Chowgirls Get Kitschy at Retrorama

RETRORAMA
Thursday, May 21, 7-11 pm
Minnesota History Center in St. Paul

You’re invited to celebrate American popular culture with Chowgirls at Retrorama, featuring:

• Fashion show by Anna Lee of MN Fashion

• Vintage boutique by Via’s Vintage Wear & Swank Retro

• 20th century trivia with Trivia Mafia

• Dancing to A Night in the Box

• Mixology tips and martini sampling from Bradstreet Craftshouse

• Hors d’oeuvres demos by yours truly! We’ll show you how to cook up fabulous ’50s cocktail party appetizers — Pigs in a Blanket and Rumaki — with a Chowgirls twist.

Come sample our food and enjoy a family-friendly evening of old-school entertainment. Tickets are available from the Minnesota History Center web site.

Happy Earth Day from Chowgirls

A important message to our Downtown Minneapolis friends: Stop by the Chowgirls booth for some free samples during the lunch hour on Wednesday, April 22. We’ll be stationed in the Fifth Street Towers skyway for an Earth Day celebration.

GOOD COMPOSTING NEWS
Chowgirls is part of a commercial compost program through Eureka Recycling that allows us to compost the majority of our kitchen waste. 70% of our kitchen waste goes into a compost dumpster, 15% is recycled, and only 10% of our waste ends up in a landfill!

As of the end of March, all the restaurants, co-ops, and Chowgirls in this program have composted 208.12 tons of food waste and non-recyclable paper, and recycled 113.47 tons of bottles, can, and papers. Collectively, we are diverting an average of 91% of our discards away from the trash and into new products!

The environmental impacts of this effort are huge! Using the EPA WARM calculator, Eureka converted these numbers into some interesting equivalents. Composting and recycling this much has the same impact as taking 70.5 cars off the road for a year, or providing electricity for 53.4 homes for a year! It would take 9,333 trees ten years to sequester this much carbon!

For more information about the environmental benefits of composting and recycling, see Eureka’s full report.

Chowgirls Heart Bikers

The majority of Chowgirls kitchen staff rely on their bikes for transportation, even in the most brutal weather. In their honor, Chowgirls is proud to co-sponsor ARTCRANK, a showcase of affordable bicycle-inspired poster art created by some of the Twin Cities’ hottest artists and designers.

Check out the scene, buy a poster or ten, and chow down on some of our delectable edibles on opening night.

ARTCRANK OPENING NIGHT PARTY
Saturday, April 4th @ 7pm
One On One Bikes + Coffee + Stuff
117 Washington Ave N, Mpls. MN

ARTCRANK is also sponsored by METRO Magazine, Bastian + Skoog, and a host of other cool indie businesses.

Minnesota’s Love Affair with Chowgirls

Minnesota Women’s Press readers voted Chowgirls as their “Favorite Green Caterer” for 2009! “With a menu that stresses natural, seasonal foods, and a cooking philosophy that stresses the pleasures of eating, it’s hard to go wrong with Chowgirls,” the ladies say. Thanks for the honor!

We were also named “Best Up-and-Coming Caterer 2008″ from Minnesota Meetings + Events Readers’ Poll.

Chowgirls is 5 years old!

Chowgirls reached a small business milestone on March 12, 2009 — we turned 5! In the five years we’ve been in business, we’ve gone from
- 2 kitchen employees (Heidi & Amy) to 20
- 2 lovely servers from the Czech Republic (Jana & Andrea) to 20 lovely servers from all over the world
- 3 oven racks to 24
- 6-foot hood to 18-foot hood
- 0 walk-in coolers to 1 walk-in cooler
- 1 event a month to 7 weddings in one day

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this happen, especially our husbands Eric and Chank (who were our first grill guys) and dedicated staff. Our managers Truman and Maari have helped us through many growing pains. Our kitchen staff, particularly Annie, Marvel, Liz, Ranon, Scotty, Devin, Robbie, and Booty, are incredibly dedicated and have all contributed in their own unique ways.

Our office manager Melissa has increased our professionalism immensely and she is a delight to work with. Marc’s bar experience has been invaluable as have Laurie’s scheduling and site management abilities. All of our site managers, including Joanne, Casey, and Danielle, are stellar performers. And we love all the fun and interesting individuals who have contributed as servers.

Thanks to all the friends and business partners who have supported our business and helped it grow: Lynn Olson and Frank Stone of the Frank Stone Gallery have had faith in us from the beginning, as friends lending their gallery for their launch party and then as landlords assisting us with a kitchen build-out. Our investors whom shall remain nameless also made it possible to build the new place. Dean Davidson and Elizabeth Gunn of East Bank have renewed our faith in banking locally. The Chank Company housed our first office for a year. Greg & John Pillsbury were immensely helpful and patient in turning over their old Burrito Loco for our first full-time kitchen. And our friends at Uncle Franky’s were kind enough to purchase our used equipment from that same space a couple years later. Dan from The Times generously rented the Jitters kitchen to us to help us get our license and have an official place to cook. John Kremer & Jennifer Young, Jenny & Elwin Loomis, and Debbie Woodward have all offered support and advice at just the right times. Carolyn Payne of Olive Salon continues to refer tons of business our way. And Chuck Hermes, Nancy Lyons, and Michael & Kurt Koppelman of Clockwork have been great systems advisors as well as tremendous clients

A big part of Chowgirls is our brand identity. Thanks to Amy’s brother Nathan Brown for taking Amy’s initial logo concept and creating an unforgettable logo and web site. Thanks to my husband Chank Diesel for the original and custom fonts that are essential to our identity. Thanks to Jeff Johnson of Spunk for designing awesome signage and Sarah Nelson Forss for creating the best brochure ever. All of you have set high standards that we measure all other designers against.

