Hope’s Silver Spoon Restaurant – Minneapolis, MN

Trash and M.Giant called to ask if I wanted to do lunch with them – DUR. They asked what I was hungry for and I started searching online to see what might pique my curiosity, provided it was close to their house. I stumbled across a place I had driven past many times and always wondered about - Hope’s Silver Spoon Restaurant.

The signage on the outside has always confused me. The restaurant looks like a mom and pop American food place, with advertisement of Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner, and Steaks, Ribs, Salads, & Burgers written on the windows. And then another window says “Chow Mein To Go” and something about Chinese Menu as well. What does that even mean?! Well, M. and Trash Giant and I found out today.

The inside IS a mom & pop style diner which is all well and good, except for the Chinese food buffet in the front of the room and Asian-inspired menus when you sit down.

And the clientele is especially old, like the people who go here don’t actually have any idea they’re drinking coffee all day in a Chinese restaurant. There’s some serious denial I think. It’s standard old guy/gal stuff – there’s one old person at each table sitting alone drinking coffee, but yelling across the restaurant at each other because they’ve all been coming here for 50 years and know each other. But not well enough to sit at the same table as each other – that would be weird, right? Clearly, M. and Trash Giant and I were the youngest people in here by about 40 years.

The tiny Asian woman (should we presume she is the alleged “Hope” from the restaurant’s moniker?) who seated us is super friendly and cute and explained everything we could ever want to know about the menu and the buffet. The menu is filled with Chinese food entrees and appetizers, except for the last two pages, which are decidedly American-inspired. Ribs, steak, chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes, salads, and everything else the windows advertised. Even the Dinner Specials (from 2-9pm) are both Chinese and American. Weird.

We told the hostess we would be getting the buffet after we found out it was $6.95 (cheapest I’ve found around here). We got up and the little Asian lady brought us to the buffet and explained where the appetizers were (which we could see), where the salads were (which we could see), where the entrees were (which we could see), and where the soups were (which we could see). She told us we could eat as much as we wanted – again, really cute.

I grabbed as many different entrees as I could fit on my plate the first time around. Then I would know what to go back for the second time. The food is unlabeled, so you really don’t know what you’re getting. But I’m an old hat at this Chi-Buf thing, so I could figure it out.

The cream cheese wonton was really good and crunchy – fantastic. However, the egg roll was, without a doubt, the most greasy egg roll I’ve ever had. (And it had meat in it, much to Trash’s chagrin…) It was tasty, but I could feel the grease running down my chin. Serious grease. The rest of the entrees were passable. Not stellar, but I’ve definitely had way worse. The Kung Pao chicken and the General’s Chicken were both good, as was the Lo Mein and Broccoli Beef. No complaints, really. The egg drop soup was the snot-like consistency kind I’m not a big fan of, plus it had mushrooms in it, which I’m also not a fan. There was a pan of what looked like meatballs in a tomato sauce, so I grabbed one of those and to my surprise, it was really tasty. But seriously, it was a meatball. I also grabbed a chicken wing, which I don’t even like, so I knew I’d be disappointed (and I was – too much work for a small amount of meat – how many times have I been told that...).

The food was good enough I went back for a second round. I got mostly the things I liked, since I did a pretty thorough job getting entrée samples the first pass. Again, the meatball was really good and I wasn’t disappointed with the second one.

Here, we see M.Giant's epic battle of Kung Pao Chicken vs. General Tso's Chicken. We may never find out the winner...

I’ll be honest, the place is really weird. M.Giant said it would be more cerebrally-digestible if it were different food styles at different time. For example, American breakfast, Chinese Buffet lunch, and American dinner. But no, it’s whatever you want, when you want it. I should have checked to see if you could order the Chinese food for breakfast. Sometimes, a good batch of Kung Pao Chicken is just what you need at 6am to fight a hangover, right? I’ll probably be back here, especially based on the price. But it does hearken to HotGirlsBrother and I with our horrific food combination challenge. I now know where I can score Chow Mein French Toast, finally.

Top 5 things about Hope’s Silver Spoon Restaurant
1. General’s Chicken
2. Really awesome hostess
3. Very inexpensive for lunch
4. If you want mashed potatoes and egg foo young, you can get it
5. Kung Pao Chicken

Bottom 5 things
1. Really greasy egg roll
2. Snot-like consistency on the egg drop soup
3. It’s REALLY difficult to tell what the menu is like from the outside appearance of the restaurant
4. REALLY old clientele
5. Not much in the way of vegetarian fare

No website.
Hope’s Silver Spoon Restaurant
6700 Penn Avenue S.
Minneapolis, MN 55423