Krik's Picks

I’ve only been there for lunch, so far. But I’m encouraged by the new restaurant in the Chambers Hotel . Marin is the sister restaurant to Mill Valley Kitchen in St. Louis Park. Catch the northern California parallelism? The town of Mill Valley, CA, is in Marin County. I still miss the original Chambers Kitchen . Before it closed, it was one of my two favorite, special occasion restaurants in the Twin Cities. After it closed, D’Amico & Sons took over the space, calling the restaurant D’Amico Kitchen. I ate there several times for lunches and dinners. Quite out of character for D’Amico, each experience was uneven. There would be some dishes that were amazingly good, and someone else at the same meal would be served a dish that was disappointingly ordinary. My first visit to Marin was with my brother for our mutual birthday celebration. His birthday is in October. Mine is in November. We’ve established a tradition of meeting for lunch sometime in between. In fact, Mike and I h...

I posted my review of Union Fish Market and realized that I neglected to mention one of the best parts of our meal. As you will read in the post below, my wife and I ordered the lightly grilled sea bass for our entrées. We both also ordered the lobster bisque with sweet potato as our starter. Sometimes I worry a little that I’m sort of obnoxious when I pull out my camera to take a picture of my food at a restaurant. But oh how I wish that I had taken a picture of the presentation of the bisque. A movie, in fact, would have been better. The servers set a bowl in front of each of us. In the bowl was the lobster meat and other bisque ingredients. Over the bowl was a lattice of what looked like spun sugar. I asked about it and was told that it wasn’t sugar but it did add just a touch of sweetness to the soup. Then they poured the hot soup over the lattice which dissolved into the bowl. So that was really cool. The flavors of the bisque fully justified the dramatic presentation. The s...

Last summer, I posted a rave review of Union Rooftop in Minneapolis. (Click here to read it.) The rooftop restaurant continues to be a popular spot for all the reasons I cited in my review. But since Union opened, it’s street level restaurant couldn’t seem to find a following. I guess if you couldn’t get a table on the rooftop, people tended to just go someplace else. Then in September, the restaurant shifted gears. Instead of a nondescript restaurant, it’s now a fish restaurant, and it certainly appears as though the new format is a hit. We went there for a winter solstice dinner with friends. I didn’t have any trouble getting a reservation for the time we preferred (7 p.m.), but when we arrived, the tables were full. During the evening, things thinned out a bit around 8. But by the time we left around 9, most of the tables were full again. I took that as a good sign. Also, the restaurant is getting favorable reviews on Yelp (a 1-star rating was actually for the rooftop) and a rec...

I haven’t ranted about Italian restaurants in Minnesota lately. My dinner at Luci Ancora in mid-December gives me a chance to ask, yet again: “Why don’t we have first class Italian restaurants in Minnesots?” Not that there’s anything wrong with Luci Ancora. I had a perfectly fine meal with a couple of former co-workers who live in Washington, DC. But when it was all over, we agreed that it just isn’t in the same class as great DC Italian restaurants, such as Fiola , Acqua al 2 , Bibiana . This was my first time eating at Luci Ancora. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. It’s in a nice location, right across the street from the campus of St. Catherine University . They have a small parking lot. I got there early enough to get a spot. It would have been easy to also get convenient street parking. But the city streets were still pretty snow-clogged, so I was glad to be in the lot. Inside, Luci Ancora is very warm and welcoming. The modest-sized dining room is open and the tabl...

Our October trip to New York City started with a delicious meal in a French bistro and listening to some great jazz. So my wife and I awoke the next morning with the intent of seeing as much as we could during the day. Fortunately, while the temp was a little brisk, it was bright and sunny. We are inveterate walkers. When we’re on vacation, we like to pick central city hotels and use them as a base to explore a city on foot. Linda had spent some time investigating sights to see and neighborhoods to visit. She had mapped out a route for us to take. From our Midtown hotel, we started out down 5th Ave. As we started out one of the things I noticed in particular was the number of men wearing formal business attire. Mostly suits, but if not suits, then certainly jacket and tie. It struck me as quite a contrast to downtown Minneapolis. I came to two alternative, and complementary, conclusions. First, maybe the pendulum is swinging back toward a more buttoned down look for business profe...

After a long day of walking, sightseeing, and exploring, I was glad that we didn’t have to go far for dinner. We had made a reservation at the Midtown location of the Fig & Olive . We picked the restaurant because we liked the creative menu. At the time, we didn’t realize that there were multiple locations in the city. This location was right across the street from our hotel. One of the things that appealed to my wife and me was the prix fixe option on the menu. We tend to like that approach as long as the options look appealing. It’s sort of like a pseudo-tasting menu, only with more flexibility for individual preferences. For our dinner at Fig & Olive, my wife started with the house salad. Sorry if that doesn’t sound too exciting. But the list of ingredients in the salad were very appealing – fig, apple, manchego cheese, gorgonzola, tomato, walnut, olives, romaine and other greens, scallion, and fig balsamic vinegar. It was an excellent salad. My meal started with a mus...

Since retiring in July, I’ve had to start planning things to have for lunch. When I was working, I’d either have a lunch meeting, or I’d eat in the cafeteria, or I’d skip lunch (especially if I’d had a good breakfast that day). I might still choose to skip lunch, but that would mean my wife would have to eat lunch alone, and she’d prefer not to. So I’ve been planning leftovers and other dishes that I can quickly heat up for lunch. Now that it’s October and the weather is getting chilly, soup is a logical choice. This week, I decided I wanted to make a cheese soup. I had an ulterior motive. I may have mentioned in a previous post that I had a particularly robust crop of Serrano peppers in my garden. They were ripening faster than I could use them. So I went looking for a recipe for homemade pepper sauce. I settled on the recipe I found on the Food Network web site from Emeril Lagasse. (Click here: Homemade Red Hot Sauce .) Here is a photo of my beautiful Serrano peppers. I followed ...