1st- benchwarmer bob's, burnsville
7th- big bowl, edina
8th- scoreboard, minnetonka
17th- blue nile, minneapolis
18th- chiang mai thai and 101 blu, minneapolis
22nd- little tel aviv, minneapolis
25th- little tijuana, minneapolis
28th- corner table, minneapolis

1st- benchwarmer bob's, burnsville (b-)

so yeah, the chicken cordon bleu sans jambon. (no, that's not how it was on the menu), and not a bad one at that. recalling that the fries here weren't that great, i went with waffle fries with that, accompanied by a seasoned sour cream. they're a lot better than the regular fries with that, that's for sure. odd after a year and a half i remember i didn't like the fries. can't remember important things, but fries i was not fond of ages ago, sure.

still seems spendy, the service (for a bit of a premiere party for a reality show a guy i know is on) was handled decently for a large group being waited on by one person once we were put in a small private room. but alas, before that, all promises the venue made and any reservations made were completely mishandled. they didn't seem to have their act together, and not a lot of people who worked there knew what was going on. not impressive. the grade in the end was raised by the service and food, a bit.

7th- big bowl, edina (c+)

panic time!

they took my favorite thing off the menu, the thing i ordered most of the time when i was there, a great little appetizer plate called 'chix mix with stix' (2 chicken satay, 2 chicken potstickers, and a pile of peanut noodles).

it was tasty, you got a variety of flavours and textures, and it was reasonable priced, about $7 or so, if i recall correctly.

now you have to get each item by itself. you do get more of each thing, but it'll run about twice the price. so hrm. don't like that. a lot of things here seem spendy.

so i got veggie potstickers, chicken teriyaki bao, and the noodles. the potstickers were pretty good, they've been consistent with those over the years. the bao were not quite as pictured from the menu description (they were more dumpling than sandwich, which i had thought, but the menu called them sandwiches, so i pictured something more sandwichlike than the bao i've had. partially my bad, i supposed, but still confusing). the noodles pretty much sucked. something called peanut noodles should taste like peanuts (duh).

after finally getting the server's attention when everyone else was done (one of those meals where we were abandoned after a minute into the proceedings when the 'is everything ok here' was asked... bad restaurant karma jr power activate!), i asked for more peanut sauce so that the peanut noodles would live up to their name (no sauce could be spotted on said noodles).

big or small sauce? they asked.

big, i said.

$1.50 for that, they said.

well, then a small.

not happy with that was i.

they did bring two, apparently if you get a large, even to fix the crappy rendition of something, you get charged. bad policy.

don't get a drink there, unless you get wine. it's more ice than beverage. hrm.

this place used to be tons better. oh, well, there's more authentic places about the twin cities, i'll cope. and can't say i was fond of the extreme upselling they make the servers so. it gets annoying when they have to try that hard. plus the bathroom was just... odd. one tiny tiny stall, one hugeass stall. (get it? ha. bloody ha.)

8th- scoreboard, minnetonka (b)

mrs. bad restaurant karma ordered a fancy burger that took a bit longer than it should've, but otherwise fine. though i would avoid the nachos on the bar of salad. yes, the salad bar (again, ha!), where salad is probably very very bad for you (especially when you dump cheese and eggs and blue cheese dressing on it).

they have a larger version, with a few soups (the chicken wild rice was not that bad), one hot entree (in this case nacho avoidance), and vanilla soft serve ice cream with a few toppings. better than your average slidbar. though this time it was oddly arranged. things i would put on top of salad were closer to the lettuce end than the dressing end, like said eggs and mushrooms, rather than your typical post-lettuce layer, tomatoes and cukes and more of the og salad items. i am oddly impressed they had both black and green olives.

following the rule of restaurants, in a sports bar i'd get something in the sandwich or app category. in this case, the salad extravaganza works as a corollary, as there's usually one of the two things (at least).

i am analyzing this waaaaaaaay the hell too much now.

and i ate waaaaaaaay the hell too much, too.

