Q&A with Doug Anderson

I first met Doug Anderson in 2000; Doug was sort of the maitre d’ at the now-closed Pane Vino Dolce in South Minneapolis, and I was a cub QA writer waiting to interview PVD’s eccentric owner, Carlo Macy. In one of the most bizarre interviews of my career, the three of us crowded into the bathroom as Anderson hopelessly attempted to translate for Macy, as his soused king sat on the toilet and raved with his pants around his ankles. Clearly, Anderson was a man willing to go beyond in the name of hospitality. Now forty-three, Anderson has opened and closed two restaurants himself, the Bakery on Grand in Minneapolis and Au Rebour in St. Paul, gaining an eccentric reputation in his own right. A natural born raconteur, who grew up living in a series of Minneapolis flophouses with his father before moving to N.Y. in the mid-’80s, his latest venture is Nick and Eddie, named after a SoHo restaurant he waited at in 1986. It’s an attempt to bring the weird back to Loring Park.

You outfitted this place like it’s the trunk of a ’72 Impala, and you play The Fall and Pere Ubu—if you cranked it up, people would flee.
Yeah, but not everybody. And as long as they’re not hearing a lot of the words, it’s just great music. I mean, I play Suicide during the middle of dinner. It’s not that controversial. I play a lot of Sticky Fingers and Exile-era Stones, or Gang of Four, or Clash. And Phillip and Eric, the owners of the original Nick and Eddie, were really, really into music. It was sort of deceptive: Eric was a great, great cook, coming from California, working at Tower, and working in high-end restaurants in New York. But when you first met him, you know, he didn’t look like a cool guy. But then I tasted the food there, and it was obvious he was a real chef that just decided he was going to do simple stuff. It wasn’t arbitrary, and there wasn’t necessarily a drive to be innovative. It was just, affordable food, and it was before people used words like “comfort food,” but it all fit into one piece. It was a neighborhood joint that played great music and had great food. No bulls**t.

So did three-and-a-half stars from the Strib put you in the foodie spotlight for the next six months?
No. Let them have their fetish. I’m not participating. Probably makes it more interesting to any fetishist anyway, right? We don’t want to go to Prom this year. You and I have talked about it: It’s an infantile culture, that food culture, reflective of larger things in this culture that I find absolutely uninteresting. The first year the Sex Pistols came out, you had this amazing thing happening in music, and for the next twenty-five, you had the f**king Knack. Same thing in the food world.

Do you consider what you’re doing here an art or a commodity?
Neither. I mean, we’re just f**king Serving. People. Food. That’s all we’re doing. No, really. But there is something subversive about bringing somebody what they’ve asked for.

No. What’s subversive about fulfilling somebody’s wish?
You live in a culture that’s forgotten how to f**k.

So, that’s what you mean when you refer to it “fuel for f**king.”
Yup. It’s just another function like any other function. It’s having a conversation. It’s eating a good meal. The foodies have made it into something more. Made it into something to disclose to others. To show the world what you’ve eaten. You know, keep it to your f**king self. Just go about your business, and live your f**king life. It’s hard enough.

Do you think that your chef and your pastry chef are more ambitious than cooking “fuel for f**king”?
No. You know, obviously, it’s sort of a joke that I know will rile somebody. But it has something more to do with the MC5 than it does with pornography or sex or screwing. But no, I think their ambition is exactly the same. Steve already has been to the top of the mountain as far as celebrity chef. He was a part of the Newport thing at Tower that really turned the tide as far as cooking. But you just get to a certain point at which what does it do for you? Why is that interesting? It’s not. What’s interesting is to live your life. To do the thing that you like in an environment that’s acceptable to you. And I don’t think that either of them have any ambitions like that. I think we could have a really solid, really good restaurant. The fundamental rule that we’re following the sort of Lacan—and I don’t want to be taken as an intellectual or an aesthete, but some people read Erma Bombeck, and others read Lacan—no value judgments. (Laughs). But the one rule in psychoanalysis is don’t f**k with somebody else’s fantasy. Now when I walk into, I won’t say which restaurant, but one of those restaurants with the reeds and the fireplace, these concept-driven restaurants, and you’re clobbered over the f**king head. And I think any sensitive person has to think about where the f**k they are on this planet, at this particular point in time, being faced with this stuff. I just want to go someplace and not think about it.

But you have a concept going here. You brought the original Nick and Eddie owners in for “voodoo.”
Well there is, but I think it’s a non-verbal. We never talk about it. It’s just what feels right. It becomes intuitive. This feels this way, or this looks this way.

So when did you fly them in?
Yeah, he flew out and spent months with us when we were designing the place. He was involved in raising money, he was involved in being part of the face and showing that there was a relationship with the original Nick and Eddie. That it wasn’t just “it’s a great idea, let’s take it and run with it.” I mean, Phillip is very much a part of this restaurant. And Phillip calls it DNA.

When did you work at Nick and Edide?
It opened in ’86. I worked there two-and-a-half years. I was all of twenty-two. And then the neighborhood changed, and the music changed. Again, this is not a value judgment, but as soon as it became the Beastie Boys and 3rd Bass. I mean, I was a complete product of punk, and I never made that transition. The key of Nick and Eddie was that it was very young. I got too old.

