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.

Very quick side note here before I really get rocking on this.  I was fortunate to finally purchase the complete (or complet) Monty Python’s Flying Circus…all forty-five episodes on stunning DVD quality of the original broadcasts with all the warts and flaws.  So when I started out with “It’s…”, I, of course, thought of a bedraggled Michael Palin, dressed in a tattered suit, long beard, struggling to get to the camera, looking straight into the camera to say the should-be-patented “It’s…”, longing as he is to say more, but it cuts away right into the credits.  Somehow seemed seredipitous because I didn’t mean to start this way, but I just did.

Anyway, sidebar over, I’m sitting at the wonderful Acadia Cafe on the corner of Nicollet and Franklin learning more about blogging and even more about podcasting.  After this day, I am convinced that I will do a podcast, and I will do one soon.  No more waiting.  But more about that later as I want to talk about the Acadia Cafe for a second.

This place is wonderful.  It has a fine beer selection, decent food offerings and the background music is not only unobtrusive, it strikes that fine balance between engaging and comforting.  I’m currently enjoying a fine beer by the new Twin Cities brewery Surly…I highly recommend the Surly Bender, a porter-like offering with a hint of hoppiness, mild bitter and chocolate overtones and a smooth finish.  I’m on my second one, and this is with other fine tap offerings like Old Speckled Hen, Beamish, Shiner Bock and Pilsner Urquel, just to name a few of my favorites that tempted me.  That and I saw they offer the very fine Rogue Shakespeare Stout in a bottle.   This is definitely a place I am coming back.

The meeting here was organized by Garrick VanBuren whom I consider the godfather of Minnesota podcasting and a friend of mine.  Garrick’s First Crack podcast has been going on for two years now and has covered the gamut of topics.  I also met a couple of other bloggers and podcasters, including Dan Hook with the Hook Show.  I’m forgetting a couple of guys I know, but I’ll make that up at some point.

Here’s the deal though.  Although podcasting is saturated right now, as well as blogging, who cares.  I’m going to do what I’m going to do.  If people listen, great.  If not, I stop and go to something else.  I looked at the equipment I’ll need for this and barebones, this will still cost me around $329 (not including cables).  Ideally, I get a couple other things and I’m looking at $600-800.  Still less than what I paid for my laptop.

So there it is.  Expect a podcast in the near future, within the week I would say.   There’s no reason for me not to do this.

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.

I know it’s not your fault. Bad start, 1-3 record (probably tied for first in the NFC north though), can’t seem to win a game on the road, an offense that is offensive in the term of “they’re stinking the joint up”, and a fan base, though rabid at times, is elusive with the requisite fanatacism that is found on the east coast.

Welcome to Minnesota. Please enjoy our fickle fans which have already predicted one of two things to happen——a blow-out handed to a hapless defense (and at least one “coming out party” by an unheralded player which was on no one’s radar until they played the purple), or a good offensive first half which can only lead to one of the greatest meltdowns in football history. If there is a star player on the other team, it is probable that player will have a sparkling run which will be shown on every sports show until the end of the season and may end up on an NFL films clip of that player sticking it to the defenders. This isn’t trying to sound cynical, but after you’ve watched a few NFL films highlighting a player or two and those great runs are always against the proud purple and gold, you start to catch on.

Remember the four Super Bowls we lost? We do. We remember 1998 as well when we should’ve, but didn’t go. Just another dagger in the heart of the fans. It’s gotten to the point now that fans expect the falling. In true Minnesotan fashion, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and keep on keepin’ on.

That brings me to your coming to the Vikings. I’m sure you had high hopes. I know we did, but at 1-3, who are we kidding any more. Defense still has some problems (over 240 yrds given up on the ground?) and the once potent offense just plain stinks. Don’t say a word about Randy Moss or I will reach right across here and punch you in the throat. It’s not him why our O is so bad. Not even close.

But no one probably told you about the Vikings or the apparent curse someone has laid at our feet.Honestly though, Red McCombs did not help. I believe that was a part of the curse by some derranged and unbalanced Lions fan for their team being a suckhole. Flashes of brilliance followed by waves and waves of idiocy. It may get better someday. Perhaps the curse will wash away and the Purple can finally get that victory parade we’ve wanted for years. But until then, just remember it was me who told you that being a Viking can be a tough time.

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.