17th- blue nile, minneapolis (c-)

again with the absurdly long time to get food on the table. half an hour or so for a bowl of soup and a salad. another half hour before the entrees started showing up. service was quite the haphazard experience here, with dishes showing up in front of the wrong people, the server leaving when we said we were ready to order (and before we did), someone not getting what they ordered at all, etc. . the grade reflects the overall experience of the group, i think, rather than just mine, as i think my bad restaurant karma-ness was impacting others more than myself this evening.

most of the dishes are ethiopian, with some general mediterranean for instance, the folks who got pita to scoop up their food didn't get pita up for the job. it was more of a pita chip than a pita. and though i see why they are on the menu (for people who want the burger and fries no matter where they are, though why they would come here is a big question...), fries are an odd thing to have on a plate that otherwise has mediterranean food. (average fries, by the way.)

i went with a sampler platter of most of the vegetarian dishes, one a cabbage and potato affair (i didn't like the pickled cabbage, and in fact on the menu it didn't show up as pickled), and what looked and tasted like many bean dips- a chick pea, red lentil, yellow lentil, a fava bean, and split peas.

they came on and with biddeena (ethiopian bread), which reminded me of a pancake mated with a crepe that had an accident in the lab and grew to four times normal size. interesting, good for scooping up the foods. i would have liked to try one in a dessert recipe. anyway, some of the bean dips were spicy, but they didn't warn people, which in minnesota they should as many minnesotans are not good with spices. the dish it would have been good as a group starter rather than an entree, i think,. and it would have been nice to know which was which, pile of foodwise.

many of the other dishes seemed to have a way too big pile of rice. the dish that was supposed to feature schwarma, hummus, and babaganoush had a bigass pile of meat, and tiny tiny helpings of the other. the lamb shoulder looked a bit bony (rather than meaty).

the place itself looked like it used to be a mexican restaurant, it had that vibe (and some of the decor), and the whole time we were there, it was oddly uncrowded. maybe the place draws for their dance nights rather than the food. or since the u is not in session, there's fewer patrons. je ne sais pas.

18th- chiang mai thai, minneapolis/101 blu, minneapolis (b, c-)

i had to warn someone that i had never gone to dinner with about the bad restaurant karma jr. sometimes it's good to apologize in advance if you suspect something may happen. but nothing happened to them, just me.

thinking i could use it, i ordered the good luck salad with mock duck, medium hot. (mock duck good luck salad is fun to say aloud, and good luck mock duck salad is more amusing than that even, but i am ever so easily amused). which means that i got my good luck salad with tofu in mild. which, being completely spaced in a tired way, i didn't notice really, but thought 'hmm, that doesn't look like mock duck at all. oh, well.' then the server brought the right one to the table and asked which one i wanted, as they grabbed the wrong one.

i took the one i ordered, since the tofu was bland, i wouldn't recommend it. the mock duck version was much better, though i don't think 'salad' and come up with a picture of what i got. it was sauteed mock duck, onions, cilantro and such with a quarter head of iceberg lettuce, served with sticky rice. to me, that's a 'make your own lettuce wrap.' so i did. later, i got some lime wedges to squirt on 'em, which brought up the cilantro in it, which i enjoyed.

the table started with fried cashews, which are pretty addicting, and fresh spring rolls, which were a decent enough version. the pad thai was ok, didn't knock me out or anything. the squid curry was interesting, but i don't think the squish factor worked well in the dish. the person who got it thought it was decent.

though the place has a menu of girly drinks that are interesting- i ended up with a with a rama colada, their version of a pina colada. however, all drinks are extremely watered down and poured with a light hand on the alcohol.

the room was interesting, though they could stand to clean the restroom a bit more often (it's not my job to hunt down more tp for them, etc). and oddly, when we called for reservations they said they were booked. when we got there at the time we wanted reservations (no more than an hour later), there were many empty tables and we got seated right away. odd.

a while after dinner, we went to 101 blu. their name conjectured many guesses as to what kind of food they served, such as french, italian, and such, but basically it's upscale bistro-ish type of things, vaguely (it didn't seem a well-put together menu, let's say). we didn't eat the food there anyway, we went for some wine.

a decent enough list with some interesting things (we got the faux frog and a rioja), but my god, the place was fruit-fly intensive. which is annoying when you're trying to eat or drink or such. and the light in the bathroom there was the least flattering and most poorly placed lighting i've seen in a restaurant restroom perhaps ever (they have it so that a woman of average height would be unable to check her makeup, and considering the clientele they wish to attrach, that's puzzling).

though i will say you can play 'spot the ikea' there. bonus points for naming the products.

