We got served

Grecco's on the St. Croix

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:51:00 +0000

Visited on Saturday, January 7th

Notes from Erin:
When I decided on St. Croix River Inn as the location of our B&B weekend away, I started to be on the lookout for good restaurant options in that area. Only a few days later, a serendipitous LivingSocial deal to Grecco's on the St. Croix popped up in my inbox, so I felt it was fate. Kate assured me that it was a good pick, so I went ahead and bought it and am so glad I did because it was exactly the same as the normal tasting menu, just 50% off - really, can't beat that.

I'm going to format this review in the same way I did for our tasting menu at La Belle Vie - unfortunately I have no details of this tasting menu since I forgot to ask them to write everything down. It seemed that the items we got were not nearly as inventive or unique as La Belle Vie, but the idea is the same as in any tasting menu.

The one overall note I'll make is that the service was odd to me - Ben says he thinks it was great, but I disagree - it seems when you have so many people waiting on you, no one takes any ownership. The courses were also really oddly spaced - there were several times we were sitting there for nearly 20-30 minutes in between courses. It was wonderful to be able to enjoy a leisurely 3 hour meal, of course, but some consistency would have been nice because other courses came out on top of each other. There were also a few times where it was hard to find a server, or water took awhile to come out - I just prefer to have one go-to person at a restaurant versus being waited on by seemingly everyone working.

Notes from Ben:
As part of our weekend at the bed and breakfast in Osceola, Erin had bought a Living Social deal to Grecco’s in St. Croix Falls, about 10 miles away. The deal was a buy-one-get-one deal on their six course chef’s menu, a value of $70, not bad!

We had reservations at 7pm and arrived right on time and were seated immediately. Grecco’s is deceptively large, with several different rooms as you go further back. It looked like there was bar seating in the very back room, but I never went back further to inspect. I liked the separate rooms, each had their own decor and their own vibe. We were seated at the second room in, adjacent to the wine bar in front. It took a little while for our server to stop by, but after that the service was excellent.

We did get some bread quickly, thankfully, because I was starving by that point. I noticed that they had a wine pairing that you could add to the meal for an extra $25. Since we had already paid for our dinners several months ago, I had no problem adding that in, and told Erin “you’re driving home” :).

The server seemed to time the wine a little off from the food. Sometimes I would get the next wine several minutes before the food arrived, and once or twice the food would come out and the wine a few minutes later. It kept me on my toes a bit as I would sometimes get another glass of wine before I had finished the last course. These were full glasses of wine too, so it was definitely worth the $25 in my mind.

Ben: We started off with a spinach salad that was paired with a white zinfandel. I prefer red wines over white and blush wines, but this wine was still good and very cold. The salad was good as well, it came with onions and a red (raspberry?) vinaigrette dressing.

Erin: I thought this salad was nothing special. There was way too much dressing. It seems I'm getting far pickier about the quality of my salads lately. Anyway, I ate it all and it was FINE, I guess, but seemed like an odd choice for a tasting menu.

Ben: The next course was pasta with truffles, mushrooms, and feta cheese paired with a pinot grigio. The pasta was excellent, I could have eaten an entire meal of it. Again, the wine was good and seemed to work well with the pasta, but me not being a wine buff, I just have to go with what they tell me.

Erin: LOVED this pasta - since everything was taking forever, and all I'd had was a little piece of bread and the salad, I devoured this very quickly. Perfectly creamy and flavorful.

Ben: The third course was whitefish over rice paired with a sauvignon blanc. The fish was generously seasoned and delicious. The rice was plain, but with all the flavor from the fish they worked well together.

Erin: The fish was fairly good - I didn't finish it because the dish overall was kind of bland and I wanted to save myself for future courses that might be better. Turned out to be a good decision!

Ben: On the fourth course I finally got a red wine, though I do not recall what kind it was. It was served with seared duck and wild rice. Again, both the food and the wine were fantastic. The serving sizes thus far were also small so while we were having a variety of food and several courses, at no point did I feel painfully full, which was nice.

Erin: The duck was delicious - it was cooked perfectly and was well seasoned. The wild rice I was a little less jazzed about, it was a little too al dente for my tastes. It was fine though, and I think I finished most of it.

(Forgot to take a photo of the wine - imagine a glass of red wine here)

Ben: Next up was beef tenderloin with mashed potatoes and another red wine. I love that there were three meat courses all in a row, yum! The steak was excellent as were the mashed potatoes, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with this, in my book.

Erin: This was probably my favorite course - surprising since I'm not normally a beef person, but I AM a mashed potato person. These mashed potatoes were so good - very rich and creamy.

Ben: I had seen a tres leches cake on the dessert menu, but since we were having a chef’s tasting menu, I was worried that I wouldn’t have any dessert options. I asked our server before the dessert was served if the tres leches cake was available, and she said “yes, I think that’s what they’ve been serving”, so I got very excited.

Then, without another word to us, she brought out the coconut pound cake with a blackberry sauce. Now, this cake was fine, though I’m not much of a dessert person in the first place, but you’d think after I specifically asked for a different dessert, she would have at least mentioned that it wasn’t available. Seriously, I LOVE tres leches cake. Love it. I was sad. And my emotions were running high after six full size glasses of wine.

There were no tears shed and we enjoyed our dessert and the rest of our time at Grecco’s. Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable dinner that lasted around three hours. Even if we didn’t have a Living Social deal, I would consider doing this again just because it’s rare that you get a dinner experience that lasts that long, it was a lot of fun. If you’re ever looking for a day trip with a long dinner, I definitely recommend the tasting menu at Grecco’s.

Erin: The dessert course was the most... eventful, shall we say. I decided I wanted a decaf coffee with the cake - mostly because I too had been hoping for the chocolate tres leches cake I kept hearing about, so I figured the coffee would make the pound cake a bit more interesting. It took me awhile to find someone to actually order from - and when I did, the bartender brought it out and made some completely strange comment to me after pouring cream into my coffee, saying "Soon you'll be seeing someone else doing this!" and then awkwardly coming back a few seconds later and saying "I meant your child!" Ohh, pregnancy comments. They really are something else. Oh, and the cake was just fine. Nothing great, but it satisfied my need for something sweet. Pretty sure I also had a few cookies when we got back to the B&B as well...

I'm not sure I would have wanted to pay full price for the tasting menu, but for 50% off, it was certainly worth it. The food was all on the range of pretty good to delicious, and it was a really fun experience - it had been probably since our meal at La Belle Vie that we were able to spend that long just enjoying our food and each other's company - overall a great evening!

Ben's ratings:
Service: The service was great and we were waited on by three or four different servers.
Food: Excellent food. Fresh and hot.
Drinks: Since I got the wine pairing I didn’t look into the drink situation much. I believe they have a full bar in the back, not sure what the beer list looks like.
Ambiance: A little subdued when we were there on a Saturday night. Mostly older adults.
Convenience: Again, a little far from the cities.

Deets
Grecco's on the St. Croix (website not functioning - here is the yelp page)
115 N Washington Ave
St. Croix Falls, WI

Tangled Up In Blue

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:30:00 +0000

Visited on Friday, January 6th

Ben's Review
Erin and I planned a weekend away before baby #2 arrives, so last weekend we were off to a bed and breakfast in Osceola.

We already had plans for dinner on Saturday night (in the next post), so for Friday night we did some searching around and eventually settled on Tangled Up in Blue Restaurant in Taylors Falls.

A few people had mentioned to us that the decor was............eccentric. As we pulled into the parking lot we were prepared for the worst. Maybe we had oversold the decor in our minds, because while it was a little much, it certainly wasn’t the most awful thing in the world. (Just for an example of the decor, we were seated “at the table under the two sconces”).

The restaurant is rather small and is handled, seemingly, by one server with help from the cooks, so it took a few minutes for us to get water and drink orders. The bottled beer list is rather small and I started with a Samuel Adams.

We were both starving when we had arrived so we quickly ordered the crab cake appetizer while we decided on our entrees. Several of the entrees choices sounded good, but I was sold on the beef Wellington as I had just seen a friend of mine having some leftovers at lunch, and was intrigued.

Our crab cakes came our after we had ordered and they were piping hot and delicious, served with some greens and tartar sauce. We devoured them quickly due to our hunger. I don’t know if I was influenced by how hungry I was, but they were some of the best crab cakes I’ve ever had.

My beef Wellington came out awhile later, reinforcing that it was probably freshly made. I ordered a Fat Tire to go along with the steak. The steak came with sides of asparagus and au gratin style potatoes. As an aside, for some reason asparagus is the vegetable that I always notice being served ridiculously out of season. It’s winter and there’s no way that asparagus was grown anywhere near Taylors Falls. It’s ok to use seasonal vegetables, people shouldn’t expect asparagus in the winter.

The beef Wellington was excellent, as I had imagined it would be. It seemed a little different than the example I had seen a few weeks ago, but it was awesome nonetheless. The mix of the flaky pastry with the steak was delicious and everything was hot and fresh.

Erin was scanning the dessert menu as we finished, but decided instead to grab some ice cream on the way back to our bed and breakfast (and some whiskey for me, thanks Wisconsin gas stations!) and enjoy our lovely suite.

Service: The service was very casual and friendly, almost like you were a guest in their home.
Food: The food was fantastic.
Drinks: Decent wine list, but very small (four, I think) beer list. No cocktails.
Ambiance: Small, cozy restaurant, but it wasn’t close to full when we were there.
Convenience: A bit of a drive from the city. I don’t think Metro Transit makes it out there.

Erin's Review
After telling a few friends that we were headed to the St. Croix Falls to stay at a B&B for the weekend, we got a few recommendations for Tangled Up In Blue... but were warned about the decor (I also was particularly fond of the URL). I'm really not sure what I expected, but I think it was along the lines of scarves hanging from the ceilings, lots of mirrors, maybe some bells hanging from the chairs. Something completely over the top, that's for sure. What we happened upon was tame by comparison, but I guess could still seem to be a bit much, especially considering the glitter on the table. To those friends who recommended the place - was the decor "worse" when you went?

We actually were originally going to try out a pizza place in Dresser, but as we approached, it was super bright with about 100 small children running about inside. Not something we wanted to see after leaving our still a little sick (first ear infection - great timing!) Annie with the grandparents. I'm definitely glad we went the extra few miles to go to Tangled Up In Blue - the atmosphere was much better suited to what we wanted our weekend to be - quiet and calm.

Because, as Ben mentioned, we were absolutely starving by this point, we quickly ordered an appetizer. I ate a bit less than half because I wanted to save some room in my limited stomach area for my main dish - I decided to get just soup and salad and to try some of Ben's beef wellington, mostly because he was concerned about the cost of the meal. I was battling a cold and couldn't taste much anyway so didn't want to waste a ton of money on a huge entree I wouldn't be able to taste or eat all of anyway.

I had the house salad and a tomato soup. I liked the soup, but I swear there was some mention of pasta being in the soup on the menu (which isn't updated on the website) - tortellini or something, but that was nowhere to be found in the soup. It had chunks of green pepper and tomato in it, and was very creamy... but no pasta. Oh well, it was good, and soup is easy to eat when you're stuffed up so it hit the spot.

The salad was pretty meh - there wasn't quite enough dressing and the chunks of blue cheese were not flavorful at all, and I felt there should have been more cheese overall.

I did look at the dessert options, but was glad I passed on them to just enjoy some ice cream by the fireplace at our B&B - it gave me some time to actually want to eat again too. Tangled Up In Blue is definitely a good option in this area - although I liked our next meal more (Grecco's) - but if you are looking for 2 nicer dinners for a weekend trip, these 2 seem like the best choices in the area. I noticed they won some award "restaurant worth the drive" several years ago, and that might be a BIT of a stretch since there are far better restaurants in the Twin Cities, but if you are already in or near Taylor's Falls - it's a great option.

Deets
Tangled Up In Blue
425 Bench Street
Taylor's Falls, MN

La Chaya Bistro

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:11:00 +0000

Visited on Saturday, December 31st with Nate & Molly

Erin's Review
Because Ben's parents had asked to take all the grandkids each New Year's Eve, we figured we were pretty much obligated to find SOMETHING to do. 98% of our friends are either pregnant and/or have small children, so the pickings were slim. We have both been burned by special "holiday" menus at restaurants before that are mostly a waste of money and not very good, so I set out to find a place on our list that was just serving their normal menu and either did not take reservations at all, or still had openings. Ben apparently did not know this, after reading his review, but I purposely picked places further away in Minneapolis since I knew we'd have freedom from rush hour and the toddler.

After driving through what was a rainstorm at the time, we got there right on time - all the spots in the parking lot were filled, but we found one on the street very close. The restaurant was completely full when we got there, so I guess it was a good thing we made reservations. I didn't think it would be that full since there were still several openings when I'd checked about a week previously.

After the men ordered their beers, we decided on a few appetizers. Molly picked something with mushrooms, and we also got calamari. I normally am not a fan of mushrooms, but I actually really liked the appetizer. I guess they are "oyster mushrooms, sauteed in garlic and chili served with grilled bread", according to the menu - I liked that they weren't HUGE chunks of mushrooms, and they were grilled such that the mushrooms had a nice texture to them. I also liked the calamari - the tomato sauce they came with was a nice change, and they weren't overly breaded or too chewy at all.

For my entree, I chose to get the pasta special, which was their standard seafood pasta with lobster. It was served in a white wine sauce with spinach and tomatoes. I liked how light this dish was - I didn't feel disgustingly full when done with it, and the sauce was very flavorful but didn't overwhelm the lobster. I did have enough leftover for a small lunch, and it reheated well.

I purposely saved room for dessert, but wasn't too thrilled with the options. I went with a key lime pie, but it was a bit TOO tart for my liking. I honestly don't even think I finished the whole thing. Molly got the apple crisp and that seemed like a much better option. I also got a decaf Mexican mocha which was quite good, but not sweet enough for me - adding a few sugars made it perfect. I guess my sweet tooth has gotten a bit out of control lately :)

La Chaya Bistro was a great pick for this evening - I'm glad we finally tried it, as the food was delicious. The ambiance is a bit generic, but the food makes up for it. It was a fun night out actually enjoying some leisurely kid free conversation with Nate & Molly for once!

Ben's Review
My parents want to start a tradition of taking all the grandkids on New Years Eve, a total of three kids this year. We took advantage of the night off and went to La Chaya Bistro in south Minneapolis with our neighbors.

Randomly, we ended up just a few blocks from our last review spot, Sunstreet Breads, which is odd for us since I feel like we don’t make it over to south Minneapolis that often. We had reservations for 7pm and arrived right on time. Nate and Molly had gotten there a few minutes earlier and already were at the table. La Chaya Bistro is a very small restaurant with the tables close together and “cozy”, so we were elbow to elbow with our neighboring tables. Luckily being the table of four, we got to be the “loud” ones and all the couples just had to deal with us :) The place was completely full of NYE diners and everyone seemed to be a in good mood having a great time.

The beer list at La Chaya Bistro is not huge, but they did have Fulton’s IPA in bottles, which I had been wanting to try. Nate got some sort of peppery concoction with Corona and a salted rim that he seemed to like. The wine list looks more promising if wine is your thing.

We ordered calamari for an appetizer while we enjoyed the company of adults without any children around. Erin remarked afterwards that she had no idea the last time we ate dinner with Nate and Molly without both of our kids around. I bet it’s been well over a year. The calamari was good, being that it’s pretty tough to screw that up. There was also plenty for the four of us.

I was tempted to get the special that night, an eight ounce pork tenderloin with brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes. Nate ended up getting it and let me try a bite and it was fantastic. I ended up ordering the chipotle sea bass with mashed potatoes and spinach.

Our food took awhile to arrive, but we were fine with the wait as nobody was in a rush. When our food came out it was immediately clear that it was all freshly prepared. The food was still steaming and the plates weren’t hot. I feel like a hot plate is a sure sign that it has been sitting under heat lamps for awhile :) My sea bass was one of the best meals I ate all year. It was absolutely delicious. The sea bass came with a sort of oily pesto on top that gave it a fresh flavor in addition to the chipotle, it was amazing.

