Food + drink: Doing it Kim Bartmann's way at Pat's Tap

Some bars say very little about their owners. Pat's Tap isn't one of those bars.

Kim Bartmann's latest endeavor was designed with several of her idiosyncratic obsessions in mind. She likes skee-ball, so the bar has four vintage skee-ball machines. She likes canned beer, so there are no bottles (just cans -- and lots of them). She likes palindromes, so the bar's name is "Pat's Tap" any which way you look at it.

At this point in Bartmann's lengthy restaurant-redefining career, she can basically do whatever she wants. I suppose that's what she's been doing all along at the likes of Bryant-Lake Bowl, Barbette and the Red Stag Supperclub.

Located near the corner of Nicollet Avenue and 35th Street in south Minneapolis, Pat's Tap was once home to Casey's, a no-frills bar seldom frequented by people from outside the neighborhood (except for Bartmann, it seems).

"Obviously, I love retro and vintage stuff," she said. "It's a really cool bar and deserved to be brought back to life."

Over a couple beers last Friday, the restaurateur waxed poetic about the opening of her long-awaited neighborhood joint.

"I just always thought that was a cool name for a bar," she said. "And it's a palindrome. And it's my mom's name." Momma Bartmann still lives in northern Wisconsin (family camping trips were inspiration for the Red Stag). You can get a glimpse of Pat on the menu, which features an illustrated picture of her when she was in her early 20s. Apparently, there also was an old Wisconsin bar named Pat's Tap.

"I have to be removed from it at the State Fair," she said. "It's like I'm stuck at a slot machine." The bar's skee-ball machines date to 1952. Her sister, Kari (a co-owner), spent the summer restoring them in her garage. Games have been free since Pat's opened in late-September, but they'll cost a quarter once Bartmann gets the coin mechanism working.

"First of all, I had to have food my mom would like," she said. She noted the BLT iceberg lettuce salad as filling that requirement. The rest of the menu is something she calls Eurotrash: steak frites, bangers and mash, lamb meatballs, gougères. It's bar food, but taken through the wringer by chef Charlie Schwandt. Small plates range between $5 and $9. Salads and sandwiches hover around $10 to $13. Most entrées are in the mid-teens.

The bar's old-school jukebox was most recently at the Turf Club. The jukebox's carousel is still stocked with Johnny Cash, Radiohead, Bowie and Guns N' Roses. But you can't please everyone, she said: "One of the customers said, 'I thought this was vintage.' I said 'It is -- it's CDs.'"

There are plenty of tap beers to choose from, but the bar puts an extra emphasis on its can selection, which is one of the Twin Cities' largest (more than 60). Why cans? Bartmann points to the "Canifesto" on the menu: "Cans are airtight and oxygen-free, protecting the beer and keeping it fresh." The cans range from $3.50 for a Hamm's to $8 for a Tokyo Black (a high-end porter from Japan).

Well, here's one thing that hasn't gone Bartmann's way (yet). Half of her brand-new brick patio is gated off, per a zoning and licensing issue. She's working on getting it resolved. And don't even mention this summer's controversial patio ordinance. "I don't even want to talk about that anymore," she said.

Restaurants "are the worst energy [users] of any small business," she said. "Our food system has a huge piece of the pie when it comes to our carbon footprint." After the Red Stag, Pat's is the city's second LEED-certified restaurant (which means it's energy efficient up the wazoo). There's a huge solar array on the roof, the men's urinals are waterless, the furniture is reclaimed. Her close attention to design has made the bar look pretty sleek -- maybe too sleek. "I originally wanted it to be a little dive-ier than it is," Bartmann joked. "But there's still time to redesign and mess it up."