Mexican coming to Uptown?!

As if watching Food Network during my cardio workouts wasn't enough to undue my body's war against gravity, it looks like a new Mexican restaurant is going in next door to the Fitness Together training studio where I pay overly pumped dudes to hurt me 2 - 3 times/week. The space was formally occupied by the tasty, but unremarkable Pizza Nea, who closed that location earlier this year. Though renovations are not yet complete, they were training staff tonight so an opening must be imminent.

While my neighborhood (Uptown Minneapolis) is not hurting from loosing yet another pizza joint (we are also over represented with Thai restaurants, sushi places, hair salons and "glass shops"), Mexican Cuisine (and I'm not talking Burritos) has been a painful gap in our walking-distance choices for chow. My brain was too wiped post work-out to remember the name of the new establishment, but I'm intrigued and have high hopes. I'm curious about what they'll do with that Neapolitan wood-fired pizza oven left there by the pizza folks though.

More details to come (Update as of 3/20/08 available here).

LA (2of2) 0 to Packed at Chaya Venice

After a day of meeting with a partner company about plans, ideas and what-not, their team offered to take us out to a nice meal at Chaya Venice. In order to assure we got a decent seat, we were told to meet them promptly at 6pm, which seemed to be an obnoxiously early time for dinner, but I'm glad we took their council. Within 25 minutes of our arrival, the place went from pin-drop empty to every table being filled with the vaguely beautiful, but pained set that only southern California can produce.

My friend Eric had suggested/considered Chaya for our dining spot the night before, but it was closed on Monday so it was either an odd coincidence that our business colleagues chose this place or there just aren't many choices in Santa Monica for high-end cuisine. Like Chinois, Chaya Venice aimed for Asian fusion, but with a more Japanese underpinning and a modern aesthetic that added to the vibe and energy of the place.

I started my meal with a fabulous set of seared sea scallops over Thai green papaya salad. The dish was lightly dressed with a delicate ginger garlic vinaigrette that helped to bring out the sweetness of the papaya and the scallops beautifully. I followed the scallop salad with another attempt at paella. My last experience with paella was viciously heavy and unpleasant so I feared ingesting this dish while wearing a shirt that was just on the edge of being too tight for a business dinner. This particular paella was served with half a grilled lobster on top so I couldn't resist giving it a go.

The mix of seafood and rice was superb in every way. The underlying dish was well seasoned to help the sweet meats of the lobster, shrimp and squid to shine, but the portion was reasonable enough to not leave you feeling like a stuffed horse. This is certainly a place to be if you want to dine among the sorta beautiful (but certainly well dressed) people and try to "get" what SoCal is about.

LA (1of2) - What the Puck? Chinois on Main

I had to make a quick run out to LA for business, so I called up a friend/former co-worker who is now living in Santa Monica to connect over chow. My buddy Eric clearly doesn't get out much as he kept pointing out places that he heard were excellent, but since he had never been to any of them, he couldn't say for sure. Of the options he presented, we aimed for Chinois - a long-standing Wolfgang Puck establishment on the Main Street drag.

If I did not know it was a Puck establishment, I would have been nervous. The place has clearly not been renovated since the 80's and every surface had a Miami Vice/Buddha Palace color and texture palette applied to it. The Puck folks describe the design as "timeless" with only the slightest hint of irony. Eric had heard that this was one of Wolfgang's first restaurants and that the food was excellent so we gave it a go.

The menu read like a twisted Chinese-America culinary romance novel, if such a thing existed. Dishes like "Warm sweet curried oysters with cucumber sauce and salmon pearls" and "Braised veal cheeks with plum wine and long life noodles" suggested hard-core gastroporn, so I aimed for two of the less sexy items labeled as "Chinois Classics" to get a better feel for the soul of this joint.

I paired an entree of Grilled Szechuan beef with spicy shallot cilantro sauce with a side dish of the Crispy Spinach. The beef was exceptional in tenderness, flavor and raw spirit and was brought to new heights with the side sauce.

If you have not enjoyed a good fried hardy green, the Crispy Spinach at Chinois is a sporty intro. I fell in love with the concept of taking good a tough leaf like spinach or collards and deep frying them to tender crispy perfection several years ago. Whenever I see crisp greens on a menu, I can't resist. The side dish was a bountiful massive platter that both Eric and I noshed down to the clean plate below. Fried vegetables are a beautiful thing!

While I could quibble with the decor, the food wiped it all away and made me forgive the Puckster for some missteps he's made at my local Puck hot-spot 20-21 (another place with great food, but questionable restaurant design) or those horrid Wolfgang Puck Express outlets in airports and malls. If I were him, I'd expand more cautiously.