Not being a dessert fan I deferred to Erin and she got the key lime coconut torte and let me try a bite. It was good, but I was already too full from my sea bass to really care. I say give me a good piece of meat over sweets any day of the week.

If you’re looking for a nice meal out, I highly recommend La Chaya Bistro, it is fantastic and well worth the money.

Service: Excellent service. Our server was knowledgeable about everything and friendly.
Food: Delicious and fresh, you won’t be disappointed.
Drinks: Good wine list, smallish beer list, but they did have Fulton and Summit.
Ambiance: It’s a tight fit, but everyone we encountered was in a good mood, so it was fun.
Convenience: They have a small parking lot and there is ample on-street parking.

Sun Street Breads

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:33:00 +0000

Visited on Friday, December 23rd

Ben's Review
For Erin’s birthday she wanted to go out for breakfast, unsurprisingly, and decided on Sun Street Breads in south Minneapolis. Since I still had to work that day we headed over there relatively early and found an already busy bakery.

The entrance to Sun Street Breads is a little confusing if you haven’t been there before. First, there is a curtain that blocks a view of the restaurant from you so you don’t know if you need to queue up, wait to be seated, or grab a table. Secondly, since you can either order food to eat there or simply stop by for a loaf of bread to go, it’s unclear if you wait in the same line depending on what service you need.

It turns out that the line is for everyone, though I certainly could see a second line being useful for those people that are not eating in. Erin probably made a faux pas by going in and grabbing a table with Annie while I got in line to order for us, but with limited seating we didn’t really care :)

Actually, another family came in after us with three kids and the dad took the kids to grab a table. Someone who was in line commented to him “Uh, I think you’re supposed to order before taking a table”, to which the dad replied, “Well, we’ve got three kids, so......I’m sorry if this inconveniences you.” I can see both sides of it, but still funny to overhear :)

Anyways, on to the food. We knew we’d be getting their breakfast biscuits, it was just a matter of what combination of meat, cheese, and eggs we’d be getting. In order to differ from Erin’s order I got ham with pepper jack cheese and a basted egg. I also got an americano to drink.

After ordering at the counter and getting a number for our table, we had a short wait and our drinks were brought out. The americano was better than I had expected for a place that focuses more on their bread than coffee. Our food also came out quickly while at the same time appeared to be freshly prepared. I happened to notice a bottle of sriracha sauce at the coffee station so I made sure to doctor up my sandwich a bit. The sandwich was fantastic, with the homemade biscuit being the highlight. Being that they have several combinations, and the prices are reasonable, I would for sure come back just to try several styles.

In addition to having great food, the ambiance at Sun Street Breads is cool because the kitchen is in plain view so you can see their large scale baking operation at work. It’s interesting to compare the tools and methods they get to use compared to what I see Erin doing at home when she bakes. We picked up a loaf of sourdough for a family get together that was also delicious.

I had a great time at Sun Street Breads and will be back this spring, probably on Erin’s maternity leave for a sandwich and perhaps a walk around the lake :)

Service: The line was long, but it moves quickly. All the people I encountered were friendly and attentive.
Food: Excellent breakfast and fresh bread.
Drinks: They have beer and wine and the beer selection is small but diverse.
Ambiance: I liked the ambiance a lot on the weekday morning we were there. I was shocked how busy it was, but it was the start of a holiday weekend.
Convenience: They do have a shared parking lot with the strip mall they’re in, but I couldn’t find a spot there. Plenty of bus options on Nicollet as well.

Erin's Review
After asking a few people for recommendations for a good new breakfast spot, I decided on Sun Street Breads for my birthday breakfast. Since my birthday was on a Friday, and some places only serve brunch on weekends, my options were a bit limited. After getting this recommendation, I saw Sun Street in many "best new restaurants" lists, so I figured it must be a good choice!

Ben and I drove separately, so when I got there I immediately got one of the only tables left, bypassing the long line. I'm sure I angered a lot of people by doing this, but it turned out that tables turned over fairly quickly, so everyone got a spot without incident. Ben got inside shortly after me, I took Annie and we got settled at the table. It took probably 10-15 minutes or so for Ben to get to the front of the line and order - it was WAY more packed than I had anticipated for a Friday morning.

Once Ben finally joined us, he brought a scone for our "starter" - it was quite good, and was in a different style than most scones I've had. We all enjoyed it. Since Annie is not so skilled in eating biscuit sandwiches just yet, we got her granola with yogurt. When it came out, the pieces of granola were huge and pretty hard, so I took most of them out and gave her just the yogurt with some of the littler pieces of granola. I did try a few bites and it was very good - just not so easy for a nearly 2 year old to eat with the large very crunchy pieces.

I got a pretty standard biscuit sandwich with fried egg, cheddar cheese, and sauce. It was absolutely delicious! I loved the sausage, and especially the biscuit. It filled me up for quite awhile too. There is nothing fancy at all about the food here, but it is very well prepared, and comes out with everything hot, including the biscuit, which is crucial. They have lunch and dinner too, and I'd really like to come back to try those meals as well.

As with all places in south Minneapolis, this is not convenient to us at all, however, if we have an open morning it's a fun outing, especially in the summer. Annie and I made the most of the trip by hitting up Heartfelt and Wild Rumpus in Linden Hills after breakfast when Ben went to work. Sun Street Breads is delicious and I'm glad we made it over there!

Deets
Sun Street Breads
4600 Nicollet Ave
Minneapolis

Caribe Caribbean Bistro

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 04:19:00 +0000

Visited on Tuesday, December 20th with Erin's family

Erin's Review
It felt like an ordeal to pick a restaurant for my family birthday dinner this year. Since we were going on a weeknight, it needed to be somewhere relatively close to our house to avoid traffic because we'd be going at the height of rush hour. I really wanted to go somewhere new, but felt we'd exhausted the family friendly options in St. Paul and eastern Minneapolis on our list. Thankfully, after close examination of our list (which caused me to finally update it to delete all the places that closed and add a bunch of new places - it had been awhile for sure!) I remembered Caribe, one of those places that is so close to our house that I just apparently forget about it completely.

After conversing on twitter with one of Caribe's biggest fans (@AlecGraham), I decided to risk it with Annie even though it seemed not the most kid friendly place (small menu with no real kid options, small space, dark, etc) and figured she could eat off our plates and that if I brought enough entertainment she'd be okay. It turned out to be mildly stressful, but when is eating out with a toddler ever not?

We got there right at 5:30 and my parents were already seated at our table that we'd reserved a few days prior (they ask for reservations for parties over 6) - we did specify that we were a party of 6 plus a toddler, but were seated at a normal 6 top - luckily it was easy enough to squeeze in a high chair. We waited about 10 more minutes for my sister and brother-in-law to get there, after hearing the specials.

I'd already pretty much decided on the lobster mofongo if they had that, and was DYING to have some of the mango and cheese empanadillas. Perhaps it's pregnancy hormones, but when the server told us they were out of those after I attempted to order them, I was near tears. Yes, irrational. But I REALLY WANTED THEM. Plus I'd had about 10 minutes to get extra sold on the idea since we'd gotten there too. They were also out of 2 of the entrees as well (or just not serving them, not sure which) - note to servers and restaurant owners everywhere - if you KNOW you're out of something, tell the tables immediately so they don't get their heart set on something. It seems like an obvious thing to do when listing the specials. Anyway, through my sorrow, I managed to squeak out an order for the conch fritters instead.

The fritters came out fairly quickly, along with our beverages (I just had water and did try a sip of my sister's sangria - I liked it but she thought it tasted too much like black licorice, which I think was really the black cherries - whatever). I did really enjoy these, they weren't overly fried and the dipping sauces were very tasty. Annie also loved them, especially dipping. We probably could have eaten another order of them even, but wanted to save room for our main dishes.

We had eaten the fritters in record time, so the wait for our main dishes seemed pretty long. I'm not sure if it REALLY was, but I was getting mighty impatient by the time they finally came out, mostly because Annie had decided she'd had enough of sitting in her high chair (no food = no thanks for her) - she was fine one I got out the secret weapon - grapes - but that basically meant she wasn't going to eat anything substantial that evening. It did give me confidence that the food was prepared to order (mostly at least), which is a BIG deal to my Dad - I always like to try to find a place that he will enjoy for our family dinners and he did seem happy with his meal - success! Everyone seemed very happy with their choices.

Brother-in-law's Piñon

My dad's pork tenderloin special

As soon as I got my lobster mofongo, I dug in, and gave Annie a few beans and pieces of it - she ate it up until getting a huge piece of lobster that apparently frightened her and she decided she was done with eating for the night (except for a mountain of grapes). The mofongo was excellent - it is described as a classic Puerto Rican dish made with plantains that are first fried,then mashed with garlic, salt pork, olive oil, salt, and pepper,using a mortar and pestle; then stuffed. It reminded me of a cornmeal type casserole dish in texture. It was stuffed with the lobster meat, and as pictured was on a bed of black beans with other veggies. I ate way more than I should have and felt seriously uncomfortable the rest of the night, but it was worth it! I need to remember that no matter how good something tastes, I AM 7 months pregnant and my stomach space is limited.

After we finished our meals, I was waiting and waiting to hear what the dessert special was... finally, my mom and sister finished and our server told us it was coconut tres leches cake, which excited me greatly. Since going to 112 Eatery, I love tres leches cake - and it's one of Ben's favorite desserts (I even made it for his last birthday). We originally were going to get 2 for the table, but decided on 3 and that was definitely a good choice as we devoured all 3 pieces extremely quickly - Annie would have for sure eaten all 3 pieces herself if we let her. This was delicious - almost like pudding and perfectly coconut flavored. A great way to end the meal! They usually have just one dessert option so it's luck of the draw - most that I heard of sounded great to me though.

I'm so glad we finally went to Caribe - we can get there without taking any major roads at all (aka University) but thankfully, light rail construction in our area is done so traffic isn't even a major issue like it was all spring/summer. I have heard awesome things about the brunch - they have several delicious sounding benedict options, so it'll probably be another one we hit up after I have this child - although Ben is already planning a return visit for lunch just to have the Cuban sandwich. It's debatable how kid friendly it is during dinner, but it would be fine during the day. It is a really cute place that's different from the usual spots - I highly recommend giving it a try!

Ben's Review
Erin struggled to find a place to go out to eat for her birthday this year, as we find ourselves going to the same places over and over again when we go with Annie. It’s just easier to go someplace that we know is kid friendly, rather than tempting fate with an unknown location.

She got several good recommendations about Caribe on Raymond Ave. in Saint Paul, in the old Jay’s Cafe location. (We never made it to Jay’s before it closed, though we live about a mile away). We got reservations for six adults and a toddler and headed over on Tuesday night.

To say that Caribe is small is an understatement. I think there’s room for about twenty people total to eat at once. In spite of the small size it didn’t feel cramped, nor did I feel like I was intruding on the other tables’ conversations. The lighting was dim but, again, not in an annoying way.

The dinner menu is small and fit on one page and while I was salivating the prospect of their Cuban sandwich, that was only on their lunch menu :( That just ensures that we’ll be going back at least one more time. Erin had been eagerly anticipating the mango and cheese empanadillas and was devastated when he told us they were actually out of them. He also mentioned that they were out of two of their entrees as well, the mahi mahi (which I was considering ordering) and the shrimp (which Erin’s mom was considering ordering). It’s a little frustrating when they have a small menu to begin with and then they have several items that are unavailable.

Luckily there were still plenty of items to choose from, so we made it through unscathed. I was tempted to get one of the specials, but Erin was already going to order it, so she convinced me to get the Jamaican Rundown, a coconut stew with some vegetables and crab served over rice. We all ordered and then played the game of trying to keep Annie entertained until our food arrived. Erin had some gifts to open and with six adults it’s a little easier keep her occupied than when it’s just Erin and me.

Our food came out two people at a time, with a few minutes in between each serving. This was good and bad, because it gave a little confidence that the food was prepared fresh, but it also meant that the first people to get served were over half done with their dish by the time the last people got served, oh well. My stew was a good, hearty winter dish. It actually reminded me of a non-spicy Thai curry, but with crab meat. The serving size was not huge, but certainly enough to fill you up. I thought Erin’s dish was better than mine and since she couldn’t finish hers I had ample opportunity to compare the two. In addition to hers tasting better, it was also the more interesting dish of the two, as mine was soup, more or less :)

I enjoyed our dinner at Caribe and will be going back for sure to try their Cuban sandwich. I would also be tempted to go back on a Wednesday night as it’s half price bottles of wine. I think this would definitely be a fun place to go without a kid next time.

Service: Our server was friendly and knowledgeable, just wish he would have told us what wasn’t available right away.
Food: Delicious food that is freshly prepared.
Drinks: Decent beer and wine list and half price bottles on Wednesday.
Ambiance: Despite the small size that I normally don’t care for, I really liked the ambiance, it was nice.
Convenience: Just north of University on Raymond, it’s probably much better now that the light rail construction has subsided.

Deets
Caribe Caribbean Bistro
791 Raymond Ave.
St. Paul

Victory 44

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:05:00 +0000

Visited on Sunday, December 11th with Kate & Kyle

Ben's Review
Erin made plans with Kate to meet for brunch this past Sunday so we headed over to north Minneapolis to try out Victory 44 at Kate’s suggestion.

I had heard of Victory 44 but didn’t know much about it. Erin described it as having two rooms, one a coffee shop and the other side more of a dining room. We arrived and found Kate and Kyle already seated on the empty dining room side as the tables there were better suited for four adults and a toddler. Oddly, at 10 am on a Sunday they had the Black Keys CRANKED up in the dining room, but they thankfully lowered the volume at our request.

Having not had coffee yet we quickly ordered some while we checked out the menu. The prices at Victory 44 are surprisingly reasonable. Eggs Benedict, which I have a hard time finding under $10 elsewhere, was $8.95 and after confirming that it was indeed two eggs and on Kyle’s recommendation I ordered it. Our server came out a little later and apologetically let us know that since they were out of ham, we’d have to have real bacon on ours instead. This marks the first time I’ve ever heard anyone apologize for having to serve bacon.

Checking the place out while we waited for our food, they seem to have a nice selection of beer and wine on hand and a good looking dinner menu. The dining room started to fill up while we were there and there was a healthy din to the place.

Our food came out and the first thing I noticed was that the portions were not the typical restaurant size, they were actually the size that human being SHOULD eat. Two smallish pieces of crusty bread were used for the eggs Benedict, with a poached egg and bacon. Rather than hash browns it came with a side of cheddar tots, which were hot and delicious. The hollandaise sauce was awesome, with a hint of mustard flavor that was perfect with the runny eggs.

I enjoyed Victory 44 and would love to try it for dinner sometime. If the quality of food matches what we had for brunch I won’t be disappointed.

Service: Service was good, I had a weird vibe at first, but our server was friendly.
Food: Excellent food and normal sized portions.
Drinks: Good looking beer list and good coffee.
Ambiance: Loud music at first, but they turned it down for us. Seemed friendly enough while we were there.
Convenience: For us, not very. It was a 20 minute drive from Saint Paul, but well worth it.

Erin's Review
Kate knows of my intense love for eggs benedict, and being also pregnant, knows that it's one of the saddest things to abstain from (for me at least) - she had been to Victory 44 several times, and thought the brunch was delicious, and had several amazing non-benedict options so invited us to join her there. I was very annoyed to find that my camera battery was just about dead when we got there, but I squeezed out enough photos and supplemented with iPhone pics for this review.

Kate's biscuits & gravy - the dish that caused her to recommend the place to me.

I was a bit confused about where the brunch was - if it was in the main dining room that opens at 11am (which seemed much fancier on the website than it was in reality) or in the cafe - it turned out it was served from the cafe, but since that area was full when we went, they seated us in the dining room, where Black Keys was blasting. Kate said they had just turned it up, and sadly for them, we asked them to turn it down. We're turning into "those people" (who am I kidding, we've always been "those people").

