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Greetings from Seattle

Sep 052006

On my little mini-vacation, I am out in beautiful Seattle enjoying the sights, the sounds, the smells and other things that start with ‘S’. I’m currently writing from the Icon Coffee in Freemont (suburb just north of Seattle) and I have to admit that I have a lot of observations of this city. The last time I was here it was for business and I didn’t really get a chance to take in the nightlife that much. This trip is pretty much all vacation and my impressions here are even stronger than I initially thought. I will now spurt off a number of vaguely random thoughts of Seattle and it’s suburbs in hopes to give you, the reader, an opportunity to get a litle flavor of my trip.

Old VW vans here are plentiful in number, many in good condition, in all of the various model years. Nearly the same could be said for VW Beetles. Just the sight of them brings out your inner hippie.

The seafood here is outstanding. If I hadn’t been born, bred and raised completely land-locked, I may not find the seafood here so amazing, but it simply is fresh, plentiful and reasonably priced, all of which you will not find in the middle of our country.

To illustrate how good the seafood here is, we went to a sushi place called the Blue C. It has a conveyor type service in which there is a conveyor belt around a good portion of the restaurant with different sushi on different small colored plates, each of which has a corresponding price; for example, a blue plate would be $3.25 and an orange plate would be $2.75. You take what you want as it comes around. I stayed relatively safe with mostly salmon and tuna but I did venture out a bit with eel and scallops. I dared not to try the squid or the various fish eggs. Another time though. Only so much adventure at once.

Not only is the seafood outstanding, the food in general is pretty damn good. Tonight we are going to a little Italian place that is supposed to be very good. Also, down the street is apparently the best hot chocolate ever at a little French place.

Seattle’s downtown is bustling, much more so than Minneapolis (I won’t even bring up St. Paul because to be fair, it just doesn’t have a downtown–a nice quiet, sleepy, big city). There’s just a lot of people around downtown. Perhaps it’s because the fish market is also bustling. I highly recommend a quick trip down there. It’s not all fish, but there’s a lot to do and eat there.

A word on Starbucks. We all know that they are from this city and they are pretty much everywhere, but it seems that Seattle takes its coffee very seriously. Local shops are plentiful and quite good.

The northwest is as environmental as you would expect. Many buses cart people around and even some of those are dual hybred buses that could run on alternative fuels or on electric power much like a cable car. A lot of people walk or bike. Good for them.

A final note about the music scene here. I’ve always been proud of the Twin Cities music scene. It’s been vibrant and positive and with a little looking, you can always find what you are looking for. Seattle has a great music scene. I haven’t actually experienced it, but seeing the advertisements for concerts everywhere, it seems to be as good. Maybe one of these days, I’ll get to take in a concert or two.

Restaurant Review: Vino 610

Drink, Food, Restaurant Reviews, Twin Cities Life 2 Responses »

Apr 192006

Vino 610 is, to be blunt, an enigma. Did I hate the place? Absolutely not. Is this a must stop place to eat? Not really. Is this a place with a ton of potential? Yes.

This is a place that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. Is it a restaurant? Well, it serves food, most of it pretty good. But without a couple of signature entrees, it’s lacking for that food destination quality that makes people want to travel to get there. Is it a wine bar? It seems more than that. Good wine list, good beer list (for those who don’t want wine). Also had “progressive” flights of wines that the number one was a good house wine, but nothing special working up to better wines. So I have to judge this by what I think is what it is, which is a restaurant.

The appetizers were good. The artichoke dip was amazing really. But the bean dip seemed like it had been waiting for someone to eat it…but the chips with the bean dip were incredible, like they were just freshly made. See, this is what I have to deal with. Some of this was good and some of it needed work. Salads, though, seemed universally delicious.

The entrees were…how shall I say…interesting. It was like they took a number of comfort foods and jazzed them up a bit and gave them different names. My Croque Monsiuer was really nothing more than a pretty good ham and cheese sandwich. The pomme frites were nothing more than french fries. The YTBNG had a vegetarian lavash, which is more or less a thin crust Mediterainian pizza. That was quite tasty.

So what are we dealing with here. Let me tell a quick story about the night. Dave got a petite steak that was overcooked. He told the waitress who noticed it immediately and took it back to the cook. A new steak was cooked and brought out. It was done right. Later, the owner who felt bad about the whole thing got our table a round of champagne. If there was something about this restaurant is that with service like that, it is moving in the right direction. However, Vino 610 could use a couple of tips and I offer these in good spirits:

Get a website. A little exposure with the menu can go a long way to helping things out.
Get some heavy drapes. A small place like that with limited seating should not get too noisy. A couple of well placed drapes will deaden the sound and make it more intimate, which it should excel at doing.
Get a couple of really interesting entrees that are not take-offs of some comfort food. Or do comfort food in a new way, one that really makes people want to go there. Barring that, focus the wine a bit more and make it a wine destination…more flights, better flights. Perhaps a line of premium wine flights or host a regular wine tasting.

