#kramarczuk’s

[pamietniko]

veggie cabbage rolls and pierogi

Minneapolis, Minnesota

[kasperl-ruprecht]

My sister used to live there. I regret that I didn't visit her often while she lived there, although I did help her move there and move out.

Kramarczuk's was pretty good place for grub though. Some of the people working there were good friends with my sister so perhaps tell them the LeBaron's recommended the place.

Do I have anyone from Minneapolis on here? Anyone know of good food?

[stuffaboutminneapolis]

Kramarczuk’s at 125 E. Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis in the 1950s

[henchmaxxing]

Kramarczuk's sauerkraut save me

[twins2994]

I always set out to maximize doing the things that I love the most. This year, I set a record by going to fifty-nine Twins games and the summer flew by at times. The Twins were in first place for basically all of the season. Well they were able to clinch the division unlike last year and swept the Blue Jays in the Wild-Card Series. It was such a thrilling moment high fiving my mom after we won Game 1 then strangers after winning Game 2. I went back to Kansas City (twice), Los Angeles, and Milwaukee. I got to enjoy Kramarczuk’s brats, Cuban Sandwiches on Sunday’s, and added a new food of walking tacos to the mix at Target Field. Here’s to a hell of a season and the journey I went on for the past six months. Thank you to everyone, who attended games with me or helped me throughout the summer. It was a memorable one. From Joe Ryan walking out to Fire On The Mountain and Purple Haze, to Donovan Solano introducing me to Calm Down as his walk-up song, and hearing Sky Full of Stars when Kyle Farmer dug into the batter’s box. And of course, Jhoan Duran’s entrance with all those flames. Those songs were the soundtrack to my summer at the ballpark. I am truly blessed to be able to do what I love in life. I cannot wait for spring training in March. Vivete la vida y disfruta.

-Chris Kreibich-

[negative-generation]

i would literally jump off a bridge FUCK saint paul. minneapolis forever. we have the light rail and kramarczuk’s what ELSE could you NEED.

Minneapolis should be called West St. Paul if I'm honest and it should be annexed by St. Paul

[totesratical]

I support local businesses (but especially ones that have delicious snacks)! 🐀❤️🍖 Eat well today!

[fieriframes]

[It's nice to have something that you can go to to get a taste of the old country. More specifically, Ukraine, where the Kramarczuk family came from. My father made everything from scratch.]

[trivialbob]

Yesterday my brother and I met up with people we know. There was a Ukraine fundraiser at the Luce Line Brewery. I’d never tried that brewery so I was eager to see it. Kramarczuk East European Deli of Minneapolis was on hand serving sausages out of a food truck.

The brewery has five or six unisex bathrooms. Several sinks occupy a common area outside the rooms. I was surprised by how many people exited the bathrooms and skipped right by the sinks, knowing full well everyone in line noticed could see.

When I worked downtown I wanted a sign was posted on the  rest room door, next two pull handles: “Use the top handle if you washed your hands and the bottom handle if you did not.” My hope was it would shame some guys into washing hands.

The brewery donated a dollar for each beer sold. I had hoped to be able to write a message on some munitions. Suck on this, Putin! However, the brewery apparently wasn’t cleared to have a supply of anti-tank weapons and paint or chalk on hand.

Later in the evening Jim and I went over to Dusty’s, a dive bar in Minneapolis that I had been wanting to try (it was #3 on my list from the day before). We each ordered a beer and a dago sandwich as we sat at the bar. It was fun. A band was setting up to play for the evening. We didn’t want to stick around for that and called it an evening when the last drop of beer was gone.

