Good Enough Isn't: On Mint Mark 2.0
A love letter to all the people who miss what Mint Mark was, an essay about tiny restaurants, and why this food writer isn't sad that Mint Mark moved.
1: This essay begins with a fight.
A few weeks after I published my last piece about Mint Mark, my ex-boyfriend came into my house after a closing shift at a restaurant somewhere in the Twin Cities with a macaron ice cream sandwich for me and chicken tenders for him. “I’m a little upset with you,” he said.
“Why,” I asked.
“Your piece,” he said.
“What,” I said, baffled, laughing. “It was ga-low-ing,” I said.
He quoted me: “I am not sure yet if this essay is an ode or a eulogy.”
It’s a quote from my first essay about Mint Mark. He was repeating my words back at me. My first piece was written about the last week of Mint Mark 1.0 before they closed and opened in a new space. I drove to Madison during their closing week to eat there in order to write that piece. It said that Mint Mark favorite restaurant in the country. You can read that passage below—or better yet, click the link above to read my whole piece first.
“I’m not sure if it is a eulogy or ode, I’m not,” I said, throwing my hands up. “It could be either.”
“He’s doing the right thing,” he said, talking about Chef Sean Pharr. “He’s moving to a bigger place to give people better jobs. You can’t live on 40 seats at those prices in 2024.”
“I know that,” I said
“Do you,” he asked, turning on my oven to put in chicken fingers and looking at me in a way that said, “You don’t.”
It was 11:30pm. I was so tired. “Yes,” I said. “But at the end of the day restaurants are about the food and going from 48 to 90 seats inside and 150 seats with your patio is not something every team can pull off.”
“You don’t believe in your favorite restaurant,” he said, handing me the macaron ice cream sandwich.
He was fighting me quietly, hoping I would just say, “You’re right, you’re the chef,” but I’m not going to take that fight sitting down because the fight wasn’t about Mint Mark. The fight was about me.
I held the macaron ice cream sandwich as it melted and stood my ground, gesturing with it like some kind of weird Italian mobster in a movie scene (Go ahead and read this in a Tony Soprano accent if you want). “I have cried at that chef’s counter over the food. I have driven from Chicago to that bar instead of eating at a restaurant I had a prepaid reservation for. But you also know the restaurant has to change at 150 seats. You know that. I know that. He knows that. I am sure he is terrified. I am sure he is scared he made the wrong decision. Because what he is doing is hard.”
Then I felt that sinking feeling you get when you’re there standing in front of a man who you love on his worst days and realize he wants you to be someone else on your best days. That was what crushed me in the end.
The fight wasn’t about Mint Mark or Chef Sean Pharr or restaurants at all. It was about me—and this blog—and what I’m trying to say about restaurants. “What the hell do you mean I don’t believe in them? You don’t believe in me.”
We sat there deadlocked in my kitchen and now we were having two different conversations. He was defending my favorite restaurant in the country from me. Honestly, I wouldn’t doubt it, aside from the staff, he was defending the chefs from the girl who maybe loves it the most. He was defending them from a glowing review I wrote about them. And I was defending myself against the man I loved who didn’t trust that I’d be able to see Mint Mark 2.0 for what it was, regardless of my fears.
“He’s doing the right thing.” he said again.
“I know that,” I said back. “But at the end of the day, if the food isn’t as good, I think I get to be sad about it.”
“It’s still the right move if the food is a little bit worse,” he said, looking at me in the way he often did, like he was annoyed with me and wished I just took his word because he, after all, was the chef.
And this is where we disagree. If the food was worse when I arrived at Mint Mark 2.0, I would have grieved the loss of my favorite restaurant in the country, because so few restaurants do food like that and because one fewer of them would break my heart.
When I walked into Mint Mark 2.0, straight in from a drive out of Minneapolis for brunch, I replayed this conversation in my head. We had broken up months ago. But it was sticky—it was lodged in there.
