The New Riverside Cafe was (mostly) a vegetarian restaurant owned and operated by a collective/cooperative.

The Riv was founded in 1970 by Episcopal priest, Father William Teska, on the corner of 19th and Riverside in the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. In 1971 it moved to the corner of Cedar and Riverside in that same neighborhood.

In 1984 the cafe underwent a major renovation and finally succumbed to financial problems, closing in 1997.

This site is operated by former collective member Michael Libby. The entire site is available as source code at GitHub.

My first primary goal is to finally publish the cookbook. Someone had started the project before I worked there, but I put some time into it and printed up some drafts for people to work with. I would guess that most of those draft copies are lost at this point, but I still have one… So please check out the Cookbook!

If I ever finish the cookbook, my next goal is to go to the Minnesota Historical Society and spend some time with their New Riv archives, hopefully getting a look at the fabled recipe box and copying out any recipes that didn’t make it into the cookbook.

Enjoy the site!

— Libby