Charlie’s Cafe Exceptionale Part I
This is the first of three guest posts from our intern Ben. He has been working with the Charlie’s Cafe Exceptionale Collection.
When one looks at the Minneapolis restaurant scene there are a great number of excellent choices available. For instance, everybody is probably aware of places like Hell’s Kitchen with its interesting decor or Brit’s Pub where you can bowl on the rooftop lawn. However, if you were to ask somebody who has lived in the area for several years they may lament the passing of someplace you have never heard of. This would be the oak paneled supper club that was Charlie’s Cafe Exceptionale. It was a staple of the Minneapolis Dining scene, located at 701 Fourth Ave. South from 1933 until 1982. It was named after the original proprietor of the restaurant who was named Charles Saunders, and was known for high class fare and cuisine from around the world. However, what many people don’t know is that Charles Saunders was only one of two Charlies who owned the restaurant when it opened in the early thirties. The other was Charles “the Finn” Herlin who was an accomplished bartender who immigrated from Finland in 1893. He worked in several restaurants and studied around the world untill he ended up working with a bartender named Tooze Rogers in Minneapolis. It was in Minneapolis that he created two cocktails that were considered mixological masterpieces remembered to this very day. These were The Bootleg, which resembles a Mojito, and The President Cocktail which he considered his masterpiece and claimed to make 1000-1500 of them a day. He even claimed that the cocktail stock was requested at a party in Washington DC, and had to be smuggled in since it was a dry city. Then the tragedy of Prohibition hit and he was put out of a job. He was out of a job until Prohibition was repealed, and he joyously began work opening a restaurant and bar with Charles Saunders. Tragedy again struck in 1933 when Charles Herlin died shortly after the restaurant opened leaving Charles Saunders as the sole proprietor. However, he survived in spirit, and The President Cocktail could be ordered at Charlie’s right up to the end.
Here is a menu from 1933 which contains cocktail recipes used at Charlie’s on the back. The second one from the top is their recipe for The President. However, it should be noted that it is not the original recipe for the cocktail. How do we know this? Because we have evidence from the mouth of Charles Herlin himself that shows that the recipe shown here is wrong. To see this evidence, and what may have happened to the original cocktail just stay tuned.