22nd- little tel aviv, minneapolis (d-)

if you don't order something, yet it appears on the menu as a charge and they don't take it off, well, because you ate it, that's not a place i'm going back to.

so i'm not going back to little tel aviv, as the server decided we wanted an extra pita bread, served it to us without telling us about the added charge, and would not remove it from the check even though it was something we never ordered.

between that and getting our food after someone who came in after us because they were clergy, well... if that's the only thing that would've happened, we may have gone back (that can maybe be put down to bad restaurant karma).

but it wasn't, and the other is not forgivable.

food isn't much to write home about, either, but if you keep kosher, it's one of the few places you can go in the twin cities. oy gevalt. it's about c worthy.

the place itself looks like it could use a good cleaning up, repainting, and such, even though they've not been open that long.

and after we were finished with the hummus we had to start with, we got our used knives unceremoniously dumped on the table, not replaced or on a plate or on a napkin. hrm.

25th- little tijuana, minneapolis (b)

every time i come here i turn into some rainman person, compelled to id the songs i know when the come on. and lo, has it been ages since i've heard 'you take me up' by the thompson twins (i'm old, where's my cane?)

not as good when it's not late, for some reason. maybe the grease builds up over an evening, so it's about the right level at 10 pm or later. still wasn't bad. though it was odd seeing the place in the daytime for some reason.

and odder that when we went in, it was around 7pm ish and there was maybe one other table filled.

and they need to turn the heat down in the sauna bathroom.

once again i went for the nachos, and i think they improved the guac. though i wish it came with that and the sour cream (or souercream as it was on the bill) and they weren't extra. i'm cheapass.

apparently the milkshakes are pretty decent, too. and though the veggie nachos seemed odd to me (carrots? cauliflower? that's way to healthy for the nacho experience...) they weren't bad either.

next up, little italy.

ha. ha.

(yes, not at all funny.)

28th- corner table, minneapolis (a)

attention most restaurants, i have located 'it.'

it is at corner table.

the it you're missing, that is, as many of you are.

everything here is great, tasty, wonderful, affordable... etc. service is lovely, the setting (except for the need for a bit better drapes at sunset) charming (you can play a bit of spot the ikea, but not too much), the food local or midwestern, mostly.

my companion started with the salmon crostini... smoked salmon on top of toast with dijon sauce, and a bit of greenery ( since some was purple, would that be purplery?). i got the smaller version of the nosh plate, swapping out the meat bits (usually for proscuitto or genoa salami or what have you) for extra cheese. mmm. cheese. the plate had really really fresh goat cheese, egyptian feta (better than regular, not as good as sheep's milk feta), olives, nuts, toasted focaccia, and strawberries from the vine (like homegrown or wild or something). lovely.

after, i went with the grilled tiger shrimp on tomatoes with basil. this was simply the best plated dish i've seen in ages, in that i usually don't want to stare at food for a while before consuming it. this, i did. though it was as good to eat as to admire. my friend ordered the ravilio with black lentil sauce, with some nice ricotta action on it, which she enjoyed more than the ravioli we made and ate at levain, which is saying quite a lot. (it doesn't show up here as it was a class, not a restaurant trip). the apps and meal came with an eggy bread which was very much like challah, if not challah itself.

dessert was the cheese plate. you can get two, three, or four cheeses. since i had the egyptian feta, and aged cheddar didn't seem quite right, we went with the apple cinnamon cheddar and the carr valley cardona. the cardona is a fontina-esque goat's milk cheese worth seeking out, made in wisconsin. and the cheese plate was thoughtfully arranged- the cardona was next to the apple slices, which... my god, find some and try. really. braeburn would be a nice choice, applewise, and toss in a few toasted walnuts. the cheddar, next to fresh honey (with honeycomb) and nuts, which that went well with. that came with a dark bread.

the wine list here is good, reasonably priced, and you can get glasses of any wine on the list at 25% of the cost of the bottle if you order two glasses. what a kickass idea.

service was most excellent, and the service staff got subtle hints. applause to them. we chose a wine with an amusing name, chateau d’aydie. made with tannant grapes, which as you can probably guess the name has something to do with tannin. it was a bit dry for my taste, but went pretty well with things. and speaking of things we drank... unlike many places, the water is not overly cold and filled with ice. no, it's a bit above room temp, and had the flavour of lemons in it. which, as a person who really does not like ice in any beverages, i enjoyed. it's another thoughtful touch.

and the bathroom is amusingly labelled. but then again, i'm easily amused.

i kinda which i lived even closer to this place.

 

 

© The bent sun as risen