Last Minute

Join the good people at Corner Table for the 5th Annual Jazz88 Restaurant Tour Late Night, this Saturday, November 21st. Chef Scott Pampuch will prepare... Join the good people at Corner Table for the 5th Annual Jazz88 Restaurant Tour Late Night, this Saturday, November 21st. Chef Scott Pampuch will prepare a four-course dinner with wine pairings! It's a 9:30 p.m. seating, and it's limited to 40 attendees. Tickets are still available.  Please follow this link and read all about it.

Check out Shefzilla and vote for your favorite local food media maven. It’s called the Golden Pen Award. 

You also need to check out www.woodfromthehood.com and get yourself some true Minnesotan cutting boards. These are made from trees taken down for public works projects, trees damaged in summer storms, et cetera. The boards even come with a "certificate of authenticity" with the city and zip code from which the wood came. A great holiday gift for the sustainably driven, especially if you need a host gift for Thanksgiving.

Loring Kitchen and Bar

I honestly have no idea when this place opened. Loring Kitchen and Bar  I drove by this place so many times, yet I never noticed this restaurant right under the Eitel apartment building. Maybe I have noticed the place: with some high-class dudes sitting next to the windows, sipping some early morning coffee, while I was driving away from another night of hang-over. (-__-") Appetizer: Lump

Rise and Dine at Blue Plate Restaurants on Black Friday

Ted Cooks 19th Hole BBQ

2814 E 38th St
Minneapolis, MN
612-721-2023
http://www.tedcooks19thholebbq.com/

Category: BBQ

Rating (Scale 1-10, with 10 being the highest):
Food: 9
Service: N/A (pick-up only)
Ambience: N/A (pick-up only)

Recommendation: Excellent. This take-out only place is special, and one of our favorite restaurants in the Cities – you get serious BBQ at very reasonable prices.

To be honest, the idea of take-out BBQ didn’t appeal to us at first. We were worried about the food being cold by the time it reaches home and we’ve always enjoyed eating BBQ in a small family-run establishment that doesn’t offer much in terms of ambience, but just great food. Ironically, there’s no restaurant we’ve frequented more in the last six months than Ted Cook’s (we also catered our son’s first birthday party from here.) It all started when a group of ten friends were coming over to hang out – we didn’t want to go out so a little bit of research led us to Ted Cook’s. It’s located just off the light rail stop on 38th St. A non-descript building that you’d easily walk past if it weren’t for the smoky goodness of the BBQ (or the large crowd with growling stomachs.) Poke you head in and you see a limited menu, a few chairs to sit on while you wait, and a porthole that connects the front of the house to the kitchen. Don’t be surprised if one of the guys from the kitchen pokes his head out of the porthole to take your order. These guys are cool, relaxed and don’t have a sense of urgency or panic, regardless of how many patrons are waiting. Good BBQ takes time…and love.

The menu is standard BBQ fare with one omission – the brisket. We’ve tried everything on the menu and have been thoroughly impressed. The place to start is the Rib Tips ($12.50 for a dinner). Smoky, fatty, piled high, and full of flavor – at this price it might be the best value in town. Following closely on the heels of the tips is the BBQ Pork ($12.30) and the BBQ Beef ($12.30). The mouthwatering pork (with a dollop of coleslaw) makes for an amazing sandwich while the tender, thinly sliced beef, lathered with their spicy sauce does wonders to a piece of white bread. Needless to say, they also serve Ribs ($19.90 for a full slab), which are good but not as juicy as the tips. If you want BBQ Chicken ($9.60 for half), they have that too, but chicken just can’t stand up to pork when it comes to BBQ. You have a nice selection of sides to pick from. We can’t say a bad thing about any of them but we prefer the classic Coleslaw, Beans, and Collard Greens. If you order a “dinner,” a side of JoJo’s (fried sliced potatoes) comes with – these hot potatoes are the only thing that don’t transport well; they tend to get soggy pretty quick. We forgot to mention that you get to pick a sauce for your BBQ. The hot has a nice amount of heat and won’t work for everyone, so we’d recommend sticking with the medium that provides good heat along with the sweetness and smokiness (we usually get a side of the hot sauce to make it more interesting.)

This place can get busy at dinner so be prepared to wait or you can call in an order (with a minimum of four dinners). Lots of street parking is available.

$$. Great value for food. We catered a large dinner for around $12 per person.

