2nd- brit's pub, minneapolis
3rd- qdoba, eden prairie
4th- raising cane's, apple valley
8th- ravello, long lake
11th-el loro, savage
13th- perkins, st. louis park
17th- cue, minneapolis
18th- cosmos, minneapolis
24th- lone spur, minnetonka
27th- good day cafe, golden valley
31st- qdoba, eden prairie
2nd- brit's pub, minneapolis (d+)
i should know better, but i don't.
i know i don't like most of the food here, but sometimes i have to try. and sometimes i am too lazy (and vincent's has too many people before pub quiz).
i had the welsh rarebit, which sounded tasty- cheese, with a bit of beer, melted on ciabatta. i've seen recipes for it, and it looked like something i would like (bread, cheese, where can you go wrong? well...). alas, it was cold, and not so cheese-laden. five pieces of smallish bread, with a hint of cheese. not good. not filling. don't get it, please.
i got a side salad, too, as i was still hungry. it strangely abundant, though on a tiny plate, so it was very hard to eat without dropping stuff all over. so i did. (i cleaned it up, however...). it had tomatoes, cuke, red onion, mushrooms, spring mix, and croutons. i got the blue cheese dressing, which was tasty, though not enough to cover the salad.
service was negligible. dinner was either bad or hard to eat. blah.
same thing as chipotle, only different. huge burritos, more or less, and a few other things. more menu items, owned by jack in the box instead of mc donald's, but the same concept- fast casual 'mexican' food. mom liked the mango chicken salad (also available without chicken, weird). i though the queso chicken burrito was ok. i'd go to either with the two for one (which we had) or free (like i had at chipotle). worth it then, maybe even without.
4th- raising cane's, apple valley (d)
this one was hard, as the food's not really d quality but if your entire menu four items- chicken fingers, french fries, coleslaw, and texas toast in this case- you better represent some damn fine examples of said four items.
they don't.
sadly, the only thing that wasn't average or below was the toast, which was ok, but not toasted on one side. the fries were eh (frozen crinkle cut, i think) the coleslaw not that good, even with pepper.
you'd expect the chicken fingers to kick butt at least, but nope. the coating was good, sure, but the chicken was overly dry and chewy, and didn't taste like, say it with me... chicken. it tasted like nothing. disappointing. the dipping sauce resembled ranch dressing that was orange, and tasted like it too.
so i don't get it.
i spy with my little eye something beginning with 'p.'
starts with p, starts with p... could it be... plastic?
as in plastic in my food?
of course it is.
as it's been a while since i've gotten any foreign objects in my food (that i can remember, sometimes it all blurs together, really), i suppose i was due.
bad restaurant karma strikes again.
this time it was part of the bag that had held the mussels in my steamed prince edward mussels in a chili-infused broth. it was a good plate, and i got a lot more than the small i ordered. not great, but pretty good. there was lots of broth, with green pepper, tomato, and onion. and we got lots of pretty good bread (the warmer it was the better it was) throughout the meal, with fresh sweet butter.
so this is one of those times where such an incident brings the grade down, as the server did not so much as apologize as state what the object was.
admittedly, it was a smaller object than i usually find in my food, but still.
since we had a $50 gift certificate from the tco tuesdays crew (if you go on a tuesday, you get to fill in another card, so hey... bonus...), we went multi-course, something we don't usually do.
mrs. brk started with the house salad, which listed itself mixed greens with balsamic syrup infused with hazelnut oil and some spiced hazelnuts. now that was good and all, especially the way it was dressed. alas, mrs. brk was trying to avoid dairy products and chose this salad over other possibilities that had cheese in them. so of course this one had stealth blue cheese, i guess, as it's nowhere in the list of ingredients.
continuing with her non-dairy theme, this time without actual dairy (that we could spot), her main course was a small version of the truffle fettuccini with baby artichokes, grilled asparagus, and oven roasted tomatoes. the plate required a bit of cutting and mixing to get the flavors to play nicely together. the homemade pasta was a bit chunky, and the plate could've used a dusting of lemon zest or a shot of lemon juice to make it play better together, but it was a nice spring dish.