Art, Azia and a very stiff drink

Some friends of ours live at the semi-exclusive Minneapolis address of 801 Washington Ave, which is a massive loft conversion that was at the forefront of the conversion madness in that part of town that now has run amok. Nevertheless, the space is fabulous, the lofts gargantuan and the public areas are used as a gallery to display art. Once a quarter they host an art opening there for the public called, "Art at 801" so that the residents can show off the building to the community of envious gawkers and the art-i-nistas. After a couple of hours of people watching, it was after 10pm and we were peckish enough to brave Azia - a rather over-the-top pan-asian fusion place on "Eat Street" in Minneapolis.

We went with a happy-hour order of cranberry wontons and some fried calamari off the main menu. Calamari begs for salt - I don't know why, but anytime I've been disappointed with calamari, it was due to a lack of salt - this was no exception. The most interesting part of the dish was the sweet basil dipping sauce that I tried to capture in a photo. The color was akin to lime sherbet and looked terribly unnatural, but was quite tasty. They have a version of the calamari sauted with a sweet chili sauce so we'll try that next time.

The Cranberry wontons were $5 or $6 on the happy hour menu and made up for the calamari disappointment - they were crispy fried and stuffed with cream cheese. They made for the perfect companion for the Lychee-tini - a 14.5oz knock-your-socks-off monster of a cocktail made with lots of 3 vodka (it's apparently distilled from soy) and lychee-fruit puree. Be sure to hit this drink up at happy hour when it is 1/2 price - it's $14 during regular business hours. Given previous trips to Azia, I knew one of these would make me happy, two would create a personal disturbance. I stopped at one and was home watching TV by midnight.

Leading me back to Lucia's

Reading another local food blog recently, I was reminded of Lucia's Wine Bar/Restaurant/Cafe and whatever else they have over there under that name. Saturday afternoon, the BF and I wanted to break out of our rut of going to the same places and hit up something off our regular circuit, so we decided to walk over to Lucia's to grab lunch.

Although our friends and every reputable food critic in the know extols the virtues of Lucia's fresh approach to local ingredients, our experience dining there a couple of times several years ago was underwhelming. While the food was expertly prepared and of very high quality, our Southern-tilting palates had a difficult time understanding what all the fuss was about. We figured after five years in Minnesota, the hot sauce and butter-fried remnants of our years in Atlanta have faded, so we figured it was time to give Lucia's another try.

The BF was disappointed that Lucia's was serving brunch, not lunch, but I didn't mind repeating breakfast. It was once my favorite meal until I started adhering to a standard breakfast of Fiber One Raisin Bran and scrambled Egg Beaters on the weekends (kinda takes the wind out of your sails on breakfast). I ordered up a Bloody Mary and their French-style omelet stuffed with slices of mild chorizo sausage and topped with guacamole (so much for leaving the southern palate behind). Like before, the food was expertly prepared and deliciously fresh, but not that flavorful.

I was debating whether or not to try again for dinner in the restaurant sometime earlier today when I got a gift of a $100 gift certificate to where else - Lucia's - from the head of my division at work as a "thank-you" gift. All the signs are pointing me back to Lucia's.

3 days of Mexican

This was not planned, but I've just completed a three day Mexican series - sort-of . . .

Friday:
After the Of Montreal concert at First Avenue, my companions and I dropped in at the Chevy's "Fresh Mex"; downtown for Margaritas and snacks before braving the "Y'all Come Back Saloon" - a local institution that never ceases to be popular with the boys. I had eaten dinner earlier in the evening, so I ordered the "Guac My Way" which was promised to be a table-side fresh preparation of Guacamole just as I wanted it. The cheerfully flirtatious server bounded over with a tray of fresh avocados and various accoutrements so that he could try to match my taste preferences. I asked for it chunky, spicy, a touch garlicky and a some salt for good measure. To my horror, his bowls contained garlic powder, very sad looking chopped tomotoes and no salt to speak of. In the end, it ended up bland and tasteless despite his best intentions. After sucking down the 12oz "Blue Agave" margarita, I decided to forgive him and Chevy's for their transgressions. It was just confirmation that if I want a good bowl of Guac - My way - I have to make it myself.

Saturday:
In preparation for my Sunday dinner, we decided to drop by the Midtown Global Market to pick up some things that I didn't trust my local grocery store to carry in good quality (ripe plantains, Mexican queso fresco, and fresh tomatillos). We were pleasantly surprised to see how busy the stalls and shops were on a Saturday night. We opted to cap off our shopping with dinner at "A la Salsa"; - one of the few sit-down establishments in the market that has been getting rave reviews. I started the meal with the first of my 2for1 Mojitos which tasted much like the kind I get when I'm in Mexico or the Caribbean - light on the lime, balanced on the mint and sugar, and just enough rum to make it worth the while. We moved on to the first course of Tostones con Camarones where they took thick fried planks of plantains and topped them with perfectly grilled shrimp topped with this delicious spicy mango salsa. My main course, a Pollo en Mole Poblano - a delicious quarter chicken covered in a rich, ever so slightly sweet mole sauce with two savory tamales on the side - was a delicious exercise in simple complexity. I love a good mole poblano that can balance out the sweet, the chocolate, and the various spices to make it a brain-tingling experience. The A la Salsa folks did not disappoint.

