On a Mission

Fate seems to have brought these two men with complementary strengths together. They met at Anbar’s wedding reception, a traditional Persian affair catered by Ansari, who was D’Amico + Partners’ special events manager at the time. They discovered they had similar backgrounds and interests as Iranian immigrants who had forged careers in the American restaurant business.

Ansari had come to the United States in 1978 to visit his sister, a student at Macalester. Shortly afterward, the Iranian Revolution occurred, and he stayed stateside. The sixteen-year-old worked his way up the business from valet to dishwasher to waiter to management. Anbar had moved to Dallas in 1977 to attend North Texas State University. He worked in a cousin’s restaurants while in college, then partnered with the cousin to open a dozen restaurants of various ethnic varieties throughout the eighties. He moved to the Twin Cities in 1991.

In 1995, Anbar joined Ansari at Morton’s, where Ansari had become the Chicago–based chain’s regional manager. Six months later, in 1996, they decided to start their own restaurant company. That same year, they opened Atlas Grill, which garnered a loyal following for its Persian–style fire-roasted meats. Five years later in 2001, they charmed the skyway lunch crowd by fashioning those same meats into the town’s best wraps at Good to Go, which opened above Atlas (and uses its kitchens).

Then they got ambitious. They scored big among power lunchers in 2003 with Mission and brought kebabs to the suburbs with Kabobi in 2005. Last year, hoping to continue their knack for reclamation, they purchased the defunct Cattle Company on I–394 with the intention of putting an upscale restaurant in the suburbs. But when the Pizzeria Uno location across France Avenue from Southdale became available, they pounced. The Cattle Company site would wait.

Via presented challenges for Hemisphere. It took the partners outside of their downtown Minneapolis comfort zone. They had charted suburban waters with Kabobi, but it was a quick-service, low-risk venture. Via, which introduced sophisticated cooking to tables where pizzas once perched, represented new territory for the pair. Knowing they couldn’t simply replicate Mission, they were forced to develop a new concept. “We didn’t want to come in too sophisticated and overwhelm people, but we didn’t want to hit below the mark either,” Ansari recalls.

The resulting compromise was a menu that includes delicate crab puffs in mango-ginger chutney, offset by flash-fried walleye with Buffalo seasoning. The ambiance created by burgundy wing-backed booths and heavy wooden table tops plays to the business crowd and the shoppers venturing across France.