When perusing the menu for that day, I got a bit flustered dealing with Annie and just quickly chose the "malted waffle" - when I asked, she said it was a sweet waffle with a bit of malt powder in the batter, basically just a regular waffle - good to know :) I ordered Annie the yogurt parfait as there weren't any sort of muffins or anything available, which would have been a bit cheaper of an option for her since there was no sort of kids menu or pricing. I also ordered a vanilla latte, after seeing Kate's twit a few weeks prior that showed the beautiful design on the top of hers.

Regular coffee came out really quickly, but Kate and I had ordered lattes which were taking a lot longer. It was after 10am and I hadn't had any caffeine yet so I was pretty close to tweaking out about that. Luckily, it was worth the wait - they pour the milk tableside and somehow create the design on the top. Probably because of this, the lattes weren't super hot, but I think I've been a bit spoiled by ordering them "extra hot" everywhere else I go.

You can see the design even better in my iPhone pic

Our food came out pretty quickly - Kyle and Ben had both ordered the benedict, as if to taunt Kate and I - and it looked amazing. DEFINITELY a spot I'll be returning to when I am not with child just to have that. My waffle was very pretty as well - you can tell presentation is important to them, even for what felt like a casual weekend brunch. The server did comment that they made the parfait "child friendly" for Annie by putting it in a plastic cup instead of a wine glass - definitely a good choice :)

I was starving, so basically inhaled my waffle but from what I can remember it was light, crispy and fluffy - perfect. I was still hungry after eating that, so also had some of Annie's parfait, since there was no way she'd finish that. The side of cheesy tot things from the benedicts were enticing, so Kate and I ordered another side of those to split. They came out quickly as well and were piping hot. Definitely a good choice - after those I was pleasantly full. Annie really enjoyed them as well, as she does with most things involving cheese.

If I lived closer, Victory 44 would be an excellent option for a fairly affordable brunch (unless you order a bunch of extras like I did - like a more expensive drink, a side order, etc). I've also heard excellent things about their dinner as well. As mentioned, I'll be making the trek at least once more to try the benedicts!

Deets
Victory 44
2203 44th Avenue North
Minneapolis

To learn a lot more about this neighborhood, check out the post on Minneapolis 81.

Wilde Roast Cafe - New Location

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:38:00 +0000

Erin visited on Tuesday, December 6th with Rebekah

Our original review of Wilde Roast Cafe was written over 3 years ago now, and since that time I have been there quite a few times - for breakfast, just for coffee, and for dinner. It is one of my favorite spots in northeast for sure.

This past summer, Wilde Roast announced that they were moving to Main Street, along the river. This certainly appears to be a good move for them - lots of foot traffic in the summer, larger space and along with that a larger kitchen. However, convenience for many was definitely sacrificed. Parking is now a complete pain in the butt - unless you are lucky enough to get one of the metered spots out front. There are a few nearby ramps, but it does seem like this move will put an end to people doing several hours of work there while sipping coffee for the most part.

On Tuesday, Rebekah and I did make the trek over to Wilde Roast to check it out, do some work, and also grab lunch. We parked in a ramp a few blocks away that is attached to the Riverplace that is $2.50 during the day on weekdays at least, so not too bad. The space is much larger, but is a bit awkwardly laid out. There is a lot of dead space in the entryway, and then it seems to be divided into 2 areas - more of a cafe, with smaller tables and the couches and armchairs, and then a few steps up is the dining room. We sampled both areas during our time there. It is a beautiful space, with a lot of brick, dark wood, and tons of Christmas decor right now. It was still pleasantly busy, so the parking situation must really not be a drawback for most.

Despite the more upscale feel, it's still counter service - we ordered our lunches at the counter and moved to the dining area. My Reuben was one of the best I've had, and the fries were amazing. It all came out piping hot. The food at Wilde Roast has always been a hit for me - breakfast, lunch or dinner and this was no exception.

While it is a bit more of a hassle to get to Wilde Roast in their new location, I would definitely suggest making the effort. I'm interested to see how they change in the summer months with their new patio space - to me, this has always felt more like a cozy winter spot, but I'll be sure to come try it out in the summer months as well!

Deets

Wilde Roast Cafe

65 Main Street East

Minneapolis

Republic

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 02:09:00 +0000

Visited on Saturday, November 19th with Lori and Jeff

Ben's Review

On the same day that we went out for lunch at Cheeky Monkey Deli, we had also made plans to continue our child-free day and have dinner with our friends Jeff and Lori at Republic in the old Sgt. Preston’s location.

The snow had continued all afternoon and made for a gross five mile drive to 7 corners, but it wasn’t as bad as I had feared with the first snowfall of the season and we made it over there in fifteen minutes or so. It was strange to notice how different this area of town was in the years since we went to school here, Grandmas and Sgt. Preston’s are gone, as is................whatever was there before Corner Bar, and we noticed that Bullwinkle’s was now closed too.

They had just gone on a wait at Republic when we got in, but the host was just clearing off a table and told us we could have it, so we settled in while waiting for Jeff and Lori to arrive. Erin was starving and so ordered the spinach artichoke dip to nosh on while I pondered what I would have for my three beer flight. The flight is $10 for three eight ounce samples of beer. This can save you a buck or two if you choose the pricier beers on the menu. I went with Surly Wet (my only time this year having it), Stone Brewing Arrogant Bastard, and Odell Mercenary Double IPA as my options. The tap beer list is fantastic at Republic and getting to try three beers is awesome. When Jeff and Lori arrived he saw what I had and followed up with the exact same order.

I made an effort to not look at the food menu before we came so that I wouldn’t have my meal decided before I even stepped in the door. While Republic doesn’t have the largest menu, they do seem to have a reasonably diverse food offering, especially some of the appetizers like Serrano ham and ricotta fritters. Since I had a Cuban sandwich at lunch I wasn’t feeling like having a sandwich or a burger and decided on the beer battered fish and chips.

The spinach artichoke dip had been very good and only served to get me even hungrier. We were eating later than we normally do when Annie is around, and that coupled with my beers was making my stomach growl. Luckily our food came out not too long after we ordered and I was not disappointed.

My fish and chips came with homemade ketchup, tartar sauce, and some other white looking sauce that I couldn’t distinguish, but can only assume was mayonnaise. It was only after I was nearly done that I realized I hadn’t even tried the homemade ketchup as I had used the tartar sauce for my fish and fries. The fish was what you’d expect from battered and fried fish, and was very good, no big bites of just breading and no mushy fish anywhere. The fries were also good, hot, and well seasoned.

Predictably, Erin and Lori wanted to order dessert and since the prices were low we ordered three desserts to share between the four of us. We got the Caramel Pot de Creme, the Black & Tan pudding, and the Caramel Apple Cake. The reason for the low-ish prices was apparent when the desserts came out, as they are rather small, but I prefer it that way anyways. We all tried all three desserts and they were delicious and the perfect size to finish off an already large meal.

We really enjoyed Republic and the atmosphere there, as it’s a far cry from the drunk frat boy crowd that used to exist on weekends. Between that and the excellent beer list I can see us coming back here in the future.

Service: Service was good, they took care of us without bothering us.
Food: Good spinach artichoke dip and fish and chips, nothing crazy, just a good, clean fill.
Drinks: Awesome list of beers, the wine list doesn’t look as extensive, but I wouldn’t know.
Ambiance: It was busy at Republic without being so loud that you can’t hear anyone, I also like the remodeling they’ve done inside, much nicer than Sgt. Preston’s.
Convenience: We parked in the Holiday Inn ramp without bothering to look for street parking as it’s a pain in the ass as far as I’m concerned. Certainly buses are available as it’s right near campus.

Erin's Review

I'd heard about Republic a lot from my coworker Janelle, who is a big fan of craft brews in addition to dining out. (Definitely check out her website if you are a Minneapolis lover - a great way to find out about hidden gems in a number of the neighborhoods she's toured!). When reviewing our list lately, often Ben and I have a hard time getting really excited about going to a place. There are a few really nice places left on there that I definitely want to try, but for a normal Saturday out, our reasonably priced options are running thin. That makes us even more excited when a place like Republic opens up, because it's so obviously one that we would enjoy AND it's not too expensive at all. It's a good thing I don't really care about beer, so I didn't make Ben wait until March to go so I could drink too.

I was still battling a cold, but managed to spruce myself up that night a bit for our double date. We got there at 6:30, and it was definitely pleasantly full. It's a fairly dark restaurant - made taking photos a bit more difficult, but the ambiance was nice. I was surprised at just how much remodeling had taken place since Sgt. Preston's - the only thing that remained the same was the one stall bathroom, but thankfully it didn't retain the same odor from it's previous owner.

As Ben mentioned, I was starving when we got there, so I quickly ordered the first appetizer I saw that looked appealing - spinach and artichoke dip. It's been awhile since I had that at a restaurant, since it's frequently made at gatherings at my own house and others, but this definitely hit the spot. Once Jeff and Lori arrived, we all got to chatting, and waited awhile before ordering.

While Republic has a pretty good menu, nothing interesting was standing out to me, so I just went with an old standby of a bacon cheeseburger. The burger didn't come with fries, but since Ben had gotten some, I knew I'd be able to at least have a few. Our food seemed to come out relatively quickly, and everyone's dishes were well presented. I enjoyed my burger, but didn't feel it was anything particularly special. However, I could barely taste anything due to my cold anyway, so my judgement is probably off.

I hadn't noticed the dessert menu on our table tent, so when the waitress responded to my inquiry about dessert with a "yes", I was ecstatic. Lori and I couldn't narrow it down, so we got 3 - which turned out to be a great choice because they were quite small. My 2 favorites were the black and tan (chocolate and butterscotch pudding and whipped cream) and the caramel pots de creme. Yum!! They were the perfect size for one person, but since we were sharing, 3 was great.

Republic is definitely a welcome addition to the 7 corners area. I wonder if it is still a hangout for the traditional age college students anymore, because Town Hall and Republic definitely seem to cater to a slightly older crowd. Perfect for this almost 30 year old! I'm sure we'll be back, especially in summer to try out their excellent patio. If we actually went out more often than once a month, I could see this overtaking Maxwell's as our go-to spot (that we haven't been to for nearly a year)... I'll always have a special place in my heart for The Max, but Republic does have better food and beer and a good vibe.

Deets

Republic

221 Cedar Ave S

Minneapolis

Cheeky Monkey Deli

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:04:00 +0000

Visited on Saturday, November 19th

Erin's Review
Cheeky Monkey Deli is definitely one of those places that I'm surprised we haven't been to earlier. I think now that I realize it is so close and tasty, we'll be back more often! We took advantage of Ben's parents offer to watch Annie for the weekend, and despite me having a pretty nasty cold, braved the elements not once but TWICE on Saturday to go out to eat. While Annie does enjoy eating out, our options are a bit limited with her in tow. Lately we've been loving places like Chipotle, smashburger, Longfellow and Highland Grill simply because Annie likes the meals on their kids menus and they are often loud (side note - I actually had NO idea Chipotle even had kids meals, but they do and they are reasonably healthy and cheap!).

Despite the fact that WE were without a toddler, everyone else at Cheeky Monkey had theirs with them! It was still nice to be able to know that we didn't have to deal with one, even if it did get a bit loud in there. So now we know - this place is definitely kid friendly, at least for lunch and brunch! On weekends from 10-2, they have a brunch menu in addition to their typical lunch menu. At night, it turns into more of a bistro. I'd definitely like to try this place for dinner as well.

It was a little before noon when we got there, so I was debating between brunch and lunch. In the end, my sweet tooth won out, so I went with the brioche french toast topped with berry compote and mascapone butter. This was divine - I got the smaller order and honestly think I could have polished off the large order myself! It didn't come with anything, and I had a hankering for some meat so I got bacon on the side. Sausage would have been my first choice, but that wasn't an option. I actually am not usually a fan of plain bacon, but theirs was a perfect mix of chewy and crispy, and not too greasy.

I also got a cup of decaf to sip on before and after I ate my french toast (I'm not a fan of hot drinks while eating a hot meal) since I'd already had my caffeine allotment for the day at home. The coffee was good, but they didn't bring out nearly enough sugar for me, as usual :)

I decided to leave the big camera at home and try out Ben's new iPhone 4s for photos for this review - all of these are without any editing. While obviously my DSLR does a better job, the iPhone camera has left my point-and-shoot camera in the dust, as long as there is sufficient light available!

All in all, I really liked Cheeky Monkey - the ambiance was pleasant and the staff was friendly. My food was delicious and I definitely would like to come back to try more!

Ben's Review
My parents offered to take Annie for the weekend, so Erin and I made use of our time without Annie by going out to lunch on Saturday, right as the snow was starting to move in.

Erin had picked Cheeky Monkey Deli and after I checked out the menu and location, I was on-board. I’m always more inclined to go somewhere close, especially because you knew the roads would be ridiculous with the first messy snow of the season (and that turned out to be true).

We rolled into the parking lot just a few minutes before noon and grabbed one of the many tables that were available. It wasn’t very full there yet, but it was heavily slanted towards families for some reason. Moms and dads with two or more kids mostly, so it was surprisingly hectic. I had not realized they had beer and wine and being that we had a day of absolutely nothing going on, I ordered a beer (Sweet child of vine) at 11:50.

In spite of all the kids there, I enjoyed the ambiance. By this time there was a nice looking snowfall through the large windows out front and the decor inside is clean and cozy. I especially liked their blackboards as they had some art on them in addition to the menu.

Having looked at the menu before we went, I knew they had a Cuban sandwich and I KNEW that’s what I was going to order. I’m totally addicted to these sandwiches, they’re so f-ing good. The sandwiches don’t come with a side, so I reluctantly decided to add on some homemade potato chips, even though I knew I wouldn’t be that hungry for them.

Our food came out soon enough and I was pleasantly surprised at how hot my sandwich was, it nearly hurt to hold onto. It didn’t feel like a “heat lamp” heat either, it seemed genuinely hot off the press, and it was just as delicious with a great mix of pork, ham, cheese, mustard, and pickles. The homemade potato chips were just OK, they had a bit too much oil on them so some of them weren’t crispy at all. While they were called “salt and pepper chips”, I didn’t taste any pepper and hardly any salt. I prefer fries anyways and the sandwich certainly filled me up, so it was no big deal.

Being that it was just lunch, Erin managed to hold off on dessert for now :) We hung around for a bit and reveled in the fact that we had no schedule today. On the way out we snapped some photos with my phone (the whole review is from my phone, in fact) and then braved the 1” of snow to get home.

Service: Service was just fine, it looks like sometimes it might be counter service as they had a place for a line to queue up, but we received full service.
Food: Excellent Cuban sandwich and so-so potato chips.
Drinks: Beer and wine, with a decent list of each.
Ambiance: It was a mix of families and older couples today and not much in between. Other than some loud kids it was pleasant.
Convenience: They have a parking lot with a few spaces, which is great, otherwise you’ll be parking on Selby. Probably plenty of bus service too.

Deets
Cheeky Monkey Deli
525 Selby Ave
St. Paul

The Lexington

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:09:00 +0000

Visited on Sunday, October 2nd

Ben's Review

I was out of town on the day of our actual anniversary, so we went out last Sunday for a belated anniversary dinner. I gave Erin a few options of places to go and she waited until Sunday to decide on The Lexington so she could determine what kind of food she was in the mood for.

My sister Becca came over around 5:30 to hang out with Annie for the night and we headed out. Sunday was the start of a gorgeous week in the twin cities and it was a great night to be outside. The Lexington is a short drive from our house and we got a parking spot on Grand Ave, right in front. Grand was surprisingly dead for a nice weekend evening, as was The Lexington. Erin had made reservations earlier in the day, but they were not needed at all. We opted to sit in the bar area, as I liked the decor and the lighting better, but there were plenty of tables in the dining room as well.

I perused the drink menu after we had been seated and was immediately drawn to the sazerac cocktail, made with bourbon, bitters, and a bit of absinthe. I had thought that this would be served up by default, but mine came in a small glass on the rocks. Not sure what the “right” way is here, but it was still a good cocktail. We were also served a basket of bread with butter, which is always a hit with us, and this was no exception.

