Travail bringing its over-the-top restaurant to Minneapolis, temporarily

The restaurant that helped revitalize the main street of Robbinsdale is moving to the city.

While Travail Kitchen and Amusements undergoes a complete overhaul in its home, Minneapolis fans of its over-the-top, interactive dinners still have a chance to indulge in a ticketed prix fixe meal closer to home. Travail is doing a "residency" in Minneapolis (1930 Hennepin Av. S.), the address formerly known as Bradstreet Craftshouse, and Rye Delicatessen and Auriga.

Over in Robbinsdale, the current Travail building will flip into a new home for its sister restaurant Pig Ate My Pizza by late spring. A new two-story building across the street will become home to Travail's new concept — a sort of mobile, immersive dinner party — by summer 2019.

Until then, Travail co-owners Mike Brown, James Winberg and Bob Gerken are opening a new bag of tricks in Minneapolis, only for the first six months of 2019, while construction continues in Robbinsdale.

"We have to keep the business going and keep our cooks employed," Brown said about the temporary move.

This residency, called UMAMI, echoes a pop-up that Travail did in 2013, when it took over a north Minneapolis fried-chicken restaurant while constructing what now is the current location. That event was called UMAMI, also.

"The cool part about this is we get to revive UMAMI, which is a fan-favorite concept that many were upset we ended up closing," Brown said. "So it'll be fun."

This time, the prix fixe menu will include "Dim Sum cart service, shared family courses, amuse bites, sake bombs and more." There are four seatings a night, and tickets are $85 per person, with an additional $50 fee for a beverage flight. Bar patrons can get ramen, dumplings, wings and tonkotsu donburi on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Tickets go on sale next week at travailkitchen.com/tickets.