Xstream Cuisine – St. Paul, MN

I went to check out the Rummage MN event at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. I had walked around a while and was getting hungry, so I popped into Xstream Cuisine food truck for some lunch. The line wasn’t terribly long, but I could see that a few menu items had tape over them and appeared to be sold out. Thankfully, there was a jerk chicken wrap still available. I ordered one of those when I got to the front of the line. The woman working wasn’t the nicest person in the world and appeared frustrated when I ordered a jerk chicken wrap. She told me that there was a batch of jerk chicken in the oven, but she told it to me in such a way as if I should try to order something else. I told her very nicely I didn’t mind and I’d wait for the chicken. She sighed loudly, muttered under her breath and rung me up. She wasn’t having a great day.

I waited a pretty long time for my food, but so did everyone else, who were also probably waiting on the jerk chicken wrap – one of the only things that they weren’t sold out of. I eventually got my wrap and went and sat down. I heard the food truck lady snap at someone who asked about sauces, so I knew to go to the condiment table and figure it out myself. I got some sauce and napkins and sat back down.

The wrap wasn’t big, and was mostly rice. I had two small pieces of chicken in the whole wrap. Thankfully, the flavor of the rice was pretty delicious. But the chicken was hard to tell I had some because the pieces were so small and it was actually overwhelmed by the jerk rice flavor.  It was a pretty uneventful jerk chicken wrap, in all honesty.

I probably won’t go back to this food truck again, even if they have more items that aren’t sold out.

MRE lunch – Dallas, TX

While we were at the Dallas Arms Gun and Knife Show in Dallas, DreadPirateNick wanted me to try an MRE – or Meal, Ready-to-Eat – a military super-calorie meal ration used by soldiers to keep them going. DreadPirateNick would waffle between telling me how terrible they were and how much he wanted me to try one, knowing I write about food-type things. He found one that we could both agree on eating, although he was trying REALLY hard to find the gross ones – something about omelets or other things that I hope to never eat out of a bag. We knew we were going back to the hotel, so he offered to cook me a gourmet MRE lunch of Beef Ravioli!

The whole thing is self-contained in a bag and is intended to be heated up, although DreadPirateNick assured me there were times where there was no possibility of heating it up and you gulped whatever was in your bag down your throat and tried not to gag it up. Inside was usually most of the following:

• Main course
• side dish
• dessert or snack
• crackers or bread
• spread of cheese, peanut butter, or jelly
• powdered beverage mix (fruit flavored drink, cocoa, instant coffee or tea, sport drink, or dairy shake>
• utensils
• flameless ration heater(FRH)
• beverage mixing bag
• accessory pack: xylitol chewing gum, water resistant matchbook, napkin/toilet paper, moist towelette, seasonings (salt, pepper, sugar, creamer, tabasco sauce), and freeze dried coffee powder

Our other friend M.Butterfly showed up and joined us poolside for some delicious lunch, with DreadPirateNick giving us the play by play, like a cuddly Julia Childs. It was a special moment for all of us, I assure you. DreadPirateNick started by dumping everything out on the ground so we could see it.

Then, he showed us the bag that you dump water into to heat up whatever your entrée is – in this case, Beef Ravioli. He told us that sometimes these things emit some smoke as they heated up, so it’s better that we didn’t do this inside the hotel room. He put the ravioli pouch in the other pouch, dumped in some water and set it aside to heat up. Kind of cool.

He then gave us the appetizer – Osmotic Raisins. We had to look up what osmotic raisins were, but it wasn’t anything aside from they added some sort of sweetener to them to make them more palatable. That did raise some red flags. We tried them and they were pretty disgusting. Even more disgusting than raisins usually are. They also had some sort of coating on them that stained whatever it touched, including your skin and clothing. Just ewwww.

DreadPirateNick showed us the wheat snack bread and then cheered loudly when he saw that it came with the cheese spread with jalapenos. Apparently, this was the best of the bunch. He opened up the bread which was similar to those weird sandwich slices kind of bread that’s like a smushed-down actual slice of bread. The flavor isn’t really there, and the texture didn’t help. With the addition of what appears to be expired EZ-Cheese (aerosol cheese), it helped a little bit. It was pretty dry all around.