The best way to describe this place is potential. If Vino 610 lives up to it’s potential, we could have a real winner on our hands. Here’s hoping they get there.

Restaurant Review: Masa

Drink, Food, Restaurant Reviews, Twin Cities Life 3 Responses »

Feb 152006

Tonight we had dinner club at a restaurant called Masa located on Nicolette Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Until just now, sitting down to get the website address of this place did I realize that this is one of the dining establishments under the big tent that is D’Amico and Partners. Knowing that before I went would have raised my expectations and I’m glad I didn’t have that knowledge beforehand as I can be more honest about my feelings for the place.

In a nutshell, it was okay. Not bad, but not great. It’s a small restaurant so luckily for them, there were some of the small things that were working for them tonight. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

All nice dinners start with a nice little drink and Masa had a wide selection of wines and a list of specialty mixes and drinks. I took advantage of the michelada, which is Negro Modelo beer with a maggi salsa, spiced lime and a salted rim. It’s a tasty drink and spicy, not too expensive at a very reasonable $5.50. Many people took advantage of other specialty drinks including a number of different margaritas. The mango margarita was quite good as was the two varities of sangria they offered.

We ordered two appetizers, the Sopes Surtidos, corn masa boats with shredded chicken, beef or roasted poblano. This was a tasty dish, to say the least. We also ordered guacamole, which, sad to say, was just adequate. I expected much more, but I guess how much can you expect with just the basic guacamole ingredients.

Entrees were ordered and even though there were nine of us, all of us decided on four different dishes out of eight choices: Pollo con Mole Poblano, Enchilada with Seafood and Pipian Sauce, and Puerco Veracruzana which is a pork shoulder. The last I can’t remember the name, but it is essentially a chicken stew. All dishes had their charm and my choice of the chicken in the mole sauce was good, but not so good that I was making the necessary yummy sounds that seem to follow me when I’m having a great dining experience. There was a lot of “oh, that’s good” and “that’s nice” going around the table, but no one going “you have GOT to try this.”

Only two people opted for dessert and I went for the flan. The flan was very good, possibly the best thing I had that night. I took my time with this one small dish and relished finishing it off. It had subtle hints of coconut that snuck through tasting.

But this gets back to the whole thing with Masa. Some of the little things that are done are spot on. The flan, the drinks, the chairs we sat in which at first take you by surprise by their shape but are eminently comfortable. But there were little things, obvious things, that were missed. One small plate of tortillias for the five people that needed them was embarassing. It eventually was too much of a hassle for me to keep asking for the tortillias to be passed back down from the other end of the table. One at each end of the table would have been a suitable and easy solution for this. Wait staff was friendly, but didn’t seem to really knock me over with service and I wasn’t compelled to think much about what great service I was getting. The chicken mole, which was good, had to be sawed off the bone which is a lot of work for a little chicken.

Masa is a place that you walk into and you expect a great meal and when you get a very good meal, you feel left out, like you missed something that should have been there. It is a place that seems like it’s almost there. Sadly though, there wasn’t anything besides the flan that is immediately compelling to me and makes me want to return soon on my own which would be the sign of a good restaurant with a bright future.

Tasty Wine

Drink, Food, Thoughts Comments Off

Feb 022006

Wine tasting is like watching a foriegn mystery movie in another language. If you don’t understand the whole thing, it can still be enjoyable, but you still feel like you’re missing out on something. Such was last night as we went to Brits for the Twin Cities Uncorked event. The night was billed as a wine and chocolate pairing, and it was pretty good. I prefer the actual sit-down wines paired with various entrees or appetizers where you really get a good sense for the stuff you’re drinking. Not only that but you get some good food with it that some sommelier picking out what goes well with what. Last night was a crap shoot. You tasted some wines, were given some suggestions on what goes with what, but other than that, good luck. Chocolates were pretty good, but I wasn’t really there for the chocolate. I like chocolate, but I don’t need it.

To give you a feel for my night last night, let me tell you the most memorable thing. I found a cheese that I absolutely love, can’t get enough of. Oh sure, I drank some good wine, and some of those I would even consider getting if the price was right (and many were), but one taste of that cotswold cheese and I was in heaven. I wasn’t the only person gushing over that cheese either.

When you have a wine event and people are talking about the cheese, something is amiss.

As usual, conversation drifted from here to there. After the event, we went to have another drink (at least some of us had a drink) and I needed food, particularly some bangers and mash. Not sure how we got to the point, but we started talking about blogs and how someone’s blog was funny. Also, apparently I need a nickname for…oops, almost spilled it.

