Krik's Picks

On a frigid Saturday night, the 4:40 movie had just ended, and people were surging toward the restaurants at 50th & France (Edina’s ‘downtown’ neighborhood). We saw crowds packed into the entry of several places as we shivered for a block and half from the theater to the Pig & Fiddle . Much to our surprise, we got right in. A few minutes after we got our table, the place was full. Food: 4/5 Service: 4/5 Ambiance: 5/5 Value: 4/5 After the movie, we just wanted a good burger and something to drink. We’d been to the Pig & Fiddle before and enjoyed it. It strives to be a neighborhood pub for the 50th & France area. It’s actually on the Minneapolis side of the line. I wonder if that’s why it took a while after the movie to fill up. Maybe there’s some kind of psychological barrier to crossing from Edina into Minneapolis. In any case, it was exactly what we wanted. Pig & Fiddle has a varied menu of traditional pub food, I think mostly selected to accompany the...

We used to avoid going out on major holidays like Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. But we wanted to spend the evening with some friends, we weren’t interested in any of the new movies, and eating Chinese seemed like such a cliché. So we made a reservation at Mill Valley Kitchen . It was a very enjoyable meal. Food: 4/5 Service: 3/5 Ambiance: 3/5 Value: 3/5 The only other time I’d eaten at Mill Valley Kitchen (MVK), it was a group celebration dinner with some friends. I remembered it as a pleasant meal, but hadn’t hurried back. My wife has had lunch there a few times. But I have eaten a couple times at its sister restaurant downtown – Marin . I wrote a review of that a year ago. The two restaurants are very similar, though I think I like Marin better. Like Marin, MVK prides itself on top quality, very fresh food that’s prepared very simply and healthfully. The food we ate on Christmas Eve certainly lived up to the restaurant’s goal. My wife and I split a kale salad to start....

It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten at Murray’s . But a friend picked it for a special birthday dinner, and I’m glad he did. Food: 4/5 Service: 4/5 Ambiance: 5/5 Value: 3/5 Comments: You go to Murray’s for steak, right? Sure they’ve got fish and seafood on the menu, and I’m sure they’re good. But it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that we’d be eating steak. Murray’s offers several different steaks at several different price points … all of them expensive. In that regard, it’s not much different than any other high-end, expense account steakhouse. But I like the fact that it’s a locally owned independent restaurant. That gives it a nice ambiance. The guys started with martinis. Excellent. Murray’s has an excellent wine list; we had a couple of bottles of Frog’s Leap Merlot that went great with our steaks. We also ordered a few side dishes. They were a little on the small side, but tasted very good. The steaks were outstanding and large. Two of the guys worried tha...

This is the second post on neighborhood restaurants in Minneapolis. The first post was about a special wine dinner at Victory 44. It was a really great experience, but not the typical experience at V44. This review of Sparks , on the other hand, is very typical of what you can expect for the restaurant. According to Sparks web site, the owner decided to open the restaurant when he moved to the neighborhood, which is Bryn Mawr . (He also owns Rinata , an Italian restaurant in south Minneapolis.) We’ve eaten at Sparks twice. The first time (several months ago) was with friends. We ordered and shared several small plates from the menu. The menu for small plates, pizzas and salads offers a lot of variety. We liked that experience very much, but never found an opportunity to return. Until, that is, a Saturday night in mid-December. We just wanted a casual, no-fuss meal and thought of Sparks. So glad we did. Sparks has expanded since our first visit. We were seated in the expansion ...

This post and the next one explore some of the creativity that’s occurring in neighborhood restaurants in Minneapolis. Victory 44 is in the Victory neighborhood of North Minneapolis near where my son lives (in Lind-Bohanon ). It isn’t a neighborhood that you’d think of as being a destination dining spot. But Victory 44 has been winning kudos and drawing people in while still maintaining an ambiance as a neighborhood restaurant. I’d only been there once before, with my son for lunch. (Click here to read that review.) I always intended to go there again. So when I saw a Facebook post about a wine dinner in early December, I made a reservation. I took Ben again because I knew he’d enjoy it, and because my wife isn’t so fond of tasting menus. One of the things that appealed to me about the early December dinner was that the food courses would be paired with Italian wines. Nebbiolo was the featured grape, and the six wines were selected to show the variety of ways the grape could be...

When I decided to go ice skating last week, I knew I was going to fall down. The only questions were ‘How long will it take’ and ‘How badly will I get hurt?’ I never was a very accomplished skater. I never played hockey. I couldn’t master skating backwards. But when our kids were little, I used to go skating with them a few times every winter. Eventually they grew up and I stopped skating. When we moved to our current house – 18 years ago – I put my skates out on a table for our garage sale. I marked them $1. No one bought them. When we moved, a box with my skates and a few other unsold items went into our garage. Last week my wife and I took care of two of our grandchildren while their parents took a well-deserved vacation. We went down to the park one day and discovered that the ice rink had been flooded. The kids loved ‘boot skating’ on the ice. So the next day, I went into the garage and dug out my skates, laced them up and brought them along to the park. The first day went p...