I briefly considered steak or seafood, but the prices turned me off - they seemed higher than some steakhouses in town and I doubted it would be as good. The chicken breast stuff with crab and asparagus sounded delicious and it came with Bearnaise sauce and a side of herbed risotto.

Our food came out and it looked great. I started with the chicken and it did indeed have asparagus inside, but I couldn’t really discern any crab meat and the Bearnaise sauce was just OK, it was overly salty and richer than I thought it ought to be. The risotto was good, but I prefer Erin’s home cooked risotto better (I don’t have the patience to make it well :). Overall I was a little disappointed in my meal. I was expecting a great meal from a restaurant that has been around for as long, and with as great a reputation, as The Lexington.

Being that it was a nice night out we had planned to walk down to Cafe Latte for dessert (for Erin), but our server surprised us with a free dessert for our anniversary. The dessert was some sort of pastry with a chocolately, marshmallowy mess inside, but it was pretty damn good. We picked at it a bit, but kind of had our heart set on going to Cafe Latte, so we still went over there and Erin enjoyed an amazing lemon cream torte that I snagged a few bites of.

Overall I had a great evening out, but I chalk that up to my company and the weather. Sadly, I can’t recommend going to The Lexington, with plenty of other places to spend a special night out.

Service: The service was the bright spot at The Lexington. The hosts were incredibly friendly, as was the server. The free dessert helped :)

Food: The food was fine, but I was expecting more.

Drinks: Full bar with a good menu of specialty cocktails. The drink menu on the web site must be out of date because I don’t see the sazerac that I ordered.

Ambiance: I was glad we sat in the bar instead of the dining room, it looked a little stuffy in there and the bar area was plenty nice for me, plus they have a very nice bar to look at, which is better to me than any sort of wall decorations any day.

Convenience: Lexington and Grand can be an annoying intersection, but it was no problem for us on a Sunday night.

Erin's Review

Ben gave me a few options from the list to choose from for our anniversary. After looking at the menus, The Lexington stood out purely for their "signature" mac and cheese. Yes, kind of lame, but that's what I wanted that night. After announcing that we were going on twitter, someone recommended sitting in the bar. When we got there for our 6pm reservation, which was in the dining room, I did elect to have us sit in the bar since the vibe just seemed a little less formal in there.

We sat for awhile before ordering, Ben got his drink and I ordered a kiddie cocktail. Places that have actual good non-alcoholic cocktails are becoming amazing to me lately. It seems pretty rare. We then order and get our bread. We both changed from "The Lex" salad to a house salad because of neither of us likes olives.

Salads come out shortly after, and they are pretty bad - overdressed, and the tomatoes taste like they were refrigerated and from the middle of January. Pretty sad, considering they could have just, you know, gone outside and plucked some fresh ones, but oh well.

My macaroni and cheese with lobster was realllllllly good, by far the best part about the experience. I could only eat about 7 bites before I was completely full, but it was good for lunch the next day too. This was a great meal - you can choose 2 different things to go in your mac and cheese (a few meats and some veggies) but I just wanted the lobster. It's definitely rich!

We were then informed that we were getting a free dessert, which I figured we'd take even though we also planned to walk to Cafe Latte for dessert. It was chocolate and marshmallow in a pastry, and I also got decaf coffee. The dessert was also very rich, and I wanted to save SOME of my appetite for my 2nd dessert as well so we didn't eat it all.

I did like the ambiance of The Lexington, and some of the food was good. I can't say I'd go back since there are about a zillion other fancy places in the cities that are far better, but I'm glad we finally tried it after driving by for years.

Deets

The Lexington

1096 Grand Ave

St. Paul

Shanghai Bistro - Stillwater

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:37:00 +0000

Visited on Sunday, September 11th

Erin's Review

So, as some of you may have guessed by the lack of posts here for a long time, or knew if you read my other blog or follow me on twitter, I am pregnant! And haven't really wanted to go out to eat to any new or exciting restaurants for awhile. At nearly 4 months pregnant, I'm just now starting to get my appetite back, so hopefully we can resume more regular posting... I'd been bugging Ben for a date since we went to the U2 concert, and finally we got it arranged - decided on an weekend afternoon so hopefully I wouldn't be as tired.

I got a few recommendations of restaurants from people on twitter - one was Shanghai Bistro. I'd been craving sushi for awhile, so that was my choice. I had pretty good luck when we went to Ronin during my first pregnancy with cooked sushi and them being accommodating about altering rolls, so I was hoping this would be the same.

When we got there, we discovered that this was the same location as the former Stones, which we'd been to a couple times. It appeared that they'd changed absolutely nothing about the patio - I even recognized the same furniture. It's a nice patio, so it's not like they needed to change much. There were tons of open spots on the patio - kind of odd for a nice weekend night. I think most people maybe want a view of the river? The inside was totally empty and dark.

We were seated immediately, and our server came out and took our drink order. I said I wanted something fruity and non-alcoholic and explained I am pregnant, and she recommended a fruity blended drink that was pretty tasty. I'm not sure what it was as it isn't on the menu online, but it involved coconut and strawberry. We also immediately ordered crab rangoons, which I loved but may have ruined my appetite for my meal. The bees DEFINITELY loved my drink - thankfully the garnish served as a way to keep them away.

I explained to the server that I could only have cooked sushi rolls and asked if they could make any substitutions for me. She seemed wary - and helpfully let me know that she has been told that pregnant women can have 6oz of raw fish a week. Whatever, lady. I'm certainly not about to take that risk at some random sushi restaurant in Stillwater, and I'm NOT taking pregnancy advice on what I can eat from a 20 year old. Whatever. So I said that I wasn't comfortable with that and would only be eating cooked fish. Then I asked if the California Roll was cooked - she said no. I said... are you sure? (because I know it is at every place I've ever been) and she said she would check. She came back, informed me they could bake any roll for me, and had forgotten to ask about the California Roll. I made her go back, and she found out that yes, indeed, it is cooked. So I got that, along with one roll with eel and shrimp tempura where they were willing to remove the one additional raw fish from the roll. So a lot of fiasco for not anything THAT exciting.

Once I actually got the sushi, it was pretty good, although the California Roll seemed a bit lacking - just the crab and avocado. It seemed most other places have a bit more going on. The other roll (Red Dragon) was quite good, but fell apart really easily. This was where I really could tell how much my appetite has gone down - normally I could down these 2 rolls no problem, but I could barely finish half and nearly had to run for the nearest trash can when I had one too many rolls after I was full. Not my finest moment, but thanks to a jolly rancher, I was once again good to go.

After that, I was pretty much done and completely full. We had intended to check out Nelson's Ice Cream after dinner but I couldn't even fathom having room in my stomach for that! Next time for sure. I've yet to go to a restaurant in Stillwater that really wowed me... this one was fine, but nothing special. Next time I plan to try dock cafe, which was also recommended.

Ben's Review

Since we hadn’t really been out without Annie since the U2 concert in July, we arranged to have Erin’s sister Liz watch Annie on Sunday evening while we went to spend a couple hours in Stillwater.

Erin got a couple recommendations of restaurants in Stillwater and decided on Shanghai Bistro as she was wanting some sushi (of the non-raw fish variety). We arrived in Stillwater a little after 4, with plans to walk around Main St. until dinnertime. We happened to park right in front of the restaurant, and it turns out we had been there a couple years earlier when it was called Stones.

We made our way back to the restaurant around 6 and easily got a table on the patio. I had seen earlier that there was a band that would be playing so I made sure we sat on the other side of the patio so it wouldn’t annoy me. Little did I know that it was just two dudes playing acoustic covers of some awesome songs. I heard some CSNY, Oasis, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, amongst the sweet cover songs they played. For ONCE I was actually enjoying the live music at a restaurant!

I saw the cucumber martini that sounded good and ordered that while Erin quickly ordered the crab rangoons with no hesitation. Shanghai Bistro has some standard Asian food and I was tempted to get my all time fave (but very boring) sesame chicken. At the last minute, I decided to go with the moo shu pork, but was then stymied by the fact that they were out of the batter for the stupid pancakes! With nothing to fall back on I got the sesame chicken :(

The martini and crab rangoons were both good. The martini definitely had something extra like simple syrup or something, because it was incredibly sweet; nothing like the pleasant face slap of cold vodka that I was expecting. For $10 I expect nothing to be watered down, especially with sugar. I don’t mind a little liver damage, but I will not tolerate extra sugar in my diet.

After Erin’s deliberations with our server about her sushi, our food came out after a few minutes. I got a hearty sized bowl of breaded and fried chicken along with a separate bowl of rice. Our server even brought out some chili oil and sriracha for me to jazz it up a bit, which I appreciated.

The sesame chicken was everything you expect and demand - all white meat chicken, breaded and fried with a little sesame sauce. It was certainly better than typical delivery places in the cities, but nothing spectacular. For $10 it fit the bill. I ate nearly all of it, as that stuff doesn’t do well for lunches the next day. I also finished off my meal with a dessert cocktail of an old fashioned, which oddly enough tasted to have less simple syrup than my martini, go figure.

Service: Eh, this was just ok. Erin had to have some back and forth about the sushi and then she was even telling Erin how much fish a pregnant woman could have. As if she was going to take any pregnancy advice from our server.
Food: The food was good, but nothing special.
Drinks: Decent beer and wine list, with a full bar. Avoid the specialty martinis.
Ambiance: Awesome cover band and a chill patio crowd on a Sunday night. There were actually a lot of children and families.
Convenience: Shanghai Bistro is right on Main St in Stillwater. We even got a parking spot right out front.

Deets

Shanghai Bistro

324 Main Street

Stillwater

World Street Kitchen - Minneapolis Street Food

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:20:00 +0000

Visited on Thursday, August 4th with Scott

Ben's Review

Erin has been wanting me to go downtown and meet her for lunch at one of the food trucks that now exist in Minneapolis. A couple weeks ago I biked downtown from home and met her and Scott for a trip to the World Street Kitchen food truck located near 5th St and Nicollet.

I started noticing the buzz around food trucks last year when an ordinance was passed that relaxed many of the restrictions on them and they seem to have exploded this year in downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Nearly every day on twitter I see several people hitting up different food trucks and the food has looked amazing.

Since Erin works downtown she has had a chance to try several of them out and wanted me to try World Street Kitchen. I met Erin and Scott outside Erin’s building and we walked over to the truck’s location. Erin had seen that they had ran out of gas (??) and had to run to get more, so we weren’t even sure if they were operation yet, luckily they had solved their issues and were indeed serving food.

WSK helpfully twits a picture of their menu everyday, so we knew what was available before we got there. I was absolutely starving after biking in so I wanted whatever was the largest portion. Erin said the spicy beef torta was good and large, so my mind was made up. I also got a Mexican coke, as those are too good to turn down.

The order taker at WSK also uses Square on an iPhone to accept credit card payments, which was cool to use, this was the first time I’d seen Square out in the wild. After you order you get a ticket stub and then you hang back and wait for the people in the truck to call out your number. The numbers do not appear to be sequential as they were calling out numbers all over the place.

After what felt like a half hour we FINALLY got our numbers called and raced to get our food. I was going crazy by this point and we still had to walk to a nearby courtyard to enjoy our food.

My torta was indeed very large and incredibly tasty. The beef was tender and juicy and it also had cheese in the pressed sandwich. The bread was kind of tough, which made it kind of battle to rip a bite out of it, but it was well worth the effort. After wolfing down my sandwich I tried some of Erin’s rice bowl which was delicious and deceptively large. Even though I was hungry as hell, the rice bowl would have done the trick just as well as the beef torta.

I really enjoyed my first food truck experience and the fact that there are several more means that I’ll probably be making my way downtown for a couple more lunches this summer, especially given that I work fairly close by these days.

Service: There isn’t much service at a food truck by definition. The order taker was a friendly guy, but our food did take awhile to get, probably an isolated experience though.
Food: Excellent food and freshly made.
Drinks: WSK has some soda, water, and juices, no alcohol or hot drinks
Ambiance: You’d think this wouldn’t even apply, but there is a crowd of people milling about waiting for their food, so this actually does give some ambiance. Mostly people making small talk while straining to hear their number called.
Convenience: If you work in one of the downtowns, these are really convenient and a great way to get some lunch on a nice summer day.

Erin's Review
I've been loving the food trucks all around downtown Minneapolis this summer. I've eaten at them way too many times, but I'm trying to sample a lot of them before the cold creeps in and I don't want to leave the skyways! So far my favorite, partly due to proximity to my work, is World Street Kitchen, which is owned by the same people as Saffron. Like most food trucks, the menu changes daily depending on what they've got cooking up, but there are some staples. I've had the opportunity to visit WSK a few times, so I will report on those visits in addition to this one with Ben and Scott.

Almost every time I've gone, unless it's before noon or after 12:45, there is a fairly significant line, but it moves quickly. This particular time it took the longest to get our food, but that could be because I think they prep a lot of similar items together and Ben and I ordered different things. Who knows. It really wasn't THAT long, we were just starving and hot so it felt like forever! At this visit, I finally decided to try the chicken yum yum rice bowl, after hearing Scott rave about the veggie bowl many times. I LOVED it - it probably was my favorite thing I've gotten there, depending on what you're in the mood for. It certainly offers the most food. It comes with a ton of basil, cilantro, rice, something crunchy (not quite sure exactly what it is but it was my favorite part), delicious and flavorful chicken, more veggies and, the proverbial cherry on top is definitely the slightly runny egg that you can mix in with everything. Seriously so good. It's been off the menu for a few days, and there has definitely been some push back from loyal fans about it on twitter!

Chicken

Veggie

After this particular visit, I forced Ben to walk with me ALL the way down to 10th and Nicollet (he was a bit peeved) to get a cupcake from the Cupcake food truck. In order to make this an experience worthy of a blog post, I needed to visit 2 trucks in one day :) Worth the walk, but I was still so stuffed from my rice bowl that I had to wait to eat the cupcake until later in the day. I got Lemon Raspberry, and I actually liked it a lot better than the cupcakes I've had from their main store on University, oddly enough.

Other items I have sampled on my visits to WSK are pictured below, with my brief review. Summary: I've loved everything I've had, with my tops definitely being the bahn mi and the yum yum rice bowl.

Smokey Beef Torta - my first visit to WSK back in early June. This was very good - I was glad it was pulled beef versus a big slab since that's easier to eat. Also had cheese, and mine had some avocado pieces. Ben's had peppers. Ben mentioned the bread was tough - I do not remember this, and I would because I hate that, so perhaps Ben is just a pansy.

Curry chicken banh mi - my other favorite! Everything about this is awesome. The flavorful pulled chicken, simmered in a curry sauce, the variety of crisp fresh veggies, and the soft bread that is crunchy on the exterior yet easy to bite through (my main complaint of many baguettes). This was the perfect amount of food for me. My 2nd WSK visit, only 2 days after my first :)

Finally, the chicken pita sandwich, which I just had a few days ago. This is a new menu item, and the day after I went, they posted this explanation of it on twitter: Shawirma aka middle eastern gyros: marinated chicken, Turkish pickles, french fries and garlic sauce wrapped in pita bread.

I basically had no idea what I was getting here, so I was a bit thrown by the combination, but it was definitely good and SUPER filling.

If it's not obvious, I love this place. The street food movement has been awesome for expanding my lunch time variety - I've managed to visit quite a few so far this summer and hope to try out more before they go into hiding for the winter! A great directory of all the known food trucks can be found at MSP Street Food.

Deets

World Street Kitchen

Location varies - check twitter feed for details. Typically on 5th between Nicollet and Marquette during the lunch hour

Minneapolis

Masu Sushi & Robata

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:59:00 +0000

Visited on Thursday, June 2nd

Erin's Review

I originally heard about Masu from Kate, and Heavy Table. Once I saw the post on Shooting the Kitchen, that sealed the deal for me - we needed to go, and fast! We aren't usually this quick with visiting new restaurants, but hearing about it from so many places and a huge craving for sushi did it for me. I had heard the service totally sucked, but the food was awesome so I was mentally prepared for that experience.

