4th- panzanella bread company, shakopee
6th- good earth, edina
6th- d'amico and sons, edina
8th- boston market, st. louis park
11th- mojito, st. louis park
18th- mell's beauty bar, minneapolis
20th- cafe barbette, minneapolis
25th- mainstreet bar and grill, hopkins
28th- ikea restaurant, bloomington

4th- panzanella bread company, shakopee (a-)

like panera only different. and i would venture to say better, though i reserve the right to change my mind if things change on future visits. anyway, sandwiches, breads, soups, salads, some pastas at dinner. they have pizzas, which may only be dinner, too. pastries, croissant sandwiches, and omelets for breakfast.

you order at the counter, and depending on the time of day, they'll bring you the chow (dinner, i think) or you wait for it at the counter (breakfast, lunch)

i've not had a good panini in ages. here it was nice thick bread, real chicken breast, pesto, and lots of tasty cheese. fairly large, too. i'd rather have something besides chips with it, but chips it was. the other stuff people ordered looked decent to really good, too. i think i'd go with sandwiches here and not pasta or salad (those both looked closer to the decent rathern than really good end of things). i'll have to try more stuff from here. perhaps another restaurant option it is.

6th- good earth, edina (b)

like last time, only with slightly better tatoes, and less generous with the sour cream and guac. the server also underbilled us, and when we told her, didn't bother to thanks us for letting them know, which was... interesting. still like roseville better, still miss toast. toast toast toast. got a caramel roll to go, it wasn't carmel roll enough for me, and tasty healthy, which is not quite what i was looking for.

6th- d'amico and sons, edina (b-/c+)

i don't like a lot of their pasta salads, as they tend to go a bit gloppy on the mayo for my taste. and i wasn't in a pizza mood like i was previous (in the first ever blurb thing, historical note). so i got a cold salad trio.

first up, calamari, shrimp, white beans, and a few veg in a vinagrette. they needed to clean the shrimp a bit better, but it was pretty good.

the calamari weren't rubbery or anything. then an artichoke heart, tomato, red onion, red and green pepper salad in another vinagrette. decent enough, but the artichoke heart was so very canned. and it needed a bit of cleaning, too.

the roasted veg with chicken didn't need cleaning, and came together well, but i would have liked it if the chicken were cut in strips and not just plunked atop the veg. i'm picky.

love their bread, it makes good toast too, as a pointless aside there, but the butter was in the stage i am not fond of using it in (for those of you who know the nora's story, you know what i mean... if the butter is not at least half solid, i'll stay the hell away from it).

counter ordering was run well despite a crowd. and we snagged an outdoor table, which was nice.

had a few details been taken care of, it would have gotten a better grade.

9th- boston market, st. louis park (b)

there was a joke in the sunday comic about this place in 'get fuzzy' today.

there were a few places that closed before 8 pm for dinner in the area. so we went here, they're open all the way til 9.

there were not a lot of people there at that time so we got larger than usual piles of food here. turkey, garlicdillnewpotatoes(thatweren'tthatnew), creamed spinach (some day i will figure out why i like that), corn bread. warm, decent enough, etc. ditto the quarter dark-meat chicken, though the steamed veg chosen looked a bit watery. and don't get the macandcheese even though they say they have blue cheese in it. not worth it.

11th- mojito, st. louis park (a-)

there's a bit of a showy aspect about this place, what with the salad ceremony and the meat parade. on a wednesday, undercrowded dinner, it almost seems a bit too much.

dinners start with the salad show, which is the salad brought to the table in a big old bowl, then the pepper is ground (if desired) and dressing poured on the salad. i am not sure why it's done this way. but it is. the salad itself is a mix of greens, tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, and red pepper. the ceremonial dressing is a citrus vinagrette. it was quite good, but it could have been a bit more picked over (we had a few lettuce stems in there). it came with fried cheese bread, which is rarely a bad thing, but could have used a bit more cheese for my taste. the bring some latin-themed sauces to the table to dip your bread in, chimichuri, hot sauce, and a bbq-type sauce.

mom got the half chicken, i got the salmon special. entrees are generally a la carte here. this is another place i'd say that if we didn't have a two for one coupon, at least that dinner would not have been worth the price, especially if a side is added. $20 seems a bit much for a small half-chicken, salad, and maybe some fries. it's not that special. good, yes, even very good. but still... anyway, it came in a mushroom sauce, and the sauce the chicken was done in tasted like a sweet but spicy bbq sauce (a la the dipping sauce).

(side note, we picked up buca yesterday for dinner... with buca small, it would have worked out to paying $13 for 2 mid-sized chicken breasts in lemon caper sauce had it not been for the coupon... is that worth the price of admission? yeah, i'm cheap, but still...).

i had the salmon special, which was grilled, and plated atop mashed potatoes with some scotchbonnet pepper action (sofrito may have been involved there, too). tasty, it was. the salmon was flavored nicely from the grill and the... seasonings they used. apparently they used to do pizzas that were more affordable, but they don't anymore.

the meat parade dinner looked interesting too, and that may be more worth the money. they have a 9 different grilled meats that are paraded around the restaurant by men dressed in pseudo-gaucho costumes (why, i don't know). you cann eat as much of the meats as you want (it also comes with side dishes). the meat parade looked very tasty, but it looks like a thing to do only when you want to eat lots of meat, which is not something i think about as a general rule. (not a very vegetarian friendly place, i will say.)

though they do have some 2 for 1 coupons on the net for lunch, which would be interesting to try, the sandwich selection looked a lot different than what usually abounds in st. louis park, that's for sure.

we both stuck with water, eschewing the theme mojito drinks. which was refilled quite promptly. the service was quite good here, and that may be because there were a lot of servers with not a lot to do this particular time of the evening. the place is wonderful to look at, too. spaces are well-defined by different decor, but it all works as a whole. bathrooms are also interesting. they have a chalkboard outside of the area that's fun to scan and draw on, too. parking is... interesting, even on a busy wedensday (someone needs to label the ramps in that development... blargh).

i'd go back, i am not sure of mom would. not her kind of scene, but it's not intended to be.