I stood at the door to Mint Mark 2.0 and I said a small prayer, because when I tell you that Mint Mark is my favorite restaurant, I am not kidding. I went to over 400 restaurants in 2023 and it was my run away favorite. In 2024, I’m going to be just shy of 300 restaurants, and it’s still my favorite.
700 restaurants and I have chosen this one as my favorite.
It is my favorite restaurant because of not just the food, but because of its soul. Because it is brave and it is fun and it feels decidedly Midwestern in a world where Midwestern restaurants try to be something, anything, else.
When I opened the new heavy door to Mint Mark, I felt like it was my job to tell you the truth. Did they move and keep their soul? Or did they grow and lose it?
If I had walked in there with that man, he would have told me my job was something entirely different: blind belief because it was the right thing to do.
I’m sharing this anecdote not to harp one last time on a man who took my heart and shattered it on the ground like a piece of China he didn’t bother to think about being careful with, but because the thing he liked about me the least is the reason you should trust me.
He hated that I was hard on restaurants—you should trust me because of that.
If I walked in and it was a mess, if I walked in and Chef Sean Pharr had sold out the soul of Mint Mark for profit, if I walked in and new Executive Chef Kasey Cooke had messed up the vibe, if they couldn’t handle the weeds at 150 covers, if I had walked in and the food wasn’t as good, if I had walked in and it felt like something entirely different, I would have seen it and I would have told you.
My ex would tell you to go to his buddy’s place if it’s just okay, but if my favorite restaurant started slipping? I’d tell you the goddamn truth.
When I tell you this, I mean it:
Mint Mark 2.0 is somehow, against all odds, better.
2. It’s really a shame they had to move.
When I was in Madison, people asked me why I was traveling in town. Most people responded to my answer of, “Eating at Mint Mark,” with some version of:
(That’s it by the way. That’s the whole review.)
Before I walked into Mint Mark 2.0, I felt the same way. I felt like we lost something, but unlike the average guest, I understood why. With surging food costs, small restaurants have to charge an arm and a leg for dinner (well over $100 per person) and make a killing on wine to be able to just barely stay afloat.
I asked a few chef owners working in tiny restaurants to do the math for me. We’re talking chef owners working 80 hours in restaurants they built with their own two hands and walking away making under $20 an hour all said and done, often making less than their Chef de Cuisine or Executive Chef does per hour.
When I asked a chef to do the math on her hourly wage for me, she teared up. I asked her if it was worth it and she said, “Yes and no.” She was making $17.24 an hour. Her restaurant is 31 seats including her teeny tiny bar. Her line cooks start at $20 an hour. She gave her life, her ability to have children, a good salary at a fine dining restaurant, and stability to push for her dream.
For many chefs to live out their dream of a restaurant with their name on it, they are making less than they could make for someone else while putting their entire life on the line.
It wasn’t always like that. There were moments in time when you could have a 40 seat restaurant with $50 covers and build a life outside of it. But that time seems to have passed and I understand why we’re grieving it. I think we should, but I think we have to grieve it in context of the larger picture for restaurants and not one restaurant at a time.
A friend who runs a restaurant in Jersey told me recently that it feels like the entire restaurant industry is careening towards planned obsolescence. Her rent is about to go up by a significant amount. She’s not sure she can stay when it does. Lots of chefs feel that way.
Opening a restaurant is harder than ever—and it was always hard. There’s a local restaurant opening a brick and mortar that is over 300 seats. A friend of mine is pushing for a 200 seat monster build out with no front of house except bartenders because that’s the only way he might be able to have a life outside of work—and he wants kids, lots of them. And then there’s chefs trying to create intimate experiences by working out of their (or someone else’s) home kitchens, because it’s cheaper than industrial rent (think Little Owl and Duck Sel).
When I found out that Mint Mark was moving to double their interior space and gain ~60 new seats on a patio with an eventual cocktail bar up top, I got it.
