The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Drive down Eat Street - Nicollet Avenue - and you can see the whole drama of restaurant existence in a block or two - life, death, and sometimes renewal.

Last night, we headed out for dinner at one of my favorite Chinese restaurants, Relax (a really unfortunate choice of name), and discovered that Relax wasn't relaxing, it was dead. (Sometimes, with the fish and crabs in the restaurant's live seafood tanks, it wasn't easy to tell.)

My how time flies. It is almost August, the days are getting shorter, and the evenings of patio dining will soon be a distant memory. I still haven't made it back to my all-time favorite outdoor dining spot, the patio at the Black Forest Inn, for a mug of Pilsner Urquell, a pair of bratwurst

We had a delightful dinner at Jasmine 26 last night — a dramatic improvement over my visits last summer, shortly after the Vietnamese bistro at 26^th and Nicollet opened its doors. Most of the Vietnamese staples are offered, like the spring rolls and egg rolls, and pho, for a dollar or two more than you might spent at Quang or Pho Tau Bay, or at the original