Get out your berets and celebrate French independence with Barbette on
Sunday, July 13 when they host a Bastille Day Block Party. Featuring a
flea market and organic food and beverages, the free event will also
showcase several bands and entertainers.
The fun begins at 4 p.m. and goes until 10 p.m. Barbette is located at
1600 West Lake Street in Uptown Minneapolis. For more information,
visit www.barbette.com.
Tin Fish is open for the season, and on sunny days, the long
lines are back at the Lake Calhoun Pavilion. These guys have the formula
figured out: start with very fresh ingredients, and then prepare them as simply
as possible. Prices seem to have gone up a bit since last year – as have
seafood prices everywhere – but they are still quite reasonable: you can get a
Mini Tin sandwich (two pieces of cod on a toasted bun) for $2.75 and a big
grilled shrimp taco for $4.95. The fried tin fish combo (four pieces of cod,
three shrimp, two scallops and six pieces of calamari) with fries and slaw has
gone up to $15.95 this year, but it is big enough to share. The little bits of
fried squid were nothing to write home about, but the cod was perfect – moist
and fresh – and the scallops had the succulent sweetness of the very best. And
the view of the lake is priceless.
There are still a few seats left for the Belgian beer
dinner, tomorrow (Tuesday) night at Barbette, 1600 W. Lake St., Minneapolis. It’s a benefit for KBEM Jazz 88,
but The Rake is co-hosting, and I’ll tag along and tell a story or two.
Belgian beers happen to be a passion of mine. Back in the
early 80s, when I had fantasies of opening my own micro-brewery, a friend and I
spent a week driving around the country in a Citroen deux chevaux trying every
local brew we could find. Last time I checked, there were around 300 different
brands, many of them tiny farmhouse operations, and nearly every brewery had
its own distinctively shaped glass.
Belgium is kind of a Galapagos island of brewing, where all
kinds of weird brewing styles survive that had gone virtually extinct elsewhere
on the planet. Many of those brewing styles have been rediscovered in the last
few years – beers brewed with fruit and herbs and spices, and wild yeasts.
I haven’t seen the list of beers that will be poured yet,
but chef Sarah Masters’ menu sounds promising. She’s using domestic
Belgian-style microbeers for cooking, in each course, including a starter of
1Chevagne goat cheese with pumpernickel toast points and Rejewvenator-
marinated fig, followed by pastry-wrapped garlic sausage with braised cabbage,
duo of mustards and side of greens tossed with a Biere de Miel vinaigrette;
Flat Earth Pale Ale-marinated eye of round roast with creamy polenta and
spinach, and a Chocolate tart
with raspberry-Brother Thelonious reduction as a grand finale.
Tickets are $50 benefiting Jazz88. To make online
reservations, CLICK HERE or call Kevin Barnes at (612) 668-1735.
Confidential to "Anonymous": (i.e., anybody who posts anonymous comments): Anonymous coments are welcome, and negative comments about restaurants (and about restaurant critics, for that matter) are okay, too, but it seems to me that if you are going to be harsh, and especially if you are going to single out an identifiable individual for criticism, you ought to sign your name. Or better yet, become a Rake Restaurant Rater, and post your critique there.
It’s a slippery, messy business, kissing. Two tongues meetings in one person’s mouth, touching and rolling and wrestling like snakes. The transfer of saliva. The hot, warm breath vaporous with what the kisser has most recently consumed.
Not only that, even strangers do it. People who’ve only just met in bars; partygoers on New Year’s Eve; returning soldiers and can-can girls.
The fact is, even those of us who are married, living and trading body fluids with the loves of our lives are rather irrational. I mean, would you use your spouse’s toothbrush? Soiled strand of dental floss? Already chewed gum?
Of course not! And yet, we invade the oral — and other — cavities of our partners quite whimsically. No matter how we think it through, the strangeness of kissing as a modern-day practice, we keep on doing it. Why? Well, it turns out scientists have an answer. It’s because we’re hard-wired to taste our mate’s body chemicals — essentially, through their spit.
I’m sorry. You’d like me to put a nice veneer on this. But the fact is, according to an article called Why We Love in the January 28 issue of TIME, we’re actually "sampling" the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of a person when we kiss. This is a gene family involved in tissue rejection, and it’s important that we mate with people whose MHC is different from our own.
"Conceive a child with a person whose MHC is too similar to your own, and the risk increases that the womb will expel the fetus," writes Jeffrey Kluger in TIME. "Find a partner with sufficiently difference MHC, and you’re likelier to carry a baby to term."
