Seasonality: 112 Spaghetti Squash

Chris:
This is the first in a series of hopefully many quick mini-reviews of dishes that pop into and out of existence with the changing seasons. With so many restaurants in the area that cater to the ingredients of the season, great dishes come (and unfortunately go) so quickly -- and it's easy to miss a winner.

This week we have the 112 Eatery Spaghetti Squash. 112 is worth a trip any night, but it is especially worth a trip to try this autumnal dish while it is still around.

The key is the simplicty: bright, vibrant yellow spaghetti squash, a simple vinegar (apple cider maybe?) to add tang and sweetness, red pepper flakes for a slight kick, lightly grated parmesan to add some salt. The flavors blend perfectly, and the extras are so lightly applied that they don't take away from the natural taste of the squash -- they simply highlight it. Not to mention the fact that the thin strands of squash are expertly cooked to provide a chewable yet soft texture.

The dish totally trumped my old standby, the 112 cheeseburger. I just about ate the whole plate of squash before starting on the burger -- it was that good. At $6 for the generous-sized side dish, it was an absolute steal. Go try it now before it goes out of season.

Rating: 3.5 tines.

The hunt for late night happy hours

Elizabeth:

I've always loved the concept of happy hour, but when you work in the suburbs it's tough to take advantage of the downtown happy hours very often. That's why I've decided that my new focus is going to be finding the best LATE NIGHT happy hour in the Twin Cities.

Late night happy hour. What a great idea! And I'm not talking about late night drink specials on First Ave. I'm talking about the pairing of yummy appetizers with interesting drinks and cheap, good wine from some of the area's finer restaurants. It's still a concept that is catching on, but I lately discovered that Saffron (across the street from the popular 112 eatery) is one of the early adopters. Other early adopters include Azia, Temple Bar, and Dakota Jazz Club.

Eric and I had tickets to the theater on Friday. When the show starts at 7pm on a Friday, it doesn't leave much time for a romantic pre-show meal. So Eric decided we would make it a Seagull sandwich - sandwich our trip to the Seagull with visits to a couple different happy hour spots.

First on the list: Spill the Wine. http://www.spillthewinerestaurant.com/

I've been to Spill the Wine a few times and this visit lasted only 30 minutes. Rather than go into a detailed review, I'll focus on the key happy hour highlights. But I will say that I've been impressed with the dinners I've had the past few times I've visited. And the cheese plate is incredible.

Spill the Wine happy hour highlights:

• 4pm-7pm Mon-Friday. I wish more places extended happy hours to 7pm.
• $15 bottles of wine. There are typically 4 white options and 4 red options, and the best part is that you can cork the bottle and take it with you if you don't have time to enjoy the whole bottle.
• $3 draft beers.
• $5 appetizer choices. I think these may change each week, but last night the options were bruschetta or fried calamari. We chose the bruschetta and it was delicious! Pieces of tomato and mozzarela marinated in balsamic vinegar, served over a piece of grilled bread that had an olive tapenade on it. The dish was drizzled with an amazing balsamic vinegar reduction and a light pesto sauce. Overall, I wish they had more options on the happy hour appetizer menu, but since we were there for such a short time it was okay.

Rating: 2 tines for the happy hour. Dinner rating TBD.

The Seagull was excellent - and Ian McKellan had an old man afro! 3 hours 20 minutes later, we're back in the car and heading to our next happy hour spot: Saffron. http://www.saffronmpls.com/

Saffron late night happy hour highlights (they also have an earlier happy hour):

