6th- asian chao, philadelphia, pa
6th- vincent a restaurant, minneapolis
10th- baker's square, st. paul
17th- maggie's, wayzata
22nd- american pie pizza, minnetonka
27th- mchugh's public house, savage
29th- spoon, apple valley
6th- asian chao, philadelphia, pa (b)pretty good for last-minute airport dining, actually, especially chosen for lack of a huge line. i went with two things that wouldn't taste too bad if they cooled- lo mein and a chicken and mushroom combo ($7.95 for quite decent portions of each). the food tasted fresh, not greasy or cornstarchy. i would've liked more flavor in the form of sauce, but a bit of duck and soy helped.
while eating the lo mein, i was thinking that it would be nice to get things like cold peanut noodles and maybe even (not deep fried) spring rolls at airports- interesting food that stays decent on a plane, doesn't give you hideous breath or smell weird to other people, etc....
6th- vincent a restaurant, minneapolis (b)
since my day was not the best ever, hell yes i went here. and avoided the happy hour menu- danger lies that way. (ok, i lied. i had one thing off the happy hour menu- a girly drink. kir royale, $5. and it's all good. creme de cassis, bubbly, and a lemon peel. they're one of the few places in town that do them, and perhaps the only one to do them right).
but i was thinking they would have the corn soup that i really love. this year it's a puree (well, at least that's what they called it when i went in), so it's not quite as dreamy, but still really good. a bit thicker texture and the mouthfeel isn't quite as velvety- this tastes more healthy than the veloute. oddly, i ordered a cup, they brought in a bowl ($8). since i felt like eating a bowl, i figured... why bring it up? but odd. especially as i had the person that used to be the one reliably good server.
i also went for the cheese plate (small, $10.50) and went for a tomme, a bent river (sort of a camembert affair), and a bleu d'averge. the bread they had with it (and with the meal) is the same served with the soup and was not quite as 'french' as i remember. it was more bland than before- acceptable, but not great. it works less well with cheese.
a pretty decent showing overall, but i don't like it overall as much as i used to.
10th- baker's square, st. paul (f)
"sometimes you have no choice... sometimes you've got no voice to say..."
why not be semi-obscure and use arcadia lyrics to point out that coming here was so not my idea yet i had to attend (a family thing). i knew going in no matter what i ordered, it wouldn't be good. i didn't know that other bad retaurant karma-related things would happened, though i could've predicted a higher than usual chance they would...
had a very unclean fork in my silverware. since the server was generally awol, we swapped it ourselves. no refills (even when other people at my table got them)- i had to have other people ask for me. this was on top of a (somewhat understandable) 20 minute wait for a table, a not at all understandable 10 minute wait before the server came to our table and a way the hell too long wait (half an hour) for our food, most of which required assembly (vs. cooking).
so that was a big pile of suck. the server should have never been assigned a table of eight people by themselves, sure, but even at their other tables before we sat down, they were already waiting. a combination of not enough servers and us getting the bad one that so didn't wish to be there.
as for the other big pile of suck, the 'food,' i had a choose 4 items for $6.99, breakfast-style. the two egg 'omelet' was omelet-shaped, but was supposed to have cheese in it (it had a bit on top). the wheat 'toast' was wheat bread that said 'hey' to a toaster nearby. i had two tablespoons or so of hashbrowns on the plate (underdone), and an inedibly bad strawberry crepe (probably more 'strawberry'). i also had a bit of my mom's turkey sausage (rubbery), and her banana-walnut muffin (no discernable taste, was nuked too long and fell apart when you tried to butter it).
ok, yes, i knew it was brunch food and that sort of thing does make my bad restaurant karma even worse, but i've been craving an omelet for over a week now, and this was my first chance at one. good thing there's other chances...
this place makes me sad inside.
for some reason i've been craving a cheese and mushroom omlet(te) for weeks. the crap meal above was kind of the result of that, but really it was going to be awful no matter what i ended up with. out of a desire to go someplace other than where we usually go, mom whipped out her dining cards, and we ended up here, a place where i could get that omelet.
it wasn't too spendy, $7.35, but it was of the more compact rolled variety, not the big fluffy thing that some places have. nnot tons of mushrooms and cheese, but enough to tell what you're eating. it kept unrolling a bit, so that make it a bit difficult to eat, but it tasted fine.
the hash browns it came with (probably out of a bag) were crisp enough, though not fully potato-y. the toast, i went with sourdough, the two large slices were barely toasted. good with the blackberry jam a la smuckers, though. and if i were less lazy i would've asked for new toast. odd the easiest thing once more turned horrid. but i did have more luck with breakfast food at dinner than i had at lunch (see above), n'est pas?