I thought about using initials, particularly SO for significant other. However, I occasionally talk hockey and SO means shut out. Also, if you are familiar with baseball it means strike out. Somewhat ominous, if you ask me. If you read some sports columns, Dr. Z often calls his wife the flaming redhead, never referring her as anything else. Fun, I thought, but then where do I go with that? I could call her the cute blonde, which she is, but it’s not a grabbing phrase, is it? We don’t really have any nicknames for each other (hell, we don’t even have a song) so it compounds the problem. I could use gf, which is netspeak for girlfriend, but that is so 1998. But on the other hand, she is unconventional, unlike anyone I’ve ever known. In that thought, some ordinary psuedonym just will not do. I have to give this one some thought. Suggestions welcome. Leave thoughts in comments please.

A tip for single men who are looking for women. If you like wine, I mean actually enjoy drinking the stuff, wine tastings like this, mixer style, are a gold mine for you. Sit down dinners, not so much, but where you mingle and taste and converse and such, it’s money that’s well spent. I saw a number of guys there last night that were 1) actual wine drinkers looking for good buys or something unique. They tended to be older and were taking notes. Probably not “in the market”, as it were. Then there were 2) guys that were dragged there by their girlfriends. These poor bastards would rather be on the other side of the room getting their drink on if not for being tethered by an invisible collar around their emaciated necks, leash held by their girlfriend. One could almost see the sad, lost puppy dog look in their eyes, the tell-tale sign of a man being held against his will. Then there were 3) young professional guys who actually wanted to be there. I saw maybe two of these guys…maybe. If you actually fall into this group and are single and looking, you really need to get to one of these things. That is, unless you are intimidated by smart, professional women who have their ~~shit~~ lives together. But the ratio of women to men was at least 3 to 1, good odds.

Here’s the catch though. If you don’t like wine, this is not for you. The only guys there that weren’t there to taste (not drink) wine were the #2 saps from the last paragraph. You come here alone or with a couple of buds and start bitching about the tiny swallows in your glass, you’re a fake and easily spotted. From there, you quickly move to pariah status and then it goes downhill from there. Might as well move on to a meat market and look for a shread of dignity on the way out. Just remember that.

Now to contemplate more nicknames. Be back later.

Obligatory post

Food, Thoughts, Twin Cities Life Comments Off

Sep 282005

After work, I met Laura at Rossi’s in downtown Minneapolis for a birthday party for one of her friends, Brenda. So where do I start with this?

As I was walking to Rossi’s, I couldn’t help but think of NYC. There’s a world of difference between the two cities. That much is obvious, but there are things that for me were glaring. Walking in a big city is interesting and sometimes fun. In NYC, there’s always people there, at nearly any time of day,Well, in Manhatten anyway. In Minneapolis, I walked a couple of blocks at 6pm without passing more than a handful of people. I thought about this and noticed some real differences. There’s no real residential in downtown, or really anywhere close to the heart of the city. And there isn’t the small commercial stores on the street for people to walk into. I like Minneapolis, but I thought this was a pity. Why do you think that Uptown is so popular? Or Grand Avenue in Saint Paul? The mix of residential and commercial where people are able to walk to nearly everything they could want is inherently appealing. Then I got to the bar.

It was pretty fun. I ordered a double scotch, my favorite, 15 yr old Dalwhinnie. There’s two reasons for this idea. The first is that I sip scotch. If I would’ve ordered anything else, I’d drink it and many of them. I just wanted one drink and didn’t want to pound down drinks, one after another, getting drunk and racking up a huge bill while trying not to think about the hangover tomorrow. Second is that I didn’t want to spend that much money. One drink would be plenty. The company was great, fun people to be around. There was some decent music being played by an accordian player and a bassist, then later a jazz trio. Good stuff.

But Rossi’s itself? I don’t know. I liked the atmosphere, located in a basement with exposed brick. As I said, the music was quite entertaining. Here’s the bad things. Our waitress was awful. I know we were a big table, but the bar wasn’t terribly busy and it looked like she didn’t have many other areas. Regardless, I wasn’t sure who our waitress/waiter was for quite awhile. I got there, she confused me about the drink specials, dropped off my drink and then disappeared for over 15 minutes while I was hungry and wanted to order some food. She didn’t pay any attention to us, which was too bad because we would’ve spent more money, drank more, ate more and tipped better. Beyond that, it was pretty expensive. Far more expensive than the service we were getting or the quality of the food. Definately a mixed bag. I’ll probably give it another try just to see if there is something different with the service and maybe I’ll change my mind.

Last note: it was brought out that I have a blog. I’m not sure if anyone will see this, but I was obligated to post tonight about this just in case someone who was there tonight happens to check it out.