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Hot Plate
Category:
Food & Dining
5204 Bloomington Ave S
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55417
(612) 824-4794
In this South Minneapolis neigborhood cafe near Lake Nokomis you'll find a hearty buckwheat banana waffle that belongs to the chock-full-of-fruit variety of this specialize eating exploration....
In this South Minneapolis neigborhood cafe near Lake Nokomis you'll find a hearty buckwheat banana waffle that belongs to the chock-full-of-fruit variety of this specialize eating exploration. Weekly specials add variety to you choices but stop by if your hunting for a good waffle variety.
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In a way, you have to decide what type of waffle you enjoy most because, in part, it is a style-thang again. There is your airy Belgian waffle variety, there are you candy waffles (more akin to...
In a way, you have to decide what type of waffle you enjoy most because, in part, it is a style-thang again. There is your airy Belgian waffle variety, there are you candy waffles (more akin to desert than breakfast) and there is the chock-full-of-nuts type of waffle. And if you care to venture to Seattle, WA there is yet another Swiss-German waffle that will knock your socks off but that's for another review.
For me, it is a matter of mood and the changes of seasons. Edina Grill and her sister eateries: Highland Grill and the Longfellow Grill. You really have to be ready for this. Are you sitting down? The waffle concoction in the Twin Cities that will knock you down is topped with caramelized bananas, hot syrup and whipped cream. Now, make no mistake, this belongs to the desert waffle family and you better brace yourself.
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Holly B's in the heart of the little town of Lopez on Lopex Island is an essential service to the island and its residents. Everywhere you go on Lopez, people are all talking about Holly B. If you...
Holly B's in the heart of the little town of Lopez on Lopex Island is an essential service to the island and its residents. Everywhere you go on Lopez, people are all talking about Holly B. If you are in a coffeeshop, at a restaurant or a guest in someones house or cabin you'll see signs or hear speak that the baked goods are provided by Holly B.
This is because Holly B's baked good are delicious, creative and top-notch. Step inside Holly B's shop off the planked covered boardwalk, you'll be pleasantly overwhelmed by the heartwarming splendor of fresh baked goods. Samples are laid out on the counter and in racks and bins you'll find big crusty loaves of artisan breads.
In the mornings you'll find pastries and wholesome flakey stuffed puffed goodness to go down with your coffee and juice. In the afternoons you'll also be able to enjoy items like cheesy crunchie tomato baked brusetta and hearty bread loaves to throw into a picnic basket, pack into your bike bags, or take back to your island escape shelter. It's ll good. With a no compete clause in effect on the island, partly because Holly RULES!, you might encounter a shortage of supply, so get tthere early. Prices can be a bit stiff for everyday consumption but on vacation exceptions can be made to keep in the happiness groove. Match Holly B bakery with Vita's few food combinations are better.
Island life is better because of Holly B.
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Vita's
Category:
Restaurants
PO Box 352
Lopez Island, Washington 98261
(360) 468-4268
Located at 150 Village Road, at the sign of the hungry dog, you'll find this wood cottage painted in bright colors with a deli-style counter and wine store called Vita's. The food here is wildly...
Located at 150 Village Road, at the sign of the hungry dog, you'll find this wood cottage painted in bright colors with a deli-style counter and wine store called Vita's. The food here is wildly delicious as are the women who work behind the counter.
There are a number of hand-made dishes feshly prepared, squared and served up ready for a picnic on one of Lopez Island beaches or scenic outlooks. For instance, Gruyere Mac and Cheese ($4.95 a slice), Tomato Basil Puffed Pastry with Feta Cheese ($4.50) or Curried Chicken Salad ($7.95 lb) pack up very nicely in your basket along with a bottle of red wine from Vita's bottle racks. If you have been more active and seek more substantial items, you can pick up Risotto Stuffed Chicken Breasts ($5.95 ea), Beacon Wrapped Pork Medallions with an apricot glaze on a bed of cranberry wild rice pilaf ($7.95 a serving), or skewers of Chicken or Flank Steak Satay's with exquisitely spiced sauce for $3.95 each. Even though the presentation is informal and served in cardboard cartons, this is gourmet quality food. Really delicious.