i went with a small version of the lobster and ricotta stuffed cannelloni in a tomato sauce. it was small indeed, as there was just one of them (shades of the one ravioli...). it was decent, but maybe underseasoned or something. i think i was influenced to order it by mrs. brk rather than going with another pasta or a pizza, though she didn't sample it once it hit the table. oh, well. i'll live.
so once again back to mrs. brk. her dessert choice was the carmel apple phyllo box served with a raspberry coulis. after the salad hit the table with stealth cheese, my hypothesis was that the dessert would have some sort of stealth dairy. yep. whipped cream. well, i was happy it did, because that was one fine dessert, and i got most of the whipped cream.
and once again, a vast surprise when i got the cheese plate. well, it was kind of surprising for me, anyway. they have a cheese plate for an appetizer, too. but i got the dessert one. they should be different, i think, not have the dessert one be a smaller version of the appetizer one. i don't want salad and roasted tomato with my cheese for dessert. that's not right. it was weird.
the cheese was fresh mozzarella and some sheep's milk pecorino (i think it was a pecorino). if they would've left off the salad and the tomatoes, and tossed on some balsamic syrup and a few hazelnuts, that's dessert cheese.
the place looks less good in the light than the dark. there were a lot fewer people here at the earlier hour we ate, too.
so. to sum up.... mrs. brk thought her food (minus the stealth ingredients) was an a- or so (i'd give it a b+ and maybe take it down a bit for the stealth dairy). i'd give mine about a b-/c+ (without plastic, with the bad and wrong non-dessert dessert cheese plate). service was b/b- or so, and throw in a downgrade for the foreign object in food (refer to policy stated), we have the final grade listed above, changed slightly- twice- after a rethink. (i felt the need to explain this one). the more i think about it, the worse it is. so i'll stop now.
11th-el loro, savage (a-)
is it weirder that i go out and eat somewhere, and write about it on a web site, or is it weirder that total strangers sometimes read it? (if you know me, it's not strange, as you know sooner or later brk will enliven the proceedings, so to speak, so that's not weird).
i've been doing this for four years. that's a damn long time (though not even half the time i've had this web site, which'll be ten years come august. maybe i should have a birthday party for it?). that makes me feel old... er. (the geeky part's obvious, no?) the cane's in the closet if i need it again...
anyway, i liked this meal better than the one i had at bursville's el loro, or shakopee's el toro (same thing only different). mostly as i picked a better menu selection (seafood enchiladas, with non-rubbery squid and crab and shrimp in a creamy sauce, with a fresh avacodo salad and the best rice i've had at a mexican restaurant ever) and it was way less busy at lunch than it is at dinner, so service is better, and it's not as new as the shakopee branch so the decor is a bit more relevant (parrots, parrots everywhere). still ranch dressing with the chips and salsa though.
13th- perkins, st. louis park (c)
we were headed to good day cafe for mother's day brunch, but they told me they took no reservations. i am not sure if that changed after i called, but from what we overheard it may have (hrm...).
since mom didn't want to wait the hour plus it would take to eat there, we ended up at one of the few breakfast places nearby, the perkins.
it doesn't matter what we ate, per se, as all perkins food tends to be pretty much either crappy or average (or, somehow both), and the service is crappy or average (or, somehow both) no matter what you get. it's like real food, only different.
we had average on both counts. so it could've been worse (there were not foreign objects in the food, for instance). and it was a newer one, so there was only a few years of weird perkins patina about instead of decades.
but the non-food tasting food is creepy.
we'd still like to try the good day cafe.
what a difference lenny makes.
we had maybe 50 minutes to the show we were seeing there (lisa gerrard, fyi), and the server starts off on a supercilious note about how we have to hurry to get things done, then doesn't get back to the table for 5 minutes or more. (it didn't get any better until they saw the tip amount).
the food was not that great- i had the frisee salad with the poached duck egg, which was good last time. this time it was underdressed and needed salt, plus i ordered it sans any pancetta on it, and of course it came with the pork. (as did the amuse bouche- toast with sundried tomato and pancetta). the roll with it was cold and oddly sweet.
