7th- bloomington park tavern, bloomington
11th- tucci bennuch, bloomington/twin city grill, bloomington
18th- big 10, hopkins
20th- don pablo's, bloomington
25th- great american grill, eden prairie
27th- little tijuana, minneapolis
7th-bloomington park tavern, bloomington (b)
no cod sandwich which is not a po' boy again. this time, it was the half chicken bbq plate. having read a lot of calvin trillin on food, yes, i know that this is not really bbq, especially since it is chicken, and not really authentic bbq. they should rename their food. anyway... i craved pit roasted chicken with the bbq sauce and a side of cornbread. since it vaguely falls under 'bar food,' i figured it would be ok to get it here and it may work out. (why not go to a bbq place then? well, no one else wanted to go to a bbq place...)
i'm a sweet sauce and sweet cornbread leaning person, so the mildly spicy and blandish versions offered here didn't do a lot for me, but the honey butter for the cornbread was a nice touch. the chicken was most good, though a bit smallish for half a chicken. tender, smoky, and all that kind of thing. the fries were above average for not homemade ones as they were warm. (yep, me and my fry obession at it again.) the dinner salad was impressive in its size and scope- a mound of iceberg lettuce, alas, but also seeded (seeded!) and peeled cucumber, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced black olives, red onions, cheddar and jack cheeses, and carrot shreds. it wasn't great, it wasn't bad. it just was.
the server was one we usually have (i am beginning to think there is only one in the dining area), and always seems rushed and a bit spaced, even if you are the only table there. on one hand, they did remember to bring the side of blue cheese dressing (which wasn't synthetic, like some of them can be) with the fries and not with the salad. on the other, a side of coleslaw was ordered with a sandwich, and the coleslaw was brought to two people at the table before the entrees, plus another one was on the plate with the sandwich. coleslaw for the masses.
11th-tucci benucch, twin city grill bloomington (b, c)
free food, pretty much. tip not included. the place that owns both of these joints (along with big bowl, etc.) sends gift certificates for these places out to some bits of the twin cities. so i went, as it was on my way to somewhere else.
a bowl of minestrone and stuffed mushrooms at tucci. good soup, i liked the chickpeas in it (kind of not very authentic), but pretty much anything you stick enough fat it tastes good. and this had a bit more than this kind of soup usually has (it was visible). the stuffed mushrooms were ok. i don't think i'd get them again, though. the bread basket was mixed. the waiter was attentive but not annoying, so that was good.
strangely, i ended up with four glasses on my table. water, diet coke, diet coke (halfway drunk) and ice. the ice was brought after i requested it be removed from the glass, where it was to the top. i don't like ice in cold beverages. it just waters down drinks and makes me need more refills, and i usually end up getting more than average anyway. the server also brought extra lime slices for the things, which was nice. but yet it added to the extreme number of things i apparently needed to eat a bowl of soup and some mushrooms. tb is getting more of a service b than a food b, really. the food was decent for the location/choices you have at the place.
twin city grill was dessert. peanut butter and chocolate pie with coffee (yes, let's get wired for the afternoon... caffeine on top of caffeine). the pie was fluffy in the pb layer and didn't really taste like pb. i suppose if i had a pb jones i could have gone to the restaurant that only serves pb sandwiches, but those i can pretty much make at home, my culinary skills stretch that far. i can even do the kind with banana.
anyway, the pie was very tall and had a large layer of whipped cream on it, plus pb and chocolate chips (straight from the bag to your plate). so there's no really good way to taste all pie layers at once without something being out of proportion or really squished or both. i hate it when that happens. the plate itself was strangely large, and had powdered sugar on it for some reason, along with some store-bought tasting chocolate sauce. the crust was falling apart in a bad way. the coffee was decent. the service... eh. average. i had two forks on my table, and another one was brought for the pie. apparently these places have it in for the dishwashing staff or something.
onion rings (split order) with the half turkey sub. i think they make the subs differently on campus, or the grill is seasoned more. anyway, decent enough chow and service. onion rings were a bit overdone and greasy, but it's hard to tell... one person's greasy is another person's heaven. it would be an odd slogan for a religion but it vaguely works for food. boy, do i need a nap or something.
20th- don pablo's, bloomington (c)
an overwhelming craving for big, stupid, american style nachos.
for me, these missed the mark. they were missing whatever it is that makes them unctuous.... the real huge blobs of avocado-laden guacamole, multiple cheeses running throughout the food, piles and piles of sour cream instead of a smallish blob, random olives, that kind of thing. and tomatoes, let's not forget those, in our mind's eye of a big, stupid, american nacho plate. and for chicken nachos, it was not so very chickeny of a dish.
the raspberry margarita was not at all bad, though. it makes a super girly drink... it's super girly, and it makes a super drink of that sort as well. two, two, two meanings in one.
so now i still crave nachos of the big, stupid, american kind, which means that unless i can find a less evil place, it may mean going to a horrid chain restaurant. blargh. not that this isn't one of those... crammed with families on their friday night out, loud sounds, weird, random music playing, harried server. it's the kind of place where i like to take off my glasses so i can concentrate on my table and not be distracted by the annoyance of badly designed space.
but first i should probably do something about my pad thai craving, and my craving for the huevos at good earth.
25th- great american grill, eden prairie (c)
great, not really. grill, not so much either. american, that bit's hard to quibble with because it is in america. i used to work at great american music. it wasn't great either. but average american music and average american grill probably don't draw in the people, i would guess. i expected more grilled things than one steak, chicken breasts, and hamburgers, given the name of the place.
it's a hotel restaurant, which you really wouldn't know was there, as the only sign of it is a banner hung outside the hotel noting the restaurant (which apparently must remain nameless to the masses) has weekly specials. which work out to be.... average food tending toward bland. the sandwiches needed heaps of mustard to be palatable, the bread needed toasting, the fries and fruit tasted of nothing, really. the seafood bisque needed seafood. and yes, i know i should not have ordered it, but my choices were not that great.
the cottage cheese, however, tasted like cottage cheese (which is a good thing, for those of you keeping score). the chickenwich (yes, i used a nonstandard word. i'm half-assedly trying to start a trend. i was going to say a nonreal word, but it's real in as much as anything is, and i'll stop the exestentialism tangent before i get any more annoying/further...) was ok, too.
the server was quite good, though, which brings the grade up a bit.
the lobby entertainment turned out to be the parade of police officers, ambulence people, and fire ambulence people. i hope whoever called them didn't eat what i ate. you never know. this was in addition to the classical tunes with the random pop tune in the middle (beethoven, bach, cyndi lauper...) on the boombox.
27th- little tijuana, minneapolis (a)
the nachos i wanted before, virtually my record collection on the boombox, coloring, still great for post-concert munchies.
© The bent sun as risen