We finally booked a double date with SVB and the Weathermatologist, after months of me forgetting to check my calendar and confirm days that actually worked for all of us. I take full responsibility. There’s a new supper club in downtown St. Paul, right across from the Xcel Energy Center, and somehow we accidentally managed to pick a night where nothing was going on at the X, so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.
The website says it is a 1960’s Palm Springs inspired supper club, piano lounge, and tiki bar. And it’s also a funny coincidence that D and I were recently in Palm Springs at various tiki bars, so we have a close comparison. But it definitely has that feel once you get inside.
The first thing you’ll notice is that there isn’t a parking lot. I’m not sure why people get so bent out of shape about that, especially since this is a downtown metropolitan area, where tons of restaurants exist perfectly fine without parking lots. There’s multiple parking ramps right across the street, so just suck it up and park there. If it’s an event night, you’ll just have to suck it up. Welcome to the big city.
You can see the tiki bar on the side as you walk in, as well. There are rolling garage doors that undoubtedly lead out to an outdoor space. In the rear of the restaurant, there’s more of a dining room feel and you can also sit near the kitchen area and watch the goings-on there. Just make sure you get reservations, as this place fills up.
D and I got there early (intentionally), so we could check out the tiki bar, called False Eyedoll. The drink menu is slim, but does have a good showing – better than some bars that sort of have a tiki offering. They’ve also got a small snack menu that had some delicious sounding dishes (wings, smokies, tacos, pickle roll ups, etc.). I started with the False Eyedoll – rum, lychee, peach, pineapple, lime, and mango. D got the Pain Killer – rum, pineapple, coconut, lime, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Both drinks were actually quite delicious and didn’t come from a mix. The bartender did a heck of a job and kept us entertained, too. I blew through mine too quickly and had to order a Glove Drop – jalapeno-infused tequila, pineapple, and lime. I’m not a fan of “spicy” drinks (but I AM a fan of spicy food), but this was actually really good. Lots of jalapeno flavor, without the spiciness. I really liked this one more than I expected. Then our friends showed up, so we went over to our reservation-booked table – eatin’ time!
Before I go further, let it be known there is a fuzzy wall on the way to the restroom. I love a good fuzzy wall, ever since Get Him To The Greek came out. This one is pretty spectacular.
The menu is pretty interesting. Lots of upscale and cheffy dishes to choose from. We had heard the portions aren’t large, so we kept that in mind. D and I started by splitting the coconut miso noodle salad. We also ordered some crinkle fries, because why not? D got the halibut & caviar and I caved and went with the waygu manhattan steak (our Lyft driver asked me if I was getting a steak as soon as he heard we were going to a supper club, so he is to blame for planting the seed). The waiter kept getting a bit confused with our order for some reason, which was weird, since it was pretty straight forward, both ours and our friends. He came back to our table no less than three times asking what we had ordered. Hmmmmm.
The server brought us a small table relish tray – various things like peppers and pickles and such. Good colorful showing to start with. We waited a bit for our food, which is fine, since we had plenty to get caught up on (see the aforementioned delay on me booking dinner with these wonderful people). The coconut miso salad arrived and it was FAR better than either of us expected. Noodles, herbs, cucumber, cabbage, carrots, edamame, and sesame seeds all combined into a pleasant hillock. And we both thought it was a pretty reasonable portion size. This was absolutely the best thing we ate at Apostle. Would recommend highly.
I had to order another drink (since we took a Lyft), and went with the Passionfruit Collins – vodka, passionfruit, lemon, and soda water. Since I usually just get a Collins with vodka, I can’t tell if they’re usually separated like this one was, but the passionfruit puree was settled at the bottom and hard to stir, so I either got a mouthful of goo or a mouthful of straight vodka. Not sure I’d order this one again, even if that’s how the presentation is intended to be. Just weird.
We waited a bit more, and they brought everyone’s food out, but mine was not what I ordered, so they sent it back and said they’d start on my steak right away. Remember all the confusion at the beginning? That was part of it, although we had a pretty lengthy discussion of what temperature the steak should be cooked at, so I know what I ordered. D’s halibut was pretty small, especially for a pricey entrée. And it came with two asparagus sprigs. I know caviar is expensive, but I don’t get the impression this is the million-dollar stuff. The halibut was cooked about right, but even with the caviar and herb butter, the dish left a little bit to be desired.
A little while later, the waygu steak showed up. I’ve had waygu steak a few times and this one was the ok-est of the ones I’ve had. It was cooked like I requested (thankfully), but there wasn’t a ton of flavor with it. The two baby bok choy stalks didn’t really add much to the presentation and the “chron sauce” that was supposed to be topped with herbs and capers (which it wasn’t) was unremarkable enough that I honestly couldn’t figure out what it was made of. The meat flavor was perfectly fine, but the most expensive item on the menu should probably knock my socks off, or at least make them itch.
We had to remind the waiter that our fries had never arrived. So, we ate those for dessert instead of ordering anything additional. The fries were actually cooked really well and perfectly crispy and salty, but I didn’t know until just now what the dip was supposed to be until I looked it up to remind myself. It didn’t taste like much, so I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be cheese or honey mustard or bechemel – it was supposed to be horseradish hollandaise, for what it’s worth.
We thought we were done with the mix-ups, until the waiter brought the bill which again, we thought was straight forward and didn’t have shared dishes, but had swapped some of our items. We didn’t even bother bringing it up and just figured it out amongst ourselves. We’re pretty easy going couples and just rolled with it and didn’t complain. But, when we left, the waiter said he hoped we enjoyed our meals and he hoped we got a better waiter the next time we were in. hahahaha. I’ve never actually had any staff say something like that before. I wasn’t even sure how to respond or if he was joking. But, probably an appropriate finisher to this extraordinarily lengthy and pricy meal that we could have expected.
http://www.apostlesupperclub.com
Apostle Supper Club
253 Kellogg Blvd. W.
St. Paul, MN 55102