Since we were parched, DreadPirateNick giggled as he opened up the kool-aid pouch (but that’s a trademarked term). He dumped the red powder into the mixing bag and shook it for a while until it resembled a blood donation bag. I’ll be honest, this fruit punch wasn’t terrible, however, drinking out of a super flimsy plastic bag was more of a challenge than any of us imagined.

Our ravioli had heated up and was ready to be served. We all passed it around and shared it. I was surprised to find it wasn’t terrible. It tasted like a super generic version of Chef Boy-R-Dee Ravioli. I’m glad it was hot, as well. Those water-powered heaters worked pretty good. You could tell it was meat-flavored and the sauce wasn’t great, but it was edible. I’d guess after eating these every meal for a few years, you’d be ready to eat a shoe.

And speaking of shoes, there was beef jerky!!! It was, without a doubt, the worst beef jerky I’ve ever had. It tasted like they had dropped it in the dirt before they packaged it. It was like chewing leather. I would not recommend this jerky.

And finally, for dessert, there was a frosted brown sugar toaster pastry. Now don’t get your hopes up about it being like a pop-tart. It looked like a pop-tart, but it tasted like you accidentally ate the box instead. Not good.

Honestly, I’m glad DreadPirateNick was so adamant about sharing one of these with us. I had heard horror stories about some of the meals the military eats, and this was apparently one of the better examples of the field training meals they get. There are better options in the mess halls, but when you’re out in the field, you have to pack light and eat fast. This was all of those things – just remove the flavor.

Thanks for being a good sport DreadPirateNick and M.Butterfly. I probably won’t rush out to buy a case of these, but I now know what to expect if someone busts one of these out while camping or I get into an apocalypse situation sometime soon.

Hoban Korean – Eagan, MN

D.Rough and I had both heard really amazing things about this place from a number of articles claiming it was the best in the Twin Cities. I hadn’t heard any friends talk about it, but it was in a further suburb, so I suppose I should have factored that in. We also heard they have karaoke attached to the restaurant, so we thought we’d better go check that out.

 

We went and checked out the Karaoke rooms while we waited for our table to be ready. They have four rooms of different size and they will bring you drinks and appetizers to your room, which sounds awesome. Looks like this could be a potential evening activity with some of our ridiculous friends…

The restaurant seated us in the large dining room, which was full. We scanned the menu and tried to figure out if we should go adventurous or play it safe. We decided on a safe appetizer and adventurous entrees. We got some spicy chicken wings to start. Then we got Meat Jun (sort of like a fried meat/bulgogi pancake), and also Hot and Spicy Octopus.

The chicken wings were really pretty darn good. Even better than I suspected they would be, since sometimes, Asian restaurants like to overcook the chicken and hope the sauce covers it up. These had a lot of meat on them and the sauce was really tasty and not very spicy. Just a little bit, but for Minnesota, that’s a lot. We both really liked these wings. 

The Hot and Spicy Octopus was next. We both love octopus, especially fried and grilled. I know Minnesota doesn’t have a huge bumper crop of octopus usually, so it was a gamble, but we were both up for it. It looked really pretty on the plate, so we were excited to check this dish out. D.Rough took the first bite to test it out. It was a small piece and I could tell by her face she wasn’t thrilled with it. Then I could tell, when she wasn’t through chewing it 5 minutes later, that it might not be the best-cooked octopus we’ve ever had. It clearly wasn’t. I’ve never actually had octopus this chewy before and I was really surprised how long it took for each piece to break down. The sauce itself and the vegetables were delicious, but the octopus was basically inedible. It was like eternally chewing on pieces of rubber and eventually, both of our jaws hurt from chewing and we gave up on it. I’d suggest a different dish to my friends who end up going there.