We got there around 7:30, and I jumped on the few open seats I saw at the sushi bar. I've always wanted to sit at the sushi bar, but never end up doing it because we're usually out with a bigger group. We took advantage of being a party of 2 that night, and I'd highly recommend doing this if you go to Masu, because I think that is a big part of what made the experience so fun for us. We started off ordering drinks, and not being a big drinker anymore, I really loved that Masu had a good selection of non-alcoholic beverages that were actually something other than soda and lemonade. I did end up getting a sparkling berry lemonade, but it tasted nothing like the sickeningly sweet stuff you'd get most other places.

A few servers helped us throughout the night, and I'm pleased to report that we never experienced poor service at any point in the evening. My water glass was kept full, and everyone answered our questions patiently. Since we are used to eating at 5:30 with Annie, we were pretty starving by that point, so quickly ordered the crispy pork kara-age appetizer. It came out quickly, and was enticing enough to get the people next to us to ask what we were eating. These were tasty and addicting - not too chewy, but had good structure and weren't overly greasy despite being fried.

To sample some robata, we chose the bacon wrapped asparagus and beef and burdock rolls. The asparagus was crisp and had a bright flavor, while the bacon was pretty chewy which made for a good combination. Surprisingly, I LOVED the beef and burdock rolls, which were a recommendation of one of our servers. These were very tender and not tough at all,which is my typical complaint of beef.

It is always difficult for me to make a decision on what rolls to order at sushi places, as if I had my way, I'd order about 10 and try one piece of each. We again went with the recommendation of the server and got the rainbow roll, basically because of the wide variety of fish it sampled. I knew I wanted spicy tuna, and eel nigiri as well. I love caterpillar rolls, but didn't see any rolls with eel on the menu. Since it was offered as nigiri, I'm not sure why that is, but the eel nigiri was very good. I loved seeing the sushi chef preparing our order. This fish all tasted very fresh and there was a good balance in the rolls between veggies, rice and fish. This is definitely some of the best sushi I've had in the cities!

The atmosphere at Masu was really low key but fun. It wasn't that loud, and I could best describe the crowd as yuppie hipster. The place was full when we went there, and from all accounts I've heard, is typically pretty busy. The decor is very colorful and vibrant - I love the wall art, and the sushi bar is beautiful. The row of games in the bar also provides something interesting that you aren't likely to see at other places.

Masu has a great combination of a great vibe, excellent food and (at least when we were there) good service. I'll definitely be back!

Ben's Review

Erin had been craving sushi for a bit so we arranged for the neighbors to watch Annie a couple weeks ago while we tried out Masu Sushi & Robata in NE Mpls, a newish place that has been getting some high praise lately.

Masu is located across the street from Whitey’s on E. Hennepin; I dropped Erin off at the door and found a meter about a block away to park. I found Erin at the beautiful sushi bar which, it turns out, is made from reclaimed lumber dating back to the 1850’s. The bar is shaped like a “J” with the curved end cap blocking off the bar as well as the three sushi chefs, which is where we sat. These seats are great as the sushi chefs give you quite a show as they prepare the sushi for the entire restaurant. For one of the rolls they even break out a propane torch to roast the top a bit, very cool.

Masu has several specialty cocktails that I felt obligated to try instead of a plain old martini. I went with the “Double Precious” (that’s my nickname, actually) which is described as a “Sparkling Jasmine Gin Elderflower Martini”. At this point in my life I have relegated myself to the fact that these drinks will never be strong enough for my liking, which really makes them a waste of money, but it sounded good, so what the hell. It was very tasty, but I probably could have pounded the whole thing, it was fairly sweet.

Having never heard of “robata” we had the server explain it to us; it’s a way of cooking the food on a charcoal grill. All of the robata options were in the $3-$6 range and are intended to give each person a bite or two. Our server recommended a couple orders of robata items and a couple sushi items. We got two robata and one regular appetizer: asparagus wrapped in bacon, beef and burdock rolls, and crispy pork kara-age. All of these were delicious and served beautifully as you can see from the pictures.

For sushi we ordered two rolls, the rainbow and spicy tuna, and one order of eel nigiri. Again, sitting at the bar we were watching them make all of the sushi, guessing which order would be ours. It was cool to see it all come together into the final presentation that you see in the photos. I enjoy sushi, and while I’m certainly not a connoisseur, this tasted great.

After putting back my precious martini in quick order, I got an old fashioned. This was much better suited to my tastes and was, as with everything else, delicious.

I had a lot of fun at Masu and definitely plan to be back in the future.

Service: The service was good at the bar, it seemed like all the servers wait on everyone because we were helped by a couple different servers during our stay.
Food: Awesome food, absolutely delicious
Drinks: They have several “fun” cocktails and sake, as well as a full bar.
Ambiance: Loud, but not overwhelming. We don’t sit at the bar often, but I was surprised to find that I liked it better than sitting at a table. In a loud environment it’s obviously easier to talk to someone when they are right next to you.
Convenience: This area is hit or miss (I feel like I say that for every place we go), but we always manage to park without much trouble.

Deets

Masu Sushi & Robata

330 East Hennepin

Minneapolis

Black Forest Inn

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 02:02:00 +0000

Visited on Friday, May 27 with Jake and Allison

Ben's Review

Erin heard about spargelfest at Black Forest Inn and wanted to check it out. Her parents took Annie up to the cabin one day early on Memorial Day weekend, so we took the opportunity to meet our friends Jake and Allison for dinner before heading up ourselves on Friday night.

I had heard that Black Forest Inn had a great patio, but I wasn’t really excited to try this place out. After having what I considered to be bland, uninteresting food in Germany during our honeymoon, I had written off their food entirely. Spargelfest sounded cool, and I do like asparagus, so we headed over after work.

It was cold out the day we went, so the patio wasn’t going to happen, which was unfortunate. The inside of Black Forest Inn reminded me of the beer halls in Germany with the high, painted ceilings, the woodwork, and the customers and staff.

We had arrived early which gave us plenty of time to look over the menu and consider our options. I started with a beer (Erin insisted that I get a German beer, which I was going to anyway) and got the Paulaner Salvator.

I was surprised at how much of the food actually seemed good, not what my prejudiced mind was expecting, which was nice. I actually didn’t end up getting any spargelfest specialty, but I made sure to try Erin’s asparagus soup. I went traditional and got the bratwurst dinner which consisted of two bratwurst links, hot German potato salad, sauerkraut, and rye bread. I also noticed that they had a maibock mentioned on the spargelfest menu that was not on the beer list, so I got a maibock with my meal as well (can’t recall the brand now).

I was amazed at how good this food was. I don’t know if I just happened to get bad food in Germany, or if my tastes have changed in the past five years. The bratwurst was excellent, and I even slightly enjoyed my sauerkraut. The best part though, was the hot potato salad. I had breezed over the word ‘hot’ in the menu and was expecting the cold variety that we know and love. This potato salad was phenomenal and I fully intend to try making this at home because it cannot be that difficult.

Jake and I also got to have the lion’s share of Erin’s pork because she had ordered a ridiculously sized portion for herself and found herself not really needing her third slab of meat. Needless to say we left incredibly full and with leftovers for the cabin.

Service: The service was just OK, it took awhile to get our drinks and orders taken. Our server changed halfway through, so there must have been a shift change or something going on.
Food: The food was excellent and the portions were huge.
Drinks: Small beer list, but they have light and dark German beers and a couple macro brews.
Ambiance: Kind of loud and boisterous, while also friendly, which also reminded me of Germany.
Convenience: Black Forest Inn actually has a parking lot, which I did not realize. We parked on the street, and we’ve always managed to find a close street spot when we come to this area.

Erin's Review

Like many places on our list, I'd been wanting to go to Black Forest Inn for many many years. German food just isn't high on my wish list, however. The patio was the biggest selling point for me, so I was pretty disappointed that it was cold and raining on the day we planned to go. I do definitely think we'll have to go back sometime to sit on the patio, because it looks beautiful!

Ben and I took our honeymoon, now 5.5 years ago, to Germany, and Jake and Allison just went on a trip to Germany last year, so it was fun for all of us to reminisce about our time in the FATHERLAND (not Motherland as I sometimes have been known to mistakenly say).

I was having a REALLY hard time figuring out what to order. I started off with a refreshing root beer, and then stared at the menu for a good 20 minutes while we waited for Jake and Allison to show up. I knew I wanted SOMETHING with asparagus, and wanted a pretzel. Those were my basic requirements.

Finally I decided to order the asparagus soup as a starter - it was creamy and delicious, with mostly pureed asparagus but with enough chunks to make it interesting. It brought back pleasant memories of the asparagus soup I had in Amsterdam on the last night of our vacation in Europe 2 years ago.

After MUCH deliberation, I decided to go with the hausplatte - it was described on the menu as "A generous sampling of rippchen, bratwurst, polish sausage, red cabbage, sauerkraut, and potato salad. Served with a fresh-baked pretzel and homemade mustard". I mistakenly thought that this would be a "sample" plate - which is what it said on the menu. But no. This was FULL portions of EACH of those meats, PLUS a pretzel and full orders of each of those sides. Um. A bit much for me, you could say. I did think this was DELICIOUS - especially the pretzel. The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the "rippchen" which was some kind of huge slab of pork. No thanks. Anyway - my advice is that this plate is PLENTY for two people. I made good headway with the brat and potato salad, and some saurkraut but that was about it. Far too much for one or even probably two people. Despite the solo pretzels not being anywhere that I could see on the menu, you can just order one on the side. Probably a better idea than ordering an enormous meal just because it came with a pretzel. Oh well, live and learn.

Black Forest Inn was friendly and inviting - everyone seemed to be having a great time. Upon looking at their website, they have a kids menu and I saw plenty of high chairs too. We might have to go back with Annie in tow for a patio visit later this summer.

Deets

Black Forest Inn

1 East 26th Street

Minneapolis

Grand Cafe

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Fri, 20 May 2011 01:04:00 +0000

Visited on Sunday, May 8th

Erin's Review

Whenever I hear Grand Cafe, I get confused and think that it's in St. Paul. When Ben initially suggested it for Mother's Day brunch, I wasn't too excited, but once I looked at their website and menu I definitely realized the error of my ways on both counts.

We got there a little late for our reservation, since Ben had spent the night at a friend's house the previous night and we were a little slow to get ready that morning. It was definitely packed when we got there, so a reservation was key. I think that Grand Cafe actually looks much more casual than it would appear on their website. It's certainly a cute little place, but for brunch and lunch at least is quite casual. Most people were a little dressed up since it was a special occasion, but nothing crazy. (Ha - clearly not everyone since the dude in the middle of the photo is just in a white undershirt)

Annie and this little girl stared at each other for the majority of the meal

They had eggs benedict, so I knew what I was getting right off the bat. There was actually a special menu, but I saw people with items that weren't on the menu, like blueberry pancakes, so it seems they were offering the normal menu as well. There is no kids menu, so when Ben chose the Huevos Rancheros, I figured Annie could just have some of that. I also wanted something sweet, so asked about the pastries of the day. They had a lemon poppyseed scone that was good enough for me - not what I would have chosen if I had all the options in the world, but did the trick. We ordered coffee right away, I loved the cute presentation of the cream and sugar.

My scone wasn't that great - I've made much much better at home. The best scone I've ever had outside of my kitchen is still the cinnamon scone at Cafe Patteen in downtown Minneapolis. I need to make the trek back over there soon. I'm sure, like most things, it would have been delicious right out of the oven, but it was a bit dry and dense for my tastes. I still ate it up, offering a few bites to Annie who enjoyed it as well.

I ended up being swayed from the ham to the housemade gravlax (salmon) for my benedict. I was so glad I got that - DELICIOUS. I loved the combination of the salty fish, rich hollandaise, and asparagus. The egg was the most perfectly poached egg I've had since the eggs benedict at Barbette, and might tie for my favorite eggs benedict I've ever had. Seeing as I have it as often as possible, that is very high praise! I didn't even eat many of the potatoes since I wanted to save my appetite for the eggs, but Annie seemed to like them.

Grand Cafe does have high chairs, but isn't a place I would label as kid friendly due to their lack of kids menu - they might be willing to make something, but since they don't offer it, I'm guessing they don't really want the little ones around too much. Oh yeah, and the bathroom was so huge I just had to take a photo there too, since I conveniently had my camera around my neck.

I'd definitely like to return to see what this place is like for dinner.

Ben's Review

Erin helpfully gave me a list of places that I, should maybe, consider for Mother’s Day brunch. Looking over the list I tried Grand Cafe first, hoping that they would still have reservations available ten days prior. I never know how early these things fill up, but apparently ten days is plenty of time at Grand Cafe because we got it right at the time I wanted, 10am, for two adults and a toddler.

I was at a friend’s going away party the night before, so I had to hustle home around 8am after crashing on Jake and Allison’s front porch. Not much Sunday morning traffic so I got home with time to clean up and get ready to go. We got a bit of a late start on the drive, so I called and said we’d be a few minutes late, and they seemed very appreciative.

We rolled up right at 10:05 and I dropped Erin off at the door so she could claim our table while I parked. The on-street parking was full in this area of south Minneapolis, but I managed to find a spot about a block away. I walked in and found Erin already at our table, a booth on the north side of the restaurant.

I think the booths are slightly raised, or the seats are just close to the table, because I felt very tall sitting there, as if I could see over everyone else. There was a large table in the middle of the room that looked like it would fit in a residential dining room. They had sat two separate parties of two at each end of the table. You would think that it would be awkward to share a large table with another couple, but they managed to pull this off very nicely, and I normally hate restaurants that squeeze the tables in, but this seemed to protect both couples’ privacy better for some reason.

The breakfast menu at Grand Cafe is not huge but they seem to have all of the bases covered. After a bit of indecision I was convinced by the pork confit to try the huevoes rancheros, which always brings to mind a big, sloppy mess on the plate. Surprisingly, Grand Cafe makes them not so messy, and absolutely delicious. The tortilla on the bottom of the plate soaked up the mess from the beans, pork, eggs, and the homemade mole to perfection. This was easily the best huevoes rancheros I’ve ever had, and rivals the breakfast burrito at Longfellow Grill for my favorite breakfast.

I wasn’t getting much of a warm fuzzy from the service; there wasn’t anything bad about it, just didn’t feel too welcomed. I was also surprised at how it wasn’t crazy busy for Mother’s Day as I had assumed it would be, it was a nice surprise though.

We got out of there and had time for a windy walk around Lake Harriet, reminiscing about our walk last year when Annie was a little smaller (same hooded sweatshirt for me though!)

Service: Eh, we were taken care of, but I didn’t feel terribly welcome..
Food: Awesome huevoes rancheros
Drinks: The coffee was good and they were nearly militant about making sure your cup was full.
Ambiance: It was a good level of noise from the friendly breakfast crowd.
Convenience: I find this area of Minneapolis to be annoying to get to, as it’s not convenient from any freeway. Once you’re there it’s not bad.

Deets

Grand Cafe

3804 Grand Ave S

Minneapolis

Thom Pham's Wondrous Azian Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Mon, 16 May 2011 00:29:00 +0000

Visited on Friday, May 6th

Ben's Review
I “surprised” Erin last Friday by meeting her at her office and taking her out to lunch. (She found out about it that morning, which wasn’t a huge deal). I knew she had been wanting to get sushi, so I planned on trying the new-ish Wondrous Azian Kitchen on Hennepin.

Not knowing anything about the place, I made reservations. Not necessary at all for lunch. The restaurant is large and nearly empty at noon. We were seated in the bar area that has full length windows facing Hennepin. They also have a separate dining room so they can hold a significant number of people if need be.

It was nice out that day (a rarity this spring) so the windows by our table were partially open, which I liked. We were quickly asked for drink orders and if we had any questions about the menu. I assumed we’d be getting some sushi to split but Erin decided to get a bento box for herself, leaving me with a wide array of options from the menu.

I like sushi just fine, but I love me some Pad Thai, which they of course had on the menu. I asked about heat levels and was told that the Pad Thai comes with a three out of five spice by default, which was fine with me.

