Krik's Picks

My wife and I spent a very enjoyable evening with friends at Bacio in Minnetonka. There were 12 of us. On a Saturday night, a group that large can be difficult. But Bacio handled our group with grace and efficiency. The service was friendly, knowledgeable, and attentive. Someone who organized the group suggested that we bring bottles of wine from our personal stash. Four of us did. I was impressed that our server was familiar with the wines that we brought, even though they weren’t from the restaurant’s list. As it was, we still ended up ordering two more bottles from their list. We started with a round of appetizers – 6 or 7 from the menu which we shared around the table. My wife and I split a Brasiliana salad. We both were very pleased. It was an ample, creative mixture of celery, hearts of palm, lettuce, avocado with a lemon vinaigrette. For dinner, I had a half order of lamb meatballs from the pasta section of the menu. I thought they were very good. They were served with a ...

For the past several years, I’ve given my wife a present of preparing dinner for a week. She likes because it’s a whole week when she doesn’t have to worry about whipping together a dinner after her piano students leave. I have fun doing it because it gives me a chance to try a bunch of different things. When I first started giving this present, I used to organize it by day and give her two or three options for each day. But one year, she said she’d prefer to just mix and match recipes. So since then, I find two or three recipes and organize them into related categories. So, for example, here are the categories for her 2010 present: Here’s the Beef (beef recipes) Duck, Duck, Gray Duck (duck recipes) Salads & Something (3 different dinner salads) 3 Ways with Fennel (3 recipes featuring fennel) Vegetarian (just what it says) Cluck Cluck (chicken recipes) Something’s Fishy (fish recipes, duh) Also, when I started, I used to go to a wide variety of sources for ...

We probably should have just left. When we showed up at Nick & Eddie’s for our 8 p.m. reservation on a Saturday night, the host apologized and said our table wasn’t ready. There were some large groups that were not clearing as quickly as they anticipated. He offered us a complementary cocktail. So that helped. While the host was cordial and accommodating, the bartender was strangely surly. That should have been our first clue. The wait wasn’t really that long, maybe 20 minutes. We were offered a booth by the window in the bar. My wife really would have preferred to be in the dining room. But we took it. A server swished by and dropped off a menu. We didn’t see him again for 20 minutes. The combination of inattentive service and a crush of people around the bar lead us to ask if we could be reseated in the dining room. The host (still trying to be accommodating) found us a table – in the back near the restroom and the back door. Now, instead of having a crowd hovering over ...

I have to admit that sometimes when you discover a fantastic restaurant deal, you worry that when the word gets out, the crowds will come and spoil it. In this case, however, I’m worried that if more people don’t find out about the fantastic lunch deal at Raku , the restaurant won’t be able to survive and we’ll all lose out. My wife and I have been to Raku before for dinner.(Click here for that review.) It was on a Saturday night. We liked the décor, the ambiance, the bar, and the food. But the service wasn’t so great, and that kind of spoiled it for us. Still, we looked at the lunch menu, and it looked so promising, we decided we would give it a try. When we showed up a little before noon on a Monday, there were only three other tables being served. Our server greeted us and gave us our menus. Raku offers three lunch specials. The main lunch special is $16. You get a soup or a salad, and appetizer (like a sushi roll or egg roll), and an entrée. My wife was pretty sure that’s what...

We’re so lucky that both of our kids live in Minneapolis and so we can see them for family-oriented holidays. So with Mother’s Day coming up, my son and son-in-law and I decided to prepare a dinner for our wives and the mothers of our children. My wife, being at least nominally the ‘grande dame’ of the family said she was in the mood for Mexican. My daughter and daughter-in-law thought that sounded good. So I went to work to find a creative menu to serve on Sunday night. Here’s what we came up with: Guacamole & tortilla chips Shrimp Mango Tacos Cabbage Radish Slaw Rotini Salad with Chives For the guacamole, we stuck with a pretty standard combination. But we did innovate a little by adding a quarter cup of pomegranate seeds. They added a sweet, juicy character to the smooth, rich avocado. I got the pomegranate seeds at Trader Joe’s . While I was there, I decided to check out their shrimp. As I was perusing their selection of frozen seafood, I saw a very intriguing it...

The first time my wife and I went to moto-i in Minneapolis was about a year and a half ago. We had an enjoyable experience on their rooftop patio. moto-i is located at Lyndale and Lake St., right across from It’s Greek to Me . When we checked for a table at Greek, we were told it would be a half hour wait. We decided to check out moto-i while we waited for our table. It was a warm summer night. We watched the passers-by on Lyndale below us and enjoyed a couple of innovative cocktails. moto-i is a sake brewery restaurant – like a brew pub, only they make sake instead of beer. Our cocktails were creative concoctions featuring sake creatively combined with gin, vodka, and other beverages. My wife particularly liked hers which featured a lychee nut; first time she’d ever had one. We scanned the menu and agreed that it would be worth coming back for a meal sometime. Fast forward now to the first Saturday in May. Our son was having a pottery sale at his studio . He and the other artists...