Sunday:
I cooked for us tonight and reached for my friend Rick Bayless for inspiration. I live and die by his "Mexican Everyday"; cookbook so I picked two recipes for this meal: Gulf Coast Rice Pilaf with black beans and plantains supporting Spinach/Mushroom Enchiladas in Salsa Verde. While the pilaf was very good, the enchiladas again stole the show. The sauce is a simple mixture of fresh tomatillos, garlic and jalapeno chilies reduced and then balanced with some stock and crème fraiche. Although the assembly is messy (you dip the tortillas in the sauce, roll in the filling and serve, rather than rolling in the fillings, saucing and baking before serving) the result is fresh, fragrant and intoxicating. I paired this meal with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon that I opened yesterday, but kept fresh in my newly refurbished "Pek Supremo" wine preservation system. More on that in a future update.

Pizza Pizza - Go!

I broke one of my personal dining rules by eating the same thing for lunch and dinner - Pizza and spinach salad in this case. Both were very different studies of the same concept.'

Lunch was provided by my office cafeteria. I wanted the "healthy option" from the grill - a whole wheat spicy chicken quesadilla with carrots. As the line was too long, and I was on a tightly mandated 46-minute lunch break from my management training, I defaulted to what was hot and grab&go - the sliced pizza and pre-mixed salad bar.

The slice was a 1lb honking mass of thick cornmeal dusted dough covered in cheese, a decent tasting sauce and greasy pepperoni (according to Sodexho, each slice is worth 400 calories, but I don't buy it). I tried to balance it out with the house spinach salad which consists of slightly wilted baby spinach leaves, thin sliced red onion, mandararin oranges, glopped with a raspberry vinaigrette. Uff!

Contrast that with my take on this idea at dinner. We started with a small refrigerated deli pizza from Trader Joe's that was heavenly. The crust was perfectly crisp on the edges, but flakey and tender on the inside. It was topped with pesto, sliced roma tomatos and fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese. The check-out dude at TJ's warned me that these were so good, he would eat them two at a time. Luckily, I only bought one which my BF and I shared. We paired the pizza with my standard (need a salad, and need it now!) spinach salad. Here's how I make it:

Basic Spinach Salad:
1) Dump a bag of triple washed baby spinach into a bowl (wash all you want, if it's got e-coli you can't do a thing about it)
2) Sprinkle 2 generous pinches of coarse kosher salt over the leaves
3) Drizzle lightly with good extra virgin olive oil (about 3 seconds worth of drizzle)
4) Splash with some aged balsamic vinegar (Trader Joe's again has a nice 10-year for only $3)
5) Fresh Grind some black pepper on top to taste
6) Toss and serve

Dinner was done in 10 minutes, which gave us time to get out to the Minneapolis Auto Show, where we could smell the leather and continue my multi-year effort to buy a new car. Will it be a Beemer, Land Rover or another Infiniti? Either way, I may have to cut back on my grocery/restaurant budget given my taste in vehicles.

Serious steak sandwich to ease work-day blues

Today was a filet mignon sandwich day. This is how to do lunch!

I went to Bacio for lunch with a group from work and enjoyed this medium-cooked beauty with some luke-warm fries (we had a party of 11, and I think they failed to get the timing right on delivery). The sandwich was perfectly cooked and topped with carmelized onions spiked with balsamic vinegar and a creamy spread that may or may not have had some sort of cheese in it. There is a decadence that comes with enjoying a Filet Mignon as a sandwich during the day that makes the afternoon much more palateble.

I'd like to attempt to recreate this at home when the spring grilling season hits (in Minnesota, that means June). The trick will be not over-cooking the steak (which is what I tend to do) and finding the perfect bread for the bun as the texture/chewiness has to blend perfectly with the juicy-tenderness of the meat and accentuate the grilled flavor. Using some good vidalia onions and carmelizing them with a slighly aged vinegar and going light on a scant amount of gorgonzola cheese would probably top it off just right. I'd skip the aioli spread as it just gets in the way.

Great cheeses

Today I discovered two interesting cheeses. The first was a blueberry studded crumbly wedge of white stilton with the consistency of a dense slice of cheesecake. My neighbors served it to us today with wine and crackers. It came from Trader Joe's so I will have to get some next time I go.

Also found a fab cranberry chipotle cheddar that went well with a homemade tortilla soup I made from a Rick Bayless recipe. The spicy Smokey sweet creamy cheese made the soup extra decadent. It was a Carr Valley Cheese from La Valle, Wisconsin - I picked it up at my local Lund's Grocery store, but it is not available on Carr Valley's website.