Still, it felt like a knife to the heart because if Mint Mark, a genius and beautiful restaurant that is always full, cannot stay alive at 48 seats and charge under $100 per person… who can?
And it’s not that Mint Mark couldn’t stay there. It’s not that Mint Mark “had” to move. When people say that, it sounds like the building was condemned, instead of this being an intentional decision to keep the restaurant alive for me and for you and honestly for the kitchen team.
It’s not that they couldn’t stay. It’s that there’s no space for growth if Mint Mark stays there without you paying more every single year for your food.
At a certain point, if you’re always full, your revenue stays the same year over year over year. If you have 48 seats that are always full (as Mint Mark did), you cannot give raises by bringing in more guests. You give raises by either cutting into your already thin margin as a chef owner or increasing your prices by the cost of living adjustment and inflation on food every year. Both of these things aren’t ideal for a business—and neither of them are ideal for you as a diner.
The restaurants I love the most are teeny tiny. Myriel, Beckon, Schwa, HAGS, to name a few. But those restaurants all clear $150 per person on food alone (HAGS is the cheapest on the list at $160; Schwa is the most expensive at an average of $225). That’s before tax, fees, and service, which pushes all of these reservations past $200 except Myriel which is $196. Add in drink pairings (Schwa is BYOB) and this is a real cost of eating at one of these restaurants is at least $300 per person.
This is Beckon for one person on the standard wine pairing (there’s two other pairings—and then there are add ons like caviar and Wagyu.) Transparently, my true cost to eat at Beckon with my n/a pairing and Wagyu was just shy of $600. My real cost when I eat at Myriel (the cheapest on the list all in) is close to $300. Per person.
That’s not what Mint Mark is. Mint Mark is not a $600 date night.
But in order to stay alive at 48 seats and pay your staff well, offer raises every year, and make money yourself, you have to get close to that price point as a small restaurant. And that’s a devastating reality for all of us, guests and chefs, that goes beyond Mint Mark.
The thing is that people who are sad about Mint Mark moving are sad about something bigger than Mint Mark: they’re sad at the reality of rising restaurant costs, inflation, and stagnating wages for the rest of us that means we can’t afford to keep up with rising costs in restaurants as we go out to eat.
The truth is small restaurants that are always full have a cap on what they can make—and in 2024, for most of them, if they want their prices to stay around or under $50/person, 48 seats won’t cut it.
I’m sharing this because I am hoping that I can somehow get people who miss Mint Mark’s old space to understand that in order to stay there, it might become unaffordable for you to go there and Chef Sean Pharr wants you to be able to go there. Mint Mark is a restaurant for the average person in Madison, not the rich. The decision to move is as much about keeping Mint Mark accessible to you as it is about growth.
The cost of having a 20-50 seat restaurant in 2024 is that it becomes unattainable to the average person due to forces outside of owners’ control. And Mint Mark’s magic is that everyone can go there.
So Chef Sean Pharr’s decision to move is partly about you, but it’s also about his team.
Take one look at the old Mint Mark kitchen as a person who knows anything about kitchens and you can see that the old kitchen was hard to work in.
Mint Mark 1.0 was designed to be a bar with bar snacks and somehow magically became a restaurant.
Chef Pharr was talking to me about how he kept dreaming and pushing the menu past the limits of the kitchen. The kitchen was built for bar snacks, not 12-14 gorgeous plates spinning up and out of it. It was shaped like a rhombus. I remember looking at it when I was first in the restaurant thinking that the team was moving with a ton of intention and it looked like it was a difficult kitchen to work in logistically.
Chef Pharr said to me, “The prep kitchen and walk in were in the basement which meant you had to run up and down stairs an average of 50 times a day to prep, cook, and store food.” Now, I don’t know about you, but if I was a staff person at Mint Mark, I’d be so happy to move and not have to do that.
Simply put: Mint Mark was organically and beautifully born in a space unable to contain it.