The wait for our food seemed long, but maybe sushi takes longer? Anyways, our food looked great and the lunch portion of my Pad Thai was easily enough for a second meal, which makes the $10 price tag even that much better. I recall the heat level not really being what I would call a three. To me, I should be able to taste the heat at three, but this was pretty weak. Not sure what they would do for a two or one. They do have sriracha at all the tables, which is nice. (I nearly stole ours because it was the big bottle and unopened.)

(Editor's note: It seems Ben forgot he had soup)

Aside from the spice not being where I anticipated the Pad Thai was very good. I always marvel at how Asian restaurants can get the noodles done so well, I can never replicate that at home. The chicken, sauce, and noodles were great, but as I look at the picture now, it appears that it didn’t have basil, which I thought was a Pad Thai standard ingredient.

Wondrous Azian Kitchen was great for a lunch date, and not too expensive when you factor in the leftovers. The bar is huge and well stocked, it would be a fun place to bring a larger group of people downtown (if we ever did that anymore, haha............sigh).

Service: Good service, exactly what was expected.
Food: Great Pad Thai, though not as spicy as I was expecting
Drinks: Being lunch on a workday I didn’t have a cocktail, but they do have a huge bar that has everything you could want.
Ambiance: Hard to tell because it was so empty, but I can see this place cranking the music at night and opening the windows to the Hennepin Ave crowd.
Convenience: Not terribly convenient for parking, but plenty of bus and bike options.

Erin's Review
The Friday before Mother's Day, one of my co-worker's was sick. She had a presentation at noon that I offered to take for her, but my other coworker Jen told me I couldn't. I also wasn't allowed to ask why, and couldn't make any other plans after 11:30am. Reallll stealth, Jen! Ben has surprised me at work before, so as soon as this turn of events happened, I pretty much knew what was up, just wasn't sure of the details. He showed up at 11:30, and told me we were heading out for lunch - pretty sweet guy! After I got over my initial disappointment of him not having Annie with him, as he had the last time he surprised me, I enjoyed our surprise lunchtime date.

It was a beautiful day outside, so Ben offered me the opportunity to switch up the location to a place that had a patio. I'm glad I chose to stick with Wondrous Kitchen as they had their large windows open to Hennepin Avenue, which made it feel almost patio like. We both really enjoyed Azia when we went to a blogger event there, so I figured Wondrous Kitchen would be pretty similar.

After perusing the menu, I decided not to get sushi for Ben and I to split because of the pretty high cost of the rolls I wanted to order. I was glad to see a Maki Bento option on the lunch menu because I really wanted rolls, and most sushi lunch specials feature nigiri (plain fish and rice). I ordered that, as well as my new favorite beverage of cranberry juice and sprite.

Our soups came out pretty quickly - I had gotten the miso soup, and it was FULL of seaweed and tofu, unlike most places which have a few lone tofu cubes and not much seaweed at all. It was a bit much for my tastes, I almost prefer the more sparse miso soups that I've had elsewhere, but was still certainly tasty.

When our main dishes arrived, I was pleasantly surprised by how much sushi there was. It was almost too much for me, which rarely happens with sushi! I was a little disappointed with the presentation - when I see the word "bento" in the description, I do expect something a bit more elaborate. Oh well, I got over it. I love sushi, quite a bit, and typically order rolls like caterpillar, dynamite and other specialty rolls. I think one common characteristic of those rolls is some type of delicious sauce, cream cheese or spicy mayo - these rolls were pretty bland in comparison. I did really like the spicy tuna but the other two were a little blah. I was able to jazz them up with some wasabi, but it was a poor substitute for the type of sushi I typically enjoy. This was my own fault - I knew what I was getting, and just didn't want to pay that much for the more involved rolls. Again - oh well.

The ambiance at Wondrous Kitchen was a little blah over lunch, just because it was practically empty (as are most places outside the "skyway belt") but I can see it being hopping and really fun late at night. Anyone been here at night that can comment? The decor was minimalist but had some nice touches. I really liked the bar with the huge windows facing Hennepin - it would definitely make for some good people watching.

I hope Wondrous Kitchen can make it in this location that does seem to be a bit cursed. The choice of a long and kind of confusing name probably wasn't a good one, but hopefully it won't hurt them. "Thom Pham's Wondrous Azian Kitchen" just doesn't roll off the tongue very easily, and I'm pretty sure if you were going to pick a place randomly to text a friend to meet you at, you'd pick one with a lot fewer letters. Maybe that's just me speaking as a lazy texter, who knows. Anyway, we both liked it and I'd be interested to come back and see what it's like when downtown is hopping.

Deets
Thom Pham's Wondrous Azian Kitchen
533 Hennepin Ave S
Minneapolis

the Bad Waitress

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Sun, 01 May 2011 14:56:00 +0000

Visited on Saturday, April 23 with Rebekah, Rett and Adelaide

Erin's Review

When Rebekah told me that Annie was playing at the Children's Theater, I knew we had to make a family trip to see it! For some reason I thought the theater was in downtown St. Paul near the Children's Museum, so when we went to make firm plans of where to get brunch, I found I was mistaken. There aren't a whole lot of brunch places really near the Children's Theater and Minneapolis Institute of Arts, so the Bad Waitress was pretty much the obvious choice. The show was at 11, so we figured we were giving ourselves plenty of time with a 9:30 reservation.

We all arrived promptly at 9:30 and were taken back to a large, oddly shaped booth in the back. We mulled over the menus and then wrote our orders on a pad, and sent Rett and Ben over to do the business. Finally, after what seemed like a ridiculously long wait, we got our coffee. Most other places get it to you pretty much the second you sit down, which I much prefer. It took even longer to get our food, as Ben notes below, which since we had a show to get to, and two toddlers with us, was VERY annoying. The service concept at Bad Waitress certainly works fine at other places, like Birchwood Cafe and Be'wiched, but on this trip, I felt like they were deliberately making us wait longer than every other table there for some reason. With no set server, no one has any level of accountability either. No one apologized or even seemed to notice that we were waiting. Overall, the service was pretty horrible.

Annie eventually got frustrated with the wait

The food finally came - I had ordered eggs benedict, which came with asparagus. It was actually very good, but I had to seriously wolf it down so we could leave in time to make the show, and also help Annie eat. The eggs were done a little more than I prefer, but still had a bit of runniness to them.

The pancakes that Adelaide and Annie both got were ridiculous - larger than most adult pancakes and just seemed to be wasteful. I know they are on the younger end of the spectrum for kids meals, but even a grown adult doesn't need a pancake that large. They came with a few berries in the shape of a face and bear ears, which was definitely cute. Annie ate maybe 1/4 of the pancake there and all the berries, and I brought about 1/4 more along for a 2nd act snack during the play which was definitely needed. I also noticed the pancakes sitting at the window for at least 5 minutes, and they only got brought out when Rebekah finally asked about it. Very, very annoying. Every restaurant should know that you can bring out a children's meal as soon as it's ready.

I actually really liked the food at Bad Waitress, and the service at other tables around us seemed to be much faster, so I'd still recommend it and just hope the service is better for you.

Ben's Review

Erin was unable to pass up the chance to go see the play “Annie” at the Children’s Theatre, so we arranged to go see it with Rett, Rebekah, and Adelaide, with plans to have brunch nearby at the Bad Waitress beforehand.

I had heard little about the Bad Waitress other than they don’t really wait on you. I like the ordering concept a lot; you fill out a short order ticket at your table from the menu, then walk it to the register where you place your order and pay. A food runner then brings your food out when it’s ready. I like that you can order at your own leisure, or as soon as you walk in the door if you know what you want.

The menu was varied with nearly every breakfast option you would want for brunch. We sorted out what we would have and got something for the little ones and headed up to order. I like that they have the option to order a carafe of coffee as opposed to individual cups, and carafe refills are only a buck.

I ended up with the breakfast burrito which is made to order with your choice of three ingredients in addition to a couple scrambled eggs. I got chorizo sausage, bacon, and cheddar cheese, but I turned out to be a horrible “short orderer”, as the cashier had to fix several of my entries on the slip. She seemed annoyed with my ignorance, but also appeared as though it was totally expected from a noob such as myself.

We were so rushed I nearly forgot to take a photo

Rett and I ordered, paid, and went back to the table to wait for our food. We waited. And waited some more. Other tables that arrived after us got their food, ate, and left. We still didn’t get our food. We started to worry that we’d miss the start of the play if we didn’t get our food soon. Rebekah went to check on the status. We waited a little longer and it finally arrived, about fifty minutes after ordering. Luckily the girls were good natured the whole time. Annie and Adelaide did great too.

Annie was quite patient up to a point

While scarfing down my burrito I managed to take a second to taste what I was eating, and it tasted great. The burrito was pleasantly full of eggs, meat, and cheese, and it wasn’t all liquidy like my scrambled egg burritos are when I make them at home. The burrito came with a side of American fries which were good and tasted as if they had actually been made fresh.

Annie and Adelaide both had the largest single pancake I’ve ever seen, in the shape of Mickey Mouse, of course. It came with some berries which Annie made sure to enjoy before moving on to the actual pancake.

For size comparison

Luckily since you pay when you order we could simply eat and run, and we made the play with plenty of time. One thing I find a little odd about the Bad Waitress is that there are reminders to tip your server. What is the etiquette in this situation? I tipped the same amount I would normally, but I felt like I shouldn’t have to. The level of service you get is, by design, less than traditional restaurants. Being that I won’t be here that often I didn’t mind this one time, but if I were to make regular visits, I think I would feel justified in reducing the tip percentage, what do you think?

Service: The service was fine, the food took much longer than expected.
Food: The food was very good, so maybe the time it took was worth it :)
Drinks: I didn’t see any alcohol on the menu, so I think it’s limited to NA drinks. The coffee was good and they serve real half and half.
Ambiance: Typical busy brunch crowd, there was a good din to the place. It was difficult to have a conversation across our large table, so the sound carries quite a bit.
Convenience: Parking was OK on a Sunday morning, but this isn’t the easiest place to park, at 26th & Nicollet.

Deets

the Bad Waitress

2 East 26th Street (at Nicollet)

Minneapolis

A few links

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:11:00 +0000

We were just featured in METRO Magazine's "Blog Love" section on their website yesterday: check it out! For those of you coming over from that post, welcome!

For anyone who has ever been curious about the photography on We Got Served, I recently wrote a post answering some common questions I get about photography, and gave some tips on how to get photos in dimly lit restaurants - here it is.

128 Cafe

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:58:00 +0000

Visited on Thursday, April 21st

Ben's Review

Around 3pm last Thursday my mom offered to take Annie for the night and have my dad take her to their house on his way home from work. We jumped at the chance to use a gift card they gave me awhile ago to 128 Cafe for an impromptu date night.

I quickly checked the menu online, but since they change it so often there aren’t many details to be found. I did see that they have a weekday special for $25 per person that includes an entree, soup/salad, and a dessert, which sounded promising. We arrived around 7pm with plenty of tables available. 128 Cafe is in the basement of an apartment building on Cleveland Ave., across from St. Thomas. You could drive by the nondescript entrance daily and not notice that it even exists. The inside is as simple as the exterior, with simple but elegant decorations.

The $25 special that night was a fettuccine in a white wine sauce. That wasn’t floating my boat that night, so I passed on the special and opted for the braised pork with polenta and kale. I tried to convince Erin to split a bottle of wine, but as usual she persuaded me that a glass was all she wanted. I got an unpronounceable red wine that was supposed to have a medium body, which it did.

Soon after ordering we got our wine and a plate of bread, which was awesome. I could easily fill up on warm bread and butter and wine at these places, they should offer that as an option. I would totally pay $3-$4 :)

All the components of my dish were fantastic, the pork mixed with polenta well and I’m a big fan of kale to begin with and with the butter in this dish you couldn’t go wrong. I just got sidetracked writing this review to go look up how to braise pork (it looks easy) and I will be trying this out soon. The portion was actually reasonably sized as well, I didn’t feel disgustingly full as I sometime do at restaurants, even after the bread.

Because Erin got the $25 special, she got a preset dessert of Izzy’s vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce, but since she really wanted the lemon pound cake, she ordered that and I got to eat her ice cream. I don’t believe I’ve ever had Izzy’s before, but it was damn good, I’m going to try to remember to stop over there this summer sometime.

I had a great time at 128 Cafe on our unplanned night out, thanks Mom and Dad!

Service: Great service, everyone was knowledgeable and professional.
Food: The food is excellent, everything we had was delicious.
Drinks: They have beer and wine, no booze. I recall the beer list being just so-so.
Ambiance: Being in a basement is interesting, but they do a good job of making you forget that. The surroundings make it difficult to be totally isolated from your neighbors, but I’ve certainly been to worse places as far as that goes.
Convenience: Plenty of street parking in the neighborhoods and they have valet available.

Erin's Review

We are definitely very lucky to have both sets of grandparents nearby, and even luckier when they send a text that they want to take Annie overnight! After we set up the details of the transfer of the child, Ben and I consulted our ever growing list of gift cards and coupons. We chose 128 Cafe since it was going on a whole year since Ben got it for his birthday last June.

128 Cafe is one of those places that we've passed time and time again (although, unlike Ben, I always notice it - it's a huge awning sticking out from an apartment building - how could you NOT notice it??!) and always said we should go there, but never got around to it. There are a lot more flashy options if you're looking to have a nice evening out, but I would call 128 Cafe a quiet underdog among the mid-range but not necessarily top tier restaurants in the Twin Cities.

The one area where this restaurant is lacking is in ambiance. Admittedly, they don't have a ton to work with, and at least they do have a few windows, but it could certainly stand to have a makeover. Even a bit less stark of a paint choice could make a huge difference. Different lighting would be nice, although they are working with slightly lower ceilings. Anyway, the physical look of 128 Cafe leaves a bit to be desired. There are 2 rooms, the smaller front room, and slightly larger back room, where we were seated.

At first, I thought their $25 special meant you had a few choices of salads, entrees, and desserts, but it's only one entree and one dessert choice, and likely is vegetarian most of the time. I decided to go with it because the entree sounded pretty good to me - a house made fettucini with portobello mushrooms, caramelized onions, and asparagus in a white wine sauce. I picked the ceasar salad, since the other option had goat cheese, of which I am not a fan. I also ordered a glass of the Malbec, which was perfect. I know, not the best pairing with a light pasta, but it worked for me.

The ceasar salad was one of the best I've had - the dressing was clearly homemade, and it was topped with an anchovy and lots of parmesan. I could definitely taste the hints of anchovy in the dressing, and the croutons were delicious and crunchy.

I loved the pasta - it wasn't too heavy, but just rich enough with a delicious white wine sauce, and again, topped with lots of parmesan. Although I usually don't like mushrooms, these were very thinly sliced and weren't too mushy. It was a pretty big portion, and I actually had the half I got boxed up for lunch today and it made great leftovers.

As soon as I looked at the dessert menu, I knew I wanted the lemon pound cake - I am a huge fan of lemon desserts! It was a pretty large piece with fresh whipped cream, a few blackberries, and a raspberry puree on the plate. The cake itself was just a bit on the dry side, but still quite tasty. I liked that the whipped cream wasn't overly sweet, it was a good contrast to the sweet cake and flavored well with the berry puree. I also had a bite of the ice cream I had turned up my nose at, and it was quite good, but I'm still glad I went for the cake.

I wasn't sure what to expect with 128 Cafe, but I was very pleased with the experience. The food was excellent and the service was perfect - not obtrusive at all, but very friendly and prompt. Thanks to my in-laws for the $63.50 gift card :) If you are looking for a quiet and lovely evening, 128 Cafe is definitely a perfect option!

Deets

128 Cafe

128 Cleveland Ave N

St. Paul

Black Sea Restaurant

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:11:00 +0000

Visited on April 5 with Josh, Mindy and Abby

Erin's Review

Black Sea is one of a few restaurants near Snelling and Minnehaha in St. Paul - none of which look very appealing from the outside. I had heard about it a bit from my stylists at Moxie Salon, which is across the street, and always meant to try it out, but never got around to it. Josh's coworkers recommended the place to him, so he decided to go there for his birthday. Due to the proximity to our house, we were invited along.