Kolap - St Paul

Lately we hit the wall, unable to find restaurants serving good, cheap, and different foods. I was about to hang it up. I felt like, to paraphrase John Madden, put a fork in me, I'm done. I lost my enthusiasm for writing and even Viagra wasn't going to give me a lift.

Then we hit upon Kolap, a Cambodian restaurant located at the corner of Dale and Thomas, an area many are just apt to quickly drive through. The outside is reminiscent of a neighborhood bar and the inside is typical 70s utilitarian restaurant furniture. That's fine with us because the money they save on decoration is passed onto the customer with heaping amounts of delicious food.

Beef shish-kabobs with pickled vegetables. Not pictured. The meat had a mildly sweet and salty flavor. Adding the vegetables made for a nice temperature and textural difference. It was decent.

Seam Reap Sour Soup with Shrimp - moqua, pineapple, lemongrass, cilantro, basil, chili peppers. I'm not a soup person but this was a fantastic soup ranking right up there with one of the best I've ever had. All taste sensations were engaged when consuming this soup and left the mouth guessing what was the next texture and taste - sweet, sour, or salty - to come. This was simply a wonderful and different soup. In itself it could have been a whole meal but I would have liked a little more protein.


Banh Sung. Similar to what Vietnamese restaurants offer. The spring/egg rolls are different from the Chia Gio and the noodle appears similar. This dish came out with a side bowl of a mild peanutty and what I assume to be very dilute fish sauce. It didn't have the zing of the Vietnamese version but was a welcome change. The flavors of this dish were much more mellow and a respite from the heat of the soup.

Lot Chha with Chicken. This dish had fat bean sprout shaped rice noodles along with bean sprouts. This also was more subtle in flavor but very well prepared with a slight wok hay flavor. Not only was the taste good but the textures were right for a good mouthfeel.

Total price: Slightly over $30, with leftovers for a nice lunch.

Bottom line: I shudder to reveal this hidden gem but it's a secret too good to keep to ourselves. Kolap is what this blog is all about, good cheap different sublime food at minuscule prices (for the TC area)! Kolap has restored my faith in TC eateries and my enthusiasm for writing. The little blue pills can now be stashed for the long cold nights...

601 Dale St
St Paul, MN

The Lyndale Tap House

Visited on Thursday, October 29th with Kate and Kyle


Erin's Review
I read a few blogs/newsletters that list which restaurants are opening each week, and add places to our list accordingly. I'd added Lyndale Tap House whenever I saw that it opened, so I was interested to read Heavy Table's review of the place. While it was pretty negative, I didn't want to rule it out based on that one review alone. Kate and I quickly decided we'd go to see for ourselves if it really was that bad.

Ben and I got there a bit early, at 5:45, and were seated at a huge booth. There are a few booths in the place, and also some high top tables in the bar area with chairs that have no backs. I hate those type of chairs, so it was a good thing we weren't seated at one of those tables :) Since the main complaint of the Heavy Table review was about the ambiance and clientele of this bar, we were on high alert, but the place was pretty much empty and very sedate when we got there so there wasn't anything for us to be annoyed about, no matter how hard we tried to find it :)

I was so hungry I couldn't even wait for Kyle and Kate to get there before ordering the pretzels. In fact, they were lucky we even saved 2 for them :) (the main reason we saved any was just to get a photo) Those pretzels were delicious and I would personally be satisfied just going to this place right after work for a few rounds of pretzels and some beer (if I could drink beer, that is). I think most people know I'm 100% satisfied with Miller Lite, so I had no qualms about the beer list at all - it actually seemed to me that they had a pretty nice list that will certainly please most people who will frequent this bar, even if they didn't have many local options.

I vaguely recalled that Heavy Table said the Tap House Burger was pretty good, so I went with that. I asked if they had American cheese as I prefer that on my burgers, but alas, no. Just cheddar. I guess this MUST be a high class establishment ;) The rest of the table got Pit sandwiches, and I think I was probably the most satisfied with my meal of everyone. The pit sandwiches had an absurd amount of meat on them, especially Kate's pit beef. She also noted that her sandwich wasn't really quite hot, and vaguely tasted of cumin which she doesn't like. Everyone did love the fries, especially with the cheddar ale sauce.


