{"id":5516,"date":"2011-03-31T05:10:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T12:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/?p=5516"},"modified":"2011-03-31T05:10:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T12:10:02","slug":"st-paul-mn-cecils-delicatessan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=5516","title":{"rendered":"St. Paul, MN &#8211; Cecil&#8217;s Delicatessan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My mother had an odd personality quirk &#8211; well, not to me, but certainly to those around her. She led a very standard American middle class life in the 50s and 60s, the dutiful wife and mother, whose own personality didn&#8217;t start to emerge (at least to her children) til we were well on our way out of our teens.<\/p>\n<p>We each learned something different from my mother. We each had different experiences.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;oddity&#8221; in my mother, at least as far as I was concerned, and involved, is my mother looked to me to take her to &#8220;off the beaten path&#8221; restaurants&#8230;and an occasional dive.<\/p>\n<p>I think she relished telling the stories of these outings to her peers. Made her feel more &#8220;edgy&#8221; or that she had something to one up them with. Not sure, doesn&#8217;t matter, I cherish those dates I had with my mom.<\/p>\n<p>The path of our adventures often took us to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where I lived a couple of times.<\/p>\n<p>One of my mom&#8217;s favorite haunts with me was a little hole-in-the-wall delicatessan in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cecilsdeli.com\/\">Cecil&#8217;s<\/a> opened on July 1, 1949, and is still operated today by\u00a0Cecil&#8217;s daughter and her\u00a0husband.\u00a0 Unless you are &#8220;in the know&#8221; you probably wouldn&#8217;t even realize a restaurant was there, as the store front is a traditional deli and meat counter, and the restaurant is through doors in the back of the store.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s worth the trek, as my brother and niece did today, in &#8216;celebration&#8217; of my late mother&#8217;s birthday.\u00a0 A corned beef homage, as it were.<\/p>\n<p>Cecil&#8217;s are big customers of Vienna Beef, and if you are\u00a0 regular reader, you know what a buff I am of that company.\u00a0 I first fell in love with Vienna&#8217;s natural casing hot dogs, but have since begun an affair with their entire product line. (Which is both served, and sold at retail, at Cecil&#8217;s).<\/p>\n<p>My brother, his daughter and grandbaby \u00a0plowed through their respective menu choices, before he loaded up on Vienna products to take home: dogs, buns, relish, and a brisket or two.<\/p>\n<p>Cecil&#8217;s is a &#8216;must stop&#8217; if you&#8217;re on a whirlwind tour of Twin Cities dining.\u00a0 A <em>must<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I love the fact that Vienna is making a big push to get their product in retail locations.\u00a0 They&#8217;ve been at Cecil&#8217;s a long time.\u00a0 Tomorrow?\u00a0 Hopefully the world!<\/p>\n<p>I can only think of one bad experience I had at Cecil&#8217;s, and it had nothing to do with the restaurant or food, but instead, a very hungover pre Mrs. Burgerdogboy who had to excuse herself, go sit in the car, and lose what little lunch she had, in the gutter.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cecilsdeli.com\/soups.htm\">Cecil&#8217;s sandwich menu<\/a>.\u00a0 Can&#8217;t get to Cecil&#8217;s?\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.viennabeef.com\/store\/\"> Order Vienna Beef <\/a>products for home delivery.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<div><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5525\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5525\" style=\"width: 448px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil2-png.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5525 \" title=\"Vienna Beef Retail Products Display\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil2-png.png\" alt=\"Vienna Beef Retail Products Display\" width=\"448\" height=\"335\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5525\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vienna Beef Retail Products Display<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5547\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5547\" style=\"width: 384px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil4-jpg.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5547 \" title=\"Cecil's Deli Restaurant Interior\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil4-jpg.png\" alt=\"Cecil's Deli Restaurant Interior\" width=\"384\" height=\"256\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5547\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cecil&#8217;s Deli Restaurant Interior<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5548\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5548\" style=\"width: 384px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil6-png.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5548 \" title=\"Cecil's Deli Retail Shop\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil6-png.png\" alt=\"Cecil's Deli Retail Shop\" width=\"384\" height=\"256\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5548\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cecil&#8217;s Deli Retail Shop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil1-png2.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5551\" title=\"cecil1 png\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cecil1-png2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"448\" height=\"335\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanspoon.com\/r\/29\/330691\/restaurant\/Twin-Cities\/Merriam-Park-Highland-Park\/Cecils-St-Paul\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: none; width: 200px; height: 146px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urbanspoon.com\/b\/link\/330691\/biglink.gif\" alt=\"Cecil's on Urbanspoon\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cecils Delicatessan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mother had an odd personality quirk &#8211; well, not to me, but certainly to those around her. She led a very standard American middle class life in the 50s and 60s, the dutiful wife and mother, whose own personality didn&#8217;t start to emerge (at least to her children) til we were well on our&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=5516\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">St. Paul, MN &#8211; Cecil&#8217;s Delicatessan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,34,35,25],"tags":[871,1998,2000,2296,2311,3582],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5516"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}