• 11pm - 1am on Fridays and Saturdays
• $5 glasses of wine. 4 to 5 options for red and white, plus a couple sparkling options. Bartender is super friendly and let me try the wine before he poured me a glass. Love when bartenders do that.
• I think they have other drink specials / beer specials, but I can't remember. Eric's favorite on the cocktail menu was the Harissa Mary. The bartender claimed this drink was his proudest accomplishment on the menu. Think bloody mary to the middle eastern extreme - they puree tomatoes with spicy red peppers, garlic, harissa, and other spices to make a bloody mary mix with great flavor and heat, but not too overpowering. Again the bartender poured a sample for us. Eric thought it was delicious, but thought he might enjoy it more over pasta as opposed to an entire pint glass of it with vodka.
• $3.50 happy hour appetizers! This is the best part of Saffron's late night happy hour. There were six choices: fried eggs with caramelized onions and sweet potato (served with harissa aioli), kofta meatballs (lamb and beef), pomme frites, charmoula burgers (mini burgers marinated in charmoula - a spice blend made from 22 different spices), lamb BLT, and vegetable & rice croquettes. We selected 4 of the six. Overall, we liked all four of our choices but the Lamb BLT was the most distinctive. House cured lamb bacon served on toasted challah with a pesto aioli. YUM. The eggs were suprisingly flavorful and perfectly cooked sunny side up with a soft yolk. The onions and sweet potatoes were cooked in right on top of the white. We had high hopes for the charmoula burgers and the meat was good but we couldn't really taste the complexity of the 22 spices. Kofta meatballs with a harissa jam (can you tell this place loves harissa?) were tasty, as well. For $3.50, this is the best late night food I've found in the T.C.

Rating: 2.5 tines for the late night happy hour. Dinner rating TBD.

My search for late night happy hour spots continues...will keep you posted on what I find!

Chris comments on 12/14/07:
I was reminded of this post when I recently learned that the new Red Stag Supper Club is apparently open until 2AM, seven days a week. No details yet, but they supposedly have a "late night" menu which may or may not also include drink specials. I know that the late night menu at Barbette (also a Kim Bartmann establishment) has some great $5 appetizers -- mussels, oysters, frites, cheeses, etc. -- so I'm hopeful for Red Stag's as well!

We will have to try it and report back.

Warehouse Sandwich Goodness

Chris:
Today I tried the brand new Be'Wiched deli and sandwich bar in the Minneapolis warehouse district:

http://www.bewicheddeli.com/

I love it when new restaurants open in the cities. Every new independent place means one more possibility of eating something unique and amazing. But what I love even more than a new independent restaurant is a new restaurant that fills a niche that simply was lacking in the area. Sure, it's nice to have yet another good authentic Neapolitan pizza place (there are already three), but it's freakin' fantastic when something which previously didn't exist suddenly springs into existence. Such was the case when Little Szechuan elevated Twin Cities Chinese food to a new level last year. And such is the case with Be'Wiched.

We now have a sandwich shop in the Twin Cities that would make a New Yorker proud. The kind of deli that roasts (let alone slices!) its own meats, makes its own sides, bakes its own desserts, uses the appropriate bread pairings (roast beef on striato -- yes! pastrami on rye -- yes!) and even has a respectable selection of deli-street-cred beverages. (Even the ginger ales come in two different strengths -- strong and mild!)

What does this all tell you? Not anything specific about regionality -- there are tons of bad sandwiches to be had in the depths of Manhattan -- but rather, like many old delis that grace the city of pretzels and Papayas, BeWiched is the kind of place that appreciates the details. It shows on the menu, it shows in the (beautifully aesthetic) space, and in the end, you taste it in the sandwich.

Oh, the sandwiches. I think I could have ordered any of the dozen sandwiches on the menu and left a happy camper. I went with the pastrami after hearing a few people rave about it. The house-made pastrami was sliced to fall apart perfectly with each bite, yet hold together in the sandwich. The meat's flavor was without a doubt the best I have had in the Midwest. Such depth of flavor, not overly salty, perfectly crusted around the edges. The dark rye added just the right amount of sourness, and along with the pickled cabbage and coarse-grained mustard, the sandwich was a model of flavor harmony.

Along with the sandwich came a deli-worthy pickle spear and a small fresh scoop of cous cous salad.

The one downside at Be'Wiched is the price tag. Their sandwiches are somewhat expensive ($9-13) and it is hard to ignore that, especially when you are subconsciously comparing it to the $3.99 ham and cheese sub that you can get from Cub. I think the solution here is to realize that it is like comparing apples to oranges -- or in this case, processed lunchmeat to freshly roasted, local, organic (when possible) ingredients.

One more bonus: they serve wine and beer, and have $2 taps during happy hour until 6:30. If only I lived in the warehouse district!

