Hazelwood Food & Drink - St. Louis Park, MN

 

Full disclosure: I wanted to show readers that I don’t ALWAYS eat garbage food or culinary atrocities – that’s what this review is. I met Trash and M.Giant for lunch in St. Louis Park since we had many things to get caught up on. Hazelwood is a slightly upscale and modern restaurant with just-short-of-tweezery dishes. Lots of instagramable decoration and plating. I think I had something going on that afternoon and didn’t want to fill up, so I ordered one of their healthy bowls with chicken. Of course, Trash asked me if I was ok or had some ailment that I was about to explain to them during lunch. But, really, I just love quinoa.

 

I’ll be honest, I did find it a little weird that all of the bowls have the exact same thing in them and you just pick what’s on top. But thankfully, everything in the list of ingredients sounded great and I just went along with it. Don’t most places have different flavors with different proteins? Just seemed a little simple for a place like this. Not complaining, just pointing out that I found it odd.

 

The bowl they brought out was picture perfect, as you can see. Green beans, baby greens, edamame, toasted pepitas, cucumbers, tomatoes, quinoa, lemongrass sauce, and plum sauce. The chicken had a roasted poblano sauce on it, as well, which was quite good. Everything was fresh and tasty and there was plenty of it, as well. The quinoa actually had flavor, which sometimes, it’s just a boring grain, so Hazelwood definitely knew how to cook it properly. The lemongrass sauce wasn’t too overpowering, either. This dish, for as simple as it is, has a lot of things that could take over the dish, but that didn’t happen. So, well done, Hazelwood. 

 

The menu has a couple of things that sound interesting, but I think what Hazelwood does well is take normal food and make it much prettier. They’re doing great at it, too. No complaints on my end.