The Meat Jun sounded delicious. It arrived and looked a little drab. It was a sort of gray-ish-brown color that didn’t look all that appealing (especially compared to the awesome photos on the website). We were hoping to get over the texture of the octopus by eating this – but that wasn’t going to happen. The texture of this was possibly even worse. The meat was extremely chewey, and whatever breading they used on the outside was basically uncooked flour, yet super greasy. We tried a couple different pieces to make sure we didn’t just get one piece of non-perfect beef. But the whole thing was like this. We just kept chewing and chewing. The flour-y breading made the whole thing worse, so we just ended up stopping.

We figured we might as well drink, just to help recover from this. We ordered a small pitcher of Soju. Actually, we ordered three or four different kinds of flavored soju and they would come back and tell me they were out, so we finally ended up with the mango soju. Which, frankly, was DAMN delicious. Yes, we loved the awesome little ice-filled pitcher that it arrived in at the table, but the flavor was perfect. We know we can’t pour our own soju, so we kept filling each other’s glasses. We’re both givers. And yes, it did help us a little bit forget how bad the meal was. A LITTLE.

We got our large amount of uneaten food boxed up, so it didn’t look like we hated everything, and left. We immediately threw away the food when we got home. I apologize to the people that enjoy this restaurant. We simply had a bad experience here, which significantly pales in comparison to many other Korean restaurants we’ve eaten at. We may go back for the karaoke, appetizers, and drinks, but I don’t know that we’re going to order much off the main menu next time. We really wanted to like this place, but it just wasn’t up to our expectations nor past experience. Bummer

Top 5 things about Hoban Korean
1. The Mango soju (not even our first choice and it was great!)
2. Spicy Chicken Wings
3. Karaoke rooms looked awesome and the kid giving us the tour was really nice
4. Great menu photos for every dish
5. All the dishes come with many small accompanying dishes of various radishes, vegetables, and kimchee
 
Bottom 5 things
1. Meat Jun
2. Hot and Spicy Octopus
3. Out of all the best flavors of soju
4. The service was noticeably slow – we weren’t in a hurry, but geeeez
5. I don’t like writing bad reviews – it always makes me feel bad

www.hobanrestaurant.com

Best Steak House – Maplewood, MN

I’ve heard about this little steakhouse with a few locations in St. Paul. I heard it’s pretty bare bones, but cheap steak is better than no steak. In fact, someone said, why would spend $50 on a steak when you can spend $15. I had to check this place out. D.Rough’s family invited us out to dinner and when I heard we were finally going to go here, I was pretty excited.

The place IS pretty bare bones with a very unique Greek wagon train feel, based on the interior design. Pictures of Santorini line the walls, illuminated by wagon wheel candelabras. And the guy that runs the place isn’t even Greek, as we found out. Unusual? Yes.

The menu is on the wall right before you get in the cafeteria-style line to place your order. The guy doesn’t write anything down – he just locks in your meat order, along with how you want it cooked, and what sides you want. You slide your tray down past the grill, where you get to watch your steak being prepared (or watch your lobster tail being toaster oven-ed), and load up on the salad bar. “Load up” might be an exaggeration, since the bowls are about 4” in diameter and really shallow. But hey, we’re there for steak, right? I got the T-bone special with 3 jumbo shrimp and a baked potato.

This plate of food looks pretty impressive. 16oz T-Bone? All day!  I started with my tiny salad. I made it myself, so there really isn’t much to complain about. Sure, they only have iceberg lettuce sitting in a hotel pan full of water, but they DID have chick peas, which I love, so it all balances out, right? Besides, the salad is merely a speed bump on the way to the steak. You know, pretend I’m eating healthy!

The shrimp were pretty ho-hum. Coated in breading, but pretty sure they came out of a freezer. It was more breading than shrimp, but since I like fried anything, I liked these just fine. Just not something I need a plateful of, obviously. 

The baked potato came with an ice cream scoop of butter in it. Not even margarine. Serious butter. I wasn’t thinking about topping my baked potato at the salad bar, but I should have. My fault on this one, but I still love baked potatoes with two cups of butter in them, so I devoured this thing.