For lunch I made a simple turkey salad with chopped turkey, a little mayo and a little mustard. I toasted some of the sourdough rye that my sister brought and laid down some roasted bell peppers. Then I spooned on the turkey salad and topped the sandwiches with my cranberry orange relish. It was pretty good.

My last post was dedicated to the memory of Thanksgiving 2011. So this is just a brief post with a photo of our buffet this year. The potato gratin turned out nicely. I thought it could have been creamier, but the capers added an unusual touch. Besides sourdough rye bread, my sister brought asparagus and fennel which we roasted in the oven before serving. My daughter and son-in-law brought stuffing and pumpkin cheesecake. He also helped me finish the gravy, which was very tasty. I got the recipe from PBS Food. We had to modify it to use the drippings which we siphoned from the grill. Click here for that recipe. Scroll down to the next post for links to the potato recipe and the cranberry orange relish. Happy thanksgiving to all of my readers.

I liked Frank Bruni’s Thanksgiving column: When Italians Meet Turkey . It’s about great family traditions and overwhelming feasts. It certainly called to mind some of my own fondly remembered Thanksgiving dinners. For Throwback Thursday, I’d like to offer a reminiscence of Thanksgiving 2011. While it pales in comparison to Bruni’s 40-person extravaganza, at 27 people it was the biggest one my wife and I have ever hosted. It also was my 60th birthday. My blog post about the meal featured a recipe for squash lasagna. The post includes a photo of the entire buffet, which included: Turkey (roasted on the Weber grill) Cranberry Orange Relish Beef short ribs Squash lasagna Mashed potatoes Gravy Brussels sprouts Whole Wheat Date Rolls Apple pie Pumpkin pie This year, we’re hosting again. We only have 11 people, and the menu isn’t nearly as extensive. Turkey (roasted on the Weber, of course) Cranberry Orange Relish (it’s a winner!) S...

One of the things I thought I’d do more of when I retired was writing, including – maybe especially – my blog. So I’m personally a little perplexed to observe that 17 months since I turned in my Land O’Lakes badge, Krik’s Picks has been grossly neglected. I also observe that no one seems to be complaining. I thought about just pulling the plug, but before I give up on it, I decided to give it another try.The problem isn’t lack of material. Here it is six months after our fun and exciting trip to Italy, and I still have notes for at least four posts on our time in Tuscany. I always said that while this blog would be mostly restaurant reviews, I also would be writing posts on other topics. So that’s my plan for rebooting Krik’s Picks. I’ve been posting a lot of commentary about food-related issues on my LinkedIn page. From now on, instead of LinkedIn, I’ll put more of those posts here on Krik’s Picks. Maybe with some revitalized content, I’ll attract more followers. Anyway, it’s wo...

I often tell people there isn’t any reason to drive across the river (from Minneapolis/West Metro) to St. Paul to dine. Sure there are good restaurants in St. Paul. But there are so many more in Minneapolis. When I say that, I’m (mostly) joking of course. There’s Meritage , which is my favorite restaurant in the Twin Cities. And I’ve enjoyed a couple of great lunches at Ngon Bistro . Now I have another really good reason to come to St. Paul; my son-in-law recently became the kitchen manager and chef at The Buttered Tin in Lowertown . My wife and I met friends for brunch there on a Thursday late morning. Buttered Tin is a bakery and café. Peter’s involvement is mostly with the kitchen, but the bakery gets a lot of media attention. So if you think of Buttered Tin as primarily a place to pick up good-tasting, creative baked goods, you really should give the café a try. It’s open for breakfast and lunch (until 3 p.m.) Personally, I’m a fan of breakfast, and Buttered Tin has a great ...

After a visit to the Minneapolis Farmers Market , I came home intent on making gazpacho. Not just any gazpacho, however. I remembered making an amazing recipe for a dinner party … a few years ago. I couldn’t remember what year it was. But I was very sure the recipe was from Bon Appetit magazine. I remembered a couple of very distinctive things about the recipe. There was no bread to thicken the gazpacho. I remember pureeing the vegetables and then pressing them through a sieve, so that there was no pulp in the soup. But the most distinctive part was a ‘tower’ of crab salad, molded and placed in the center of the bowl with the gazpacho spooned around it. No problem, I thought. I’m sure I’ll find the recipe on Epicurious . Nope. Well, I thought, maybe it’s on the Bon Appetit web site. Nope. Now I was starting to doubt my recollection. I tried a general Google search. Lots of gazpacho recipes, but none with a tower of crab salad. I pretty much gave up on finding the recipe. I became ...

