Soul Food from Mama Sheila’s House of Soul
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
Places to eat and drink
We covered the May Day Cafe in our Bloomington Avenue story last year, but only a month or so later they began the process of becoming a worker-owned co-op. Now that process is officially complete and the cafe has been under the new management, and we can revisit it. Guess what? It’s still awesome.
The grand re-opening occurred last February, with most of the same stuff, slightly expanded hours, and total coverage by all the local media. One thing they did not have was the croissants. Worker-owners were still honing their skills on former owner and master baker Andy’s recipe. They got it right by late spring and now even the heavenly croissants are available.
May Day Cafe at its reopening as a co-op Feb 2025
Reverie Cafe + Bar is just around the corner from May Day at 1517 East 35th St. Reverie is a favorite all-vegan cafe plus bar with great coffee drinks, excellent artisanal ales and ciders, a good wine list, and many non-alcoholic options like kombucha or fancy lemonade. Do try their beignets! So good they taste like they’re from New Orleans.
Mercado Central, 1515 East Lake St., is the incubator mall featuring first businesses mostly run by Latino entrepreneurs. Many favorites such as Manny’s Tortas got their start there. In addition to small eateries and panaderias (bakeries), Mercado Central also has retail stores, including a small grocer, and at least one butcher shop. Seating is food court style and they have their own off-street parking lot.
Sift Gluten Free, a bakery at 4557 Bloomington Ave. S., is just what the name says: a full-scale bakery, where everything is gluten free. In addition to basic bakery items like cookies, bars, bread, muffins, and pastries, they have several bake-at-home options such as pizza crusts and cinnamon rolls. They also offer hot and cold drinks to accompany your baked goods, and the retail section includes coffee beans by their two coffee suppliers, Backstory and Wonderstate, leaf tea in bulk by their tea supplier, Well Rooted Tea. AND some very desirable “merch” such as enamel pins, socks, and travel mugs. You can order anything online for pickup at same-day.siftglutenfree.com.
Mama Sheila’s House of Soul is a buffet-style restaurant and catering service offering some of the most authentic southern-style soul food north of the Mason-Dixon. “Mama Sheila” is not just a brand name, it is co-owner Sheila Braithwaite. Prior to the founding of Mama Sheila’s in 2016, she was catering for the church of her husband and co-owner Pastor Frederick Brathwaite. Frederick designed the striking interior of Mama Sheila’s with its artistic tributes to the achievements of local black people and black excellence.
The original site of Welna Hardware
(photo/Max Halperins walking streets blog)
Retail and services
Welna Ace Hardware store is at 2438 Bloomington Ave., roughly across the street from the old two story brick building in which Al and Virgil Welna founded the family’s original hardware store. Now on its third generation of Welnas, the family business has expanded and contracted, and eventually joined the cooperative chain of Ace Hardware. Welna’s on Bloomington (they also own an Ace Hardware in Robbinsdale) is my store for online browsing and also where I go for basic things like seeds in the spring, a new mop, or to get my kitchen knives and scissors sharpened.
City Blocks Quilt Shop is a member-owned co-op at 3400 Bloomington Ave. and online. They carry high-quality, 100% cotton quilting fabrics including Batiks, Kaffe Fassett, Australian aboriginal fabrics, Tula Pink, Tilda’s World from Norway and many other designers. You will find notions, patterns, books, batting and incredible customer-service. They are all quilters, crafters and sewists!
Twin Cities Barber Co. at 3745 Bloomington Ave. is a traditional barber shop with modern style. “We provide high quality services in a clean and professional setting. It is our goal that all of our customers have a memorable and welcome experience,” says their website.
Art and education
El Colegio High School is a public school charter offering culturally specific programs for kids of Latine families. El Colegio was founded in 2000 by a group of public school teachers and artists. It is a small school with around 100 students or fewer, and a staff of nine to 12 teachers, which gives them a very low student to teacher ratio. They teach both regular English and ESL, as well as Heritage Spanish, which is Spanish for native speakers. Enrollment is via application, but the school, like all public charters, is tuition-free.
Sayge Carroll, Katrina Knutson, and Keegan Xavi, the founders of Mudluk Pottery
Mudluk Pottery is a local membership-based_pottery studio (although you don’t have to be a member to take classes there). Located at 2951 Bloomington Ave. S., Mudluk is a Black, queer, and women-owned “ceramics sanctuary.” The combined studio, school, gallery, and shop was founded in 2022 by Sayge Carroll, Katrina Knutson, and Keegan Xavi with an ethos of grassroots, safety, and community for creative neighbors. See more at their website mudlukpottery.com.
Modus Locus at 3500 Bloomington Ave. S. is another unusual arts institution. The project of Ephraim Eusebio, a local realtor and artist, it combines a co-working space, an art gallery, an exercise studio and more, as well as the large adjunct MLX in Prospect Park. For the month of August, see the artwork of Powderhorn resident Angela Maki North in the gallery. If you’re interested in learning more, you can book a tour of both Modus Locus locations through their website, moduslocusmpls.com.
Artwork by Angela Maki North on display at Modus Locus
Community, and families
Four Directions Preschool, 1527 East Lake St., is one of the main projects of non-profit The Family Partnership. (Last year’s column covered the fascinating history of this organization; read it here: southsidepride.com/2024/08/06/summer-on-bloomington-avenue-south.) Four Directions Preschool is a multicultural, therapeutic preschool that offers full-day, year-round, education and care for children, ages six weeks to twelve years, including access to Ojibwe language immersion classrooms by Wicoie Nandagikendan.
Open Arms at 2500 Bloomington Ave. S. was founded in 1986 as a small operation providing ready-to-eat meals to people living with AIDS. Over the 39 years of its existence, it has grown exponentially larger, and now employs a large staff and thousands of volunteers. They serve a population with a large variety of life-threatening illnesses, and provide hundreds of thousands of medically-tailored meals every year. In 2022, they began a “cultural meals” program to better serve clients, which offers options of a Hmong, East African, or Latin American menu. (This was phased over three years, and the full Latin American menu will be available in September of this year.)
A new fundraiser for Open Arms is a statewide bake sale. The second annual Great Minnesota Bake Sale will take place Aug. 10-16, 2025. This event will see a network of bakeries, coffee shops, and other businesses from across the Twin Cities Metro area come together to raise funds for the program.
We conclude our coverage of Bloomington Avenue with the mystery of Lake Nokomis’s Amelia Pond. In case you didn’t know, Amelia Pond is the name of a major secondary character in the enormous Doctor Who universe. It’s also the name of a man-made pond near Lake Nokomis that the Mississippi Watershed district built to improve water quality. Lake Nokomis was known as Lake Amelia until the 1920s, and Amelia Pond was built in 2001. I failed to find any evidence of a link between the pond and the TV character, so it must just be a happy coincidence.