18th- mell's beauty bar, minneapolis (b+)

bread pudding from the pastry chef that used to work at la belle vie. i wanted it. i really did.

so of course they were out of it. hrm.

but the artichoke dip was tasty (even cold), the pizza was good, the service good. a limited menu, but it works for the place.

for $15 you can get a mini-manicure (ask for james!) or a massage and a drink, which is a good deal, and they have a nice selection of girly drinks, which makes me content. a good place for a party.

20th- cafe barbette, minneapolis (b)

fries, my golden friend.

pommes frites, home fries, baked potato fries, how i love thee.

i came here for the fries, hearing about them here and there... superlatives, even.

was i disappointed? well, kinda.

as one can gather from the grade, the fries famed here don't live up to vincent's.

can anyones?

probably not.

by other standards, they would have ranked highly, though.

they came with a side of flavored aioli and ketsup, vinegar on the side. the vinegar didn't quite do it for me with these. that i dipped them in anything says something... so far only vincent's fries remain nekkid on my palate. pretty darned good, not great. that's what i kind of expected...

anyway, i also had the croque madame. could've used a lot more cheese for my palate, and was just... ok.

it's a nice neighborhood cafe, though, even if the server seemed a bit confused to have a customer. not that the service was bad... it just seemed like the server was... not quite with the whole day.

25th- mainstreet bar and grill, hopkins (b+)

when i was last here, they had changed the menu from previous. and now i think they did it again, as i saw stuff i hadn't recalled last time.

for instance, the portobello swiss chicken sandwich, which i got. and i did remember enough to not order the fries, but got the crisscut fries instead. a much better choice. the sandwich was pretty good, but could've used some mayo or something on the bread.

everything was served quickly, the water refilled at a nice pace, and it wasn't too smoky or crowded. it was the server's first night, which was ironically a lot better than whatever night the server was on last night at bobino.

28th- ikea restaurant, bloomington (b)

the last time i ate an an ikea (many years ago), the food was sad. a chicken salad croissant and french fries that were humdrum enough to make me not want to eat there until the menu was changed. loved the goods, hated the food.

when i was there on opening day of the one here, the menu had changed (don't cha know, you betcha) but there was no way on earth i was waiting in a line that was... that.... long... just to eat at... ikea. or anywhere that you get your own food and use a tray. (pointless aside- i ended up at morelos).

this time, the line was shorter, and a bunch of us planned to eat before we shopped, so ikea restaurant it was after all these years. i got the gravlax plate. it had more salmon than i thought it would, and it was good. it came with mustard and bread, though it didn't have the bread on the plate, so i had to ask about it after i paid, then loop back to get it.

it could have used a side dish, like a few potatoes or something, or a salad. i was contemplating the salad bar, but it didn't thrill me. or even interesting me. salad does not have to thrill me to eat it, but that's a nice side benefit when you can get it.

the vegetable soup was worse, as it was at the bottom of the batch, and it was a creamy sort of thing that i don't usually associate with vegatable soup. vegetable soup to me means usually means red. not yellow. but for $2.89 or so for soup and a salad, that makes a cheap lunch. i'd have it if the soup were... happier.

i also picked up a bit of daim torte, daim it. way tasty. you can take it home, too, if you want to wait in another line after you wait in the line for lunch and the line to buy things that are not from the cafe. since i got daim candy at the cafe, i had the line trifecta. i wanted a yogurt cone after hours of shopping, but alas i was not going to wait in one... more... line...

and let's just say the staff needs more training. it's not the well oiled machine the ikea that i have visited the most, the conshohocken one (in pa, and i probably spelled that wrong and i feel too lazy to look it up right about now ) is.

anyway, back to the torte. 'twas very good, it would be nice with some coffee, like in a general foods international coffee sort of thing. i also tasted a few more desserts, the names of which no one bothered to read or remember or anything.

the apple pie with creamy sauce was better than i thought it would be, but in the end just ok. i liked the sauce better than the pie. the egg shaped baked good with... apples? something? was underwhelming. and, not surprisingly, vague.

the... advanced ho-ho thing was way good. it's green pastry wrapped around an almondy-coconutty-chocolatey filling, and the ends were dipped in chocolated. some people liked it better than the daim torte. heretics. that would have been good with spiked cocoa. mmm. too bad you can't pick them up (that we saw) in the cafe area to take home with you.

my favorite ikea product name to repeat over and over is ektorp. ektorp. ektorp. it had a nice mouthfeel to it. ektorp.

and let's not forget the not lamp. i can see a wayne's world meets abbot and costello routine on that... is that a lamp? not? it's not a lamp? yes, it's a lamp, not. fate to end.