The Rookery — Travail’s micro-plate sister in Robbinsdale

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We finally made it over last week to the Rookery, Travail’s new a-la-carte sister restaurant in Robbinsdale. The two restaurants share one big open space in a new building, so it’s a little hard to tell where one restaurant starts and the other ends. As we entered, at around 8:30 on a Thursday night, there was a long line of customers waiting for tables. When I asked, I was told that there would be a one-hour wait for a table at Travail – which offers only a prix-fixe tasting menu for two – but that we could be seated in the Rookery immediately. (Travail’s standard fixed-price menu is $110 for ten courses for two people, but it does offer an early-bird special of $85 for diners who are seated before 6 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, and a $90 date night special all night on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.)That made the decision pretty easy. Continue Reading

My Huong Kitchen on Eat Street: Vietnamese street food and French crepes

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If you are a fan of the Wong family’s Asian restaurants – Nina Wong’s Chindian Cafe, and Tammy Wong’s Rainbow Chinese Restaurant, you’ll probably enjoy the family’s newest culinary offering – Tracy Wong’s My Huong Kitchen. I’ve written about this tiny (14 seat) Eat Street eatery before – when it was called, um, Eat Street Eatery, but since then it has gotten a new name and a greatly expanded menu.The new menu still features French crepes, banh mi sandwiches and bubble tea, but a lot of new dishes have been added, including com tam (broken rice plates); bun (noodle salads), pho (beef noodle soup), spring rolls, egg rolls and specialty dishes such as banh mi bo ko (beef stew with French baguette) and Hai-nam chicken.It’s a pretty good introduction to Vietnamese street food, and it gets expanded on weekends, with takeout specials like ground pork and broken rice steamed in a banana leaf, steamed pork buns and dessert specials.I have enjoyed everything I have sampled, including the crisp pork egg rolls (2/$3.50) and very fresh rice paper spring rolls wrapped with pork and shrimp (2/$3.50), the broken rice rice plate with lemon grass pork chop, shredded pork (skin) and crab meat cake ($6.95), grass jelly bubble tea ($3.95) and the grilled beef banh mi sandwich ($3.95). My only quibble is with the Hainanese chicken. The traditional version of this dish is served with the bone in and the skin (very pale) on, but My Huong’s version uses shredded boneless chicken. Tracy said that’s done to adapt to local tastes, and I completely understand – the traditional version really doesn’t look very appetizing. Continue Reading

IGGERS DIGEST | La Fresca – Sophisticated Mexican cuisine in South Minneapolis

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I won’t pretend to be objective about La Fresca, Hector Ruiz’s new nouveau Mexican restaurant at 48th and Grand in south Minneapolis. I have been a fan of Hector Ruiz’s cuisine ever since he took over El Mesón ten years ago. We’ve gotten to know each other a bit. And now — full disclosure — my niece works in the kitchen at one of his restaurants.El Mesón closed a couple of years ago, but since then, his cuisine and his restaurants have only gotten better – first Café Ena, his Latin fusion restaurant at 46th and Grand, then Rincón 38, the cozy little tapas bar at 38th and Grand, and now La Fresca, which features creative interpretations of traditional Mexican dishes.Ruiz, who was born in Los Angeles and raised in Mexico, came to Minnesota at 17 to work at Tucci Bennuch in the Mall of America. He soon enrolled in the Cordon Bleu culinary program, and earned an internship with renowned French chef Alain Senderens at the three-star Lucas Carton restaurant in Paris (now closed). Continue Reading

Sausage Fest quiz: Can you match the meats with their makers?

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Thanks to everybody who came to the Daily Planet’s Sausage Fest, and an especially big thanks to the sausage makers and purveyors – Clancey’s Meats, Corner Table, Natedogs, Prairie Dogs, the Sample Room, the Seward Coop, Tiny Diner, plus cookie monster Dan Brady, potato salad chef extraordinaire Billy Treacy, and our generous hosts at the Summit Brewing Company. Also, the fantastic Brass Messengers.For those of you who missed it, here’s a quiz. How well do you know the local sausage and charcuterie scene? Can you match up the sausage and charcuterie with the sausage makers and sellers who brought them? Just match up the providers, numbered 1 through 7, with the meats they brought.Clancey’s MeatsCorner TableNatedogs Prairie DogsThe Sample Roomthe Seward Co-opTiny DinerThe cuisine: a. N***dog topped with bacon jam (okay, that one’s pretty easy.)b. Reuben dog on pumpernickel bun with kraut and Russian dressing.c. Lamb Merguez Sausage, Chicken Verde Sausage, Buzzwurst, **** Brat, Pork Cranberry Terrined.  traditional brats (made for this event with Summit Winter Ale), pork rillettes, and country style paté with peppercorns.e. German style bratwurst topped with bacon, sauerkraut, grilled onions and house-made brown mustard, and spicy merguez sausage piquillo peppers, feta cheese and mint aioli.f. boudin blanc with leek, pimenton and thymeg. Continue Reading

Chinese New Year: Are these new Chinese restaurants the Twin Cities’ best?