Chef Pharr told me, “The decision to move was so hard for me. I had literally built the first Mint Mark. The tiling, framing, shelving, trim work, walk-in cooler, and so many other things that I knew the space inside and out. It was within the four crooked walls of Mint Mark that I developed my style of cooking, as well as cut my teeth as an owner. So many emotions were bundled up in my 48 seat restaurant that I could not fathom moving it. However, there would not be a way for my employees to grow in my business without finding a way to generate more revenue. They all worked so hard and cared so much that I knew the right thing to do for them was build a bigger and better Mint Mark.”
He did.
3. Every punk has to grow up one day.
The above two sections were easy for me to write, but the section about food was really hard. I wrote an entire draft of it and scrapped it. Then I wrote another draft and sent it out to a chef friend, because all my drafts are reviewed by chefs before they go live. He told me to scrap that one, that he felt it was too technical for the average reader.
I guess this section could just be me saying that I went into Mint Mark thinking it wasn't going to be my favorite restaurant anymore.
I expected so many big things about it to change when it went from 48 to 150 seats with the patio. I expected that the changes would be so large that it would still be good, but it wouldn't be the same.
Before I went, I told a chef who runs a small restaurant what I was doing and where I was going. His eyes got really big when I told them I was going to a restaurant that went from 48 to 150 seats with their patio. He asked me if I was prepared for it to be different. I told him I was. We sat and talked at his restaurant bar about what his fears would be, and most of it came down to quality. But some of it also came down to soul.
It would be wrong for me to tell you that the food at Mint Mark is exactly the same.
With the addition of Chef Kasey Cooke, who moved up from Iowa to take on the role in the new space, you're going to see more Eastern European influences on the menu. You also will see large plates because they have the space for them. You’ll see expanded dessert, going from 2 to 6 on the menu. You’ll see pizettas, more pasta, and you’ll also see more of the small plates you love. Of course there's also brunch and Martini Lunch on Friday.
I think the chef I talked to before I left for Mint Mark honed in on my fear better than I could articulate myself. I was worried that the food was going to lose its soul, that they would get rid of their ambitious dishes and replace them with simple ones that are easy to execute in the middle of a rush. I was worried the menu would be static. I was worried the quality would go down on dishes that I know and love, like the sungold sugo, because they’re now creating them at a bigger volume.
But Mint Mark didn't become that restaurant.
Sure, the changing out of dishes on the menu is slower as it has to be when the restaurant is bigger—you can’t flip your menu over every week like the old Mint Mark did when you have a full page and not a 1/3 page printed menu. But every day I was there, the menu had small changes to it. One of my favorite things about Mint Mark is that it always feels like it’s creating—and they didn’t lose that.
When I was sat at the chef’s counter talking to people about their experience with the move, one of the chefs said to me, “Every punk has to grow up one day.”
It made me laugh—and it reminded me of the time a group of goth kids on the street told me that one day they wanted to be me when I grew up when I was on my way to a Michelin starred restaurant I thought was going to be far too stuffy for me. I was in my fancy dress covered in tattoos with pink hair, wearing tennis shoes I was going to change out at the door for thrifted Jimmy Choos. “You’re so posh,” one of them said. “But cool,” another said. I was late to my reservation talking to four goth kids in New York City who were running around on a Friday night.
I’ve grown up, too, but I’ve kept my soul. I’m not looking at my watch to get to my reservation on time. I’m talking to the goth kids and handing out Narcan. And when Mint Mark grew up, they kept their soul, too.
Look. I’ve said most of what I want to say about Mint Mark’s food in my last essay. I think a testament to Mint Mark is that it was really hard for me to find new things to say.
The point of this essay is grappling with their move, trying to understand what has changed, and what has stayed the same. It’s also me trying to explain why you should celebrate the move of Mint Mark—and also what you should grieve about the restaurant industry in general.
But this is an essay about food—and so I should tell you a bit about it.
