all kinds of people have connections to farms - whether longtime Minnesotans or new immigrants. All our customers have been responding very favorably to what we're doing.

"We want to make local food accessible, so you don't have to be really into [local food] to come in and enjoy a bagel."

As for the future, Danny is very excited about the coming year - especially when the snow stops flying. The best is yet to come, according to Danny. Since his "eat local" cafe hasn't even seen a full growing season yet.

"We're pretty sure this coming summer will be a big summer for us," Danny said confidently.

Yet another reason to long for June.

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