It was STEAK TIME. 16 oz T-Bone time! I dug into my first corner of this thing and was surprised how chewy it was. I order my steaks medium or medium-rare to avoid the chewiness of a well-done steak. My first bite wasn’t great and had a generous layer of fat to contend with. I like a layer of fat and usually clean my plate entirely, including the delicious juicy fat. But this was too much fat. (Yeah, I didn’t know there was such a thing, either. Weird.) The next couple of bites didn’t get any better, and in fact changed color of meat as I moved towards the center. Most of the time, the center of a steak is a little more pink than the edges – that’s just science. This one changed color a few times throughout the steak, as if part of the steak wasn’t even on the grill while the rest of it was over coals borrowed from the surface of the sun. I looked around and saw other people at our table fighting with their steaks. I watched others chewing the same piece of meat for about 5 minutes, trying to break it down enough to swallow. It wasn’t good. It continued to be not good through to the end of the steak. I poured a generous helping of A1 Steak Sauce on what was left of my steak and D.Rough said, “I’ve never seen you use A1 in the whole time we’ve been together!” I assured her that if she saw me use A1, I was NOT happy with my steak and it was a last ditch effort to make it more edible.

When I was finished with my steak, D.Rough still had a lot of her steak left, which should have been a sign. Her fillet was considerably softer than the T-Bone I just had, but still just as chewy (she also got her steak medium). Her steak was only slightly better than mine. That being said, I finished her steak, as well. The remaining steak pieces (and there WERE remaining pieces) got boxed up for the family dog. 

I have to say, I can see the logic behind paying $15 for a steak, rather than $50, but it has to taste like a steak. When Taco Bell or Perkin’s steak sounds like magic, you know you can skip this place in the future. I’m sure they have other things they do well here – gyros, burgers, possibly ribs and lobster – so maybe go with one of those if you find yourself here. And, for the record, they do make the fries from actual potatoes and fry them fresh. And the super buttery garlic bread that comes with it is delicious and salty. Those were pretty good.

I don’t like to give bad reviews of restaurants, because I know this is people’s livelihood, but in this case, it doesn’t deserve a better review. This place doesn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities – at least on my first visit. I’m just not sure it will get a second chance. If it does, you readers will be the first to know.

Best Steak House

1676 White Bear Ave.

St. Paul, MN 55106

Firewater Grill – Omaha, NE

When I go out of town to watch roller derby, one of the things our travelling fan group likes to do is find a (or many) tiki bar in the city where the event is happening. We usually do some research to see what our options are. This recent trip to Omaha, there happened to be a tiki bar across the street from our hotel. ACROSS THE STREET. How amazing is that?!

Our first concern about this place was the name – Firewater Grill. Isn’t “firewater” sort of a derogatory, or at least hinting at, racist term – and oddly enough in the middle of a land with tons of beautiful native American culture? Well, yes, it is. Our second concern was that it’s in a Comfort Inn. Our third concern was the d-baggery of clientele smoking on the outside patio when we arrived. We thought we’d check it out, even if very briefly. 

The lobby of the hotel has a tiki statue in a fountain, so at least they got that right, even though it wasn’t anywhere near the entrance to the bar. That’s weird. When we walked into the bar area, it was really well-lit. Like REALLY bright. There is a full bar with some bamboo reeds nailed to it, which serves as their version of a tiki bar. We found our friends (who hadn’t left yet) and sat down. Firewater Grill doesn’t have a tiki drink menu. Unusual, right? They have lots of bud lights and coors and pbr and fireball shots, but they don’t have tiki drinks. We asked about it and were told the bartender could make us whatever we wanted. We rattled off a couple of commonly understood tiki drink names (zombie, scorpion, rum runner, yellow bird, and even a Bahama mama or rum punch), but the server’s expression was blank. They WERE however running a special on mai tai cocktails. Fine. We’ll get that, even though it’s going to come out of a icee machine.

We all commented on the only other tiki related item in the room – a giant plaster tree with a huge chunk out of it where some frat boy’s head clearly impacted after a rousing game of darts. Here is that tree.