I can never resist dessert anymore, so I ordered the whoopie pie with warm chocolate sauce. As the cheapest item on the dessert menu, I expected it to be small, but no - this thing was ENORMOUS - far too big for us to finish. It was pretty good, but I thought it could have used more filling, and really did not need to be that big. It certainly satisfied my chocolate craving, but I probably wouldn't order it again.

One thing to note is that the SECOND Kate took out her camera, the manager came over and asked if we were with a media outlet, and kind of played it off saying she wanted to make sure she wasn't missing an appointment. We just said that the photos were for our blog and that seemed to satisfy her. After that, someone was at our table probably every 4 minutes, asking if we wanted more beer, anything else, filling water, etc. It was a little much but I guess they are just trying to be careful. Especially asking about more beer got old - it seems like this might be the type of place where people just pound beers one after another, but that wasn't really what we were going for at 6:30pm on a Thursday night, which seemed obvious to me.

We really would have no reason to go back to Lyndale Tap House because - 1. it's in uptown and thus is a pain in the butt to get to from our house, and 2. it isn't as good as other bars much closer to our house (Muddy Pig, Happy Gnome, BDP). However, that being said, I would have no problem going back if a friend was having a gathering there, and if I lived in the neighborhood I'd certainly go there for happy hour often.

Ben's Review
For some reason Heavy Table's poor review of Lyndale Tap House convinced Erin and Kate to try this place out last week. I had low expectations after reading the review, but I figured the least I could do was go and be satisfied that my assumptions were correct.

We got to the restaurant after a long rush hour drive from downtown Minneapolis to the Flat Earth brewery (W. 7th & Snelling in St. Paul) to get a growler and then from there to uptown. Not so much fun on a rainy day.

Miraculously, I found a parking spot on Lyndale about one block away and the meters there are only enforced till 6pm so I only had to throw in one quarter. This was all a pleasant surprise to me as I had expected a nasty parking situation.

I easily found Erin when I got inside as the place wasn't busy at all, which was a definite plus in my book. She was sitting along the back wall by the cook's counter in one of those half circle booths, which I love. Our server came over to get my drink order while we waited for Kate and Kyle to arrive and after trying to get a Summit Oktoberfest (it had switched to winter ale already, wtf? I hate that) I settled on a Bell's Two Hearted. I also learned that it was happy hour till 7pm, which meant half price taps and appetizers. Upon hearing that we also ordered some of the pretzels, which were one of the few things recommended in the Heavy Table review.

At this point, I'm feeling pretty good about this place. Half price taps and appetizers is a fantastic happy hour deal and the fact that it runs till 7pm is awesome, as you can basically get happy hour deals all through dinner on a weeknight. The tap selection, while not featuring many local beers, is still a great list of beers with a variety of styles so everyone can find something they like. The pretzels didn't disappoint and the cheddar ale sauce and the honey mustard that comes with them are both delicious, we even got more of the cheddar ale sauce for our fries with our meals.

I've been craving pork lately so I jumped on the pit pork sandwich with fries. Kyle order of the pit Cuban tempted me for a moment (especially since I had seen the Cuban at the Muddy Pig earlier in the week and that looked fantastic), but I stuck with my guns on the pork. The sandwich came loaded with meat as I had read about previously and it was 'OK', not awesome but certainly not bad. It made me crave a pulled pork sandwich even more :) The fries were really good and they were clearly freshly made, which I believe can make or break a meal, and were even better in the cheddar ale sauce. With our meal I got another beer, this time the Two Brother's Cane & Ebel.


As we were getting up to leave I realized that it was nearly full in the restaurant now. I had been facing the kitchen the entire time so I didn't notice the trickle of people coming in. They have a nice long bar with several TV tuned into the World Series, it seemed like a good place to watch sports. I think if we had arrived at 7 instead of 5:45 I wouldn't have liked this place as much, but as it turns out I would come back here for happy hour or an early weeknight meal.

• Service: Our server was nice, as was the manager, but they became a little overbearing after they discovered we were blogging about them.
  
• Food: Good bar food, awesome pretzels (and only $2.50 at happy hour :)
  
• Drinks: Great, diverse beer list and a full bar. Excellent happy hour.
  
