date: 8/24/04
location: minneapolis
grade: c-

yes, i am obsessive about details. if i order a cheese plate that on the menu says it has cheeses, honey, fruit, and nuts, if there one of those things is not on said cheese plate (in this case the nuts), i want to know why when the thing is set down on the table.

i don't want to have to ask hey, where's the nuts, and ask again 20 minutes later or so because someone didn't bother to check on them and by that time the cheese is gone, and when asked when i want said nuts and i say no because there's no cheese anymore, nuts are brought to me anyway and they still don't tell me why there were no nuts in the first place (especially if the nuts would not have gone well with the cheese, ironically... walnuts, not quite toasted, not flavored, against a creamy blue cambozola, if i got that right, and a gouda like deal and another blue)... this makes me not happy. not at all. why were there no nuts? why? please tell me, i really want to know. since they were the nuts that showed up with the salads, my guess is they were out, but i'll never know for sure, will i? hrm.

obsess? me? you bet.

when someone else at the table orders a salad and gets a tartlette instead, that is not a good sign.

there was a bag of grout mix on the floor of the bathroom.

am i done quibbling? no.

i had the duck. tasty and tender, but i couldn't cut it off the bone with the knife i was given. the carrot puree was kind of bitter and not tasty. not worth the price of admission. i will say this dish seemed weird on a seasonal menu, warm duck entrees never seem like a summer dish to me, especially anything carrot. kickin' it root veg style is wintery, not summery.

olive tapas. $3 on the web site menu. $4 on the paper menu.

the bread... eh.

service in general... less than eh.

which is odd, as a few people had been there before and had not recalled anything being as not good as this. perhaps, someone reasoned, they put the b list servers on the tuesdays during half-priced wine night. and tuesdays are a day when you may not get the 'real' chef. at least we also had a free dinner card thing, too.

so yeah.

but some dishes were pretty good, from what i sampled, however, especially the salads. the mozarella was nice with the heirloom tomatoes and had some nice balsamic action. the spinach and goat cheese salad was well composed with some nice fruit bits (fruit bits, get them at your local grocery store now, kids!). these were good. the prawns in corn chowder special also tasty.

would i dine here again? i lean toward nope. drinks and apps, maybe, sure, on the patio for a flick, yeah. eat, if i do risk it, not on a weekday.

on a weekend, though, the beggar that got to our table in the middle of the joint to ask for spare change may have been less easy to remove in a way that was handled well by the person who did so (not our server, by the way). an odd and scary moment.

and hey... a shout out to the 5 other sole peeps that showed up.

and hello random strangers reading this.