The drink arrived and was a mai tai flavored slurpee. Waste of time. We unhappily listened to a guitar duo singing some awful version of 90’s and 2000’s songs and drop a few n-words here and there. Are you serious? What’s wrong with this place?

We looked up the next tiki bar in Omaha and packed up to leave. The server brought our individual checks and my friend LooseChange wondered why her check was completely different than all of ours. I knew she had ordered a margarita, but all the drinks were the same price. Or, so we thought. I want you to look at the drink ticket and tell me what’s wrong with it… Go ahead…

First off how do we get different prices from sub-total to total? Then, why is there an occupancy tax? Do they charge people for sitting? The liquor tax we ARE willing to allow, even though it was not really taste-able in the drink. Then, there is a food tax somehow. I’ll assure you that none of the rest of us got any of these random taxes on our drinks. You might think we’re done with the confusion – but WAIT!!! There’s more. Go ahead and add up these numbers in your head. Better yet, get a calculator. How did they come up with 19 cents??!?!?!?

The server came back and we were laughing openly about the bill. LooseChange asked him about the check and he took it to his manager – who promptly comped the drink and told her not to worry about it. Thankfully. We used Uber to get a ride to the nearest actual tiki bar in Omaha. A mere 15 minutes away, but totally worth the cost to get out of this fake tiki bar.

Despite the internet saying Firewater Grill has tiki-style meals, an island bar, an island in the middle of Omaha, island cuisine, fun dining, “commissioned artwork of Aztec” (their words not mine), this place should be skipped at all costs. It was a complete waste of time and money. Sorry to be harsh, but come on.

I’m not even going to put the business address on here so I don’t accidentally make it easy for you to go here. You can thank me later.

7th Street Social – St. Paul, MN

It had been far too long since I had dinner with EnyaFace! She suggested 7th Street Social for dinner and we even picked a night that D.Rough didn’t have anything going on, so she was able to attend. She and I knew this place had opened and were curious what it was going to be like. The only other time I had been to this building, there was some definite weirdness (like me being served food during a wedding reception – NOT kidding). We walked in and I was happy to see the place had been deeply renovated. The bar area was nice and open and there was a smaller dining room – the banquet room is still there, just shut down and used as overflow on weekends and special parties. Once seated, we realized all of were the youngest people there by about 30+ years. The dining area didn’t have a real happening feel to it, honestly.

They have some creative cocktails, so we all found one we liked:

• St. Paul Sour for me – Bulleit Rye, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, wine float – odd with the wine in there, but I came around to liking it a lot by the end

• Blackberry Old Fashioned for EnyaFace! – Bulleit Bourbon, sugar in the raw, blackberry puree, orange, soda – the sip I had was quite tasty

• Cry Baby Cry for D.Rough – hard apple cider, prosecco, ginger beer – I really liked this and would love to have this on a nice summer day outside in the yard

The menu only has a few things in each section, so making a choice wasn’t too difficult. We asked the server if he had any recommendations, which was a bad idea – he read 90% of the things from every section of the menu, which took about ten minutes, and didn’t get us any closer to deciding what we wanted.

We all started with the House Smoked Salmon with all the garnishes. I wasn’t sure what the garnishes were going to be, but we had all of them. When the dish came out, I understood what they meant. There was a nice hillock of smoked salmon, next to two stacks of buttered and crusty toasted baguettes, a mound of capers, some sour cream, lots of chopped red onions, and a pile of chopped hard boiled eggs. Honestly, this was the best part of the meal. The salmon was smoked well and wasn’t fishy in that way that makes you wonder how long it was out. The toppings were delicious, even if we had slightly smaller piles left over when we finished it all. The whole thing was worth getting again.

I got the Flat Earth Dark Beer Pot Roast – Cygnus X-1 gravy and sweet butter mashed potatoes. The dish had plenty of food on it, but once I took a few bites, I was reminded why a lot of people don’t order pot roast at restaurants. Unless you have either awesome gravy or awesome pot roast, the whole thing tastes bland. The gravy had no flavor to it, not even beer flavor, which was the main ingredient. The pot roast tasted (and chewed) like it had been around a while sitting next to something that sucked the flavor out of it. And since the assorted vegetables on the side of the plate were covered in teh gravy, those were sort of ruined as well. The mashed potatoes were good, but those are difficult to mess up, especially when you add sweet butter to them. I was a little bummed about mine.