The wings and waffles is my favorite chicken and waffles I’ve ever had—and I’ve eaten it in the south. Smoked and left overnight in buttermilk, the wings are perfect for eating with your hands, which while you’re there, you might as well just rip the waffle with your hands, too, embracing the stickiness that is Mint Mark’s brunch. The cinnamon rolls are ooey and gooey. They have banana bread that is not your average banana bread—it’s moist and super rum-y. A muffin that, if you eat it with a fork, by the end, your fork is covered in sugar, making it perfect to dip into savory plates. But if you eat it with your hands? You’ll lick your fingers.
Brunch, in general, hits all the points you want it to: sticky, sweet, salty, spicy.
With so much attention to detail that they cut a hole in the top pancake on Chad’s short stack, so that the butter doesn’t slide off when they bring it to your table.
And it’s cohesive, which brunch menus normally are not. Brunch menus normally throw whatever they want at the wall. It’s a free for all. But Mint Mark’s chefs have obviously asked the question, “What can you eat together at the same time?” And for a restaurant designed around sharing, I deeply appreciate that anything that hits my table together is going to go together.
The only thing I have feedback on? The one single thing? My potatoes at brunch had a tiny bit too much oil. That’s it. That’s all the edits I have. And I delivered it in the restaurant. Minor.
The sungold sugo is good as it ever was. The duck frites has some of the best duck I’ve had in a long time—and I’m hard on duck. The dessert program is unique, it’s fun, it’s daring, and I know you want to get the skillet cookie because it feels like home, but I’m begging you to get something else. Just once. Like a chocolate cake with sauerkraut in it, inspired by the Depression. And they’ll tell you the story, too, gladly, telling you how they found the recipe and couldn’t wait to try it out. Because Mint Mark has always been about fun and daring dishes and someone saying, “Go for it.” It still is.
There’s a broccoli and cheddar “pizzetta” that was inspired by Panera. There’s a dish that was inspired by a date to a Russian bathhouse. There’s currently a savory donut in the small plates. When I was there, there was a pita essentially covered in the flavor of Doritos. There’s cheese sticks for Christ’s sake. There’s a Friday lunch with a dish called rip & dip. There’s a dish named after Monty Python. Mint Mark’s soul was always dishes like this—and it has maintained it.
I was worried that Mint Mark would lose my favorite part about it: a rotating menu that is based in having fun. But half the dishes I ate a couple months back aren’t on the menu anymore (the wings and waffles has replaced by duck and waffles, which sign me up). Because somehow, in the larger space, they’ve kept all the parts that keep Mint Mark, well, Mint Mark.
You can trust me. I’d tell you if that wasn’t true, I promise, even if makes my ex-boyfriend rip roaring mad. And over four meals at Mint Mark, I ate 22 dishes. Not a small amount. Enough to tell you if there were missteps.
This attention to detail is something that Mint Mark has always leaned into, but it’s more dialed in at Mint Mark 2.0, partly due to the pass (this is jargon for where food goes from the chefs to front of house).
On the pass, written in Scrabble letters is, “Good enough isn’t” And you can feel that at Mint Mark.
Each dish is looked at in depth at the pass, not a cursory glance, but a deep one. Even in a brunch rush where all of us seemed to arrive at once and every time a ticket was cleared two more came through the printer, they kept that attention to detail.
Deep in the weeds and only going further in, I saw two dishes get sent back from the pass. One needed more garnish and was easy to fix. One needed a refire. Most restaurants would let it rip and send it out.
But at Mint Mark, it seems like they are pushing for every plate to go out like intended. Every time.
I have ears like a moth and the things I heard in the kitchen include things like, “That dish needs a bit more finishing salt,” or, “Next time you plate that, I want to show you how.” Kind things exchanged between chefs who are working together to make magic happen every day, no matter how deep in the weeds they are. Even my pancakes had a tiny amount of finishing salt—a touch that made me laugh out loud. The kind of thing you only find at fine, fine dining restaurants: they’re thinking of all the details, all the time.