• Ambiance: At 6pm on a weeknight the ambiance was great for me, kind of low key as they get ready for the busy time of the night. I doubt I would ever come here on a weekend evening.
  
• Price: Meal prices are reasonable for what you get. The beer taps are in the $5-$6 range, but are half off during happy hour.
• Convenience: Even though I found a parking spot, I'm calling that an outlier. Normally going to uptown is a headache and I'll stand by that.

Deets
The Lyndale Tap House
2937 Lyndale Ave S.
Minneapolis

Sidetrip: Melbourne, Australia

I am one very happy Red Pepper. And the simple reason is that Australia, and specifically Melbourne, is a fabulous place for a foodie. Everywhere I turned there were new chef-driven restaurants and, not just that, everyone was talking about the food and restaurants giving the town, in my perspective, a foodie mentality. All in all, a very vibrant foodie scene and I left Melbourne sad that I couldn't get to every restaurant that was on my list.

Two restaurants blew me away - Bar Lourinha and even more so Cumulus Inc. Tapas is hot, hot, hot in Melbourne right now and both of these restaurants were all about the small plates. At the tiny Bar Lourinha in the CBD (Central Business District), I had the most flavorful spiced spinach and chickpea dish I have ever had. Work conversation was going on around me but my mind was centered in on trying to figure out what was in this dish. I got to cumin and then I was befuddled and decided to just enjoy the really comfortable, eclectic atmosphere of the tiny tapas bar itself.

And then if I wasn't blown away enough by the spinach and chickpeas at Bar Lourinha, the two vegetable dishes I tried at the very hot Cumulus Inc. were out of this world wonderful. I literally felt like they changed my foodie life and made me ready to follow chef Andrew McConnell wherever he could take me. And his style of cooking made me think he is a kindred soul with Sameh Wadi from our very own Saffron (Sameh, if you are listening, go meet this guy!). The first dish was simply called spiced cauliflower with goats curd. It was tiny floret pieces pan roasted with spices and tossed atop a bed of smooth goats curd cheese. It was bursting with flavors and spices. As I sat at the bar overlooking the tiny kitchen area, I think I saw them put at least 15 different ingredients in this dish including pomegranate seeds. I had started with the cauliflower and I was so intrigued that rather than move to dessert, I decided to have as "dessert" another vegetable dish, the organic carrots with almond cream and harissa. I watched them making this dish in the kitchen and personally couldn't resist a plateful of beautiful orange babies tossed in a hot harissa sauce and then cooled with almond cream on the plate. These were arguably the very best carrots I have ever had. I loved the cooled heat and the crispy crunch of the barely pan-fried carrots. The restaurant was a hot scene too with every table filled. I was lucky to score a seat at the bar and so glad that I stuck it out to get that seat! Sigh. Wish it was here.

Melbourne was a bit of an extended business stay for me in a country (5 whole nights!) so I also tried other restaurants about town. Spring was in the air at the Italian Becco where I had my first stinging nettle pasta. While I didn't love the space and felt the dish was a bit underseasoned, it's vibrant green color had me expecting the bunny rabbits of spring to hop out of it. At Trunk, in a renovated old synagogue space, I enjoyed the open room more than I did the so-so pizza. Nearby in the CBD, I also had a large work dinner at Gingerboy, which is all about modern Asian. I had an amazingly crisp and creamy silken tofu dish and vegetable curry but the love of the food was hurt by the "fry" in the air which left the clothes in my suitcase for the next week and a half with a slight twinge of grease (yummy...). Finally, in South Melbourne I had a delicious frilled haloumi and tomato salad with a balsamic reduction at Sweethearts Cafe. It gave new direction to my life - haloumi belongs in salad and not just as an appetizer at Greek restaurants.

Anchor Fish & Chips

I can only live the life of the monk for so long. I mean, really. Barring the need to sign up for food stamps I'm not going to be staying in every night. Finally there are some new spots out there that I've been able to get to. J.Lo and I hadn't gotten together in ages - partially due to my bemoaning of expenses and partially due to a misunderstanding over the quantifiable dreaminess of Anderson Cooper. It's a story better left untouched.

