I Had the Best Muffin of My Life

I used to live across from the Minnesota Historical Society and I used to enjoy drinking on weekdays. This would often result in me booking ass to my gig at McNally Smith on foot bright and early in the morning. But I didn’t feel bright and I certainly wasn’t early. I was a man in need of a muffin. The muffin of choice was at the Minnesota Historical Society. The pistachio muffin was crusty, nutty, with actual pistachios involved, and the coffee was stellar. Get one of those going while you hit the steps by St. Joe’s hospital and by the time I got to McNally I was ready to work on promoting Heiruspecs at my desk! What a treat.

But that has given me a lifelong affair with pistachio muffins. After Minnesota Historical Society switched food vendors I had to scratch my issue with only okay pistachio muffins from Dunn Brothers. They’re green, they taste a bit like pistachios and they’re usually available. But they have no actual pistachio action, and they are kind of disproportionate. You get a lot of muffin bottom and not much muffin top. Solid, but a B at best.

Flash forward to late 2022. I start filing away the CDs for Jazz88 in a storage area of North High in Minneapolis. The radio station had already located to St. Louis Park, so I’m sneaking out of our studios usually once every two weeks to put in 3-4 hours of filing. Generally I was getting through about three letters of the alphabet a time. And pretty much every time I finished up a shift I’d stop at Cuppa Java in Bryn Mawr for a god damn pistachio muffin. Love a coffee shop reward after a job done decently. Also shout out to Alexei Casselle aka Crescent Moon. Whenever I am in Bryn Mawr I think of him, he’s basically the only person I know from there, and his childhood home is maybe three hundred steps from this soon to be discovered majestic muffin. Now listen, I didn’t expect there to be pistachio muffins there, this coffee shop is basically just exactly halfway between North High and iHeart where we currently have our offices. Now once or twice they didn’t have pistachio muffins, and once I wanted an egg salad sandwich. But I’ve probably gotten 5 of these muffins. What makes them good? They are moist with pistachio oil or some other kind of oil thing. But it’s not overbearing. So these muffins have all been excellent. Thank you Cuppa Java. But, I’m in line the other day in need of true muffin satisfaction. Probably 11:20 on a Wednesday, the food I’ve got with me is to be eaten circa 4pm during my afternoon shift. I needed that muffin satisfaction. Waiting in line on this particular day I didn’t see the subtle green tint emanating from any of the pastries they were hawking. But when I got to the front I sheepishly asked if they had pistachio muffins already starting to tell myself that the egg salad sandwich would suffice. When this tall “I bought a coffee shop in my forties” looking man sauntered back and brought out a muffin I could already tell it was hot. Just the way he was holding it. He asked “do you want a bag” to which I wanted to say “I am going to eat in the alley and then probably tear the wrapping into small pieces and try and digest it”. Instead I said, “no”. This was the best muffin of my life. It’s all down here from here and I’m totally okay with that.