Rating: 3.5 tines.

i heart heartland

Chris:
We've wanted to try Heartland since moving to the Twin Cities, but for some reason never got around to it until last night. Being big fans of locally sourced ingredients and regional cuisine, it is ironic that we had not exerted the energy to go to what might be the quintessence of higher-end Midwestern faire. Lucia's -- the other restaurant that would probably be vying for that title in the area -- is a perennial favorite. I'm probably at Lucia's-To-Go for lunch at least once every two weeks, and I think they have some of the best food around.

So, why the long wait for Heartland? Probably the same reason we've never yet been to Alma, which I frequently hear talked about in the same breath as Heartland and Lucia's. There's always a bit of an activation energy before trying a new higher-end place, but luckily we crossed that threshold during a fortuitous foray into St. Paul last night.

Coming straight from the airport at 5:00pm, we had tickets to the Friday night performance of Prairie Home Companion -- which started at 7:30. Realizing that we didn't have enough time to go back home to Minneapolis, then get dinner, then get back to St. Paul, we just headed east and followed the wind. Well, that wind took us to Heartland's Wine Bar -- the easiest way to taste the food of Heartland on 5 minutes notice -- if you arrive at 5:30 when they open. By 6:00pm the wine bar -- which is first-come-first-served -- was full. The restaurant was fully reserved at 5:30.

Speaking of the restaurant, we peeked into it. Frankly we liked the ambience of the wine bar better; it's a little more intimate and cozy, but it doesn't really feel like a wine bar at all -- just more of a smaller restaurant with a prominent bar in the middle. In fact, I'm not sure why we would ever choose the restaurant over the bar -- since you can order from the main menu at the bar, but the bar also had its own menu with a few items I did not see on the other.

Anyway, on to the food. I went with two smaller dishes:

I started with the carmelized cabbage-pinto bean soup with smoked pork and heirloom tomato concassee. This dish was subtle yet good. The pinto beans dominated, punctuated now and then by thin chunks of the pork which I assume had been braising with the soup to the point where they easily fell apart. The carmelized cabbage was downplayed, and I couldn't find any tomato. I guess I'll have to look up concassee in a dictionary, but I'm guessing that the tomato was part of the soup base. Overall, I couldn't help but think that this dish was like a very refined bowl of baked beans, executed very well.

Second, I went with the house-made wild boar bratwurst with roasted winter squash puree and maple syrup-hazelnut glaze. Sounds great, huh? The bratwurst was at least a few notches above other bratwursts I've had before. Very, very lean, well spiced with fresh herbs -- I ate it way too quickly. The winter squash puree was well executed but somewhat standard. (I have a deep appreciation for winter squash after moving to Minnesota, since it's one of the few fresh vegetables that can be locally sourced way late in the season.) I couldn't tell if the glaze had hazelnut flavors in it, since it included whole hazelnuts as well -- but the maple base went perfectly with both the sausage and the squash to add some sweetness.

Upon my server's recommendation, I went with the Paulaner Hefe-weizen, a nice Bavarian complement to the brat. This actually was going to be my first choice as well, based on the bit of knowledge I learned in my friend Josh Pepper's legendary beer class. But that will be the topic of another post!

Raka went with the heirloom tomato salad with buttermilk blue cheese, curly cress, and opal basil-sweet pepper vinaigrette. I didn't try it, but it looked terrific -- especially for this late in the season! Five different heirloom tomatoes ranging from deep red to light green -- yum. I did, however, get to try Raka's second dish, Applewood-smoked Yorkshire pork ribs with grilled broccoli and tomatillo-brown sugar glaze. Honestly, this wasn't my favorite dish. The ribs were a little too smokey for my taste (admittedly I don't usually like anything with a smokey flavor) and they also weren't as tender as I would have hoped.

Still, I came away feeling like we will definitely be going back to Heartland -- and we will most likely stick with the wine bar.

One final note. Looking back, I feel that our selection of dishes may not adequately portray here the breadth of cuisine which was on the menu that night. The Grand Marais lake cisco (a fish, thanks dictionary) looked excellent, and the chilled organic carrot-ginger soup with opal basil-infused wildflower honey and microgreens salad sounded great. Despite its connection with Midwest-sourced ingredients, this is not your father's hot dish. But still, I recognize the humor in the situation: Heartland, Prairie Home Companion, brats and beer, all within an hour of stepping off the plane -- yeah, I'm back in the Midwest!

Rating: 3 tines, reserving the right to bump this up after a few more tries.