So you see? Kissing is a biological process, intended to help us propogate the species. Now it all makes sense. . . .
Well actually, it does. It makes far more sense than Valentine’s Day, which is an incredibly manipulative and commercial annual event (second only to Mother’s Day in this respect). Cupid would have us kissing and doing all the wonderfully irrational natural things that come next. Nevertheless, we persist in celebrating this stupid holiday [myself included] with overpriced flowers and cards and shiny red things ranging from candy boxes to cars.
My colleague, Jeremy Iggers, recently wrote about Valentine’s Day dinners, and I’d like to add a few suggestions of my own.
Chef Jon Radle at Grand Cafe is offering a prix fixe dinner featuring gnocchi with braised leek cream; pickled beet and watercress salad; a choice of roasted prime rib, butter poached lobster, or pan-fried polenta; and a malted chocolate tartlet or coconut-cardamom trifle. The price is $55 per person, $85 per person with a flight of suggested wines.
With its French-bistro-by-the-Seine sort of feel, Barbette is a romantic place to kiss in a dark corner any night of the year. But on V-Day, you can get a four-course meal for $42. Beet and walnut soup; stuffed quail on Swiss chard or pistachio-crusted goat cheese; cream cheese stuffed beef tenderloin or seared scallops or wild mushroom risotto; and petit fours with hot chocolate.
Now, I have to admit, I’m throwing this last one in simply for the name: Give the treat of meat on Valentine’s Day. It’s a dinner going on at Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steakhouse, which promises to "shower" guests with "15 savory cuts of delicious meat." Personally, I’ve never been to Fogo de Chao and I’m not a big meat-eater. But with messaging like that, even I’m tempted to give it a try.
Okay, this is the day to check and see what’s left in the
fridge and needs to get served up before it spoils, and it looks like we have
enough left-overs to make up a meal: a half-cooked review of the new Strip Club
in Saint Paul, news of an upcoming beer dinner at North Coast in Wayzata, and a
Mardi Gras dinner at Barbette.
Carol and I stopped in Wednesday night at the
Strip Club, the night after it opened to the public, and had a delightful dinner. Then Thursday, as I was half-way
through digesting the experience for this blog, I discovered that my esteemed
colleague Cristina Cordova had scooped me. It’s too early for anybody to write
a full-fledged review of the place, but Cristina covered all the basics very nicely, and
sampled a lot more dishes than we did.
So check out her post for more details, but here are a few random thoughts:
I knew enough not to expect naked ladies, but I
did expect to find a big menu of steaks, plus baked potato sour cream, etc.,
just like the downtown places, only maybe a little cheaper, because it’s a
neighborhood joint (in Saint Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff, across from the Metro State
campus.)
Turns out chef J.D. Fratzke, (late of Muffuletta) and the
owners (from the Town Talk Diner in Minneapolis) have created
something much more interesting. There are a couple of steaks on the menu, and
a few gourmet items like foie gras, (locally produced at Au Bon Canard in
Caledonia, MN), and escargot. But basically, Fratzke, who grew up in Winona,
pays homage here to the kind of plain cooking that doesn’t usually make it onto
restaurant menus: deviled eggs, beans on toast, even a Braunschweiger sandwich.
There are a couple of trendier entrees on the list, like a
bone-in duck breast with wild rice polenta, roasted mushrooms and port wine
glace ($19), and seared ahi tuna with root vegetables, French olives and
preserved lemon ($22). But Fratzke’s inclination is towards heartier, earthier fare:
Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and a black truffle gravy, ($14); a pork shank for two with mashed potatoes,
Brussel sprouts, apples and roasted garlic jus.
We enjoyed everything we sampled – especially the grilled
Caesar salad the ahi tuna, and the lean but flavorful ball tip steak (all their beef
is grass-fed, from Thousand Hills near Cannon Falls.) The big challenge with very lean grass-fed beef is to compensate for the lack of juicy marbling, and Fratzke met the challenge beautifully, pairing the flavorful meat with savory white beans and grilled onions. I suspect that the best
time to sample Fratzke’s culinary artistry will be late summer, when fresh
local produce is at its peak, but I expect to return long before then.
The Strip Club, 378 Maria Ave Saint Paul, MN 55106 651-793-6247.
