The French Hen Café, a breakfast spot on Selby Ave., is both refined and down to earth in its offerings. It’s home cooking, elevated, or rather; it’s a team of ordinary cooks putting themselves into a transcendental meal. Though restaurants focused on Southern flavors such as Revival have received recent accolades, this gem in the heart of St. Paul features playfully rich, Creole inspired recipes that have withstood the test of time.
When walking into the French Hen space, you’re bathed in light—a well-deserved respite from Minnesota’s annual war on vitamin D, a.k.a. winter. Before being seated, diners make their way through a natural oxygen bar; the passageway to the café is through Ergo Floral, a neighboring plant store that graces entrants with a verdant kiss from Cathedral Hill. Though I found the plants rejuvenating, the greens I was after would be arriving on a plate and would be soon melting in my mouth like liquid smoke.
Chef Belvin Hill, known only at the restaurant as Benny, is part of a predominately Black and Brown team of cooks who’ve all shaped the menu over the past seven years. Wearing red, yellow, and green I don’t have to ask where he’s from…. But I do. Benny’s dad is from Jamaica, though he traces his lifeline to Mississippi through Chicago, He’s a working class guy, whose true passion is fixing cars. But like the food, which is altogether Black and Cajun, Vietnamese, both refined and unrestrained, he doesn’t fit into any one box.
Benny is in charge of the collard greens and specials on the menu, which features breakfast from 8 AM to 2 PM daily. Though he would not get into the politics of who makes the best greens in the cities, he did say emphatically, “There is a secret [to his].” Indeed, the greens that come alongside blackened catfish on fried green tomato croquets, seem to announce themselves with: “Can’t tell me nothin-” indicative of both their harmonizing flavors and the time put in to make them velvety soft. If you’re looking for lighter fare, you’ll have to look outside the restaurant’s four walls, though a couple delicate slices of blood orange lay alongside the potato hashbrown as citrus palette cleansers.
Other foods cooked slow and low include the pulled pork braised overnight and finished the next day with a soy sauce glaze. You’ll find it piled high on their Banh Mi Benedict atop crunchy French bread fresh from Trung Nam French Bakery, a staple in the Frogtown neighborhood since 1989. With the meat’s juices infusing the baguette, drawing spice from the Sriracha hollandaise, you get a luxurious-tangy mouthful softened by a plump and runny poached egg. I recommend nibbling at the nestled jalapeño slices to cut through the butter and fat.
Though the name may suggest airs of bourgeoisie reserve, the food and its innovators are anything but. When I asked about the name, Madeline’s mom, Robin, replied without pause that she simply thought that it sounded good. Indeed if you went looking for this Francophone fowl, you’d probably find her frolicking in a mudbath with the rest of the barnyard gang. Scanning the room, I saw no-one holding their pinky up when lifting their glasses, though you probably could if you wanted to.
Benny says that there’s something for everybody here, though later he would reverse his position when considering the restaurant’s carnivorous underpinnings.
“I don’t care if you’re a vegetarian or anything you got to eat some type of meat: ham, turkey, pork, beef, something! You gotta eat something.”
“What!?” Rivard interjects, cracking up… “It’s true, we don’t really cater that much to vegetarians,” she concedes. “I mean there is an omelette on there,” Benny says. The two are clearly part of a tight-knit team where honest input and back and forth banter is valued. Both say that leadership is non-hierarchical and that people step up for one another when needed.
Though the French Hen has cultivated a dedicated following, the road ahead is far from straightforward. Rivard cites a 2% increase in local licensing and permit fees that increase pressure on St. Paul’s small businesses, particularly restaurants.
“We have no interest being a business if we can’t pay people living wages, if we can’t offer people time with their families. We’re struggling to do that with the price points we’re at,”
Rivard replied when asked about the restaurant’s place in a gentrifying neighborhood. Though all kitchen staff is paid at least $15/hour, she has trepidations about the mandated increase for wait staff, fearing the toll it will take on the business’s narrow profit margins.
To survive the rising costs and to maintain the restaurant’s neighborhood character, Rivard and the team have sought to make their space amenable to community. In addition to announcing the establishment’s politics with a Black Lives Matter sign in the front window, the space has been used by local organizers as a meeting sight. Regulars have also celebrating special occasions with the French Hen staff including weddings, anniversaries, and showers.
I spoke to one couple, Echo Kokesh and Linden Rael, who were marking their anniversary with biscuits and gravy along with a mimosa and a Hugo, an early morning herbal concoction of elderflower, mint, lime, and Prosecco. Supporting Rivard’s claim that customers can show up in their pj’s and not be looked at as funny, Rael affirms that you can come as you are. “It’s a safe place to be queer,” Kokesh says, “And of course, it’s beautiful.” For a breakfast spot that transports Midwesterners further south, while defying convention, consider the Hen.