date: 5/15/07
location: minneapolis
grade: a

here's something that rarely happens....i go to a restaurant, get a fabulous bargain, and have great food and good service. there's no foreign objects in my food, no weird inedible bits, food is hot when it hits the table, and everyone's food all gets there at the same time.

weird, eh?

it makes me want to go back to 20.21, the rarity of it all.

first, the bargain. if you eat in the bar, they have a three course menu for $20.21. if you ordered what i did off the menu, you'd pay $30+ more for the exact same if you were sitting just 20 feet away or so in the restaurant. where the bar is a bit awkward for large groups for dinner, it was worth sitting there for this. (we had four there.) we expected to get small portions for the price, but ended up with the regular-sized portions. which makes it even more of a kick-ass bargain.

great food- you get a choice of two items for each course. for starters, you could get korean beef shortribs in a tamarind glaze or puck's signature chinese chicken salad with a mustard dressing, cripsy wontons and cashews. one of us got the shortribs (reportedly tender and tasty), two of us got the chicken salad (cripsy and good, and tasted btter after you mixed it up and it sat around a few minutes for everything to mingle), and one of us got the same salad sans chicken off their stealth vegetarian bar menu.

you get just the two choices, but there is a vegetarian options. nice of them to do that, as the menu (full and bar) lacks vegetarian choices. odd for an asian-inspired restaurant. but the kitchen will work with patrons to get something vegetarians can eat. i think they do it on the fly, more or less. the tofu scramble that the person got was different than other tofu scrambles on previous days- the kitchen plays with the food. in a good way. this one was on the sweet side, with ponzu sauce. it was tagged 'interesting.'

i was going to get the crispy quail with a pineapple-black pepper sauce, spicy green and arugulua-pea tendril salad, but since i had the chicken in the first course, i didn't want to go all... birdy. it was cripsy, could've been more meaty, and not something i'd seek out per se, since the green thai curry with shrimp i ended up with was stellar. it was served spicy (too much so for most minnesotans, which was nice as it made it just right for us), with large and small shrimp (made for an intersting textural comparison), shiitake mushrooms and other vegetables, and thai basil, with rice on the side. it was pretty much perfection, and this alone was worth the price of admission.

but wait, there's more.... dessert. one person when with a chocolate torte with peanut butter and chocolate mousse, hazelnuts (i think, or maybe walnuts? i can't remember things...) and vanilla ice cream on the side. it was good, but it was a bit of a fall/winter dessert- very rich and heavy. it was a bit hard to eat (the mousse was a hard layer on top the torte). the lemon pyramid dessert with coconut sorbet... one of the three who went for it judged it to be the best dessert they've ever had. and may i add... yum. it was a lemon cake with a pudding-like sauce in the shape of a pyramid, with the sorbet served on top. very artistic, and what better place to do dessert art than the restaurant at the walker?

someone was thinking of pairing limoncello with it, and the bartender thought it may be too lemony, so they advised putting some sparkling wine and limoncello together, with great results- just lemony enough to go with it. you may want to try that at home, kids. they had a lemon peel (bruised?) for garnish. (if you want to go all fancy, you could try it with thai basil and ginger, too, as the bartender had mentioned they did).

and the service... as mentioned, everything was served at more or less the same time, and at the right temperature. glasses were kept filled, the bartender doing the service gave good advice on the menu.

the room is very bright, and has less art in it than you'd expect. well, less than i expected anyway. maybe the open kitchen is mean to serve as performance art. as mentioned, the bar is right next to the restaurant with no wall or partition in between. the view is pretty good- hennepin avenue, overlooking loring park and the church there. small quibbles- the chairs are a bit high and awkward with an odd cow-hide pad, and purse hooks would be a welcome addition. the restroom is also a bit odd- the coathook is way too high up, and the stalls, though they have a nice complete to the floor cubicle, are very dark and mysterious.

the dining area was half full, and the bar was pretty full, but most people were only drinking. not that that's bad, mind you, as that was bars are for, but it's hard to comprehend the lack of people taking advantage of the $20.21 dinner. it's best value in town, hands down. pair it with a jaunt through the sculpture garden, and you have dinner and entertainment for what it would cost you for dinner and a drink at a crap chain eatery. they haven't publicized this at all, though. wonder why.