Every time I go to a restaurant, I time the seconds it takes, on average, for a restaurant to get “hands” when they say, “Hands.” Hands is also a jargon term, it means come get this plate. At Mint Mark, it was 27 seconds, with multiple moments where someone said, “Hands,” and front of house staff turned around to go pick up plates. That’s rare. Most restaurants have a hard time getting their front of house to run dishes. There are entire meme pages online dedicated to it. I’ve dated enough chefs who have blood grudges against their front of house that it feels like there’s a deep enough divide it can never be mended.
But Mint Mark runs as a machine, together, meaning you get your food hot.
The average restaurant I time has about a two minute pick up time on average, meaning dishes are dying at the pass under heat lamps. Sometimes, they have mostly thirty second times and one five minute pick up. Sometimes, they have two minute pick up times all the time. Mint Mark doesn’t have any heat lamps at the pass. It’s all trust: they know their front of house will come and get the dishes. And they do.
If you’re not sure what to order, sit at the counter as close to the pass as you can. It’s a very vocal kitchen. And you’ll hear orders as they come in—plus, if you sit there at night, you can smell the skillet cookie getting baked over and over and over again. A smell that I wish Mint Mark would turn into a candle.
While it’s not always the best idea to order based on what other people love, at Mint Mark, you’ll hear a refrain from people who have loved this place for a long time and who know how to order. There are no misses, but there are standouts. Like how eggs in purgatory got called out over and over and over. People were right—that is what you should order. It’s caked in cheese and a step beyond Midwest spicy, with tons of herbs and a perfect cooked egg.
When you go to Mint Mark, grab a drink at the counter, and listen. You’ll figure out what to order, but I hope you are able to hear how this kitchen sounds different than others. Communicative, respectful, and pushing to have every plate go out the same.
4. An invitation to let go.
The food at Mint Mark is so special that I bought a cooler I can plug into my car to bring food home to friends. I packed six biscuits in a cooler to bring home along with sungold sugo from Superette, their new market concept. I took the rest of my skillet cookie and plopped it in a take out container for a friend. When I was there, Chef Kasey Cooke had a pork and beans dish on the menu that was so good I brought it home and cooked it up in the morning with eggs for a dear friend who loves beans.
Mint Mark is so good that I bring it home with me—and living in Madison, you’re so lucky to have it.
I’m going to miss that tiny restaurant, too, but I think the thing most of us are missing is the physical space and one day, something else will fill that space and you can got there and remember how much you loved it as Mint Mark. With another place you’ll love, too.
You will be able to go and relive the memories you had at Mint Mark 1.0 with a new restaurant trying to make a go at making 48 seats work in 2024. It will be a team dead set on living out their dreams, just like Chef Sean Pharr and Chef Kasey Cooke, and you’ll be able to tell your friend who hasn’t read this essay the story of how to make it work, the team that inherited their space is hustling to go up and down the stairs 50 times a day. Maybe when something new moves in there, you’ll appreciate it a bit more, because you know how hard it is to make that space work in this economy.
As Chef Sean Pharr said to me, “In the former Mint Mark space I learned that what I was doing was actually important to people. I miss it too, but it wasn't the space that made Mint Mark great, it was a combination of the staff, food and drink, and the customers that made it great. And we can move that equation anywhere.”
I loved this piece. I’ve cried at the bar at the old Mint Mark and had a whole cocktail of feelings as they moved into this new space. I so appreciate how thoughtful and thorough and honest you are in this newsletter, and this post in particular captured so much of what I was feeling about the move. Thank you!
I'm one of the grumpy ones. I know I am being unreasonable, but I am hung up on the fact that they chose one of the most car-centric buildings and locations anywhere on the side of Madison where people pay a premium for walkability. Someone on reddit reported paying $15 for parking (maybe it was a validation mistake? either way...). It's unfortunately that simple for me. Best of luck to them!