D.Rough’s Birthday Raclette Party – West St. Paul, MN

D.Rough and I don’t like to do normal things for birthdays, so we decided to have a cheese party for her birthday. D.Rough and I saw a piece about raclette cheese on a television show and knew we needed to have some. We just happened to have a friend who is a fancy certified cheese monger and she volunteered to help us host a ridiculous cheese party for D.Rough’s birthday. We invited a couple friends over (it was a pretty small list, due to the limitation of the number of people a wheel of raclette cheese would feed, so we apologize to anyone who didn’t get an invite).

Raclette is a type of fancy Swiss cheese that’s heated up until bubbly and them the molten cheese is scraped off onto a plate and served with boiled potatoes, cornichons, and other vegetables.  It’s sort of a cooking cheese by the ski lodge fire sort of thing. We rented a special raclette grill and had our friend PepperJackie order a bunch of additional cheese for us. We were going to knock this out of the park!

The raclette experience is pretty awesome. The swiss already have the fondue market cornered, but this kicks the whole thing up a notch. We added like 4 pounds of nice deli meat, 17 pounds of potatoes, a bunch of vegetables, some chutney, and pepper jelly. Oh, and a billion bottles of wine – hahahahaha.

Needless to say, it was apretty amazing birthday. Huge thanks to PepperJackie for bringing all the awesome cheese, explaining what everything was, and (wo)man-ing the raclette grill all night for all of us. She really knows her stuff and when she starts hosting these parties full time, we’ll be pushing her on all of our friends.

Yaaaaay for D.Rough’s birthday!!!

Yaaaaay for cheese!!!

Yaaaaay for piles of meat!!!

ChuckWagon Charlie’s Smokehouse & Saloon – Chanhassen, MN

A1 and I are big fans of ribs. He was off work one random day and we decided to meet (or meat) for lunch at ChuckWagon Charlie’s. I knew of its existence, but hadn’t ever been there, although A1 had been there a number of times in the past. Since it was in a strip mall, I knew it had a shot of being decent BBQ.

I had to go with a half slab of ribs and a couple of sides – BBQ baked beans and also Mac n Cheese. A1 got the rib tips and some fried potatoes. I had a good feeling about these.

The ribs were pretty good. Not Top 10 in the world good, but I was happy with them. They had a ice bark on them without being burnt and the dry rub on them was really good. Not much gristle on these and the meat had good flavor without a hint of liquid smoke on them. Great work, Charlie. The mac and cheese was decent, but at the very least, it didn’t taste like cafeteria mac n cheese. The baked beans were also slightly above average, so overall, this was a pretty good plate of food.

A1 gave me a couple bites of his rib tips and I was really impressed with them. I usually steer away (pun intended) from rib tips because you kind of never know what you’re going to end up with. Sometimes, you get some fatty bits, sometimes you get some gristle, sometimes, you get all burnt cinders. These were all meat and had wonderful flavor. If this is their usual showing of rib tips, then I’d for sure get these next time. The fried taters were also really good – obviously not as good as my Alabama grandma made, but still pretty good.

This place was kind of a sleeper surprise for me. And now that I know that I’ll get really good bbq here, I’ll be back with some friends.

Not enough for a Top 5 list, but everything was above average, so it would have gotten a more positive than negative list.

www.chuckwagoncharlies.com

Taco Cat / Eastlake Brewery – Minneapolis, MN

A-Wow and I were going to watch my new copy of “Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas” (which I would NOT recommend), but we needed some grub beforehand. We walked up to Midtown Global Market to the new brick and mortar location of Taco Cat. I hadn’t been before, but had only heard good things about it.

It was really tough to decide what to get, but I ended up going with the exact same thing A-Wow got – a sort of sampler. I went with three different specialty tacos. The Ruckus, The Outlaw, and The McFly.

The tacos didn’t take a long time to put together, and when we got them, we headed to the nearby Eastlake Brewery. This place doesn’t serve food, but they welcome you to go to any of the nearby food places in the Midtown Global Market and bring the food in while you drink their delicious beers. I got a pint of their Oostermeer 21 Belgian Strong Ale – it was pretty tasty and paired well with the tacos.

The Ruckus taco is grilled angus beef, cheese, pickled radish, onions, cilantro, mint chimichurri, and housemade salsa. Great beef flavor and it complemented the chimichurri quite well. Fantastic.

The Outlaw taco is slow roasted pork, kim chi, pickled jalapeno apple slaw, crème and salsa verde. The pickled jalapeno apple slaw went well with the pork and crema. I’m a big fan of this one.

The McFly taco is braised chicken tinga, red cabbage slaw, crème, cilantro, and salsa verde. Great taco with great chicken flavor.

Each of the tacos has two tortillas, which surprisingly held up throughout the entire meal without getting soggy and fally-aparty. The ingredients are super fresh and well paired. This place is really quite good. It originally started as a bike-supported taco delivery service, but this new brick and mortar has really blown me away. I can’t wait to come back to both of these places, hopefully without the Kirk Cameron dessert next time.

Not enough to do a Top 5 list, but thankfully, nothing bad would have made it to the list anyway! Thanks, Taco Cat and Eastlake Brewery.

Taco Cat

Eastlake Brewery

Bad Movie Night (Christmas Wrestling Theme) – West St. Paul, MN

When I announced the theme of this Bad Movie Night, a friend of mine said she was really shocked there were more than ZERO of these movies. I assured her there were four that I know of, but I’m only showing two of them.