A new little pub called The Anchor Fish & Chips has set up shop just down the street from Laura's childhood home. We converged there Friday evening. They'd just swung open the doors and already it was teaming with a hungry mix of neighborhood folks. On either side of the high top table she'd snagged for us were people taking pictures. The guys behind us were attempting to capture the magic of the Shepard's pie. "No, no... don't poke the carrot... gently roll it over. You don't want to get holes in it." Wise words, Ace -like finding Ray Brower on the side of the train tracks.

The menu is small, smaller still is the wine list. I had a choice of red or white, but at least it was organic. Better to stick to the beers at this spot. The toasty foam from the Bell's Oktoberfest tickled my upper lip like a handlebar moustache. After much debate, Laura decided to get the ubiquitous fish n chips while I opted for the hamburger with chips and a topping of Irish cheddar.

After just a few moments the food arrived. Her breaded cod was the size of a small human forearm.
She kept saying that it tasted like a doughnut. At first, this seemed like a positive assessment, but as she dragged on through her beige on beige meal, it waned. The breading was thick and crisp. The fries were clearly made in house and quite yummy. The crispty outer shell gave way to pillowy warm depths of potato yumminess. The fish was greatly enhanced by the tarter sauce that Laura had to ask for a couple of times. It closely resembled my mom's home-made, tasting of Helmann's mayo and lemon juice.

The burger was good and juicy, dripping pink juices down my grubby little fist. I felt lucky that I prefer my meat cooked medium rare. I know people that would have mooed at it before turning seven shades of pale and tipping off the bar stool. The flour dusted bun was nicely slathered with butter and toasted. The best thing on my plate were also the fries with the generous sprinkling of Kosher salt.


What absolutely did not enhance anything was the vat of gravy I paid extra for. It was hard to resist - I am a sucker for fat on fat (note more beige on beige - with the drizzling rain outside, it did feel rather English - but more the food they were known for a few years ago before gastropubs started sprouting like gilded beacons of tasty sanctuary.) It arrived warm and soon was cold and congealed. It tasted familiar. I closed my eyes and pictured a warm house, stuffed to the gills with family - all talking at once and... making copious Simpson's references. It tasted exactly like the grocery store deli gravy I'd used the first Thanksgiving that I cooked for my in-laws.

We were happy to toss our napkins into our baskets and head out just as the capacity of the place began to brim. The neighborhood was screaming for a great little spot for some decent, cheap-ish food. The Anchor Fish & Chips defintely fills the bill. Still, I was ready to meander down the street and belly up elsewhere for a grown up drink and some good conversation.

Bruce Cooks for Food Critic, Freaks Out

A noted food critic, who shall remain nameless because of the secretive nature of noted food critics, came to our house for dinner recently. Bruce, of course, wanted to impress this person, even though this person is a friend and has eaten at our house many times. But Bruce likes to get anxious about cooking. It’s part of his schtick. I don’t like it because it makes him all crabby, so I just set the table and go on about my business.

He decided to reprise the butternut squash soup, which turned out even better than the last time. I observed that the squash, roasted in chunks, gets food-processored into something that looks like mashed sweet potatoes. Then he adds broth and it becomes soup. I’m going to filch the leftover squash mash and take it to a Thanksgiving dinner, pretending that I made it myself as a special Thanksgiving treat. Do not tell anyone.

The cardamom broth, last seen as a treatment for chicken thighs, recurred as a sauce for some fish I believe he said was cod. It was much better with the fish than with the chicken, and that’s saying something.

Lest you think that everything always turns out great, I’ll tell you about the green beans. They were tough to begin with and they were undercooked. The apple pie was undercooked too, but that was partly my fault because I was trying to keep the oven from catching on fire like it did the last time Bruce made pies. He found a crust recipe that calls for chunks of frozen butter, which then melt when the pie is baking and drip so profusely that they overflow the pie-drip-catching-tray that one puts under a baking pie. BOOM! Oven fire. So when the timer went off and no fire had yet occurred, I strongly encouraged Bruce to consider the pie done, even though I knew it wasn’t. It tasted fine but the apples were too crunchy. The crust was awesome, though. It had ground almonds in it.

Noted Food Critic’s spouse brought a fancy lettuce salad with pomegranate seeds and other beautiful things, sparing Bruce the additional anxiety of making a salad. Noted Food Critic, I believe, liked the soup best, and also the fish. Luckily, Chez Bruce is not a restaurant, so Bruce won't have to endure the type of scathing criticism the NFC would otherwise dispense.