i got another app to go with it- cornmeal encrusted scallops. all two of them. so not worth $12, as they were not silky, not crunchy (why coat things in cornmeal if you serve them in broth? what the hell's the point? how things that used to be crunchy can be made soggy? that's so messed up) and it had some microgreens for no good reason.
the other person had the chicken with pureed potatoes and spinach had dry spinach, and was average. it was not a $22 chicken dinner.
we should've gone to level 5. even if the food and service were the same, at least it's cheaper.
compared to what it was, it was not that good. the best that can be said is that they did work to get us to make curtain.
and there were no foreign objects in the food.
18th- cosmos, minneapolis (b?)
hi, i'm confused about this restaurant.
dinner and a show again (jon stewart this time, great show once he got past the stuff that had been used on the daily show, which was still good, but i had seen it for free before).
anyway.
we received both quite excellent and somewhat perplexing service, for one. perplexing is the part where we ordered the pretheater dinner and told them when we had to leave, yet more than 40 minutes into it, we had not received main courses. i though the purpose of the pre-theater dinner was to get people out quickly, no?
excellent is the part where they let us come back after the show for dessert- and even held our bill until then. impressive. and water glasses and the bread refilled almost too quickly (during dinner, it was just us in the dining room for a while). the bread ranged from ok (the white bread varieties) to a superb wheat bread, served with what we suspect is hope creamery butter.
some of the food was tops- the seared diver scallops with house-made truffle linguini, saffron, and trout roe, for instance, we both got as a starter. it's like edible sin (i paraphrase my dining companion).
however, the entrees didn't thrill as much. the roasted wild acres chicken stuffed with chicken sausage made in-house, spinach pesto, dijon, and what was listed on the menu as mini yams but appeared to be a grilled fingerling potato. it was probably better that then chicken yesterday but for all the effort that went into the dish, it needed a tad more salt, and had the skin been crispy it would've been a lot stronger dish.
the grilled tenderloin with crispy polenta, tomatillo, queso fresco and braised oxtail is what was listed on the pre-theater menu, but i think my dining companion ended up with the tenderloin with blue cheese potato gratin, green peppercorn, spring onion, and truffle pommes paille (as it had spring onions, in it, and no polenta, that's my guess). hello, confused here.... it had some major inedible fatty bits. not plesant.
since it was medium rare, that couldn't have taken that long. maybe they made the chicken sausage right when i ordered? what took so long?
back to the highlight reel for dessert- a rich chocolate gâteau with what we would guess was a vanilla ice cream of some sort (it didn't match the menu) and a toffee chip was perfectly paired by a red dessert wine, a black muscat.
i am not entirely sure what i had, frankly. again, the menu and reality part ways. the listed menu has orange ice cream yuzu, with yuzu curd, heart of palm, lemongrass sorbet. hearts of palm, i am not so sure of, and i was thinking the lemongrass sorbet had hints of coconut. it was still nice and zesty (literally- there was lots of zest in it- and figuratively). it paired well with a sauternes. it reminded me of the 20.21 dessert, in a good way, but i am not sure any lemony dessert could be as good as that.
and speaking of, the pre-theater dinner is $35, which saved me about $8 off the regular price. instead of that, i'd go with maybe two apps (the crab cakes and foie gras, from what's listed at the moment) and maybe cheese, maybe not. the steak dinner saved about $15 (if it were the other menu version), so that would be worth it, but again, not impressive entrees.
all the plates. however, were some of the best-composed plates i've seen in a while. they have a large selection of interesting plate shapes, too. we saw a flying nun-hat shaped one used to serve soup we saw go by, for instance. so they're good with details like that.
they also get props for having their web site updated to include this week's tasting menu. not many places bother to update menus once they hit the web.
i'd not been to the dining room before, and though the room was interesting... very arty walls contrast with very plain walls (and one very big plain wall that needed art). the tables in the middle seem very exposed compared to the seating near the walls. both pre-and post-theater the place seemed kind of empty. maybe people ate when we left (at 7) and before we got back (8:45 pm or so), and will hit it later? who knows.
we enjoyed ourselves, though, and that's what counts in the end, i guess, more than the confusing bits.
