Grumpy’s – Minneapolis, MN

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how awesome Grumpy’s tots are, and in fact, at a roller derby party, Grumpy’s catered a tater tot bar for the banquet, and I was muy impressed. M U Y. Since it was my birthday, I decided to cancel my biometric screening I had scheduled the following morning (requiring me to fast for 12 hours) and drink after class instead. Perfectly reasonable excuse, I think.

I told the Book of Faces that I’d be at Grumpy’s after class that night and anyone available should show up and have a drink with me. I rolled in right after class let out and met a bunch of people. Boom, Lush, and Mrs.Maddening were already there when I got there and were waiting to order the tots. Mrs. Maddening suggested I tell the bartender to make me “something complicated with fruit and rum in it” – which I did. And we got a large order of tots. Lush also knows my personal tastes after reading a lot my blog posts and hearing me talk about bacon all the time, so she ordered a side of bacon to go on the tots.

More people showed up while we waited: D.Rough, M.Giant, Smallz, TheDoctor, Maddening, Pants, and Johnny. My drink showed up and was absolutely delicious – very fruity and very Rummy. (Sorry, no photo) I will have to remember to order things like this in the future. The tots arrived and were delicious as I remembered them being from the catered party. Seasoned with some sort of magic dust to make them impossible to deny. (again, no photos - I was too excited to eat them and forgot to take my camera out first) The bacon never showed up though…. Until later…


The waitress brought out a plate of bacon strips with a candle showed into a tater tot. It was Birthday Bacon!!!! Awesome idea and I love it when restaurants have fun with the customers. It was perfect. Thank you, Grumpy’s!

Smallz ended up buying me another fruity girly drink (although this one ended up having more peach schnapps in it than rum)(but I still drank it!!!), and Boom bought me a Scooby Snack – which are her patented favorite drink.

I was starving and decided to order food. D.Rough and M.Giant said they were hungry, but not enough to eat a full meal, so when I decided to order the Cheesy Garlic Burger, they both said, they’d eat a bite and be happy with that. So I did. And it proved to be a wise decision.


The burger arrived and looked sort of simple, actually. I was a little worried based on the presentation of this burger. Simple meat patty without vegetables and on a cheese-covered piece of garlic toast. I take back everything bad I said about this burger. It was incredible. From time to time, I mention that a big part of cooking has to do with proportions of ingredients. Some thigns have too much of some things and not enough of others. This burger was perfectly proportioned. There was Fantastic garlic flavor with the ample amount of cheese on the bun. And the meat itself was perfectly cooked. I think having vegetables on this might ruin it a little bit. It was great, and I’d recommend the heck out of this burger.

We didn’t stay out too terribly late since most of us had to work the next morning, but I’m looking forward to the next time I can go back to Grumpy’s. They have an amazing menu with sooo many things I’d like to try on it.