My wife and I have a couple of friends with whom we enjoy trying new restaurants. Not always brand new, mind you. But if none of us have eaten there before, we still say it’s ‘new.’ In the case of our most recent dinner, Heyday , it really is fairly new. It opened in April 2014. We actually tried to go sooner. But surprisingly, one thing after another kept popping up. So it wasn’t until mid-August when we finally went. We had a very good experience. We had a reservation, and it was fairly early – 6 p.m. When we arrived, the restaurant was not very busy. We got a friendly greeting from the host and joined our friends who were already seated. Our server popped by after we were seated and had a chance to peruse the menus. Heyday has a good selection of wine by the glass. I was tempted by a Lambrusco, which you don’t see too often on menus in the U.S., but reminded me of our trip last spring to Italy and Emilio-Romagna. But ultimately I went with a chianti. (Another Italy reminder. It ...

As we planned our Italy vacation, there never was any question that we’d go to Florence. But we had been there once before. It was 15 years ago. We were on our first ever European vacation. Our jam-packed itinerary included Paris, Provence, Nice, Florence, and Prague. We boarded a train in Nice, bound for Florence. But when our train crossed the border into Italy, we stopped. The railroad workers in Italy were on strike. So we spent the day wandering through Ventimiglia. We probably would have enjoyed it more if we weren’t worrying about when (or even whether) we’d get to Florence. We even went so far as to find a travel agent in the town who spoke English and had him cancel our hotel in Florence. Later in the afternoon we learned that it was just an 8-hour strike. Sure enough, at 4 p.m., we all got back on board and continued on our way. We finally arrived in Florence at midnight. Fortunately, the hotel still had our room for us, even though we’d cancelled the reservation. So on...

I love how Washington, DC gets attention as a city with a vibrant restaurant scene. It makes sense. The city has a very cosmopolitan and diverse population. And there are plenty of people on expense account who need to make a favorable impression on customers, clients, and colleagues over a memorable meal in a comfortable setting. Even though I’m retired, I still try to keep up on the DC food scene. It is frustrating, however, to read about great new restaurants knowing that I won’t get much opportunity to try them. (And no expense account if/when I do get to try them.) In late April I went to DC for a board meeting of Mazon , the anti-hunger advocacy organization. The first night I ate at Fiola Mare . I had yearned for an opportunity to eat there since I’d read that it opened earlier in 2014. I had eaten at Fiola DC, Fabio Trabocchi’s restaurant in Penn Quarter, in 2012 and loved it. (Click here for that Krik’s Picks blog post.) So I had high expectations for the fish and seafood...

After three beautiful days in Venice, we departed by train; destination Bologna in the heart of Emilia Romagna. Located in the Po Valley, the terrain is broad, expansive and flat. Emilia Romagna is touted as the new or emerging foodie destination of Italy, and for good reason. It had a very agricultural feel that made me think of the Central Valley of California. It’s the home of Parmesan cheese , balsamic vinegar , Prosciutto , and Lambrusco wine. But as we discovered, as much as it’s a center for food production in Italy, it has a long way to go to match the scenic beauty of Tuscany or other regions of Italy that attract tourists. The train station in Bologna is located just at the edge of the center city. It was an easy walk, about 6 blocks, to our hotel, The Metropolitan . The hotel, in turn, was only about four blocks from the Piazza Maggiore and Due Torri (Two Towers, Bologna’s answer to Pisa’s Leaning Tower). So the location was ideal for exploring the city and for our day t...

One of the top items on my list of things to do in retirement is travel. After 9 months of being retired, we finally took a major trip. We spent two weeks in Italy in late March and early April. That wasn’t literally the first travel since retiring. We took a trip to New York in October and to Los Angeles in January. But both of those trips were related to Mazon board meetings, and so felt more or less like when Linda would travel with me on business trips for Land O’Lakes . But our Italy trip was a real vacation. We could plan it any way we wanted with no worries about working around work schedules and no worries about missing e-mails. We could go for as long as we wanted, and that’s what we did. So to begin the vacation, we flew into Venice. We had never been to Venice before. We both wanted to see the city. But we really didn’t know what to expect. As we did our planning, we consulted many friends and family members. We found that people either loved Venice or hated it. We di...