D.Rough got the Fiorenza Burger – country ham, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, tomato on ciabatta bread. Al of the things on the burger sounded like they might lead to a pretty good burger, but this wasn’t the case. The meat itself should have something going for it and it fell flat. No flavor in the meat. The two bites I tried were really lackluster, with the ham being the staring flavor of the whole sandwich. Thankfully, the fries were well cooked and well seasoned, so we basically fought over those and left some of the burger when it was all said and done.

EnyaFace! got the Mac and Cheese and was pretty happy with it. She said there were a lllllllot of bread crumbs on it, but once you got down to the bottom of the crock, you had some pretty good cheese flavor and a good amount of it. From the sound of things, not the best she’d had, but not the worst, either.

Somehow, we had managed to NOT eat all of our dinner by this point and still wanted something for dessert. The write-ups we had read before coming here talked about the best thing not he menu being the Nut Goodie Kro-Nut. …to which the server said they didn’t have any today. WHAT? Alright fine. He said the replacement was a bread pudding (my temporary favorite dessert for the past month) with a whiskey sauce on it. The server also confirmed repeatedly and forcefully (I’m not joking about how forceful he was about this): Raisins, but no nuts! Repeat x6. EnyaFace talked us into sharing it and it came out pretty quickly.

There was serious amount of whiskey sauce on it and surrounding it. It was drowning in sauce. But thankfully, the sauce was really good. And with that much, you didn’t have to ration it on a per-bite basis. The bread pudding was super dense and firm, but with it sogging up a bit in the whiskey sauce, it ended up being pretty nice by the time we neared the end of it. And yes, we definitely finished this dessert.

I hate to say it, but this was one of the more mediocre meals I’ve had. I maybe could have been able to foresee that, based on the amount of older folks in the dining room. We don’t plan to go back here anytime soon. We’ll go a little bit further down the road and go to Ras!!!

Top 5 things about 7th Street Social
1. Smoke Salmon Plate
2. St. Paul Sour
3. Cry Baby Cry
4.
5.

Bottom 5 things
1. Flat Earth Dark Beer Pot Roast
2. Fiorenza Burger
3. Out of their signature item, the Nut Goodie Kro-Nut
4. So many bread crumbs on the Mac and Cheese
5. Their website is a blog plage, not an actual website – pet peeve, sorry

www.seventhstreetsocial.com

Cora’s Best Chicken Wings Foodtruck – Eden Prairie, MN

My company has started to try to healthy its workers up, so they have been doing a farmers market in the parking lot during lunch every other Thursday. It isn’t much of a market. In fact, there’s one vegetable booth with produce from Aramark (the people that run our office cafeteria), a lady selling jewelry, a booth with a sno-cone machine, and bread from some health food store. Recently, they’ve gotten a few food trucks to show up, as well.

I went outside in the 800 degree heat and found two food trucks today. One from Stanley’s in Northeast and one from Cora’s Best Chicken Wings – a restaurant I’m familiar with from St. Paul – I’ve reviewed it before. I wasn’t going to hit up Stanley’s without D.Rough, so I went to Cora’s.

The menu had some unique things on it, including a Filipino dish I wanted to try (Beef Afritada) – which they were out of. It took me a while to find the chicken wings on the menu, but there it was at the bottom of the list without any sort of flare. That’s ok – I knew not to get the wings. They were out of Canton Steak, as well, so I went with the Nacho Relleno Fusion. I love nachos, so this was sure to be my best bet.

My food showed up quickly, as it is pretty simple preparation. I went back into my building to get out of the heat. The dish looked pretty good, actually. Ground beef, lettuce, sour cream, plenty of jalapenos, but not many tortilla chips. Hmmm.

