Lucky Cricket – St. Louis Park, MN

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of all things “tiki”, so when I heard Andrew Zimmern was going to open a tiki bar in the West End Shops, I was pretty excited. Full disclosure: I’ve never been a fan of Andrew Zimmern ,though I respect what he’s done to make people think outside of the box when it comes to food. So when he made some, at the least, culturally insensitive, and at worst, wildly racist, it didn’t thrill me to go to his new restaurant. But, everyone that knows me knows I like tiki bars, and were bound to ask me how it compared to other tiki bars, so I felt obligated to have some sort of reference point.

I went at lunch on a day I had off work during the week. It wasn’t packed, but I still grabbed a seat at the bar. I like to watch bartenders make tiki drink because there’s definitely a skill to it. I took a look at the menu at all the delicious-sounding tiki rinks and finally ordered Lucky’s Path – it’s got rums, apricot, ginger, cinnamon, pineapple, and lime. Sounds delicious, right? I was crushed to watch the guy turn around to the slurpee, pull a lever, throw a couple pineapple pieces in the cup, and hand it over. No mixing. No flare. No idle conversation. No skill demonstrated. Sigh. Disappointed.

But it tasted just fine.

I thought, since it was lunch time, I’d better grab some food. The menu has some fun items on it. But it also has a lot of plain things on it. I asked the bartender what the popular items were (since he clearly wasn’t busy slinging dranks, amiright?). Everything he said sounded pretty plain and boring. This is Andrew Zimmern’s place and he’s known for the crazy stuff. So I got a little adventurous and ordered the Hand-Cut Noodles. Then I decided that might not be enough, so I also ordered a bowl of pork fried rice. And then I also ordered another drink. One that didn’t appear to say anything about “frozen” on it.

The Tiki Reviver has rums, coconut, pineapple, lime, and some coffee liqueur. I’d love to see that being made. However, the bartender turned around, grabbed a cup, put it under a tap, pull the tap, fill the cup, throw in a couple of pineapple pieces, and set it down in front of me. Sigh. Disappointed.

But it tasted fine.

The noodles came out and looked pretty good. It was lamb with some cumin and bean sprouts  with noodles. Sadly, the cumin was really quite strong. Very strong. I ended up eating about half of it before I gave up. The noodles themselves were good, but the cumin drowned out everything else. Thankfully, the dish had some good spice to it, so I was thrilled with that, but the cumin did me in.

Fortunately, the fried rice was actually quite tasty. The best part of the entire lunch.

Overall, I was disappointed. I had really high hopes going in, especially about the tiki part of the place. But, the reviews that I’ve read were accurate: overpriced standard-tasting Chinese food with standard tiki drinks. The drinks either come from a tap or slurpee machine and the best food I ate was fried rice. Additionally, my lunch cost me $45.

I’d rather go to Psycho Suzi’s or Hunan Garden for my tiki experience in the Twin Cities.  Again, just my opinion.

Who knows? I may end up back there at some point if the owner’s comments don’t hurt business too much…

www.luckycricket.net

Pizza Karma – Eden Prairie, MN

I actually made it here on opening day. I’d been reading about this place for months now and a friend I was eating Indian food with (on Friday) reminded me it was opening the following Monday. I had the day off of work and convinced a few friends to join me – it wasn’t difficult. 

The place is in a strip mall three doors down from an Indian restaurant and grocery store. But it’s a completely different animal. It’s Tandoori-fired pizza topped with various Indian toppings. There are quite a few articles to read about this, so I won’t rehash all the details, but suffice it to say, the owner knows what he’s doing and intends to take this bigger than just a strip mall in Eden Prairie. It took us a while to decide what to eat, but we ended up splitting three appetizers and three pizzas to make sure we could get maximum coverage out of our visit. 

We ended up with the cayenne dusted crispy deep-fried okra fries (Served with a black salt and buttermilk sauce), stuffed potato cakes (served with golden raisin ginger sauce), and roasted smashed eggplant pate (served with naan) for our appetizers. Then, for our pizzas, we got a Chicken Kebab pizza, a Paneer pizza, and a Potato & Tandoor-Roasted Vegetable pizza.

A couple of us also got beers, since we weren’t going back to an office anywhere. The beer dispensing system is a thing of mystery. It’s got a magnet covering a hole in the bottom of the cup and when you set it on the dispenser, it pours the beer from the bottom-up. Magic.

The naan with the roasted smashed eggplant pate (which a certain unnamed member of our party referred to as “slurry”) was good. We all decided it needed a little more zing to the pate, but a lot of Minnesotans will be extremely happy with this – especially because it’s drizzled with clarified butter before it’s served. 

The Paneer pizza was quite good. The non-melting cheese cubes on top were really a treat when you bit into one, which is good because they were plentiful. There was a generous amount of peppers on the top of the pizza, as well. The tomato-fenugreek sauce on the top was different from any pizza sauces I’ve had, but definitely in a good way. A solid pizza overall. 

The cayenne dusted crispy deep-fried okra fries were one of the highlights of the meal. One of our guys doesn’t even like okra, but was ALL really liked these. They were almost hyper-fried. Like way past any fried okra I’ve had (and my family is from the south, so I’ve eaten my fair share of okra), but it made them little crispy chip-like things. Sooooo amazing, especially with the black salt and buttermilk sauce. And there’s a ton of them – just get these and thank me later.

The Chicken Kebab pizza was also good – and very similar to the paneer pizza (but with chicken instead of non-melting cheese). Lots of peppers and that delicious tomato-fenugreek sauce – like the paneer pizza. I’m not complaining, I assure you. I loved this pizza.

The stuffed potato cakes were stuffed with chili-spiced spinach green. I’ve had something this, somewhere else, but it wasn’t nearly as good as this one. Especially with this awesome ginger golden raisin sauce. A great appetizer. 

The winner of the day was the Potato & Tandoor-Roasted Vegetable pizza. It’s a good mix of roasted vegetables and has mango powder (which I can can’t even comprehend what that even is) and black salt. But the amazing part of this is actually TWO amazing parts: habanero harissa sauce and the fact that it’s served on potato-chili naan, instead of the plain naan that the other two pizzas were served on. It definitely had some zing to it and we all loved the heat. It might need a warning for Minnesotan’s who are spice-adverse. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in a while. I’ll be recommending this to tons of people.

Amazing job, Pizza Karma!! You’re nailing it!!!

www.pizzakarma.com