Vita's also bakes yummy fresh cookies and bars sitting on cooling racks and people die for the taste of them. Cans of Italian soda and various well-made side dishes can also be had in the shop. If you are on Lopez Island, Vitas is a must stop and rivals any gourmet food of the highest quality in larger cities around the world.
There are a few high counters inside but limited indoor seating space. Outside you'll find a couple of picnic tables and I imagine most food is purchased as take-out either for eaing outdoors or back in the many summer houses and cottages on the island.
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A number of years back, Seb Joe's came into the neighborhood and was the undisputed front-running in hand-made, hand-packed ice cream and coffeeshop but Seb Joe's has been surpassed. Also, ice cream...
A number of years back, Seb Joe's came into the neighborhood and was the undisputed front-running in hand-made, hand-packed ice cream and coffeeshop but Seb Joe's has been surpassed. Also, ice cream tends to be generational or, at least, in every decade for the last three, the art of making ice cream and the inventiveness with flavors has evolved.
And if you really want to go the distance, well, you should consider the Italian ice cream and ices in a completely different category. Italian's knock all their American counterparts out of the water.
Sebastian Joe's ice cream emerges out of the 70s and 80s decade of artisan ice creams (and that's really okay since it is delicious) and features rich creamy fruit and choclate ice creams (raspberry-chocolate and cherry-chocolate are emblematic of this period), ice creams with ground chunks of other candy and cookies (also popular for the style and era) and you will also find some adventurous selections like spicy cayenne-chocolate.
If you are looking for the more contemporary Asian-inlfuenced ice creams, this is not the place, however, Seb Joe's does offer a ginger-cream that might satisfy that modern taste-bud.
The coffee at Seb Joe's is not the greatest. Brewed coffees are burnt, bitter and watery. The red head owner/manager at Frankin Ave location is a blow-hard, hard-head who my offended friends in the neighborhood and they won't go back. But certainly try other locations, in particular, the Linden Hills location where they seem to hire lovely and charming Russian girls.
The shops also have FREE wifi and computers where you can check your email. Pasteries are good and they have a selection of dipped waffle cones that make children dilerious with hope and expectation. An added touch is the a selection of newspapers on a stick (you know, like the sticks you find in Libraries) so you can sit down and read the NY Times, StarTribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, etc to survey local and national news.
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When you enter the Black Sea, owner/chef Ali Akilli will always cheerfully greet you and this opening jesture is an presage of the dining experience you'll find tucked into the Hamline Unversity...
When you enter the Black Sea, owner/chef Ali Akilli will always cheerfully greet you and this opening jesture is an presage of the dining experience you'll find tucked into the Hamline Unversity neighborhood.
There are other very notible Mediterranean cooking establishments in the Twin Cities and you might find items on Greek, Lebonese, and a variety of falfaffel joints indistinguishable but this was one of the first and only Turkish restaurants in the metro. The food here is plentiful and great for sharing with a date or groups out for the night.
If you order a Meze Platter for 2 ($4.95) you will get a heaping plate of hummus, feta, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage rolls, and olives served with peta bread. Snack on this for a while and you'll get up and walk home thinking you ate dinner. But wait, there's more to be had for a few dollars. Grilled chicken, beef, and lamb gyro-style sandwiches called Doner Kebab or Tavuk Kebab (Chicken) are all on the menu for under $4. You can order plates of rotisserie beef, chicken and lamb for $6.65 that are a kings portion. A large piece of baklava is only $1.75.
The wait staff is always friendly and the unisex bathroom is memorable
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ADDENDUM: Kramarczuk's recently went through a total make over and face lift. Much of the old world meat craked white enamel and worn stainless steel deli counter has been cleaned up and newly...
ADDENDUM: Kramarczuk's recently went through a total make over and face lift. Much of the old world meat craked white enamel and worn stainless steel deli counter has been cleaned up and newly installed to give it less workclass feel and more of a gourmet supermarket feeling.
The now offer a larger range of products in the market than in the old days and the restaurant has fresh tile on the floor (as opposed to linoeum) and new booth seating compared to the lodging house style dinning room of old.
The Ukranian sausage house, although a historic cornerstone of the neighborhood, was sadly beginning to feel a little out of place with all the booming condo developments and high buck land grabs going on here on East Heenepin.
