J.D. Fratzke, The Strip Club Meat & Fish
By Mike Mitchelson

By now you’ve heard that the new strip club in St. Paul has no stage, brass poles or, sadly, naked women.

Nah, the Strip Club Meat & Fish is the long awaited second effort of Tim Niver and Aaron Johnson, who own the Town Talk Diner in Minneapolis. Niver and Johnson partnered with Chef J.D. Fratzke, who earned great praise for his menus at Muffuletta, to open the Strip Club in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood in St. Paul.

Like the Town Talk, the building is a link to a neighborhood’s past vibrancy. Built in 1885, the building, in its day, housed a grocery and butcher shop, Fratzke said. “It reminds me of the buildings in Winona,” he added—Winona being his hometown.

Also like the Town Talk, the restaurant hopes to be an anchor for the neighborhood’s renaissance. The area, a century ago, balanced both ends of the economic spectrum: Swede Hollow, only blocks to the west, was arguably the most famous slum in Twin Cities history. Where The Strip Club is located was one of the most affluent neighborhoods. The slum is gone, but so is much of the affluence. Things are changing, however: the remaining Victorian homes are being purchased and refurbished by young couples and families. It’s the same pattern the Longfellow neighborhood, in which the Town Talk sits, followed.

Challenges remain for the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood, he added, such as a lack of commercial space. “Maybe we can help (attract that),” he said. “This neighborhood has weathered bad times, and maybe this can be a place to celebrate it again.”

So far, the celebrating has been very good—the weekends are jammed, Fratzke said, and they added lunch and brunch to the menu the week after Valentine’s Day.


Neighborhood vibe

The restaurant is a throwback to old-world atmosphere with a dark interior offset by cream-colored walls, deep red accents and a brass-railed spiral staircase to loft seating. But, starting with the name, there’s that modern, tongue-in-cheek hipster attitude, which flows into the menu.

The double entendre “strip” in Strip Club refers also to the restaurant’s signature Thousand Hills Cattle Co.’s grass-fed beef New York strip steak, ordered simple off the grill with olive oil and seasoning, or with one of seven saucily-named accompaniments, such as “Behind the Green Door” pistachio butter, “XXX-cargot” butter and “Shrimp Trampi” in citrus and garlic.

The menu also reads, “Substitutions politely declined,” and “Vegetarians regarded with benevolent amusement.”

Cleverness doesn’t mask serious food, however. Included on the menu are 13 small plates, including duck confit, Maine mussels and foie gras. In addition to the steak, there’s arctic char, salmon, ahi tuna, a bone-in duck breast and pork shank for two.

Three specials offered each night reflect Midwest seasonality and world influences. Everything, so far, has been a solid seller, except for the braunschweiger sandwich, a Fratzke family favorite. “But that stays on the menu,” he declared. “The menu is food I want to eat, and serve to friends.


Connections

Fratzke met Niver about 12 years ago at Pronto, Parasole Restaurant Holding’s Italian restaurant which gave way to the Oceanaire in 1998. Niver was GM, Fratzke joined the kitchen at the cold station. “There aren’t too many places where the GM and salad boy become friends,” Fratzke said.

At Pronto, Fratzke, worked under Chef Wade Weistling. “Wade was the first guy I watched and said, ‘I want to do that,’” Fratzke said. “I saw how you could tie food and culture together. You can take all the elements of life that are important to you and put them on a plate.”

Fratzke eventually left to work at Café Un Deux Trois, owned by the infamous Michael Morse. The chef was Vincent Francoual, who now owns and cooks at his acclaimed eponymous restaurant. “I learned there how hard you had to work to excel at this job,” Fratzke said. “Vincent and Michael were extremely demanding. Vincent wouldn’t put up with anything. Every time I tried to shortcut, he was right there behind me to dump out what I was doing. I never hated him for it—it was something I had done. He was a great teacher.”

Two years passed before a phone call from Michael Larson at Parasole pulled him back to the company and, specifically, Chino Latino as sous chef. “I was eager to become a manager and learn how to step into a leadership role,” Fratzke said.

In 2004 he was named executive chef at Muffuletta, the first restaurant in the Parasole empire. Fratzke saw tremendous opportunity to restore Muffuletta’s previous reputation for excellence—he succeeded, and was happy with his job.

But then came the opportunity.

Niver approached him about seven months ago with the idea for The Strip Club. “Tim is a front-of-the-house virtuoso,” Fratzke said. “He’s able to read the guests in the restaurant, and it’s a skill that lends to reading a neighborhood for a restaurant. …I saw the space and my jaw hit the floor.”

Parasole was “great,” Fratzke said. “I can’t say enough good things about them. But at the end of the day, every chef wants their own place. … This opportunity would have been really dumb not to take. The ability to work with your best friends and have a stake in it—I’ve had several offers over the years, but nothing felt right. And this one did.”


Local commitment

It made perfect sense to Fratzke to use locally-grown product at Muffuletta, a restaurant he described as a “neighborhood bistro in a very St. Paul neighborhood.”

That opportunity never presented itself at Chino Latino. “No one coming to Chino Latino to get a drink as big as their head and get laid is going to care,” Fratzke joked.

At Muffuletta, he tapped local food networks like the Southeast Minnesota Food Network, and through them built relationships with individual farmers. The result was one of the most acclaimed bistro-style menus in the Twin Cities. And, he did it initially without the formal approval of Parasole. “I sorta slid it under their noses,” he said. “It was always their menu, with standards and safe harbors—and that’s OK—that’s how I want to eat.”

But the local sourcing “was a personal statement, and I knew it would work there. … And as long as it makes money and (gains) notoriety, Parasole is happy. … Muffuletta was an icon of the community; that it was a Twin Cities institution was never lost on me. The responsibility to make it great again was not taken lightly.”

Fratzke obviously doesn’t take his new responsibilities lightly, either, and moved his commitment to local sourcing to The Strip Club’s menu, which, he said, will respond to the seasons and the farmers. A printed-on-site menu gives added flexibility for seasonal fare. “The St. Paul Farmer’s Market and local purveyors will be the biggest influence on the menu,” Fratzke said.

The restaurant is a “family run” establishment in more than one sense, he said. He, Niver and Johnson have young families, but their commitment to local products means other families—farmers, namely—are also dependent on their success. Yes, the young ownership group is pondering other restaurant concepts, but won’t be diving into any in the immediate future. “This is the restaurant we have right now,” Fratzke said. “We’re obligated to the neighborhood and the staff to make it work.”

The Strip Club Meat & Fish Executive Chef J.D. Fratzke. “St. Paul is a blue collar town,” he said. “And I know how to make ‘meat and potatoes’ food fun and, dare I say, sexy.”