I dug for the chips and found they were buried in a pool. Of grease. I’m normally not grease-adverse, but this was a surprising amount, even for street food. It hadn’t even sat 60 seconds and there was already a pool of grease a half inch deep in my waxed paper basket. Yikes. I tasted it to see if it was chili oil or something adventurous, but it wasn’t. It tasted like grease.

I only found about 7 or 8 chips in the bottom of the basket, none of which had the slightest amount of crispiness left in them. They were sogged through completely. That’s a pretty disappointing number of chips for an order of nachos. The meat itself was actually pretty flavorful and seasoned well, as long as you ate from the part of the meat mound above the grease line. Once you got below that, it wasn’t the best. The lettuce and jalapenos were good, again, above the grease line.

I was sad after I ate as much as I could from the basket. I didn’t finish it. I didn’t feel very spritely after I ate this, either. In fact, for the rest of the day. I’m guessing a few other people in the office got slowed down as well. I’m surprised the company I work for didn’t suggest people make healthy dishes since this whole farmers market Thursday thing was intended to get people to eat better.

I don’t think I’ll hit up the food truck from Cora’s again anytime soon. But I will likely be back to the actual restaurant in St. Paul for fried rice and chicken nuggets, however….

Not enough for a top 5 on this one.

Kiku Japanese Restaurant – Milwaukee, WI

Roller derby had ended for the evening and we were all hangry (angry+hungry=hangry) (angry at having not eaten real food in too long, not because of anything that happened – MNRG played some of the best derby I’ve seen them play). A faction of us decided sushi was in order and there was a place within walking distance that served late enough we could eat.

The menu has a ton of rolls and other sushi on it. D.Rough and I were in the mood for serious specialty rolls, so we got a Superman Maki roll, a Las Vegas Maki roll, and a Big Country Roll. We were tempted to get a fourth roll, but thought we could go ahead and get another if we were hungry. We needed a Kani Salad to split, as well. This is D.Rough’s favorite thing of all time and we have to order it whenever we see it on the menu.

And I needed a flaming volcano drink for two. It was delicious and I’ve never had it blended up like this. Like a piratey daiquiri.

The Kani Salad was out and was one of the prettiest ones I’ve ever seen. It was beautiful to look at. And thankfully, it was one of the better Kani Salads we’ve had, as well. There wasn’t any seaweed, which I’ve usually seen with this salad, but I almost forgot about it, since the flavor of the sauce in the shredded crab was so good. If we had had more energy, we probably would have fought over this one (or ordered another one), but suffice it to see, it was a fantastic start.

The rolls came out a while later, which I suppose is ok, considering there were 10 of us. The rolls were huge. The biggest I’ve ever seen. They were three-biters or four-biters. There was no way you were popping these into your mouth. When you see the $17 per roll pricetag on the menu, don’t be alarmed, they make up for it by giving you $17 worth of sushi. The fish and veggies and all the ingredients were very fresh and tasty. I didn’t hear a single person complain about any of it. The only thing I heard people complain about was not being able to finish all their food. I’m a serious eater and I was not able to finish the three rolls that D.Rough and I ordered. Thankfully, we didn’t order a fourth roll. My favorites, in order of liking, were the Superman Maki, Las Vegas Roll, and the Big Country, but I honestly liked all of them.

Be ready to eat a lot at this place. Which means one roll per person is a pretty safe start. You’ve been warned.

Also, I love giving OurManFlip a hard time, so I video'd him eating sushi, when he thought I was taking a photo. I'm a jerk, but OurManFlip is an awesome guy!

Top 5 things about Kiku Japanese Restaurant
1. Superman Maki
2. Las Vegas Maki
3. Kani Salad
4. Big Country Roll
5. Portions are massive

Bottom 5 things
1. It can get pricey
2. Not super fast
3. Service was a little shaky, but everyone got what they ordered (and the food is worth the wait)
4. Parking isn’t the easiest but it’s a downtown restaurant, so deal with it
5. Sometimes, 4-bite sushi can get messy

www.kikumilwaukee.com

3 Squares – Maple Grove, MN

DRough and I were up in the northwest suburbs for some random reason and needed to grab some dinner. It was restaurant week and we knew 3 Squares was a place that had a special menu for the week – sort of a fixe prix menu for the week. After a quick look online to see what was actually on the menu, we popped in and got a table. For the record, 3 Squares is owned by the Blue Plate Restaurant Group – the same folks that own Edina Grill, Longfellow Grill, Groveland Tap and a few other tasty places we’ve been to multiple times.