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It’s the Year of the Horse, and if you are planning to celebrate by going to a Chinese restaurant, the Twin Cities now offer a couple of new options — both actually offshoots of older highly rated establishments. Cafe 99 in St. Paul’s Midway/Como neighborhood has the same owners and chef as the Tian Jin Chinese restaurant in Chanhassen, and the newest Little Szechuan in Minneapolis’s Stadium Village is preceded by branches in St. Paul and St. Louis Park.Both make bold claims — Little Szechuan proudly proclaims that CNN named it to a list of the 50 best Chinese restaurants in the U.S., while Cafe 99 has a sign on its door informing visitors that they are entering “the best Chinese restaurant in the Midwest.” The menu describes their chef Yang as the only “nationally certified Master Chef from China.” I would take both of those claims with a grain of salt — or a splash of soy sauce. Continue Reading

Sonora Grill: Mexican with a flair

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I was pleasantly surprised by my most recent visits to the new Sonora Grill at 33rd and E. Lake Street. I’ve been a fan of the original Sonora Grill counter inside the Midtown Global Market, but the new sit-down, table service restaurant (in the former Molly Quinn space, strikingly remodeled) offers a full bar, more variety, and a creative take on Mexican cuisine. The basic staples of Mexican street food are on offer — caramelos (tacos, $4) and bocadillas (sandwiches, $10, lunch only) and guacamole ($5), but there are also more creative offerings, ranging from a hermosillo roll ($10) – which was described to me as a a Mexican take on the sushi specialty roll, stuffed with shredded pork and rice, breaded with panko crumbs and deep-fried. I’m also eager to try the fried pork tail ($6), which, according to a manager, is prepared like Buffalo chicken wings. Some of the more adventuresome offerings may be too adventuresome for the mostly non-Mexican clientele: I expected the Mexican tripe and garbanzo stew to be a version of menudo, the classic hangover cure, but it turned out to be something different, and a lot more interesting — a stew in the style of the French tripe a la mode de Caen, with lots of chewy strips of tripe in a very savory, not-too-spicy tomato and chile sauce.  I tried it on my first visit and loved it, but by the time I returned a couple of weeks later, it had disappeared — it just wasn’t selling, the manager told me. Continue Reading

Eat sausage, drink beer and support the TC Daily Planet!

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Please join us for the 2014  Daily Planet Winter Party and Sausage Fest, from 6 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at the Summit Brewing Company, 950 Montreal Circle, St. Paul. It’s a great party — last year’s fest sold out quickly, so buy your tickets soon. We’ll have a great band – the Brass Messengers, great beers on tap, and a chance to sample some of the Twin Cities finest sausages, from Clancey’s Meats, Corner Table, Natesdogs, Prairie Dogs, the Sample Room, the Seward Co-op. and Tiny Diner. We’ll also have veggie brats and tofu pups, plus other goodies. Tickets are $20 for Twin Cities Media Alliance members, $25 for non-members. Continue Reading

Now open: The Rabbit Hole; Coming soon: Sonora Grill, Freehouse, La Fresca and maybe Lutong Mekeni

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UPDATED 12/12/2013 | Some exciting new restaurants have just opened or are opening up in the next few days, and Midtown Global Market is the incubator for two of them.The Left Handed Cook has closed its counter in the Midtown Global Market, 920 E. Lake St., Minneapolis, and has reopened in the same building as a sit-down restaurant, The Rabbit Hole. The new restaurant offers an interesting East meets West fusion menu with a distinct Korean accent – and dishes ranging from kimchi fried rice and rice cakes with duck confit to burgers with kimchi aioli and crispy poussin with pickled radish. Watch for a review, coming soon.The Sonora Grill, another fast-serve counter inside the Midtown Global Market, will open a freestanding restaurant at 3300 E. Lake Street, with a grand opening scheduled for Friday, December 20. Scroll through the food photos on their Facebook page, and you’ll get a pretty good sense of the repertoire: pinchos (skewers of meat or shrimp), bocadillos (sandwiches) and caramelos (Sonora-style tacos.) Shown here, the Sonoran shrimp caramelo.Next Monday, December 16 is opening day for the Freehouse, the new brewpub/bar/taproom/restaurant at 701 Washington Ave. N., Minneapolis. Continue Reading

Opening night at Lake & Irving, Uptown’s new Hawaiian-Asian-American fusion restaurant

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We had a delightful dinner Monday night on opening night at the new Lake & Irving restaurant in Uptown. It was about the softest opening I have ever seen – so soft that if we hadn’t walked by the building on Friday night, and noticed some light coming from behind the papered windows, we wouldn’t have known that they were about to open.Their Facebook page labels the cuisine as “American (New), ” but that really doesn’t tell you very much. There is a distinctly Hawaiian / Asian accent to the menu, which includes a lot of Japanese seasonings, as well as Korean kimchi, Hawaiian kalua pork (originally, pork slow-cooked in an underground pit), and Chinese hoisin sauce. Typical dishes range from a lobster tostada starter with Texas caviar, togarashi seasoning, wonton crisp and guacamole ($8), to a house-cured lox potato salad with wasabi fingerling potatoes ($7). The sandwich side of the menu is more American, whatever that means – a cheeseburger ($11), a buttermilk chicken sandwich ($12) a caprese panini ($9), all served with a choice of salad or fries. There are some nice local touches to the menu – Kadejan chicken, Compart Farms pork, breads from Patisserie 46, and several local and regional beers. Every dish we sampled was a winner – the smoked walleye rillettes were sublime ($9)- chunks of delicate smoked fish tossed in imported Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise. Continue Reading