[northeastfarmersmarket]

Join us for our 16th annual Corn and Brat Feed - A fundraiser for the Northeast Farmers Market! 🌽🌭 . . Saturday, August 17th • 629 2nd Street NE • 9am-1pm 🌭🌽 . . @chowgirlscatering lemonade, @kramarczuks brats & vendor sweet corn! 🌽🌭 . . #cornandbratfeed #sweetcorn #kramarczuks #kramarczuksdeli #kramarczuksausage #ne_fm #fundraiser #supportyourfarmersmarket (at Northeast Minneapolis Farmers Market) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1HAUwEHvgR/?igshid=1g3ci7k2tvxri

[lankheart]

google tabs open after 3 hr zoom call with entire family:

polish restaurant new york city

golden beet salad polish new york city

kramarczuks minneapolis

h bomber guy a measured response

christopher knight desk

autistic girl tv show

wind chimes

donald glover

[mariacallous]

oh fuck yeah Kramarczuk’s has expanded the options they’ve got available online to order

I need to go to bed before I end up with some large eastern european food order 

[jdweiss]

Brazey will be screening at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (@mspfilmsociety) on April 15th. Unfortunately Brazey can't afford to visit Minnesota, but nothing can keep him from living in the virtual world. He's gonna make it after all!

[stuffaboutminneapolis]

Kramarczuk's, Minneapolis by Vanessa Hebra

[sandwichbully]

The Wedge Table (yes, again), 10 November 2018

   One time, Soft Kathryn called me Pasta Boi, a title I cannot deny, as I am, indeed, a pasta boi. Used to be I was a Pasta Slut but the word slut has been contentious for a while and only lately it’s starting to be OK to self-identify as a slut for certain things, like you’re a Train Slut if you fuck with some Amtrak or a Cathedral Slut if you’re down with the Vatican. I don’t know, I say fuck it, play it safe, don’t piss off the SJWs; Soft Kathryn calls me a Pasta Boi, I’m a Pasta Boi.    Everybody on board with that? Anybody feel like calling me out for some shit? I’m a Pasta Boi, goddamnit. What problems could you possibly have with the Pasta Boi?    ANYhoo, seeing as how I am - Wait. Am I a pasta boi or the pasta boi?    We’ll figure that out later. Look, I was out of pasta and it’s 19° Fahrenheit (that’s -7° Celsius for my metric fanbase) and I figured that was a good enough excuse to go back to the Wedge and get that last sandwich.    The tuna melt.

   Goddamn, that is a blurry-assed photo.    Anyway, I know I could’ve picked up a box of spaghetti from Hark’s across the street or even just gone down to the CVS for a box of spaghetti, but it was lunch time and neither of those places have a full-service deli with a limited line of seasonal signature sandwiches. And!? This is tuna melt weather.    So I go in there and this time I’m greeted by a bespectacled young woman and I tell her I just need a tuna melt to go, she says sure, hands me my ticket, and I go off to get lost in the (two) racks of food trying to find pasta because, while I am a pasta boi, I’m not seeing the pasta I’m used to: The red and white boxes of Essential Everyday, the green boxes of Creamette, the blue boxes of Buy Any Other Brand But This Homophobic Shit; I’m having that classist crisis again, feeling out of my element, too working class and dumb to figure out how to navigate a co-op, here he is, everybody! Charlie from the Trailer Park! Can’t find his way through the tiniest co-op and doesn’t listen to Vampire Weekend!    And then I nut up because, yeah, motherfucker, I am Charlie from Southeast Toledo and guess what: I like Black Sabbath, suck my dick. Where the fuck is the - Oh, here it is.    It comes in... bags? Why the fuck - I thought these motherfuckers were supposed to be earth friendly, why is the pasta in plastic bags instead of recyclable cardboard boxes? What the fuck sense does this make?    I pick up the pack of spaghetti and I look on the back. Under directions, it says to bring 5oz (150mL and I did that conversion, you’re welcome) to a boil and add 16oz (455g, again, I’m doing the heavy lifting) of pasta and I mutter, “What kind of maniac cooks a whole pack of pasta in one go?”    Hell, even as one of a family of four, I don’t think I ever saw my mom cook a whole box of pasta in one go. I mean, maybe she did, it would make sense, there’s fucking four of us but does this manufacturer assume... I mean, who the fuck cooks a whole thing of pasta in one go? Jesus Jehosaphat. Maniacs. Absolute maniacs.    So I got the fusili since I’ll be making a simple tomato and garlic sauce tonight that will love those little nooks and crannies to cling to.    Yes, I have studied up on pairing my pastas and my sauces because I am a pasta boi, outed and confirmed.    Then I grab a blood orange Hi-Ball and go over to the register and some old fart is just standing there with his back to it, not getting the point that I’m trying to get in line, thus a woman just walks around him up to the register and he looks at her and looks at me and looks annoyed - don’t give me that look, motherfucker, I have Aerosmith on vinyl, good Aerosmith, drugged up Aerosmith, I will knock you out in the parking lot.    Anyway, nobody’s paying attention to the woman at the register and a line is forming and then one of the guys from the deli says he can get me on the other register and I turn to follow him but then my name is called and I grab my sandwich and I get rung up and I get outside, and I load my bag and I come home.

