Cafe Metro in Minneapolis

In the late 1980s, anyone working in the glass towers on Seventh Street in downtown Minneapolis had two lunch options: fine dining or fast food, with little worth mentioning in between. Laura Tiffany and Tim Grady opened Cafe Metro in 1987 to change that.

Cafe Metro opened in 1987 at 108 South Seventh Street as a street-level cafeteria with a push-a-tray setup and outdoor tables that were nearly impossible to snag at noon. Tiffany had briefly managed the Malt Shop in south Minneapolis and spent time as kitchen manager at the New French Cafe. In 1990, when Grady left the business, Susan Bishop bought his share for $12,000. Neither Tiffany nor Bishop had planned on running a restaurant. Because the two women agreed from the beginning that one of them needed to be at the cafe at all times, they often watched the other’s kids to make that happen.

Bishop spent the 1980s baking and managing catering at the Gallery 8 Restaurant at the Walker Art Center and the Studio Restaurant at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Together, she and Tiffany built Cafe Metro into a comforting, nutritious refuge for office workers stuck in junk-food routines. The menu ranged from Tex-Mex to Thai, with plenty of vegetarian and low-fat dishes alongside heartier comfort food like sandwiches, stews, and lasagna, along with bars and cookies for dessert. Ingredients were fresh and seasonal where possible, and some herbs and vegetables came from the owners’ backyard gardens. Summer and fall were the best times to eat there. Breakfast was served until 10:30, which meant you could grab a warm muffin or scone on your way into the office and come back a few hours later for lunch.

Regulars eventually became collaborators. They critiqued the menu, suggested dishes, and lobbied for their favorites. That’s how Fridays became Four Cheese Pasta Day and the Caesar salad earned a permanent spot on the menu. Customers eventually started asking for recipes, which the owners first scribbled out by hand on request before it became clear they needed something more formal. They published a cookbook in 1997, whittling down hundreds of recipes and writing it while both women ran the restaurant, raised children, and tended their households. 

Cafe Metro closed in 2002 after fifteen years of feeding hundreds of people a day.