I have been a long-time fan of chef Ryan Aberle’s cooking at
North Coast in Wayzata, but I never felt that the casual atmosphere – and the
13 flat-screen TVs in the adjacent bar – quite fit the cuisine. But that’s
about change. "We are closing to the public on the night of January 19 and
reopening on January 23," reports Aberle. This will complete the first phase of
the remodel… allowing us for the first time clear definition of where the
dining room ends and the bar begins. The new bar (to be completed by
Valentine’s Day) will retain a single plasma TV and it will barely be visible
from the main dining room."
Aberle, a beer connoisseur, has put together what might be
the ultimate beer lover’s dinner – a 15-course extravaganza on Saturday, Feb. 2, featuring just
about every brew Sam Adams makes. Courses range from a sweet potato pancake with Morbier, duck
leg confit, burnt orange syrup, accompanied by Boston Ale, to pan-seared
Minnesota foie gras, port lacquer, and wild mushroom risotto served with Black
Lager, and a course of Pho with shaved prime rib, rice noodles, cilantro
and a glass of Winter Lager. Cost is $80, plus tax and tip.
North Coast Restaurant, 294 Grove Lane E., Wayzata, 952-475-4960.
Barbette’s Mardi Gras menu, served February 4-5, should be
pretty authentic: Barbette’s
new chef, Sarah Master, went to culinary school in New Orleans, and studied
under Susan Spicer at Bayona in the French Quarter. The menu sounds terrific,
especially for the price ($32): baked oysters Laveau, followed by a choice of crab cakes or
sausage gumbo. The main course options are chicken etouffee, blackened catfish
with macque choux and collards, or fried mirliton (chayote), collards and
spoonbread. For dessert, your choice of king cake, pecan pie or bananas Foster.
Barbette, 1600 W. Lake St., Minneapolis, 612-827-5710.
Monday night is cheap date night at the Bryant Lake Bowl –
two soups or salads, two entrees, a bottle of wine, and two lines of bowling
for $28. And since New Years Eve happens to fall on a Monday, they are offering
a Not So Cheap Date Night – the same deal for $32, but with better than usual
entrees and wine, and tablecloths on the table. They don’t take reservations
for dinner, but you can guarantee yourself a seat if you reserve tickets for
the Scrimshaw New Years Eve Spectacular, performed at 7 and 10:30 at the BLB
Theater. The show, by perennial Fringe Festival favorites the Scrimshaw
Brothers, is billed as "comedy,
music, dance, special surprise guests, and more broken resolutions than you can
shake a Scrimshaw at!" The full BLB menu is available in the theater.
There are some risks attached to sitting in the dark in a theater full of
people who are eating and laughing at the same time, but heck, New Years Eve is
the night to live on the edge. Showtimes are 7 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., and tickets
are $20, or $15 with a Fringe Festival button. You can reserve tickets online by going to the BLB website, or by calling 612-825-8949.
Bryant Lake Bowl, 810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis, 612-825-3737.
At BLB’s sister restaurant, Barbette, new executive chef
Sarah Master is raising the gastronomic level a notch or two with a selection
of a la carte New Years Eve specials such as bison carpaccio with arugela and shaved pecorino ($9), red deer with cherry-vanilla demi-glace, glazed vegetables
and mustard spaetzle ($27), and
butter-poached lobster with asparagus, tarragon potato cakes and caviar crème
fraiche ($35).
Barbette, 1600 W. Lake St., Minneapolis, 612-827-5710.
The very romantic Grand Café is offering a six-course prix
fixe menu for $65, and a modified version for vegetarians for $10 less. The
structure of the menus is the same, but the vegetarian agnolotti are stuffed
with celeriac, while the carnivores get foie gras; the seafood course of diver
scallops with lobster sauce is replaced by polenta with sweet carrot sauce, and
while the meat eaters get with a potato and cepe pave, the vegetarians get the
potato and cepe pave without accompanying animal flesh.
Grand Cafe Minneapolis, 3804 Grand Ave. S., Minneapolis, 612-822-8260.
Creating a menu that combines the spirit of a Northeast
tavern with the structure of a five-course $65 French prix fixe menu isn’t easy, but the chef
at the Sample Room has risen to the challenge: the first course offers choices
such as country pate en croute with Cumberland sauce, (in lieu of meatloaf),
and performing the role of bratwurst, a house-made maple chicken sausage.
Entrees choices include a beef tenderloin, chicken breast stuffed with
prosciutto, and striped sea bass with sautéed spinach and walnut butter sauce,
but also a tavern classic – roast breast of turkey with brown gravy and butternut
squash puree.
The Sample Room, 2124 Marshall St. N.E., Minneapolis, 612-789-0333.