I spent the weekend in Minneapolis at the Cambria College Classic to scout potential first-round picks Jacob Gonzalez (Mississippi), Matt Shaw (Maryland), Enrique Bradfield, Jr. (Vanderbilt), and Hunter Owen (Vanderbilt), along with the enigmatic right-hander George Klassen, who was bounced from Minnesota\u2019s rotation after two starts where he averaged two walks per inning, but hit 99 in a relief appearance on Saturday night. Anyway, that\u2019s a different post. This is a roundup of what I ate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I met friends for dinner at Tullibee<\/a>, a fine-dining restaurant in the Hewing Hotel right downtown, which was certainly the meal of the trip. We shared a few small plates and then I got one main, which was the only dish that wasn\u2019t excellent. The caraway potato rolls come warm, with butter soft enough to drink (I don\u2019t recommend this), although the presentation in a wooden box with a sliding glass lid is a bit silly. If I\u2019m going to pay for bread, this is the quality I expect. The kale & date salad with almonds, celery, midnight moon (a Dutch goat cheese), and an orange vinaigrette was a solid take on the rather played-out kale salad, although I confess I still like kale salad quite a bit and find it very satisfying for something that\u2019s extremely healthful. Midnight moon is one of my favorite cheeses, so that didn\u2019t hurt. The wood-fired carrots with a scallion labneh beneath and a brown butter-sage finish were probably the best thing I tasted there, with that perfect taste of the fire to contrast with the sweet earthiness of the rainbow carrots. The one slight disappointment was the cassoulet, which I love because it contains duck confit, and if I see duck confit on a menu, I\u2019m getting it. I don\u2019t care what else is on the menu, just take it, I\u2019m getting the duck confit please and thank you. Unfortunately, it was a little overcooked \u2013 since that\u2019s cooked ahead of time (that\u2019s what the confit process is, poaching the duck legs in duck fat for up to 24 hours at a very low temperature, so overcooking is more or less impossible), I assume they heated it too much or for too long to serve it. I also thought the sausage, which came whole, was too salty. I ordered their house Negroni, which replaces the Campari with the French herbal liqueur P31, so the drink is the color of mouthwash. It\u2019s less sweet and less overtly bitter than a traditional Negroni, so while I wouldn\u2019t say I like it better than the classic, it worked on its own merits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My other dinner on the trip was at Billy Sushi<\/a>, which is a very trendy restaurant that hides some very good quality fish under the veneer of what is basically tourist sushi \u2013 bizarre rolls with too many ingredients, wacky starters, and, in this case, way more Wagyu beef than any sushi restaurant should have on its menu. (They have at least two items that come with raw Wagyu that\u2019s torched right before serving. It\u2019s very showy.) The red snapper was probably the best of the six types of nigiri we tried, impeccably fresh and tasting of the ocean, while the bluefin tuna was about as soft as the butter in that bread dish at Tullibee. (I don\u2019t typically order bluefin, since it\u2019s being fished out of existence, but it came in the combination plate we ordered.) Of the non-nigiri food we tried, the shrimp po\u2019 boI, which is actually just diced shrimp breaded, quickly fried, and tossed with masago, plum sauce, and a Thai chili aioli, was the best item, as the shrimp is just barely cooked, which is the opposite of what I associate with fried shrimp at just about any place you get it. The dish was perfectly spiced for me, with the occasional big hit of chili to remind you it\u2019s there. The hot si-fu salad, which is cold but is supposed to be spicy, was perfectly fine but not spicy, and I\u2019d rather try something else from the extensive menu \u2013 or just get more raw fish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Viv\u00edr<\/a> is an all-day bakery, market, and caf\u00e9 attached to Centro in northeast Minneapolis, serving Mexican and Mexican-inspired dishes for all three meals. I got the chilaquiles verde, which is one of my favorite breakfast dishes to get anywhere, and their version comes with tortilla chips that have softened slightly from the spicy salsa verde, along with shredded chicken, radishes, queso fresco, and tangy crema. I would have gone lighter on the crema, which overpowered the other flavors in the dish, since the fat in it tends to mute the effects of chili peppers on the palate (which I assume is why it\u2019s there). I\u2019d love to go back and try several other things on the menu \u2013 they have duck carnitas tacos on the lunch menu, and as stated above, I can\u2019t pass that up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Farmers Kitchen and Bar<\/a> was my lunch stop on Friday, walkable from U.S. Bank Stadium and next to where the Mill City Farmers Market is held on Saturday. Their fried walleye sandwich, called \u201cThe Shore Lunch,\u201d was incredibly light for a fried anything, with the fish still flaky and moist. The sandwich comes with tomato, cucumbers, tartar sauce, and pickles on the side, while the menu said the roll was ciabatta but I think it was different the day I went, as I thought it was brioche or some similar enriched bread. It\u2019s an all-day caf\u00e9 that does breakfast and weekend brunch as well as a full coffee bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of coffee, I tried Spyhouse<\/a>, one of the two main third-wave roasters in the Twin Cities, since I\u2019d already been to Dogwood before. Spyhouse has seven caf\u00e9s, one in Rochester and the others in Minneapolis or St. Paul, and I went to two of them \u2013 the one in the Emery Hotel downtown and the one in Northeast Minneapolis on Broadway. The first one is charmless because of the hotel, but the second has the vibe I want in a bustling coffee shop, with plenty of space to work and hang out. I tried their Gisheke drip coffee from Rwanda and the Finca Monteblanco from Col\u00f3mbia, buying a bag of the latter to bring home; I liked both but the Gisheke was so hot when I got it that I missed out on some of the typical characteristics of Rwandan beans (they often taste of stone fruit, with light acidity that\u2019s less than Ethiopian\/Kenyan). The Finca Monteblanco is very smooth with some chocolate and caramel notes, enough so that I\u2019ll run it through the espresso machine too at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did revisit two places I\u2019d been to on previous trips. I first ate at Hell\u2019s Kitchen<\/a> in July of 2006 and have been back at least twice since then, and it\u2019s still excellent, although when I went on Friday they were struggling with service despite very few customers. (I assume they\u2019re short-staffed, like most places, but on this morning there seemed to be plenty of people on the floor.) I got what I always get, the regular waffle with coarse cornmeal mixed into the batter, and the maple pork\/bison sausage, and while I concede it would be rather hard for any dish to hold up to memories from nine years earlier, the waffle came pretty close. Due to some confusion in the kitchen, I got to try the lemon-ricotta waffle as well, but I think I just don\u2019t like that flavor combination \u2013 there was nothing wrong with it, and I know most people love lemon-ricotta breakfast dishes. I also went to do a little writing at Patisserie 46<\/a>, about 15 minutes south of downtown, to work for a bit, and that place hasn\u2019t changed a bit \u2013 it\u2019s a real French patisserie and boulangerie, and since I was one of the very last customers as they closed, they gave me (and a few other lucky guests) a free baguette they would otherwise have had to toss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I spent the weekend in Minneapolis at the Cambria College Classic to scout potential first-round picks Jacob Gonzalez (Mississippi), Matt Shaw (Maryland), Enrique Bradfield, Jr. (Vanderbilt), and Hunter Owen (Vanderbilt), along with the enigmatic right-hander George Klassen, who was bounced from Minnesota\u2019s rotation after two starts where he averaged two walks per inning, but hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,84,206,726,1116,291],"class_list":["post-9822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-breakfast","tag-coffee","tag-mexican-cuisine","tag-minneapolis","tag-minnesota","tag-sushi","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9823,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9822\/revisions\/9823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}