I showed “Santa With Muscles” – an early Hulk Hogan movie (pre-handlebar mustache). It’s a pretty awful movie where the Hulkster get amnesia and thinks he’s Santa and goes around helping orphans (including a REALLY young Mila Kunis).

The I showed “Santa’s Slay” – a movie where Goldberg (as Santa) is hell bent on killing as many people as possible in his once-every-thousand-years killing spree. It is pretty good by Bad Movie Night standards, and has lots of hilarious scenes to yell and laugh at.

I also showed “I Am Santa Claus” with Mick Foley interviewing various people who play Santa Claus at malls and holiday parties around the country. It’s a pretty epic documentary.

As usual, my friends showed their creativity during the potluck portion of the night.

We had Royal Crumble

Ja-Brownies

and Adam’s Apple Rose

In case you’re looking for Christmas wrestling movies, these are some pretty top-notch recommendations. There’s also “Christmas Bounty” with The Wiz, but it tries to hard to be a Hollywood movie and falls flat – too flat for even Bad Movie Night.

Happy holidays, ya’ll.

Kelly’s Pub / Depot Bar – St. Paul, MN

The Depot is one of those St. Paul institutions – it’s a home-town-feel bar that serves American bar food. It’s very straight forward in its approach to serve lots of drinks and keep people fed. Nothing flashy. The inside is dark, in a clean dive-bar way, and the grill and fryer are hoppin’.

The menu consists of standard bar fare – burgers, chicken or steak sandwiches, coney dogs, fries, and onion rings. The reason D.Rough and I went there was for the coney dogs, so we both got one of those. I didn’t feel like it was enough, so I ordered a bacon cheeseburger too. When we walked in, I noticed the cook was making patties with his hands, not pulling frozen discs out of a bag. I almost got a deep fried pork sandwich, but the server told me it was more like a deep fried pork chop than a breaded flattened pork tenderloin like back home. I went with the cheeseburger.  …and some onion rings.

The coney was pretty darn good. The dog itself was not a regular grocery store dog. It had a nice snappy casing on it and the meat had a really good taste. The chili was decent (although, there could have been more) and meaty, and the cheese on top was about the right amount. I haven’t had a coney in a good long while and this one really hit the spot.

The bacon cheeseburger was also really good. Cooked perfectly with just a touch of pink in the middle to keep the rest of it juicy and not dried out. It had a nice layer of cheese on top, hiding the bacon underneath. With a couple of pickles, the burger was pretty darn good.

The onion rings were really good, as well. Also, NOT from a freezer bag. Nice thick better on large rings of onions. The batter was cooked all the way through without any doughy or greasy spots. These were good rings!

Overall, it’s a pretty good lunch spot, although a bit slow on the wait for food. I think the cook was making each ticket to order, one by one, instead of cooking three or four burgers or sandwiches at the same time for different tickets. I might be wrong. I wasn’t in a hurry, though, especially since they had drinks there.

Top 5 things about The Depot

1. The bacon cheeseburger

2. Coney Dog

3. Onion Rings

4. Not expensive at all

5. A full bar (with pull tabs) never hurts

Bottom 5 things

1. Not super fast, even for a lunch visit

2. Pretty limited menu (but what they have is good)

3. Small number of pretty standard beer taps

4. It’s a small space

5. I’ve heard this place gets nuts before and during Minnesota Wild games

Kelly's Pub / Depot Bar

241 Kellogg Blvd. E.

St. Paul, MN 55101 

Taste of Asia – Eden Prairie, MN

A friend of mine told me about an Asian restaurant in a gas station in Eden Prairie. Obviously, my curiosity was piqued. Since I had a slow day at work, I drove over there and checked it out. It’s not technically in a gas station, but it’s in the same building as a bunch of other retail shops – sort of like a gas station strip mall.

Taste of Asia has an enormous menu to choose from. I’d guess close to a hundred items on the list including both traditional Chinese menu items, but mostly Vietnamese items (Pho, BunRice, Com Tam, and other noodle soups. During lunch hours, they have a small buffet, which caught my attention, even though I wasn’t planning on gorging myself (who am I kidding?). While waiting for a table to be wiped down for me, I heard three different tables order multiple #8. The menu tells me that’s the Pho that people were getting, so clearly, I’ll be ordering #8 when I go there next time.

The buffet had 4 or 5 entrees, two different kinds of egg rolls, cream cheese wontons, two soups, fried and white rice, and a few other things. It doesn’t sound small when I explain it all, but it’s in a relatively small space, so it appears small. I tried as much as I could. Kung Pao Chicken, Sesame Chicken, Vegetable Lo Mein, Fried Rice, Egg Drop Soup, Chinese Egg Rolls and Vietnamese Egg Rolls, Cream Cheese Puffs, and probably other things. All of which were much better than average. Maybe not the best in the world (sometimes the buffet-portions diminish the taste and texture of various foods), but it was definitely above average and delicious.

The whole thing is about $8, as well, so I’m pretty happy with that. The food was really good and it’s close to work. It’s pretty much got all of my boxes checked for a wonderful lunch place. I’ll be back, without question. Next time, I’m either getting the Pho or the Hot and Spicy Chicken. 

Taste of Asia

12619 Valley View Rd.

Eden Prairie, MN 55344