Krik's Picks

My first experience at Cuba Libre was a lunch with a coworker early in 2011. I gave it 3 stars on my Yelp review and commented that I'd like to return with a big group sometime. I had the opportunity to do that in early April. I brought a group of 11 people. I had made a reservation just a few days before. When I arrived and checked in at the hostess stand, I heard the words that every diner dreads, "I'm sorry sir. We don't have a reservation for you." Aha! I whipped out my iPhone, pulled up the e-mail confirming the reservation and showed it smugly to the hostess. "Sir," came the reply. "This reservation is for tomorrow night." Doh! How in the world would I find another restaurant that could accommodate 11 people at 8 PM without a reservation? The sympathetic hostess said, "Hold on a minute. Let me see what we can do." Well, it took 20 minutes, but somehow, she was able to put together a table for 11 people. I would have ...

I like pubs. Or at least, I like the U.S. version of pubs, and I like the idea of a pub. I was in a London pub once, about 30 years ago. But that’s hardly the basis for having a strong opinion. Most of my attitude about pubs is from dining in them here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. In the past month, my wife and I have enjoyed two west-of-the-river pubs. That is to say, they were not in St. Paul. But they weren’t strictly in Minneapolis. The first pub in this post is The Cooper in the West End shops in St. Louis Park. Our most recent visit was our second. We liked our first experience so much that we agreed that we would be back. This was it. The Cooper is big and new and bold and classy. It’s a raucous, rambunctious, noisy, busy scene. The food is tasty and there is plenty of authentic pub fare on the menu – fish & chips, shepherd’s pie, corned beef & cabbage, sandwiches. The drinks are also good. They have a great selection of beer and ale on tap (including Guinness), some ...

I wouldn’t normally write about eating in a hotel lobby bar. But then I learned from Land O’Lakes Facebook page that April is ‘ Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month.’ I so I decided to write this brief post about my most recent grilled cheese sandwich. On a recent trip to DC, I had one of those annoying, frustrating, delay-plagued flights that resulted in me arriving in DC quite a bit later than I had planned. On top of it, my hotel wasn’t particularly close to any restaurants, and the weather was threatening rain. So I decided to stay in the hotel and just eat something light. L’Enfant Plaza Hotel has a brew pub in the lobby. I’ve stayed at the hotel a few times, and I’ve had lunch in it’s restaurant, simply called The Grill. But I’d never eaten in the pub. As I looked at the menu, I thought about having fish and chips. Then I saw that they had roasted tomato soup. I thought that sounded good, and what better to go with it than a grilled cheese sandwich. They didn’t have one on the ...

“Wow!” That was the involuntary exclamation of a colleague after taking a bite of a grilled skirt steak taco at Barrio Lowertown . “Whoa,” I said. “That must be one heckuva taco.” I think I must have made him self conscious, because he immediately down-played it. “No, no,” he said, “The pork carnitas taco was good too.” He’d already eaten half of that before taking a bite of the beef taco. I’ll take him at his word, that he couldn’t really say which taco was better. But I’ll stand by my journalistic standards that it was the beef taco that evoked a verbal response. That little vignette capsulizes my enthusiasm for Barrio. The lunch that my co-worker and I had with our colleague was absolutely a culinary delight. The ironic aspect for me is that I thought I’d never eat at the St. Paul incarnation of Barrio. I mean … why? Cucina del Barrio is right in my neighborhood. And for a sense of the original tequila bar ambiance, it’s much closer to head downtown Minneapolis than trek...