I’m sure after I post this I’ll think of more people I should have noted. And I’m certain Amy will have more thanks and more people in mind, but she’s on maternity leave without internet. So out this goes into the ether with my biggest heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you, including those I may have not noted. You’ve all got some good karma headed your way!

Best,
Heidi

Show Your Love for Chowgirls

As Chowgirls turns 5 this year, we would love to celebrate with an award from Minnesota Bride magazine. Last year we were nominated for the Best Small Wedding Caterer category and we won an editor’s pick for Best “Green” Caterer. It was an honor and we hope to receive such esteemed recognition again.

If you’re a fan of our naturally good fare, please take a moment to vote for Chowgirls. It’s quick and easy:

1. Go to www.mnbride.com
2. Click on “Vote for the Best of 2009″ and this will direct you to the voting form.
3. Vote for a minimum of six catergories.

Please vote for us in one or all of the following categories:

Best Overall Vendor
>100 caterer
<100 caterer

Thanks for your support!

Heidi & Amy

Other vendors and friends you could vote for:

Photography
Olivia Wagner
Tiffany Bolk

Outdoor Venue
Camrose Flower Farm
Blue Horse Farm

Rehearsal Dinner Venue
Frank Stone Gallery

Event Planner
Mimi
Give My Regards To

Floral
Bastian + Skoog
Florabella

A Pageantry of Art & Cheese

We jumped at the opportunity to cater Caché, a local art extravaganza at the Casket Arts Building, the newest warehouse of creativity in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. The event will feature glasswork, textiles, painting, and one of the city’s hottest jewelers Sarah Michaela Design.

Chowgirls is sponsoring the event and catering opening night on Saturday, November 22, from 6-9 pm. We’ll have spiced hot cider and holiday cookies, an assortment of other finger foods as well as our Holiday Cheese Pageantry. Please come enjoy the art and food on this wintry weekend.

Sample this at Caché and enjoy it at your own holiday party!

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Vote for Your Local Food Heroes

Edible Twin Cities, a lush quarterly magazine that covers the local food community, has announced its readers’ choice Local Hero Awards to honor people who have made a significant contribution to the Twin Cities local food movement in 2008.

I encourage you and every Chowgirls fan you know to vote for Chowgirls for Best Food Artisan. I did!

I also voted for Alex Roberts at Brasa for Best Restaurant. With his dedication to the local food market and his generous spirit, Alex is an inspiration. We use his slow-cooked Heritage Berkshire pork with Amy’s West Kentucky BBQ Sauce for our Pulled Pork Sandwiches. Brasa pork is simple and perfect. Alex lets the quality of the meat speak for itself – no smoking or injections of any sort. It’s a great way to showcase our sauce and support our favorite local restaurant.

Best Farmer was a tough category for me. I was torn between Dragsmith Farms (who provides us with amazing greens and tomatoes), Shepherd’s Way (who makes our favorite cheeses and has endured many hardships), and Larry Schultz Eggs (who was the first local farmer to work with us directly). I cast my vote for Larry for his dedication to the family farm in so many ways. His farm has been in the family for generations. His kids stamp the expiration dates on the egg cartons. And Larry himself makes deliveries every week.

For Best Beverage Artisan, my vote went to our Northeast neighbor Mrs. Kelly’s Tea. We use her English Breakfast and Herbal High C hibiscus for our iced teas.

Who’s going to get your vote? Visit Edible Twin Cities, click on VOTE NOW.

2008 Poster Offensive deemed “Awesome!”

Sarah Nelson Forss

I just walked next door to the Frank Stone Gallery to preview the new Spunk Poster Offensive show, which opens tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.  Featured are some of the Twin Cities best designers, sounding off politically in a series of bad-ass posters.  Two fantastic Obama prints, available and reasonably priced, caught my attention, as did a graphically-strong 3-poster set by Phil Silverstein from San Francisco (the only non-local artists in the show) and commisioned by the Huffington Post. Another favorite is Sarah Nelson Forss’ “Get Your Ass Out and Vote!” (Sarah’s our girl–she’s one of a handful of great local designers who’ve worked on the Chowgirls brand.)  This show draws a big, hip crowd–hey, Heidi, Maari, and I are all coming–so come on out if you’re cool enough!  It’ll make you feel very political….Oh, did I mention there’d be free fancy Chowgirls food there?

Howdy!

At long last… a Chowgirls blog… a place for Heidi and Amy to post casual writings such as restaurant reviews, local food experiences, and updates about our business and staff, photos, and link to other blogs.

As requested in a comment, here is a picture of CG server Jill Waterhouse dancing with the mayor.