We ordered a couple of pre-dinner drinks – I got a Ginger Peach Cosmo (I’m comfortable drinking that in public) and DRough got some drink with bourbon and orange bitters in it. My drink was pretty delicious, although I didn’t eat the large ringlet of candied ginger that came with the drink. It was a little too bite-y for me. DRough and I ended up switching drinks since hers was a bit harsh for her palate. I can power through most drinks, so I wasn’t really out anything. It just had a LOT of bitters in it.

For dinner, we could pick an appetizer each, an entrée each, and then a dessert for each of us. To start, we got a caprese salad and a pair of crab cakes. Our entrees were lobster lasagna and a ribeye steak. For dessert, something called a pint-o-cake and some chocolate cake.

When we had walked into the restaurant, I ran into a former co-worker of mine who made a few recommendations for us for the special menu, so we felt pretty good about our orders. The caprese salad was pretty good. Some greens with 6 or 7 mozzarella balls, a few cherry tomatoes and a drizzle of balsamic. It was a pretty standard salad, as salads go.

The crab cakes were surprisingly good. They had the perfect crisp on them and there was not an overwhelming fishy flavor in with them. Paired with the lemony dressing on the salad that came with the appetizer, it was pretty darn good. I’d recommend these pretty highly and they ended up being the best thing we ate that evening.

The entrees arrived and looked delicious. The lobster lasagna came with a long buttered and grilled piece of bread and had a lot of cream sauce in it. I expected to see a tomato-based sauce, to be honest. The first bite I had didn’t thrill me. The lasagna noodle was really long and rubbery. It even took me a few tries to cut it down to an actual portion I could eat. The sauce was also pretty salty – and this is coming from a guy who likes salt. It was salty enough D.Rough couldn’t eat all of hers. Pretty disappointing.

I thought I’d check out the garlic mashed potatoes before I went after the steak. The potatoes were pretty delicious – plenty of garlic and not pasty like some places that overcook them. I dug into my large ribeye. I had to scrape off the onions and mushrooms to get to the steak itself. The steak had a decent flavor, which I was happy about. What I wasn’t happy about was the amount of gristle and fat in the steak. I was actually surprised how much I left on my plate by the time I was done. I didn’t finish the steak because it was frustrating and I got sick of trying to power through the gristle. This is why you don’t order a steak at a non-steak restaurant. Disappointing.

The chocolate cake D.Rough got was a little sub-par. A multi-layered cake with some decoration and nice presentation. It was a tad dry, but when dipped in the extra chocolate syrup, it was much better. Not an incredible cake, but I’ve for sure had worse.

The pint-o-cake was a cake in a pint glass. It was actually much better than I expected. It had a lemon mascarpone whipped cream on it that appeared to be handmade – it was quite delicious. It was a little difficult to eat since the strawberries and cake had settled to the bottom and you had to dig deep to get all the ingredients. But I will give them props for presenting it in a different way. I actually enjoyed the cake in a glass a lot.

Overall, I’m not a fan of 3 Squares. The meal was disappointing, especially for Restaurant Week. I’ve enjoyed the other Blue Plate Group restaurants much more than here, so I won’t feel bad about not going back anytime soon.

Top 5 things about 3 Squares

1. Crab cakes

2. Pint-O-Cake

3. Ginger Peach Cosmo

4. The staff were all really nice and friendly

5.

Bottom 5 things

1. Lobster Lasagna

2. Ribeye

3. Chocolate cake

4. Bourbon-y bitters-y cocktail

5. Caprese Salad

www.3squaresrestaurant.com