For the common good, The Citizen Café
By Mike Mitchelson

For people wondering what might happen to Chef Michael MacKay when he left The Sample Room, the answer has arrived.

As of this writing, MacKay was prepping to open Citizen Café, a restaurant he owns with his wife, Seaen. He’ll be in the kitchen, she’ll be at the front of the house. Located in the former Sweet Lorraine’s building in Minneapolis on 38th Street about five blocks from the Hiawatha Light Rail line, MacKay found his restaurant’s logo in the old linoleum tile (a stenciled chef) when he peeled up the carpeting, probably from the building’s original incarnation as Bill’s House of Good Food.

That was just one in a series of events that proved to MacKay that he had found the right spot for a restaurant. MacKay plans the Citizen Café to be a true neighborhood restaurant, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner—recognizable fare, but prepared with his particular skills and tastes.

MacKay left the Sample Room last summer after five acclaimed years as executive chef and partner, and spent five months looking for a restaurant location—drawing up five business plans along the way. He first thought Northeast Minneapolis would be a good fit. “But the cost of building out in a good location is exorbitant,” he said. “Just a hood system is 1,000 a foot.”

He began working with Restaurant Brokers of Minnesota’s George Strikos, “And we looked at everything from Hudson to the Twin Ports,” MacKay said. The deal in Minneapolis’ Standish neighborhood “fell in our lap.” A stand-alone building in good shape, in a neighborhood close to the popular light rail, with an owner not looking to gouge a buyer. It’s not a huge space—about 1,500 square feet for the dining area and an extremely serviceable and surprisingly roomy kitchen.

Sealing the deal for MacKay was the basement—another 1,500 square feet of kitchen, storage, prep stations, equipment and a large walk-in cooler. He couldn’t hide his glee. “I have 70 of these!” he said excitedly, waving a plastic prep station container. “These are five, six bucks a pop.”

The Sample Room’s kitchen is a phone booth by comparison, but it was effective for its small-plates menu and speed. “Your kitchen helps design your menu,” MacKay said. The Citizen Café’s kitchen will allow him to do plenty. “As much as possible from scratch,” he said. The large cooler will allow him to use and store local product year-round, both fresh and in value-added forms like house-made jellies and jams. MacKay had drafting-table size sheets of paper stretched across the basement level prep tables filled with menu ideas, but on the record remained cagey. “It’ll be new-American, it’ll be my personality,” he said. And it will fit the needs of the neighborhood—including a take on fast food for morning commuters, be they driving or walking to the light rail: A tax-included, $2 ro $4 meal packaged to eat on the fly.

With the space and equipment in the upper- and lower-level kitchens, MacKay also plans to have a catering operation running in early 2009, which will potentially make up about 20 percent of his business. “But first, we get the restaurant up and the name going,” he said. Catering service early in a restaurant’s life might appear an ambitious goal, but that would be ignoring MacKay’s experience prior to gaining notoriety at The Sample Room.


Background

Originally from Chicago, MacKay moved to Minnesota in 1989 to work for Patti Soskin at her restaurant, Patti’s, before moving on to Chez Paul, where Paul Laubignat become a mentor for him. He then joined a kitchen that simmered much Twin Cities cooking talent, the Loring Café from 1991-’93, where he became kitchen manager.

Marriage occasionally changes one’s perspective, and MacKay was no exception. He left the Loring for healthcare and other benefits to work for then-Dayton’s Boundary Waters restaurant in Southdale, and after exactly one year asked “What else?” and was placed with Chef Tim Scott in Dayton’s catering division. From there he was promoted to corporate catering chef at Marshall Field’s on State Street in Chicago (both companies were then owned by Target Corp.).

He and Seaen returned to the Twin Cities in 1999. MacKay wound up working for the summer at Nancy’s Landing, Paul Laubignat’s restaurant in Waconia. It was a great reunion—MacKay recharged his batteries, and in the fall was hired as executive chef at Gallivan’s in St. Paul. In 2002, The Sample Room opportunity materialized, and he became chef and partner. “My investment was a huge pay cut—about 40 percent,” MacKay said. “But the opportunity was phenomenal.”

He received accolades as his menu helped mainstream small plate servings for the Twin Cities—one highlight being featured on Anthony Bourdain’s Food Network show, “A Cook’s Tour.” At the end of his tenure, he was both executive chef and general manager.

With his success at the Sample Room, MacKay felt he had the experience and knowledge to own a restaurant outright, and his wife’s lengthy restaurant experience will also help. The Citizen Café, with an eye toward the neighborhood’s young families, will offer beer and wine, but studiously avoid the “bar atmosphere,” MacKay said. “We’ll shut down at 9 or 10 p.m.,” he said. “It fits my lifestyle. I’m a neighborhood kind of guy. …Early in your career, you want to be ‘the chef,’ you want your 15 minutes. But screw that. We’re not that special. The first ten years were about me. Now it’s only about 40 percent me. You cook to enjoy the craft, and hopefully make a little money.”
Attention, fellow citizens: Chef Michael MacKay has returned to the kitchen.
The Citizen Café’s logo was developed from an original linoleum tile in the restaurant’s floor.”