I actually had a haircut at Moxie the night before, so I asked for recommendations. I was told that the gyros are great, and that the cheeseburger is surprisingly good as well. The website leaves JUST a little bit to be desired, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. When we got there, we found a tiny place with maybe 10 tables total, and a take-out counter. It was super cramped, but somehow we managed to squeeze 4 adults and 2 babies in there.

There was only one server there, but he was very friendly. I ordered a lemonade, which was actually some kind of specific Turkish lemonade and was a bit too sweet for my liking. We got the falafel and hummus for everyone, but mostly for Annie, and I ordered the Doner Combination plate, which is chicken, beef and lamb gyros with rice and pita.

One thing I was a bit confused about was the distinction between Turkish and Greek food here - I didn't really notice a huge difference from the menu, but that could have been the dishes we ordered. Maybe there isn't a difference at all. They are really close to Hamline University, so need to cater to a student crowd and may be why they also offer fries and burgers. I'm curious to know if anyone has been to Black Sea before, and what you thought of the experience?

The food came out quickly, and tasted pretty good, although the gyro meat was pretty dry. It wasn't even close to the best Greek (Turkish?) food I've had in the Twin Cities, but it was a quick, filling and friendly meal at a place that is within walking distance to our house. If I'm in the mood for Greek food, usually I'd want to eat at Christos just to reminisce about our wedding there. The falafel and hummus were delicious - Annie and I both loved them. The ambiance leaves much to be desired, and the food wasn't THAT good, so I wouldn't recommend it. Despite it's proximity to our house, I'm not sure we'll be back more than a handful of times. If someone comments and tells me that there are better dishes to try, however, I could be persuaded. (After reviewing the photos, I notice the key "delivery" notation on their sign - maybe we WILL be eating more of this after all! 4 blocks is just too far sometimes :)

Ben's Review

Our friends Josh and Mindy were going out for Josh’s birthday and being that Black Sea is about four blocks from our house, we decided to join them.

We’ve known about Black Sea for awhile but never seem to make it over there, and I’m really glad that we did! Black Sea is a Turkish restaurant (supposedly the first in the state) crammed into a small space right on Snelling just north of Minnehaha. We walked in and for a moment thought that we’d have to leave - it just didn’t look like there would be enough room for four adults and two little kids. Then I noticed some more space where Josh was waiting for us towards the back. It was still cramped and luckily nobody sat at the table next to us while we were there.

The menu is mostly Mediterranean items, with some burgers and fries thrown in there. I saw that they had gyros and knew what I was getting, it was just a matter of which platter to get. I went with the “Doner-(Gyro)-rotisserie beef and lamb” (#23 from the menu), with fries and an iced tea. There isn’t any beer or wine at Black Sea so it forces you to save a little money that way :)

The portions are enormous. I got my plate and was delighted by the pile of gyros atop my french fries. They also give you an entire bottle of Tzatziki sauce for the table, which was great. The platter also came with a couple pita pockets to make sure you get extra full.

My gyros was delicious and I managed to eat it all. Josh got chicken gyros with some sort of Buffalo sauce, which was also excellent. Annie enjoyed her hummus, pita, and falafel VERY much. While it was a tight fit with two children, the staff were actually very accommodating about having kids around (though there is only one highchair). Later on Erin and I were talking about what makes a restaurant “kid friendly” and decided that it’s a mix of having food that is appropriate for kids and having an environment that welcomes them. While Black Sea doesn’t have a kids menu and lacks several high chairs, I do give them credit for taking the little kids in stride in their small space (and dealing with the mess they made).

I’m glad we finally made it to Black Sea and I look forward to eating there again and getting take out for home. Next time I think Erin and I could split a platter which makes it that much more affordable.

Service: Excellent service, everything came out quickly and they were very friendly.
Food: Delicious gyros and fries.
Drinks: No alcohol but they have an assortment of Turkish coffees and teas to try.
Ambiance: “Cozy”, as owners of small houses would say.
Convenience: Extremely convenient for us because we can walk :)

Deets

Black Sea Restaurant

737 N Snelling Ave

St. Paul

Pizzeria Lola

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:49:00 +0000

Visited on Saturday, March 19th with Jake, Allison and Newman

Ben's Review

Since our friends Jake and Allison live three blocks from the new pizza place in south Minneapolis, Pizzeria Lola, we had been meaning to make it over there to try it out. Last Saturday we finally got together, and Newman was even in town for the WCHA playoffs, so he joined us in trying it out.

The server commented on our "diverse" table because of our varying state shirts

We walked to Lola from Jake and Allison’s as it was a rather nice day out, and after the winter we’ve had, it felt good to be outside. Annie enjoyed using the Ergo again after a long hiatus. [Editor's note: Not really that long of a hiatus since we used it in some stores and in Mexico, but whatever - she still enjoyed it]

Since Lola doesn’t open until 5pm, Jake had called around 4:45 to try to get us on the list, since there were five adults and one toddler. It is amazing to me how busy this place gets so early in the evening. We arrived a few minutes before five and they were already open and I would estimate that one third of the tables were full. Fifteen minutes after we arrived the place was packed and people were starting to line up behind the bar. Jake mentioned that the bar/waiting area resembles Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown; people awkwardly have to stand directly behind someone sitting at the bar. Not the best environment for the people waiting or the people at the bar, but what can you do? It will certainly be better in the spring/summer/fall when people can wait outside instead.

They serve wood fired pizza at Lola and the oven is right in the middle of the restaurant. It’s a beautiful centerpiece as it’s lined with soft looking copper that fits in well with the wood-lined walls. The can lighting is interesting as well, they used tomato sauce cans to house the bulbs, and I thought I heard someone say that Lola got the cans from Punch Pizza.

The pizzas at Lola are on the small side, so for five adults we ordered four pizzas to share. We got a plain margherita pizza, the Lady Zaza, the Boise, and the Sweet Italian. The pizzas came out in a reasonable amount time, enough time for us to chat a bit and enjoy our beverages (they had Furious on tap, always a plus). Newman was excited about the Mexican coke, but then proceeded to order a regular fountain coke, justifying it because he was going to have several refills (he drank probably three cokes).

Lady ZaZa

Sweet Italian

I tried the Lady Zaza first which has kimchee sausage, peppers, and green onions. This was surprisingly spicier than I thought it would be, but it was delicious. The crust is excellent and reminds me of Punch Pizza, which is to be expected. Next I had the Sweet Italian, which looked like a more traditional pizza with red sauce, sausage, onions, peppers, and cheese. These two were definitely my favorite, though none of the pizzas were bad. The margherita was good, but they are too sparse for my liking, Annie seemed to enjoy it. The Boise is a potato pizza, as the name implies, and it was tasty, I actually had several of these pieces because we all ate our fill and they were still on the table. That was my cue to help out.

By the time we had finished our pizza it was even fuller than before, with a large line of people at the bar and people milling about outside. Jake, Allison, and Erin all ordered dessert while Newman and I watched them eat it. I tried a bite of Erin’s vanilla ice cream (Mexican vanilla, not that inferior Madagascar vanilla) and it was absolutely fantastic. I was amazed at how good it was, and now I’m reminded to seek some of that out at the store sometime.

We headed out the back entrance to give the photo booth a try. You can buy a ticket for $3 which gets you a photo booth session. The booth takes three pictures and then prints them on a strip for you to take home, or you can cut it down the middle and hang one of the sides on the wall, where they have a sizable collection growing. We opted to leave one of ours, we’ll have to find it next time we go back.

I enjoyed Pizzeria Lola very much and I intend to go back this summer when it’s nicer out, since we have friends that live so close anyways.

Service: Service was great, the manager stopped by to check in on us as well.
Food: Great pizza, excellent vanilla ice cream.
Drinks: The bar is just beer and wine, but they have a good selection of beers. I’m not sure how they got to have Surly, I had heard there is something like a three year waiting list or something.
Ambiance: Certainly a family place, as it’s located right in the middle of a residential area. People were friendly and welcoming.
Convenience: Lola is located right on Xerxes, so there is some bus service. Plenty of parking in the blocks right around the restaurant and easily walkable.

Erin's Review

I am a big fan of pizza, and would eat it for most meals if I could. I kept hearing about how great Pizzeria Lola was, but it being completely across town from us, we hadn't gotten over there yet. We finally set a date to go over and visit Jake and Allison and their pups Bella and Lola and then to go on to Pizzeria Lola. Jake has met the owner of Pizzeria Lola, who named the place after their dog. The owner apparently did not care at all that Jake also had a dog named Lola and lived 3 blocks away, which made Jake a wee bit sad, but not sad enough to not go there.

The walk over was pleasant on that nice spring day - now if only the temps would creep up to the 50s again so this dang snow would all melt! We got there RIGHT at 5, so thankfully got a table right away. Waiting a long time at restaurants really isn't an option for us anymore with Annie, so I'm glad we had the intel to get there so early and avoid what looked like very long waits later! We were seated in a booth, and placed our drink orders quickly. I asked if they had kids cups for milk, and the server said yes - they aren't little cups though, they are just full plastic cups with lids and straws - this worked ok but I had to watch Annie and help her hold the cup lest it go everywhere. We had a sippy cup but forgot it in Jake and Allison's fridge, of course! I am going to add a "kids welcome" label to the blog so people can click that to see the places we've been that I would consider toddler appropriate. Obviously you CAN bring them anywhere, but these are the places I think are better suited to the wee ones.

I really loved the decor at Pizzeria Lola - it was very centered around their pizza oven, which kept the place toasty warm. Hopefully they have powerful A/C for summertime! The oven had some fancy birchwood in the bottom, but we discovered their secret stash of oak in the back when we left through the back exit near the photobooth. Along with a few other places we've visited lately, Lola uses mismatched plates which lends a homey vibe but seems to be not that unique anymore.

Ben details which pizzas we ordered above - Annie ate mostly the Margherita, which she seemed to love, and some of the Sweet Italian. I also ate these 2, along with one piece of The Boise, which was actually my favorite of all of them. The pizza tasted completely different than it looked - cheesy and almost sweet from the thinly sliced potatoes and carmelized onions. I loved it! Annie had one bite of that one and liked it as well. She'll eat pretty much anything, though, so isn't too tough of a critic. I didn't even try the Lady Zaza because of reports that it was spicy - I figured I'd leave that one to people that would actually enjoy it.

The Boise

Margherita

Jake told me about the ice cream sandwich they had gotten on their last visit, so I was already planning on giving that a try. They now offer it as a "deconstructed" ice cream sandwich, so the cookies and ice cream are separate - Jake mentioned that the one he had tried before was nearly frozen solid, so this is a great move on their part so they can keep the cookies somewhat warm and the ice cream soft. They have 2-3 ice cream flavors daily, I went with the vanilla and I believe Allison went with hazelnut. Ben mentions above that they were very specific that this was MEXICAN vanilla. I previously haven't been picky about my vanilla ice cream, but perhaps I should be??

The ice cream was great, but I was disappointed in the cookies. I don't know why I bother to ever order cookies at a restaurant, when the ones I make at home are absolute perfection in every way, AND I can get them fresh from the oven since we keep the dough balls in the freezer. The cookies weren't warm or chewy, which is a cookie fail in my book. The ice cream sandwich was fine, but with crunchy cookies, you're basically just getting ice cream everywhere since you can't successfully bite through both cookies AND ice cream without squeezing the sandwich completely together, thus you don't get much ice cream in a bite. It wasn't all bad, just not what I prefer.

On the way out, we had to try the photobooth, since Ben worked on the software for it. At $3 a pop, it's a bit pricey, but was a fun souvenir for us to have, and we are now forever immortalized on Pizzeria Lola's wall o' photos.

Despite the disappointing ice cream sandwich, I really liked Pizzeria Lola. The pizza combinations were unique and tasty, and the atmosphere was fun. Because there are a number of similar pizza places much closer to our house, I don't know that we'll be back too often, but it is a welcome addition to the skimpy SW Minneapolis restaurant scene!

Deets

Pizzeria Lola

5557 Xerxes Ave

Minneapolis

The Butcher Block

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 01:26:00 +0000

Visited on Thursday, March 10th

Erin's Review

Ben is addicted to buying Groupons and other such coupons lately, and as I have mentioned, we also have a whole bunch of restaurant gift cards that we've had for over a year. The expiration was quickly approaching on our groupon to Butcher Block, so Ben's sister graciously agreed to hang out with Annie for the night so we could go out.

We left shortly after Annie went to bed at 7, and had no problem getting a table for 2 when we got there. It was still pleasantly full there, though, not too many open tables at all. They do a pretty good job of making up for their lack of windows with a nice exposed brick wall and pressed tin ceiling. I usually feel kind of claustrophobic in window-less spaces, so I was glad to see that it still felt open and well lit.

Ben does a good job describing our pre-dinner experiences, so I will leave that to him, but will note that I was pleasantly surprised by how affordable the wine list was - nothing by the glass was extravagantly priced which I definitely appreciated.

When it came time for food decisions, I told Ben I wanted to split one pasta dish and one meat dish. I was feeling unadventurous that evening, so stuck with the chicken parmesan, mostly because it was paired with mashed potatoes which sounded appealing at the time. Our food came out almost shockingly quick, which is really never that great of a sign. The food was good, but nothing that blew me away. I don't know that I've ever actually ordered chicken parmesan at a restaurant, I was kind of surprised to see the thick layer of melted cheese on top. I am a cheese lover, as you may have realized, so this was a-ok with me. I only had a few bites of Ben's pasta, it was quite rich and I wanted to save room for dessert.

After having our fill of our main courses, I checked out the dessert menu. It was pretty standard fare, and I went with the creme brulee. It was very close to over-torched but this actually made the crust nice and crunchy which I love. The custard was smooth and delicious.

I enjoyed our time at Butcher Block, but wouldn't rush to make a return trip. It was kind of a ho-hum Italian place with nothing remarkable about it (besides Ben's favorite server ever), so definitely isn't worth a special trip across city lines for me.

Ben's Review
I find it difficult to turn down a good Groupon deal, so I picked up the deal for the Butcher Block in NE Minneapolis several months ago (November?), thinking that the expiration date of 4/2011 was so far in the future that we wouldn’t have a problem using it by then.

Of course, it’s getting close to April and we still hadn’t used it, so we made plans to have my sister come babysit Annie on a Thursday night while we went out to use the Groupon.

The Butcher Block is located on Hennepin Ave., just north of University. We parked in the ramp behind Kramarczuk’s and walked over. We didn’t have reservations, which wasn’t a problem at all, we got a table immediately. We were seated at the first table next to the door and the tiny bar, which I thought was one of the worse tables, but it turned out to pay dividends later.

Our server stopped by to see if we needed any drinks or appetizers. I wanted to have some wine with our meal, so I wanted something different beforehand. We were in no hurry and weren’t going to order for a little while, so I ordered a bourbon old fashioned and Erin got a glass of wine.

Our server brought our drinks out and we told him we were taking our time and he said he’d stop back later. He came back to check on us and the drinks and remarked that he doesn’t get many old fashioneds ordered, though he said that since Mad Men became popular, more people were ordering cocktails in general. He went on to talk about Sazeracs and we talked booze for a minute or two. He left and Erin and I continued our conversation.

A few minutes later I was nearly done with my drink when out of nowhere the server appears beside me and quickly asks “that old fashioned must be getting sweet by now, right?”. Before I could even answer he took the shot of bourbon that he had brought over and dumped it into my drink. I was dumbfounded. After realizing what had just happened, I declared him to be the “best server in the world” to Erin. And he is. And he probably will be forever in my mind, till the day that someone else can top that feat. The only thing that would have rescinded his title was if that shot had showed up on my bill (it didn’t).

We eventually got around to ordering our food, we ordered two entrees that we intended to share, the chicken Parmesan and a rigatoni pasta with creamy sauce and sausage.