What were the cross streets?
Swing and Sullivan. It was SoHo. But it wasn’t considered part of SoHo. It’s really an interesting little piece of New York. Because it really was Little Italy. Little Italy used to extend way over. But Heath . . . my friend from King Street, which was one street over from Sullivan. SoHo really sort of stopped at West Broadway or maybe another block west. And it was still like weird little stores, and unfortunately, it’s not that way anymore. But I think Nick and Eddie, it’s opening coincided—they’re not responsible—but it coincided with the expansion of SoHo three blocks west. It was a bit of an outpost when it opened.

When did it close?
’96.

When did the idea pop in your head?
Probably in ’96. I mean, it was a great place in New York. It wasn’t just the place. It wasn’t just the place. It was kind of like the best parts of New York were not—well, places like Area, of course, were interesting and fun to go to—but the greatest part of New York, which I think has vanished now, is that you could go to a bar or a restaurant and not pay a cover charge or not be examined before you go in, and every kind of person would be in the same room. Somebody like a Howard Howard, that old crazy tough vicious old drag queen next to an accountant from Levittown; next to that person would be, for instance, a Spalding Gray. You know, whatever. And nobody bothered each other, everybody left each other completely alone, and everybody was treated exactly the same. The cooler parts of New York were extraordinarily democratic. You could go to a nightclub and go through all the flashy shit like that. I had enough juice to get into those places, and I never had to wait in line to get into a place, but my favorite places were places like the Mars Bar. It’s still there; it’s on 2nd and 2nd. And you had all sorts of hustlers and junkies and art students and lower east side poor kids and lower east side rich kids. Ever body in one room, listening to music, and drinking and getting along and talking about all sorts of stuff. So it wasn’t just replicating Nick and Eddie. I think it was a spark that Nick and Eddie had.

You do realize that Minneapolis will never be as cool as New York was.
Sure it will. It depends on who you’re sitting with at any giving time. It’s like the Northwest passage—it shifts, and it changes, and it moves. If there’s one thing that I do think is interesting about the time we live in now, it’s that we have access to all sorts of things and all sorts of people at any given time. You don’t have to be locked to any single geography. I don’t feel like we’re on an outpost here. But you know, New York isn’t that cool place anymore. Look at the West Village. At one time, it was my favorite place to be. Obviously the big gay part of New York at the time with the winding streets and hidden little passageways. And I think it was a place not only for that community but all communities that wanted to live outside of the mainstream that saw an advantage in invisibility. And now all that moved to Chelsea, and everything is on the grid, and everything is absolutely visible, and you know what? It’s just not that interesting anymore. I’m not a fan of exclusivity, but I do believe that if you want to involve yourself in something, it takes some sacrifice, and it takes some work. It’s like music was—anybody could have it, but you had to do the work to find it. And now, look at foodies, you don’t have to do it anymore. You don’t have to have read about Fernand Point for five years before you ate something that may have some relationship to part of your consciousness or part of your research. It doesn’t happen anymore.

Well, that’s the book on you—the hunt is exciting, and then you get bored, and you bail.
I don’t think that’s true, and I’m not going to comment on why the businesses aren’t around anymore. I think there is an element of truth that when you get older, you start to believe your own bulls**t. And you start making a lot of mistakes. You start to think what you’re doing is interesting or fascinating or relevant or commercially viable, and then you find that it’s maybe not the case.

So that was your bad?
Well, I’m not going to say anything. I’m not going to talk about it. I just won’t. But I think everybody does the same thing: Everybody is engaged in believing their own bulls**t. But I would say that that charge against me—that I lose interest after a couple of years—is absolute bulls**t. Untrue. There are things that I’ve maintained my interest in for decades now. They haven’t changed an awful lot. I hate to admit it, but they haven’t expanded an awful lot. The music I like or the literature I read or the paintings or the films I like. I think that the rap on me and commitment, it doesn’t bother me if somebody says it. Frankly, I don’t give a f**k, but I don’t think it’s true.

Have you learned anything from your last two closings that are applicable?
Of course. Just listen to people, and watch people constantly. See if they’re happy and if you’re giving them what they want. A lot of it has to do with quitting drinking.

Are your taste buds shot since you quit drinking?
They’re probably better now. My drink of choice was always inexpensive red wine, and all I tasted was red wine and cigarettes for years. Whiskey and red wine, depending on the day and my mood. And when I was younger, [I] took everything except LSD, and that was only because I hated hippies so much. But I started feeling paranoid and frightened of everything.

How long have you been clean?
Two-and-half years. You get infatuated with that s**t, but then you get bored. And having kids obviously made it too dangerous.

When this place opened, why were you telling everybody in the press that you were just a waiter and you were concentrating on playing guitar in your band?
Well, I pretty much am just a waiter here. I love the door now because business is going well enough that it takes more than one person at the door. I am an employee, and I’m completely committed to this restaurant and to doing whatever I can do to make it a better restaurant. So yeah, I can’t help thinking about it. I do the music, of course, and I had a lot to do with what this restaurant turned into. But this is my wife and Steve’s place. And I mean, look at me, what else am I going to do? Who else am I going to work for? Who else will listen to me if I tell them I’m playing Suicide at 8:30 on a f**king Wednesday night? Nobody else would listen to me, so I’m not going anywhere.