There's a great article on the St. Paul paper's web site about an innovative project using the old Hamm's Brewery to grow fish (tilapia) and use the fish waste to fertilize greenhouse veggies. http://www.twincities.com/News/ci_25497427/At-former-Hamms-site-its-the Don't get me wrong. I love the concept and I hope it works. But I was curious to see that it's being celebrated as an organic food production system. And since I'm an organic skeptic, I wondered: If cows and pigs and chickens have to have access to sunshine and pasture to be considered sustainable, why aren't those same activists criticizing this project for confining the fish and failing to provide them with access to open water? For that matter, why aren't organic plants required to be grown in dirt and have access to sunshine, rather than hydroponics in a greenhouse? Who decides that this project's industrial technologies are laudable while conventional 'industrial' agric...

My wife and I made it to Terzo before we went to Italy. My goal was to sample an array of Italian wines so that we’d be more knowledgeable when it was time to order in-country. I had hoped to do a custom flight of Tuscan wines – chianti, sangiovese, and Brunello. Regrettably, Terzo didn’t have just exactly what I wanted “al bicchiere” ( by-the-glass). They did, however, have three Tuscan wines on the menu; one was a Chianti , one a Sangiovese blend, and a Montepulciano . We ordered a half glass of each. Our server recommended what order to try them. All were good. My wife liked the Chianti best, and I liked the Montepulciano. Now, a word about Terzo’s wine menu. Terzo is an Italian wine bar. All of the wines on the menu are Italian, and they have a robust selection of wine by the glass as well as an extensive selection of bottles. Pricing is not cheap, but it is very straightforward. I think the most expensive glass I saw was $20 for a Barolo . Most of the glasses that we tried c...

Sorry, I got distracted after writing two posts on using leftovers creatively instead of throwing them away. (Click here for #1 and here for #2 .) But this one is the one I’m most proud of. It started with a turkey. When I make turkey, I almost always grill it. After dinner, my wife and I strip the carcass of the remaining meat. Then I break down the carcass and freeze the bones, usually in two bags. I use the carcasses later to make turkey broth for any recipe that calls for chicken broth. I use this recipe from Bon Appetit/Epicurious as my starting point. (The recipe calls for roasting the bones. But since I grill my turkey over charcoal, I find that the carcass already has a nice smoky flavor and depth of flavor, so I skip that step.) After the broth was done simmering, I strained it into freezer containers (for future use). What remained were the bones, now pretty well bare of any meat, and the soggy celery, onions, and carrots. I did toss most of that stuff. But I decided to...

The heaviest snowstorm of the season (so far) almost spoiled our plans to have dinner with friends. We had a reservation at an Italian restaurant in Minneapolis. Then we planned to drive to Parma for an after dinner drink and to listen to the sounds of Benny Weinbeck who performs there every Saturday night. With the roads covered with packed snow and ice, we wanted to minimize the amount of driving. So we changed our dinner reservation to Parma and spent the whole evening there. Good decision! Parma 8200 is part of the D’Amico family of restaurants . I admit that I’m a fan. Their restaurants are reliably good. My favorite is Café Lurcat (which I’ve written about before; click here ). But even though Parma is quite close to our house, we’d never eaten there previously. To start with, we had a little trouble deciding on wine. Parma has a good wine list with many choices at reasonable prices. The trouble was, we couldn’t find one that appealed to everyone at the table. Our server w...

I don’t really have a good excuse for not trying Butcher & The Boar sooner. It’s been highly acclaimed since it opened, and I’ve been curious. Finally, after an evening out with some friends, we expressed mutual interest in trying it. That was fine, but then came the challenge of finding a weekend that worked for all of us, and when we could get a reservation. The place is popular. Hopping busy. It wasn’t easy getting a reservation. We finally picked a date 6 weeks out, and that worked. You could say it was worth the wait. I’d say, “I wish we’d gotten there sooner.” As you’d expect, the menu is very ‘meat centric.’ Having said that, I noted that they do have a ‘Waters’ section of the menu with fish and seafood. Several of the fish and seafood items looked interesting, and I considered ordering the barbecued octopus. But in the end, we stuck to meat. All of the publicity about Butcher & The Boar mention the smoked beef rib. It’s huge, and it’s expensive. We decided we cou...

At the end of January, my wife and I spent several days in Los Angeles. We actually were in Westwood Village, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Santa Monica. We had a great time, and I’ll be writing posts on several of the restaurants that we went to. But here’s a quick overview of the vacation, with comments on the things we did. First of all, I have to admit that I’m not particularly fond of Los Angeles. We had fun. But it wouldn’t be our first choice for a January vacation. I had a board meeting for Mazon (the anti-hunger advocacy organization). So the city and the neighborhood where we stayed was determined by proximity to the board meeting location. That said, I couldn’t imagine a better location. We were right by the UCLA campus and it was easy to find great restaurants, interesting museums, fun entertainment, and nice walking paths. I have to admit that I had the impression that Los Angeles was not a walker-friendly city. But I was wrong. Our hotel was about a mile from M...