Latest Restaurant Reviews
Page 11
Ideal Cafe (Northfield, MN)
To us, the key to Guatemalan food is black beans. We ate them at least once a day during our weeks in Guatemala. It’s an oversimplification to assume that black beans are Guatemalan and pinto beans are Mexican, but that’s what we’ve observed.
Guatemalan food shares several similarities and some subtle differences with its prominent neighbor. We went to the Ideal Cafe in Northfield to remind ourselves of both.
The Ideal Cafe looks like a random nondescript 1960s coffeeshop. The restaurant doesn’t sparkle. It doesn’t have décor. There are six booths along the wall, and six tables in the middle. The kitchen is along the other wall, and there’s a place to order near the front…
Singapore Chinese Cuisine (Maplewood, MN)
Singapore Chinese Cuisine doesn’t look like much from the outside. It’s in a strip mall, and looks like a perfectly standard below-average American-style Chinese restaurant. The decor isn’t inviting. But don’t let that dissuade you; the restaurant makes some of the best Southeast Asian food in the Twin Cities.
There are two halves to the menu: a page of Chinese-food staples, and two pages of Malaysian and Singaporan dishes. Ignore the former, and order off the latter. Most of these dishes are delicious.
Order the Captain’s Curry, a chicken curry so interestingly spiced it just comes alive in your mouth. It’s not spicy hot like some Indian curries—Malaysian curries tend to be subtler and more complex. The menu claims that it’s made with 27 different spices, which is why the taste is so hard to pin down. We think this is the best dish on the menu…
Roasted Pear (Burnsville, MN)
It’s not that we hate chain restaurants. Some very good restaurants are owned by corporations. Small local chains seem to us like markers of success, not focus-group encroachment. But we resent how national chain restaurants set the public taste and squeeze the independent restaurants out of the business.
We say this because Burnsville’s Roasted Pear looks incredibly like a chain restaurant. The muted earth tone color scheme, good wood tables, and open kitchen all impressed us as a corporate store. It’s not; Roasted Pear is an independent restaurant, and the family works there. It’s more expensive than we’d like, and the menu is more variable than it should be, but……
Lone Spur Grill (Minnetonka, MN)
We have great affection for really fake-looking fake cactuses, adobe-like décor, and mariachi hats hung on the walls. These make an earnest and admirably corny dining experience. This stuff is so not-Minnesota, and that’s what we adore.
Lone Spur Grill, in Minnetonka, serves a Texan and Mexican menu. You can get standards like enchiladas on a platter with rice and refried beans. They serve a nice chicken quesadilla appetizer: not at all greasy and with a large salad on the side.
The fajitas are quite good, as long as the server gets that sizzling platter to you promptly. You’ll roll your own with a huge plate of fixings like cheese, lettuce, beans, guacamole, and rice. We liked the tuna, a nice change from the usual chicken or steak. Vegetarians will like the sautéed vegetable fajitas…
Levain (Minneapolis, MN)
We’re never going to get a bad meal at Levain. We walk in and a voice from the kitchen says, “Hi, Mom!” Our son is one of the chefs there. The star treatment is nice. We get a good table; we may get an extra little course or possibly even two. At least one of the chefs smiles at us a lot over the pass to the open kitchen.
But, truly, we’ve watched the staff, every time we’ve been over there. And everybody around us is getting marvelous, attentive service. Everybody’s getting delicious food. People who are celebrating are getting little extras. It’s not just us. Levain’s customers are all treated well, and everyone is given full value…
Mojito (St. Louis Park, MN)
Know anyone on Atkins? Yup, so do we. Maybe that’s why steakhouses are popping up everywhere. But instead of the same-old steakhouse scene, grab your protein-hungry friends and head to Mojito for some meat with panache.
Mojito has style. Open, airy, and colorful, the dining room is quite perfectly done. Its postmodern swank suggests booze, beef, and the hard road home, while at the same time being a place you can bring your family. The hip bar is to one side, and on the other is the open kitchen where you can watch the cooking take place.
There’s only one thing you should order here: the rodizio dinner. Mojito is a …
Surabhi Indian Cuisine (Bloomington, MN)
Interesting Indian restaurants used to be hard to find around town. There wasn’t much of a local population to support the restaurants we did have, which tended to be hard to find and not very good. But times have changed, and the Twin Cities’ Indian gets better and better. One of our favorites is Surabhi, in Bloomington just off the 98th street exit of 35W. The menu has so much to offer that dinner here is a virtual tour of Indian cooking.
Surabhi has all of the familiar Indian dishes like tandoor chicken and shrimp biryani. And these are good. They also serve kormas and masalas and vindaloos. Any of these can be made with lamb, chicken, shrimp or vegetables, but of course there’s no beef option…
Thanh Do (St. Louis Park, MN)
Thanh Do has got to be the busiest take-out place in St. Louis Park. We arrived at seven on a weeknight, and the crowd for take-out orders was so big we didn’t understand at first that we weren’t in line for a table. And every table was occupied. Happily, we were seated in a few minutes, and away from the door at that. The stream of people coming in and out made it chilly near the front.
Thanh Do is in a strip mall, as suburban restaurants tend to be. (The other notable tendency is for new restaurants to move into free-standing buildings once the Country Kitchens and Big Boys have been run out of town by changing customer tastes. We think such re-purposing is a good thing, all in all.) The dining room here is spare, but with enough interesting accents to make you think this might be better than your average strip-mall joint…
El Loro (Savage, MN)
We think Mexican food makes a great winter meal. Not the simple and minimalist dishes developed in the Mexican climate, but the heartier Tex-Mex style with lots of sauce and side dishes. The platter completely covered with food: that’s what will get you through a cold day.
At El Loro, your meal starts off with a bowl of fresh hot corn chips with dip. The tomato salsa is tasty, but the white dip is not. Think ranch dressing with cumin, and not very good ranch dressing at that.
But don’t let that slight hiccup dissuade you. El Loro has an extensive menu, and a lot of it is good…
Udupi Cafe (Columbia Heights, MN)
On Central Avenue in Columbia Heights, inside a nondescript commercial building, is the best Indian restaurant in the Twin Cities. It’s a vegetarian restaurant, but don’t let that worry you. The food’s so good that even dedicated carnivores will enjoy Udupi Cafe.
India is a huge country, and “Indian cuisine” is actually many different cuisines from many different cultures and traditions. Many familiar Indian dishes are actually Northern Indian. Udupi serves spicy vegetarian food from the south of India. Expect new, and surprisingly delicious, dishes…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.