Green Line Checklist Update Part 3: Hodma to Oza’s Bar and Grill
The Churn for Friday, June 13, 2025
In this week’s edition of The Heavy Table’s Churn newsletter, we go after two Somali sports platters and a really delicious pile of Ethiopian fare, too, plus coffee, plus a surprisingly great burger.
It’s the Green Line Checklist Update, and if you dig it, consider supporting us by subscribing, and you can read all the forthcoming editions in full.
The perfect alternate title for this write-up would be “Two Sports Plates and a Magician.” It captures the odd momentum of a night that started under gray, snowless skies and ended with us trudging through six inches of surprise blizzard.
We’d planned to visit all five spots in a single sweep, but the snow had other ideas. Oza’s, while welcoming, had closed their kitchen early, so we caught it on another night. Still, what we did manage to cover felt like more than enough strange magic for one evening. – M.C. Cronin
HODMA | 1197 University Ave West, Saint Paul | 651.273.3308
We stepped into a room that, aside from a mural and some dusky paintings of Somali landscapes at sunset, looked vaguely like a school cafeteria. Utilitarian fluorescent lighting above a scattering of tables covered in disposable yellow tablecloths.
There were no menus in sight. Just a couple of flatscreen monitors cycling through a screensaver of the manufacturer’s logo.
We began to wonder if this was one of those places where you get whatever dish is coming out of the kitchen that night. No questions. No substitutions. But then, someone behind the counter took mercy.
They found a remote, hit a button, and the screens flickered to life with a digital menu that didn’t so much clarify things as add to the confusion. Somali dishes like Kelyo and Beef Suqaar sat alongside quesadillas and a “sandwich.” Thankfully, we spotted a Sports Plate, a Somali standard we’ve come to trust as a reliable go-to.
At many of the Somali places we’ve visited, ordering sambusas is a coin flip, at best. Heads, they have them. Tails, they don’t. We flipped and lost. Then, we tried for cappuccinos, which prompted a concerning interaction between staff that suggested we might’ve asked for martinis. We pivoted, offering tea as an alternative. They nodded.
Midway through our meal, a scream rang out from a back room. Not quite bloodcurdling. But with enough of a bloodcurdling finish to make us pause, fork in midair. It might’ve been a couple of kids roughhousing, or a light murder taking place. In either case, the other patrons didn’t seem too worried, so we took their cue and continued on with our meal. – M.C.
Go far enough west on the Green Line and you enter the land of students and professors, where casual restaurants tend to take their orders via easy-to-navigate touchscreens. On the other end of the street, things are done the old fashioned way - a conversation, sometimes assisted by hand gestures when the language barrier gets too formidable.
It took a little negotiation and investigation to nail down the two meats we were going to end up with on the 2 Meat Sports Platter ($40) at Hodma, but we eventually ended up with chicken legs and lamb. The former were dry but pleasantly spice-rubbed, the latter tender and full-flavored, and both were remarkably tasty when eaten with the house green sauce - herbal and blazingly spicy - and the absolutely gorgeous, perfectly cooked rice that made up the majority of the platter by weight.
In terms of both quantity and quality, this was a fine sports platter and lends additional weight to our theory that the Somali sports platter is one of the metro area's tastiest and most cost-effective ways to feed a lot of hungry people with class and distinction.
We tried and failed to order cappuccinos, ending up instead with four cups of Somali Tea ($3). No regrets whatsoever, as this stuff was absolutely perfect, boldly spiced, big on tea flavor, and quite sugary but absolutely in balance with the other two elements. A banner-level hot beverage, served on a night when we were getting pounded with snow - who could ask for anything more? – J.N.
KUUSO | 946 University Ave West, Saint Paul | 612.315.3279
There was a desk in the corner of the dining room with an aging desktop computer that looked like it was waiting for someone to check their email from 1998. It gave off Internet café vibes from an era where there were such things.
The menu offered the same kind of loosely organized sprawl of dishes we found at Hodma. But this time, they actually did have sambusas. Two kinds: beef and fish. We ordered a couple, even though they looked like they’d been napping under the heat lamp since lunch. And out of tradition more than anything, we ordered a Sports Plate.
Our interaction with the man behind the counter was friendly but slightly bewildering—some combination of language barrier and our own lack of clarity. He came out more than once, saying things that may have been questions, or may have just been him thinking out loud. One thing we were sure of: whatever eventually arrived at our table was almost certainly going to vary from what we ordered. Either way, he seemed genuinely invested in making sure we were taken care of.
It’s hard not to feel like a tourist in places like this. Not unwelcome. Just aware. There’s a rhythm here we’re not quite part of. At the Somali spots we’ve visited, there’s often been a table or two of guys just sitting and talking. No food, no hurry. It’s hard to tell if they work there, or used to, or never did but sort of do now by sheer presence. They feel like third spaces in the truest sense—places that feel like home to the people in them, even if the rest of us are just passing through. – M.C.
Following the sports platter of Hodma with a Sports Platter ($35) at Kuuso was a little intense and possibly more sports plattering than a group of four should be expected to handle in one evening, but it worked itself out pretty well.
The beef on the Kuuso platter was thoroughly marinated and full flavored, dense texturally and in terms of flavor as well. By contrast, the larger chunks of meat - we're putting our money on goat, but if not goat, certainly lamb - were much lighter in texture and relatively neutral in flavor, but well cooked and enjoyable nonetheless.
The green sauce of Kuuso lacked the heat of Hodma's nuclear-strength stuff, but it packed a pleasant and refreshing herbal kick. Hodma takes top prize for rice, but Kuuso's wasn't bad - just a little more mellow and dull in comparison to Hodma's brilliance.
If the Sambusas ($2) at Kuuso had been served hot, they might've been all-timers - their beef filling was delicately and beautifully spiced, the internal texture was firm and delicate, and the flattened triangular shape was elegance incarnate in a pastry shell. The shells looked like they had been crispy and delectable when first fried - as we experienced it, they were tasty but lacked crunch. – J.N.
MIDWAY SALOON | 1567 University Ave West, Saint Paul | 651.645.8472
With cameras now standard in every pocket, we figured the days of drawing suspicion for taking a few photos at the bar were long gone. Apparently, not here and not yet. The bartender clocked our phones and shot off a dry, “Need help with those pictures?”—part joke, part challenge.
A note to bar owners: when someone starts snapping photos of your establishment, it’s probably a compliment. Thankfully, the bartender lightened up, poured a decent round, and we all moved on.
Not much has changed since our first visit here when it was Big V’s. Same bones. Same soul. Even the old lunch counter sign still hangs inside—offering 15-cent hamburgers and pickled pig’s feet—faded enough to suggest it may actually date back to the 1940s, when this was more diner than bar.
Now it’s firmly in dive bar territory, and we mean that lovingly. Long and dark, the kind of place where regulars slide up to the bar, toss back a few, play pool, buy some pull tabs, and stumble home hours later.
The sign out front promises 50 beers and 100 whiskeys, but nowhere does it mention the magician. Yes, you read that right—there’s a magician. A genuine, end-of-the-bar magician. Steven Paul Carlson sets up at the end of the bar on Tuesday and Thursday nights, performing card tricks and sleight of hand for tips.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Heavy Table to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.