Walking inside is a retreat into an old world of meat butchers serving up Polska, bacon, blood sausage and smoked bratwurst. The bakery serves up crusty rolls, twisted loafs, kolachis, and if you step over into the dining room that could double as a polka hall in a pinch, you'll find a buffet-styled line-up of bratwurst, Borscht, Golabki, cabbage rolls, goulash to pierogi, and imported beer fit for a construction worker or any hardscrabble laborer that the third wave information age thinks it readily disposed of or, at least, outsourced to India.
On Saturday's they have live ethnic music.
Another Minneapolis institution that should not be missed.
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After taking up residence in the warehouse distict fresh out of art school, we'd strumbled into the Manto Carlo for a late night chaser or a Brunch after sleeping in on Sunday morning. This was a...
After taking up residence in the warehouse distict fresh out of art school, we'd strumbled into the Manto Carlo for a late night chaser or a Brunch after sleeping in on Sunday morning. This was a place you could take you girl to show her you still cared after a wild weekend -- or she could take you when the roles were reversed and you wondered where you lost her the evening before.
Monte Carlo set a standard for family-style Sunday Brunch - a formable weekly meal for warehouse dwellers accustomed to living all week off wine and cheese trays from the old Minneapolis art crawl or crusts of bread and bowls of soup at the New French Cafe. Waiters and waitresses would keep shoveling heaping plates of potato, eggs, ham, sausage, and bacon along with dark brown pumpernickle toast and pots of strawberry jelly for a fixed price as long as you were hungry. Joe Kaplan, chef/owner of Joe's Garage recalls those days and has styled his rooftop family Sunday Brunch after Monte Carlos.
Lunch and dinner are comprised of fairly standard American dishes served in large portions. On the dark paneled walls you will find B&W signed fotos of collegiate sports figures, Twin's players from the era of the old Met in Bloomington, and the Minnesota Lakers.
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The Modern is quickly becoming a staple of the near Nordeast-side just a few blocks from the bottle houses and the former Grain Belt Brewery. Even if I can recall the days when the Modern lived in...
The Modern is quickly becoming a staple of the near Nordeast-side just a few blocks from the bottle houses and the former Grain Belt Brewery. Even if I can recall the days when the Modern lived in the 20s along Chicago Ave south it seems to have fully rooted just off University Ave and 12th St. NE.
This section of Minneapolis has the feel of Williamsburg, Brooklyn as a secondary migration out of the warehouse district into far-flung digs (not too far-flung) making for a mixture of the newly arrived artists and the coquettish soubrette who refuse to yield ground in this solidly middle class ethnic neighborhood.
As first blush, it might feel like you walked into a combination greasy diner and Edward Hopper painting but you'll find the food here to be more sophisticated than the home cooking that simply sticks to your ribs and makes you feel queazy for the rest of the evening. The Modern's food is prepared expertly by chef Phillip Becht, full of lush ingredients like mushrooms and truffles, well-made sausage, flageolet beans and duck confit.
The prices at the Modern will test the cash strapped pockets of the neighborhood regular or artist starving in the garret, in other words, those who live in the hood but the food is a real treat and well worth a visit.
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LoTo
Category:
Restaurants
Galtier Plaza
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101
(651) 209-7776
The voluminous space inside St. Paul's Galtier Plaza has struggled over the years to be something, anything but leave it to David Fhima to try something as wildly adventurous in scale and scope as...
The voluminous space inside St. Paul's Galtier Plaza has struggled over the years to be something, anything but leave it to David Fhima to try something as wildly adventurous in scale and scope as LoTo. According to Fhima, this new eating location in his fleet of enterprises is a marketplace restaurant. Not a place you'd dress up and go out to on a Friday or Saturday night (they call this a destination restaurant) but ore of a place for homies to drop in and nosh at morning, noon, or evening.
Following a Asian influence, the place tries to be and have it all -- deli, bakery, soups, sandwiches, coffee shop, bar, sit down restaurant and coming soon a wine and cheese store. You hope he can bring it all together as a stop-in joint for the lowertown loft dwellers but it might take some time to fine tune the concept. As it is, there are way to many details to pour over and things to go wrong. When your reach is so broad there can easily be things that you find exceed your grasp. This seems to be a pattern with the chef extraordinaire Phima but eventually he reigns things in, as his success shows, and is able to make his restaurants work.
Galtier Plaza certainly needs something that works!
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