Krik's Picks

Boy, was this a difficult review for me to write. First of all, I was all psyched to really like Cocina del Barrio . My wife and I have been to Barrio in downtown Minneapolis, and we really liked it. We were looking forward to having a twin (or at least a close cousin) in our neighborhood. But we (or at least I) felt our experience last weekend didn’t live up to expectations. The food was great. But the service and the ambiance were not up to par. I was all prepared to write a mediocre review. But in Sunday’s Star-Trib, there’s was an article about hot new bars in the Twin Cities, and Cocina del Barrio was one that was mentioned. The article made snide references to “Edina housewives” packing the place like a Louis Vuitton fire sale and “soccer moms in sequined jeans.” We the place was packed all right. But most of the people looked more like outer suburb refugees venturing to Edina because they didn’t want to pay for parking downtown. So then I got all defensive. But in the en...

Good Day Café has been open for while already. My wife has eaten there. Lots of our friends have eaten there. I hadn’t until earlier this month. Then, by a remarkable coincidence, I had two breakfast meetings there within the space of two weeks. Good Day doesn’t have a web site. So my link is to Yelp. You can read my review of the food. I liked it. It was pretty amazing how many people I saw there. It’s quite an array of people doing business and schmoozing. Based on my two breakfast visits, I’d suggest getting there early. For both of my visits, I got there just before 7:30 a.m. No wait either time. But by the time I left, there was quite a line-up of people waiting for tables. For me, the gold standard for breakfast places in Minneapolis is Al’s in Dinkeytown. I’m somewhat prejudiced because my son used to work there. For me, Good Day isn’t as good as Al’s. But, it’s pretty good. Of the two breakfasts I had, my favorite was the corned beef hash. Great flavor, very nicely prep...

NCFC had it’s annual meeting in San Antonio. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to San Antonio. I didn’t really know what to expect. But to be candid, it was kind of disappointing. I did my usual survey of the local restaurant scene online – Yelp, Open Table, Google, NY Times. I didn’t come up with much encouragement. It seemed like most of the restaurants on the River Walk are pretty tourist oriented. Not that that’s bad. But that usually means they lack a distinctive style or flavor that sets them apart. Most of the sources I checked recommended Boudro’s . It’s described as a Texas bistro. So when a coworker and I arrived and had free time for lunch, I sought out Boudro’s. It was about a four block walk from our hotel, the Marriott Rivercenter. Now, the weather when we arrived was distinctly not Texan. A cold front was moving in from the north, and it was starting to get chilly. Still, the tables on the River Walk looked inviting. They were still in the sun, so we decided ...

I used to use a computer program called MasterCook. It was a way of organizing favorite recipes. One of the features I liked was that it would calculate the nutritional contents of recipes based on the ingredient list that you entered into the program. It was pretty cool. But the main problem then, as now, is that when I’m cooking, I’m in the kitchen, pretty far from my computer. If I bring a laptop into the kitchen, I can put a recipe on the screen. But then the screen blanks out after a period of time, or I have to scroll down, and my hands are all messy. Not very convenient. Of course, I could always print out the recipe. But that kind of defeats the purpose of entering it into a computer in the first place. As I prepared to write this post, I was somewhat surprised to learn that MasterCook still exits! Version 11 for XP/Vista/7 is available for $20 – download or on a CD. I don’t know what version I still have. (I never throw anything away, so I probably still have the original i...

Yesterday I tweeted that I was going to make a pistachio, raspberry, and white chocolate biscotti for the Super Bowl gathering that we were invited to. Then I found another biscotti recipe that sounded better – white chocolate and dried cranberries. But it didn’t have any pistachios. And the white chocolate was for coating the biscotti rather than an ingredient in them. So I improvised. I combined the two recipes. When I was responsible for compiling the recipe column for the Midland Cooperator (see previous post), I learned that if you change three ingredients in a recipe, you have a new recipe. If that’s true, then I’ve got naming rights on this one. So here is Krik’s Picks Pistachio, Dried Cranberry & White Chocolate Biscotti. 2 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature 2 large eggs 1/2 teaspoon almond extract 1 cup dried cranberries 1/2 cup white chocolate chips 3/4 cup raw, un...

My first job out of college, I was a food columnist. Sort of. Let me explain. I earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota in 1974. Check your history. That was right during the Watergate scandal. I’m sure most of us in J-School in those days thought we were going to get jobs on major metropolitan newspapers and do political exposés. Just like Woodward and Bernstein . Fortunately for me, there was a very wise placement officer at the J-School. As I started to get serious about finding a job after graduation, she offered this advice: “With your farm background , you should look for a job with an agricultural company.” (Thank you Miss Bowman.) I had a bunch of résumés out in the mail. The week after I graduated, I got married. The day we got back from our honeymoon, I got a call from the editor of the Midland Cooperator, inviting me to come in for an interview. (Thank you Carol James and Terry Nagle.) They hired me. Midland Cooperatives was a div...

Happy Chinese New Year . (Though the internet says the translation more accurately should be “wishing you great happiness and prosperity.”) I’m not really a big fan of Chinese food. That’s why you won’t find many previous reviews of Chinese or other Oriental restaurants on Krik’s Picks. It’s actually one of the few things my wife and I disagree on. When we’re discussing where to eat, I just can’t get excited about going to a Chinese restaurant. And yet, I am quite surprised to observe that for the first month of 2011, I had quite a string of Oriental (thought not Chinese) dining experiences. It started on New Years Eve day – Dec. 31 – my grandson’s birthday. My son-in-law was working, so my wife and I offered to take our daughter and grandson out for lunch. We settled on Rice Paper , a Vietnamese/Oriental fusion restaurant recently relocated to Edina. The very next day, Jan. 1, we decided to eat at Peninsula Malaysian . I really do like Peninsula. It doesn’t take much to convin...