You and me, we’ve been on an adventure together, haven’t we? A real emotional roller coaster? We've had to deal with inwardly-directed class shame as manufactured by capitalism; we’ve talked about putting our money in the right places, like not certain pasta brands that come in blue boxes; we’ve discussed identity issues as prescribed by a person who identifies herself as an oven but uses she/her pronouns. We have been all over the map so far and I’m sure all you’ve wanted this whole time was to know how the fucking sandwich tasted. You want to know if you should give your money to these people. You want to know how tough of a call it is between Get Your Wings and Toys In The Attic because even though the track listing on Toys... has the obvious bangers, ... Wings has some definite sleeper agents that will fuck you up.    For your patience, for your companionship on this journey, mon frer, I will now answer all these questions.

   Holy shit, this is the best thing I’ve put in my mouth this week.    Now, I didn’t look at the menu too close so, disclaimer, up front, I don’t know what kind of cheese they used. Swiss would be the obvious choice but I looked at the cheese itself and the holes were tinier and not round. I’m guessing, and I’d be surprised if I were wrong, this is havarti. It didn’t have the high-pitched notes of Swiss, either, which would have definitely stood out because, here’s the deal:    You could taste everything individually on the sandwich.    The tuna salad was creamy and I’m guessing they used an organic mayo because of course they would use organic and 1) this didn’t taste like Hellman’s and I’m a slut for Hellman’s so I would know, 2) this didn’t taste like Kraft, and 3) it didn’t taste like aioli because I detected no hint of extra virgin olive oil. Thus, organic mayo is my guess and it played nicely with the tuna, probably because the mayo to tuna ratio greatly favored the fish, so while I could detect the presence of mayo, what I was tasting primarily in that concoction was the tuna.    Appearance-wise, the tuna salad looked like exactly every other tuna salad you’ve ever had: Somebody opened a can, emptied it into a bowl, threw in a dollop of mayo, and beat the shit out of it with a fork until it stopped looking like it was once a thing of flesh and now just shreds of unidentifiable protein. I get it: There aren’t that many ways to make tuna salad, so I’m not going to dock points for the look of the thing.    The aforementioned maybe-havarti was smooth and creamy, which is how havarti ought to taste. I thought it could have stood to be a bit more melty, this is a tuna melt after all, and despite my visual inspection and my self-assuredness that this is havarti, the doubt still lingers because while it didn’t taste like Swiss, it didn’t melt like havarti, and we all know that Swiss is a bit obstinate when it comes to melting. It will do it but it takes a bit more cajoling than your softer cheeses like your jacks, your colbies, and, of course, your havartis. Again, probably not Swiss, but there will always be the doubt in my mind.    Fuck it. I just looked at the menu. The answer we were looking for was gruyere. Gruyere. Just proving to you, once again, that I am capable of being wrong. I am human and I am just like you.    So, yeah, the gruyere was good, even if I didn’t know until just now that’s what it was. It was smooth and creamy, just like havarti. But the important part is that I could taste it separately from and in concert with the other ingredients (even if I couldn’t identify what kind of cheese it was).    But the real child star of this made-for-TV adaptation of a beloved series of child detective novels grown up to appear ironically on the convention circuit and still say their cutesy catch phrase thirty years later before snapping and mowing down a gaggle of parents with a hedge trimmer at a Chuck E. Cheese would be the pickled onions, sharp and sour at the same time, balancing out the low creaminess of the tuna salad and the cheese and the midrange of the whole grain bread with high notes in brassy timbres, maybe even acrylic timbres would be more fitting, like Ornette Coleman’s saxophone. It provided what other tuna melts are missing: A full spectrum of notes. This tuna melt was like the Italians at Broder’s and Kramarczuk’s and the Reubens at Colossal Cafe and Tiny Diner: It was perfectly balanced, minimally fucked with.    And I know you’re probably rolling your eyes at me raving about a tuna melt and comparing it to some of the best sandwiches in the city but it’s like this: The reason you (and even me) think tuna melts suck is because all we’ve ever been handed is shitty tuna melts. The most creative we’ve ever gotten with them is using Swiss instead of American. Maybe we tried fancifying it by adding capers or putting tarragon in the tuna salad and it just didn’t happen right. And then we’ve walked into the greasy spoon and we see the tuna melt on the menu and we wonder how fresh is that tuna salad and we skip it and if we do order it (with every nervous caution in the world), what we get is a grilled cheese with tuna salad in it. We’ve had nothing but shitty tuna melts our whole lives so it never occurred to us that if we just treated them differently, if we just treated them like they could be good, if we just took a step back and considered the core components and asked what was too much and what was missing and saw this was meant to be different from a grilled cheese with tuna salad in it, we could have a good one.    There’s a reason that this sandwich has its own name and isn’t just “grilled cheese with tuna salad” and it’s the same reason we don’t call a Reuben a “corned beef and sauerkraut” or an Italian a “three meat and banana peppers” or a Club “turkey BLT triangles”. It’s a distinct and established entity and, unfortunately, people have stopped treating it like one and instead started treating it like a grilled cheese with tuna salad in it.    Not saying the Wedgetable has brought back the sandwich like it’s the fucking messiah, I’m saying that they’ve treated it right. They’ve done right by it. It was a damned good sandwich and I don’t regret paying the eight bucks for it. And what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for in flavor. You can taste everything individually and everything compliments everything else. It’s worth at least one visit in the Wedgetable’s direction, I would encourage you to give them your money.    Also, this is, I believe, our first tag for “tuna melt”.    Oh and Toys In The Attack has for sure three radio hits but Get Your Wings has “Lord of the Thighs” which is just a thousand percent of your daily recommended dose of raunch, nast, and sweat pressed into wax, so that’s a winner.