24th- lone spur, minnetonka (b)
very good service, pretty average food. oddly, mrs. brk and i had the same things we had in august 06, except she got a baked potato instead of fries. the half-chicken was still good, the coleslaw still a bit goopy. my fajitas were less good, still needed more cooking, and were average.
27th- good day cafe, golden valley (b-)
because i've not eaten out enough this month, apparently.
since receiving nothing but glowing reviews in all media, can good day cafe possibly live up to the hype?
not when bad restaurant karma jr. is there.
that isn't to say it was horrid. as you can tell by the grade, it wasn't.
mrs. brk and i were there on the mother's day 'rain date,' as this was the place that told me it didn't take reservations, but as it turned out it took call-ahead reservations for the day of. they still do, btw. we ended up at perkins, but wanted to try this place.
when we called ahead at 10:30 am, they said it would at least be an hour, plus more time when we got there. that held true- we got there at 11:30 am (more or less) and we were told there'd be up to a 30 minute wait, but it was just 10.
while waiting, we checked out the menu. apparently on sunday you can't order off the lunch menu (currently, this may change when they start doing dinners, for all i know), just the breakfast one. it was kind of short, but interesting. twists on favorites, mostly. two kinds of omelets (souffle and french), some benedicts, pancakes, various egg combos, baked goods, and many kinds of beverages.
since we knew what we wanted, we ordered right away- we decided to get a small order of beignets to start, and we were told they would arrive first. i went with the crab cake benedict, mrs. brk with the two eggs and bacon, both of which came with gdc potaotes. she got decaf, cream just in case, i got water.
this is where things started breaking down, as a table for about 14 people came and sat in the same section as us.
the beignets hit the table the same time as the rest of the food, the cream never got there, and then when they came to see if we were ready for our check, we got asked if we got the toast. what toast, we asked, as it does not say on the menu you get toast... but toast you get.
we each got... one... whole... slice. and it was cold. but the homemade jam with it was quite good.
except for us, until we were done. they still brought it. hrm. at that point, an offer of maybe a buck or two off the bill would've made more sense.
i had to almost shake my glass in front of passing servers to get a refill. the order of beignets on the menu was not what ended up on the bill (it was odd, and only a $.25 difference... i mentioned the difference o the server, that was ignored).
yeah, service pretty much sucked. the only bright spot in the service was that most of the food hit the table hot and quick (though someone else brought it), except for the toast.
and it was quite good, though small. other than the potatoes (fried with onions) needing a bit more cooking, they were perfectly seaoned. the crab cake had tender chunks of tasty crab, though the benedict was hard to eat (stuff slid off), perfect sauce, and eggs poached just right.
mrs. brk said her breakfast was also tasty. her potatoes were perfect, of course. beignets were good, but mine was a tad underdone inside (and of course mrs. brk's was perfect).
it seemed a bit spendy when it was all totaled, though, for breakfast. that, plus the noise level in the place is high (high ceilings, polished concrete floors, and a vast room don't help... and not that it had anything else to do with the sound, but the room was on the dark side of things, which seems odd in this sort of breakfast joint) and with the wait, i don't think i'd go back here on a weekend, ever (packed full of families from the 'burbs, not surprisingly), though maybe if you hit it at 1 pm or so (they close at 2 pm) you'd have less of a wait. maybe on a weekday, maybe not.
it doesn't seem very comfortable, except for the near the to-go area where you wait. it's like the grill chain (highland, edina, etc.) on a much larger scale, and it loses charm in that. the food was maybe an a- for mrs. brk, a b+/b or so for me but the service was more of a c- or lower, depending on how generous you feel. but since a table of that many people would probably not sit next to anyone who isn't me, you'd all have better service. brk!
31st- qdoba, eden prairie (c-)
queso burrito - tortilla + chips = nachos.
queso + chips = soggy
soggy = not so good
2 x one month = 2 4 1 coupon + (bad recall on when we were here last)
does not compute.
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