Krik's Picks

I really wanted to love this restaurant. I wanted to say that it was a replacement on my Top 2 list of favorite special occasion restaurants in Minneapolis. After all, it's located in the same space as one of my old Top 2 - the Chambers Kitchen . And I had a wonderful lunch there with my brother. But the sad fact is that when my wife and I went there in early December for a belated birthday celebration, it just didn't live up to expectations. I've thought about this a lot. It's not that it was disappointing. It's just that it wasn't as good as I wanted or expected. The space is lovely. I already said that in my previous post . For our dinner reservation, the service was perfunctory. No specific complaints. But compared to the service my brother and I had at lunch, just not on the same level. So let's get down to it - the food. I guess the only way to put it is, the food is inconsistent. And if I think about it, I should have caught a hint of that from the l...

Not to be too corny about this, but I'm extending the Krik's Picks brand. I've set up a Yelp account. I have two on-line sources for diners' opinions about restaurants. One is Open Table. I use that to make reservations, and often check the diner reviews. I also submit reviews, but they don't have a way for other people to 'follow' your reviews. (At least, if they do, I haven't figured out how.) The other is Yelp. This is an on-line resource for reviewing businesses. It has a very active community of users who review restaurants. I've gotten into the habit of checking Yelp before trying a new restaurant. They do make it easy for people to follow your reviews on Yelp. In fact, they even give you a personal domain, if you want. So if you want to read my Yelp reviews, just click here . I've also included my Yelp profile in the Links section of Krik's Picks. So far, I haven't figured out how to mesh my Yelp account with my blog. It seems sill...

This isn't just a recipe. It's also a gadget review. I got my wife an ice crusher. She wanted one so that we could have crushed ice with cocktails. In the past, we would wrap a couple of ice cubes in a towel and use a hammer to crush them. Not too cool. I looked around and checked online reviews of different styles. It came down to either an expensive electric one or an inexpensive hand crank crusher. The thing that finally sold me was a user review for the hand crank crusher. She said that it was perfect for crushing just a couple of ice cubes for cocktails. It seemed like most of the electric ones were really for crushing lots of ice at a time, like maybe for a party. So I decided to get a Metrokane Retro Ice Crusher. (It's made from stainless steel and is so reflective, you can't hardly see it in the photo. It's to the left of the martini glass.) We got the cocktail recipe from West End Crave in St. Louis Park. You can read my review of the restaurant on my new...

We were in Chicago for Thanksgiving. My daughter and son-in-law requested dinner at Topolobampo . I've heard a lot about Rick Bayless and was curious about Topolo and his other restaurants, so we said 'Sure.' Ratings are on a scale of 1-5. Click here for my criteria for each rating. Food: 4 Service: 3 Ambiance: 4 Value: 3 First of all, to go there, you can't think of it as just Mexican food. This ain't your ordinary taqueria . The items on the menu are creative combinations of flavors intended to surprise and delight you. And the dining room where you enjoy these culinary creations is somewhat formal. You can dine in an informal setting at the Frontera Grill, located in the same space. But we were celebrating a special occasion, so we chose the more dressy, formal setting. So let me explain my ratings. which may seem unimpressive. Start with the food. Most of it was fabulous! We started with a trio of different ceviches (I'm not sure if the plural of ceviche is...

My son-in-law is working for a new restaurant in Chicago. It's called BenjYehuda Urban Street Food. The owner, who's name is Benji, was inspired by street food that's prepared in cities around the world, featuring fresh, locally grown ingredients prepared according to authentic local styles. BenjYehuda is modeled after the food stands on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. So in the spirit of street food, the offerings at BenjYehuda are simple and straightforward. You can have falafel, chicken, or steak (shawarma). You can have it in a pita, wrapped in flat bread (laffa), or in a box - on lettuce as a salad or on rice as an entree. Then you can add any combination of toppings or side items. These include hummus, baba ganoush, tahini sauce, hot sauce, pickles, Jerusalem salad, corn salad, red cabbage salad, and carrot salad. You also can get a sampler consisting of three mini pitas, one of each entree with the toppings of your choice. My wife and daughter both had steak, in a b...