Our food came out quickly enough, with my glass of wine as well. The rigatoni was rich and creamy with small chunks of sausage throughout. The portion sizes were certainly large enough, especially given the bread we had beforehand. The chicken parmesan was good, but nothing special, with the standard red sauce and breaded chicken topped with melted cheese.

Erin was easily persuaded (by herself) to order dessert and got the creme brulee, which she allowed me to nibble at a bit. It was very good and I liked it more than I remembered liking creme brulee at other restaurants.

We had a great night out at Butcher Block and I would recommend it. As for the world’s greatest server, we discovered soon after he freshened up my drink that he was actually the bartender, just helping out by covering the table nearest the door. My initial displeasure at the table selection was completely reversed by the stroke of luck of getting an awesome bartender to take care of us.

Service: Best service I will probably ever get.
Food: The food is good, but nothing extraordinary.
Drinks: Full bar, with reasonable beer and wine selections. The bar itself is tiny, fitting only four or five people.
Ambiance: It wasn’t loud, but the volume was at a level where I didn’t feel like people were eavesdropping on us. Friendly people and atmosphere.
Convenience: I believe there is metered parking on Hennepin, but I think it’s pricey. We usually use the parking ramp instead, just so we don’t have to carry quarters.

Deets

The Butcher Block

308 E Hennepin Ave

Minneapolis

Town Hall Tap

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:41:00 +0000

Visited on Sunday, February 27th with Kris, Erin and Ruby

Ben's Review

While we were in Mexico a few weeks ago we found out that some friends of ours would be nearby on their own vacation. We intended to meet up with them for a night, but that didn’t work out, so we arranged to have dinner after we all got back. Last Sunday we met Kris, Erin, and Ruby for dinner at the recently opened Town Hall Tap at 48th & Chicago.

The Tap has a nondescript entrance, I drove right by it as I was looking for it, so we parked a block away. It is on the same block as Pepitos that we reviewed in 2009 (whoa, it’s been a long time). We arrived around 5:30 in the hopes that it wouldn’t be that busy yet and we could get a table big enough for four adults and two toddlers, but it was already nearly full. If we had waited for a proper six person table it would have been over a half hour wait, as it was we squeezed into a four person table with high chairs at the end.

The bar is enormous and beautiful, all wood with a huge wooden arch over the backing mirror. Kris gave me a little bit of trivia about it, it turns out it’s over 100 years old and they bought it from someone in Illinois and had it delivered here. I don’t want to know what the shipping fees were for that. If we weren’t there with the kids I would have considered sitting there, it was cool.

Our server came around to get our drink orders and even though I looked at the menu, I knew I was getting a Masala Mama, it’s just not right to pass this up. Beer Advocate has it rated as one of the best beers in the country. I wasn’t feeling in the mood for a half pound burger, and I’ve been on a Cuban sandwich kick lately, so I went with that. I’m sad that it took me so long to try the Cuban sandwich, as my total happiness for life would have been so much higher if I had discovered it earlier, even in high school.

I’d like to say that the sandwich was memorable, but to be honest it was just good. Nothing wrong with it at all, but nothing that set it apart from other Cubans. It was big if nothing else, and combined with the fries it was a huge meal. I never eat leftovers from restaurants, so I did my damnedest to finish it there, I think I left a bite or two. But really, you can’t go wrong with a sandwich that has cheese, ham, AND pork. Ham AND pork. It’s really something special.

I had wanted to try another beer before we left, but between the meal and my first beer, I was way too full. Kris and Erin invited us over to their house nearby because Kris had made crepes with caramel topping. This was a pleasant surprise and we, of course, obliged. Annie was a little trooper and made it through for a late bedtime that night, but it was well worth it.

Service: The service was good, we were taken care of, and they were good with the young ones.
Food: Great bar food, and they have a kids menu, but you have to ask for it.
Drinks: Obviously a great beer selection of their own brews and some guest taps. Also a full bar.
Ambiance: It was pretty hopping for 5:30 on a Sunday night, so I can imagine it gets even rowdier later at night.
Convenience: Plenty of on-street parking on Chicago and certainly some bus lines.

Erin's Review

Lately we've been eating out less and less on our own, and more with Annie in tow. Right now, she LOVES to eat and eats a ton, so the days of just bringing along a banana and some cheerios are sadly gone. When setting up dinner with Erin and Kris, I suggested the Tap because I knew they were frequent visitors and liked it. Since it is primarily a bar, obviously, I asked if it was kid friendly. She said the first time they visited, the server scoffed at the idea of a kids menu, saying they didn't have one and didn't plan on it. Low and behold, a few weeks later they apparently realized what neighborhood they were in, and an extensive kids menu was created!

As Ben mentioned, it was packed - I was really thankful that the hostess let us squeeze 2 high chairs on the end of a 4 top table, since there wasn't any other space for a larger group. I was surprised at how busy it was so early in the evening. Apparently this is quite the hot spot! Right when we sat down, the waitress asked if we wanted the pickles appetizer - I heard the words cream cheese in the description and was instantly sold. They came out quickly and were delicious - the blackberry chutney they are served with was a nice alternative dipping option. I also got a light beer. It was pretty good, I only drank half of it, but that's to be expected.

The kids menu has a few pretty good options, nothing all that healthy. I originally was going to order a cup of chili, but the waitress warned me that it would be too spicy. Who knows if it actually would have been, since Annie seems to be able to handle a bit of flavor, but I chickened out. There are chicken "toes" (you know, since chicken don't have fingers), grilled cheese, and ham and cheese. I went with the ham and cheese for Annie. They all come with a side of fries. It would be nice if they had another option, many places have applesauce or carrots. I wasn't going to sweat it for just one night. I brought Annie's milk from home, so I'm not sure if they had that. She ate one of the sandwiches and a few of the fries, and her and Ruby ended up splitting the 2nd sandwich when we stopped at Erin and Kris' house later.

For myself, I ordered the Brewer's Cheeseburger with Wisconsin Casa Creme Cheese and fries. This was huge. Seriously just huge. I could barely finish even half of it. I would have liked some lettuce or onions on the burger, but what can you do. It really was just a cheeseburger, with a thin spread of mayo under the patty but that's it. I guess I should have read the description more literally. It was pretty good, but nothing special.

If we lived in this neighborhood, we would certainly frequent Town Hall Tap - I liked the vibe, and they were accommodating to Annie and Ruby. I might just stick to beers and appetizers, however, or try something new for dinner. It seems to be a solid addition to the other establishments on that block of Chicago in south Minneapolis.

Deets

The Town Hall Tap (no separate website, but lots of info on their facebook page)

4810 Chicago Ave S.

Minneapolis

Scusi

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 03:19:00 +0000

Visited with Erin's family on Sunday, January 9th

Erin's Review

December was a bit of a whirlwind in our household. We normally go out to eat for birthdays, but due to the epic event that was my sister's wedding on December 18th, her honeymoon fell over my birthday. Thus, I was forced to postpone my Birthday Dinner. I had chosen Scusi since I knew the other Blue Plate restaurants we've been to have been solid and they are typically pretty child friendly.

Scusi was packed when we got there at 5:30, I was definitely glad we had made reservations earlier. There were several other babies in the house, too, so that was comforting. It's a very cozy space, and I really liked the open kitchen. The server greeted us immediately, and went through some spiel about how Scusi is doing a family plates "concept" - I wasn't quite sure what this meant, but when I hear family style, I think large portions of food that everyone shares.

We picked a half carafe of wine to share between Ben and I (honestly I don't even remember the kind of wine beyond red), and also munched on the crackers and bean dip, which were totally addicting. Annie was a big fan of those as well. They have water in bottles on each table, which feels classy, but it's easy to go through those pretty quickly when you consume water at the rate that I do.

It took us awhile to figure out what to order, but we finally came to a consensus after the server told us we should order at least one dish per person. I wasn't sure if that was the typically upselling, so we did go with 6 dishes for the 6 of us, that Ben details below, but I think we should have gotten one more. Each dish actually seemed smaller than a normal entree, so maybe calling these small plates to share would be more accurate.

I really liked the food, but serving myself and making sure to keep Annie fed and happy is clouding my memory of the specific dishes. I know that she liked the salmon best, and my favorite was probably the sausage pizza or shrimp ravioli. The only dish I noticed her intentionally dropping on the floor was the lamp pappardelle, but I don't think I'd take that as any reflection on the dish :)

There were only a few dessert options, but they were all very enticing - it was a tough decision, but luckily for once Ben agreed to order his own dessert so I could have some of his too. I went with the warm apple cake and vanilla ice cream, which was delicious and made me feel warm and toasty on that freezing winter night! Ben's chocolate cake was a winner as well. I'd love to go back to Scusi, especially during the day (or when it's lighter outside after 4pm at least) to see the space in daylight.

Ben's Review

We had a belated birthday dinner for Erin with her parents, sister, and new brother in law this past Sunday. Erin settled on the new restaurant Scusi in Saint Paul, owned by the Blue Plate Restaurant Company that also owns some of our favorite places like Highland Grill and Longfellow Grill.

Scusi is located in the old Heartland space at Fairview and St. Clair, which they occupied before moving to their new location in Lowertown. The interior of Scusi is small and cozy, much like you’d expect from an Italian, family style restaurant and we were greeted warmly by the hostess and our server. While I didn’t face the kitchen from my seat, you can get a clear view of the work area, which I like. For some reason it makes the food seem more authentic if you can see them making it. But, you can also see the people at McDonalds make your Big Mac, so what does that tell you?

Our server recommended to us that we order family style and share everything. We were welcome to order individually, but they would bring the food out as it was ready, so it was likely we wouldn’t be eating at the same time as everyone else at the table. Ok, that’s no problem, we can order family style. We looked over the menu for a bit and asked the server how many entrees we should order, two? three? No, we should order one for each person she said. We settled on five entrees and a pizza, thinking that should be fine.

The pizza came out first and it was fantastic. Easily the best part of the meal, and the biggest portion. Erin had ordered the special that day which had sausage and some other vegetables on it, but the best part was the copious amounts of cheese on the pizza, it was awesome. After the pizza came out the five entrees came at close to the same time. Our five entrees were:
Shrimp ravioli
Veal gnocchi
Salmon
Vegetable linguine
Lamb pappardelle

I’m not going to go over each one of these in detail, but suffice to say that while they all tasted great, the serving sizes were small. As each entree was brought to the table, we would each take a small serving and pass the dish around, and nearly every entree only had enough for a rather small serving each. This is in stark contrast to most restaurants where the portion sizes are so large that you leave feeling ill.

Because it was Erin’s birthday we obviously got dessert, I choose the chocolate cake with scoop of vanilla ice cream, hard to go wrong with that, and this didn’t disappoint. Funnily enough, the piece of cake was rather large, so I didn’t leave hungry :)

Scusi was good, but if we go back I will stick to the pizza, it was the best tasting and best value they’ve got.

Service: Service was good, we felt welcome and everyone was friendly.
Food: The food tasted excellent but the portions were small. The pizza was my favorite.
Drinks: Scusi has several different wine portions to order from, which was great. This way you didn’t have to choose between a glass or bottle of wine.
Ambiance: Friendly, cozy atmosphere. It was also very warm.
Convenience: A small parking lot out back, otherwise it’s on street parking. Not a huge deal in this area.

Midtown Global Market

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 02:18:00 +0000

Visited on Saturday, January 8th with Janelle, Jen and Brynn

Ben's Review

Erin had arranged to meet up with a couple friends at the Midtown Global Market last Saturday for an indoor photo taking session. Annie and I tagged along for the food.

We arrived at 10am and the place was nearly deserted. I had assumed that it would be a busy place given that it’s one of a few (only?) market type places that one can enjoy indoors during the Minnesota winter. By the time we left at noon it was certainly filling up, but nothing like the weekday that I came for lunch about a year ago.

In addition to being a fun place to kill some time, the Midtown Global Market has an abundance of ethnic food options. Erin got some Mexican food to share with Annie and while I was floundering on what to get, Erin suggested Manny’s Tortas as she’d heard good things and wanted to sample some of my lunch.

I headed over to Manny’s and looked over the options. A torta is simply a sandwich with varying styles, from their web site:

All tortas are prepared with cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, avocado, jalapeño peppers, refried beans, chipotle pepper mayo.

In addition to the ingredients above, you can select a meat for your sandwich. Recently becoming a lover of the Cuban sandwich, I went with their Cuban torta. It takes about five minutes to make the sandwich, and since it wasn’t busy at all I didn’t have to wait long. The torta was delicious, which makes sense becaues you can’t really go wrong with that list of ingredients. Erin was particularly surprised at how spicy it was, must have been the chipotle mayo.

While Manny’s Tortas is comparable to fast food in the sense that you just order at a register, pick up your food, and then eat in the common area, there isn’t a whole lot of depth to the service, but I will say that they were very friendly and were happy to explain what a torta is to me. There is another location on Lake St. at Bloomington Ave.

Because the locations aren’t convenient for me, I probably won’t be having another torta anytime soon, but certainly not for lack of quality, highly recommended.

Service: Friendly, knowledgeable employees.
Food: Delicious tortas, and not much else on the menu. They know what they’re good at.
Drinks: Soda, water, coffee, hot chocolate. They do have Mexican sodas though, which implies sugar as opposed to corn syrup.
Ambiance: Hard to gauge since we were at a larger venue. Midtown Global Market has a great ambiance on a Saturday morning though. Very low key and friendly.
Convenience: Plenty of buses on Lake St. and they have a parking ramp across the street that they will validate parking for if you buy something.

Erin's Review

As I explain more in this post, I'm involved in a photo group of sorts with a few coworkers. We've been lamenting the lack of color and warmth for photographic opportunities lately, so we decided to head to Midtown Global Market in an attempt to beat the blahs of January. There are quite a few different eateries in the market - some places that are more like grocery stores, and others that have take-out. They apparently have live music quite often, have a program called "Wee Wednesdays" for kids on Wednesday mornings, as well as many other events. They also DO in fact have high chairs in their main seating area - I saw at least 8 or so. We weren't sure of this before leaving, so in case anyone is wondering... yes. They have them.

I had never been to Midtown Global Market at all before, so I was quite excited to check it out. It really is a cool spot, especially in the dead of winter. We got there right at 10 and just walked around taking photos for awhile. There were so many food options that it was hard to decide what to go with - but I knew I wanted to share my food with Annie so that limited me slightly. Although she'll eat pretty much anything at this point, it at least needed to be something she could eat without TOO much of a mess. While I was deciding, I did pick up an iced Vietnamese coffee from Pham's Deli which hit the spot. We have made hot Vietnamese coffee at home before, and I love it.

There were a few signs around the building saying that City Pages had given a few of the eateries awards in their "Best of" issue - one of them was Taqueria Los Ocampo, for Best Mexican - that was good enough for me! I went there, and chose a chicken quesadilla, which came with beans and rice. I'm pretty sure I was one of the first people ordering of the day (it was around 11am at that point), so they prepared my order quickly. The quesadilla came with lettuce, cheese, sour cream and chicken in the inside of the tortilla. I would have preferred more cheese, but overall it was great. The two salsas that came with the dish were both too spicy for my taste, but I'm not a fan of spicy food at all, so that's no shock. Overall the food was solid - I'd go there again if I was in the mood for Mexican food, but it's nothing I'm dying to go back for - I'd much rather try other things at Midtown Global Market first. Annie loved it, no surprise there!

As soon as I saw Salty Tart Bakery, I knew I'd be having a treat of some kind after lunch, so I had been looking forward to that the whole time. Lunch was really just a means for me to get to dessert anyway. I chose a Passionfruit Cupcake and it did not disappoint - the cake was soft and light, and there was a passionfruit filling that was delicious. It was topped with some kind of vanilla frosting with flecks of vanilla bean in it. I liked the frosting, but it didn't adhere to the cake very well, and came off in kind of a chunk a few times. Certainly nothing that bothered me too much.

I loved our outing to Midtown Global Market - if we ever have a free weekend morning again this winter, I'd definitely return!

Deets

Midtown Global Market

Lake St & 10th Ave

Minneapolis