[twins2994]

Every baseball season is a memorable one for me. This one was memorable for so many different reasons. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you love something until it’s gone. I missed baseball last year as I could not attend games or travel to the ballpark. This year, I appreciated going to games a lot more. It all started at spring training in March when I got teary eyed walking around the concourse at Hammond Stadium. Then Opening Day came around in April and it was an emotional day for me in Milwaukee for multiple reasons. I was overjoyed that something I loved so much was back after being taken away from me for a year and a half. The Twins weren’t the greatest this year and were a big disappointment, but going to games sure made up for what I had lost in 2020. I was able to travel to Milwaukee, Chicago, and Kansas City (three times) and see the road cities that I love. I was able to keep score and sit out in the sun in those warm summer months. I missed the ballpark food so much and enjoyed my Tony Oliva’s Cuban sandwiches, hot dogs, Kramarczuk brats, and found a new love with those brisket-achos in Kansas City. I was able to get my therapy of watching a game and have all my problems melt away for three hours. Normalcy definitely returned to our lives in 2021 and it returned to my life through the game of baseball. I was able to go to fifty-eight games, which ties a personal record of games per season that I set in 2015. As we watch the sunset on another season, I can’t help but look ahead and fear what’s on the horizon with the uncertainty regarding the new CBA with Major League Baseball and the players association. It’s going to be a very rough winter ahead in the baseball world. Nonetheless, going to games helped me a boatload and hopefully I can go back to the ballpark with spring training in March of next year. It’s been an up-and-down year for myself, but baseball has grounded me and reminded me of what was once good in the world. Here’s to a hell of a season and the journey I went on for the past six months. Thank you to everyone, who attended games with me or helped me throughout the summer. I needed to go do this after a tough year and a half. Here’s to many more games in the future! Now it’s time for me to get back to work and move forward with my life after one hell of a summer.

-Chris Kreibich-