Krik's Picks

On Saturday morning, I finished the paper but still had some coffee left in my mug. So I grabbed my Android smartphone to check Twitter. One of the celebrity chefs I follow is Giada DeLaurentiis. She had a post about an upcoming show from Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles. Linda and I once stayed in Marina Del Rey while on vacation in LA. Click here for the blog post. We enjoyed it, so I thought I’d try to catch the show. I switched to my DirectTV app, looked up the times when the show would appear, and scheduled it to record on my DVR … all without leaving the breakfast table. Fact is, I could have done it from DC or CA or anywhere I was traveling. That’s what I love about the new electronics. (It’s actually easier to find shows and schedule them to record from my smartphone than it is on the TV.)It’s also one of the few instances when I’ve found Giada’s Twitter feed, or any celebrity chef’s Twitter feed, to have anything useful. When I established a Twitter account for Krik’s Picks ...

My wife and I met friends for dinner at Wakame on a hot July evening. They live in the neighborhood and eat there regularly. When they made the reservation, we hoped we could eat outside on the patio. But it was a steamy, muggy evening with temps in the high 80s, so we ate inside. Before Wakame, this space was a seafood restaurant called Three Fish. We went there with this same couple. (Click here to read my previous review.) It was one of our favorites, and we were disappointed when it closed. We’d always heard good things about Wakame. But since my wife doesn’t like sushi, we hadn’t been there yet. We started by splitting two salads. (Well, actually, we started with drinks. Linda was very excited to see that they have a lychee martini on the menu, and that’s what she ordered. My friend and I had sake, and his wife had a glass of red wine.) The salads that we split were a spicy crab salad and a seasoned squid salad. Both were very good, though I liked the squid salad best. The...

I’ve had a lot of travel during the first couple weeks of June. Good for experiences to report on Krik’s Picks. Bad for having time to actually write anything. So be patient. There’s some good stuff coming. But here’s a quick review of Siroc in Washington, DC. I was here a year ago with a large group. We had a fantastic experience, and I swore I’d be back. (Click here for last year’s review.) The second visit was as impressive as the first time. Same cordial, accommodating service. Really excellent food and wine. Comfortable ambiance. As I reread my review from last year, I didn’t write very much about the actual food we ate. Last year, I (and several others) had the ossobuco. I love ossobuco. I thought about ordering it again. It was fantastic. But, I decided I had to try something different. So I ordered agnolotti filled with braised short rib and roasted potato. The fork-tender meat was shredded and stuffed into a beautiful pasta moon. For my starter, I had a frisee salad w...

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...