Ranting and Raving

There is a new strip mall opening across the street from my workplace. The bright side of this is that, for the first time since 1999, I can go out to eat without having to use the car. On the other hand, this strip mall is exemplary of the cultural ennui that is Minnesota in general and Eden Prairie in particular.

I took my lunch at a place called Bear Rock Cafe. I was greeted with a standard greeting of "Welcome to Bear Rock Cafe, may I take your order please." It was parroted to perfection by an order taker who had very clearly had it impressed upon him that the inclusion of the words "Bear Rock Cafe" was an essential component of the corporate branding strategy. I placed my order for a passable Roast Beef on Foccaccia sandwich quaintly named "The Rockslide," picked it up and took it to a booth to eat.

The decor of the place is something I have come to think of as Jack London Modern, designed to evoke the image of the Great White North, of lumberjacks and trappers in heavy woolen flannels coming in from a hard days work for a hearty meal and a swapping of tall tales around the fire. Under the true ceiling of flat-black painted duct work and girders, was an open ceiling of knotty pine. Knotty pine logs engineered to look as if they had been hewn and set there by some Daniel Boone served also as railings, room dividers, and support struts for the open ceiling. At the center of the room, some comfy chairs were arranged around a simulacral fireplace in which gas flames pretended to burn stone wood. Over the fireplace a color photo of a Grizzly Bear seizing a salmon from some Alaskan river hung. Elsewhere, Ansel Adams prints did their best to evoke feelings of Wild Places. And completing the feel was an array of antler chandeliers, whose perfect symmetry and occasional seam betrayed their origins in an injection mold.

The illusion found its way onto the menu as well, where, in addition to the quaint names for specialty sandwiches, the word "Grub" replaced the word "Food" at every instance, and children's meals were called "Cub Kits."

As I took it all in, I wondered where this was all based. Were they a local company (where I live, Red Lobster and Olive Garden are, strictly speaking, local businesses), or were they, like Starbuck's, an emanation from the Pacific Northwest? Well, the ultimate insult came from the potato chips which were "manufactured exclusively for Bear Rock Foods, Raleigh, NC."

Now call me provincial if you must, but people who close their schools when rumors of a snowflake are heard two counties over have no business trying to create the North Woods Experience in a Minnesota strip mall. If I want a simulacrum of a trappers lodge, I'll go to Caribou Coffee, where they at least have the good humor to mount the head of a Caribou Plushie over their imitation fireplace. And, of course, a drive up Highway 169 to Ely, MN gets me the real thing - cabins hewn from the very wood that was cleared for their construction.