the grade is more an overall thing, though. though mom though her roast beef dinner ($7.50) was 'c' level (no pun intended), the bits i tasted were not at all good. i didn't try what she called the best thing on the plate, the hot roast beef over a large slice of white bread. the gravy (she ordered it on the side) was salty (per mom). the mashed tasted boxed, and the veg with it canned. it looked very much like an elementary school cafeteria dinner (and so not the 'pizza day' kind). at that point i was not inclined to believe her re: the roast beef, but hey, you never know.
service was decent (re: water refills and such), and the food was really fast- i think due to the lack of wait we were out of there in a bit over half the time we're usually at a place. which is about right for the 80s sort of decor. i don't want to stare at that too long. i'd go back for brinner (breakfast for dinner) or maybe try the pizza, which they were doing a brisk takeout service in. but not anything that had veg or other sorts of potatoes for sure.
22nd- american pie pizza, minnetonka (c)
time again for my yearly visit to this place... oddly enough it's been exactly a year since i was last here. weird coincidence.
not so fond of the full price here- for quite a while it was $8.49 for the dinner one (20% off total), and the first time we went we got to use a discount of $7 off total on top of that. but this time for lunch it was $9.99, you get a beverage with it. it seemed spendy, mostly because there's not a lot to choose from, pizza-wise. dinner's $11.99, apparently, and they also have wings (and more pastas to choose from).
they had it arranged differently this time, with the pasta, soup, and salad on the same part, then the pizza on the other part. i did a bit of salad and a cup of the surprisingly decent corn chowder to start- i'd say it had fresh veg in there, and the corn had texture and a bit of flavor. not sure why they don't replace some of the iffier looking things on the salad bar with more veg, but i may be in the minority there. then again, not sure why they didn't hack the larger lettuce bits a bit smaller. but that's more universal.
i then tried a the fettucini alfredo, which wasn't worth it. it didn't taste like anything. the mac and cheese was a also a tiny bit bland, but had tons of melty cheese, so that made up for that (and i dumped in some red pepper flakes). very nursery food. i ended up putting the mac and cheese on the pizza again as they had no veg or chicken options out- i removed meat off the pizza and threw the mac and cheese on there. the pizza wasn't as good as before, it seemed underdone.
service was also underwhelming. it was very difficult to get refills, for sure, or to flag the server down to ask when when pizza would go out- when i got in, there was one slice that had been sitting there for who knows how long, that's it. it took them about 5-10 minutes to get another one out there. um, it's a pizza buffet. which implies there should be pizzas, no?
all of this seems to be quite a change from the first visit, where the service was so good they brought out a veg pizza for my table when i asked, then again the second wasn't quite as good as the first...
27th- mchugh's public house, savage (b-)
had the chicken melt for lunch ($9.49)- basically a chicken philly, with grilled onions, red and green peppers, and supposedly pepper jack cheese on a grilled hoagie bun. supposedly chipotle mayo for lunch. it wasn't really spicy at all, thus my questioning of those two ingredients. decent enough chicken, tender veg. the hoagie was a bit bland. wasn't the worst sandwich you can get in the neighborhood. the fries were a bit below average, though. not worth it again. service was good enough.
the irish part of the bar seems to be the drinks menu and some guinness and such posters on the wall- the menu isn't irish (nachos, burgers, pizza, etc., more or less sports bar), the building is suburban generic, the servers aren't irish, etc. not sure what the whole angle is here.
29th- spoon, apple valley (b+)
ok, it's not the best chinese(ish- they also do vietnamese foods but not so much on the lunch menu) food ever, but for a neigborhood chinese place, it's really good. they didn't do the 'dumbing down' even on their chinese-american sorts of dishes.
the fried tofu appetizer that we split ($3.50 for six larger pieces, about half a block of tofu worth or so) was crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside. the sweet and sour sauce was ok, i think it would even be better with a different sauce. peanut, maybe. or a sauce variety.
the lunch menu offers a variety of mostly chinese dishes in combos for $5.95, and you get a pretty large amount of food for that. but it's good- i'll say the chicken egg foo yung was one of the top two i've had in the twin cities, close to if not equal to the shuang cheng version- it was tender and tasted of eggs with vegetables.
not sure why the chicken was in strips on top in a good gravy in that dish though- i moved most of that on top of the chicken fried rice. though a bit cold and containing the weird square carrots and peas (that probably came frozen) had good flavor in it. and like the tofu, the sweet and sour chicken had a crispy coating that wasn't greasy, and the chicken tasted like quality chicken.
visually it looked like mostly traditional suburban vaguely chinese restaurant, the kind sans neon. the place wasn't that busy, either. that seemed odd, given their prices. and the service was good, though the lack of busy meant the entrees came out when we were still on our app.
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