Rustic Inn Café – Castle Danger, MN

We spent some time up in northern Minnesota this past weekend and had a wonderful time. People always rave about Betty’s pies, and while the pies there are delicious, the rest of the food seem as pretty lacking from our experience. So, we stopped at the Rustic Inn for a nice dinner (and pies). 

The menu is nicer than a lot of places we’ve been to up north and they take pride in their creativity and customer service here. They’ve got a variety of things that you’ll have to choose between, but our decision didn’t take long. I needed the black cherry smoke BBQ pork ribs and D.Rough got the Wild Rice Meatloaf. I somehow talked myself out of getting the Castle Danger Beer battered onion rings, and then as soon as I saw someone else’s order, I regretted that decision immediately. They’re massive, so only order these if you’re going to share them – they look incredible.

The whole time we were waiting for our food (which wasn’t terribly long), there are multiple chalkboards listing the pies that are available today. Literally almost every angle in the place you can see the pie menu – smart thinking, since it saved D.Rough time on deciding after we ate our food.

The BBQ ribs were absolutely great. They were fall off the bone, but not in that sloppy way – they still had that great meat-y chew to them. The BBQ sauce itself was quite good, as well. There were a lot of ribs on the plate too, 8 altogether, stacked up really fancy, like a little log cabin. That’s about ¾ of a rack, so I hope you’re hungry. The horseradish mashed potatoes were some of the best I’ve had, and I truly do not like horseradish. Just awesome. 

D.Rough’s meatloaf was also out of this world. It’s got some Italian sausage mixed in with the wild rice, as well as some spices that make it taste borderline Cajun. It’s super creative and delicious! Again, the mashed potatoes on her plate were the same as mine, so also awesome. 

Even though we knew which pie slices we were going to get, we still had to figure out how we were going to split these things up. We finally decided to get one slice of pie to split between us while we were still at the restaurant, and then both of us would get our own slice to take back and eat later that night. We split a 5-layer chocolate pie at the restaurant. We kept laughing because with the 5 at the beginning, it looked like “Slayer Chocolate Pie” on the signs. It was fantastic. It had some whipped chocolate on top, as well as some cinnamon layers and a white chocolate layer. Really a delicious slice of pie.

For our road pies, D.Rough got the peanut butter pie and I pulled a surprise move and got the cherry and peach crumble. We didn’t get photos of these, but I promise they were awesome. I’m not a peanut butter guy, but D.Rough really raved about her slice. My crumble was one of the better ones I’ve had. 

Do yourself a favor and go grab a bite to eat here. You won’t be disappointed with the selection or the quality. I’m glad we made it there and can’t wait until we go back!

www.rusticinn.cafe

Fitger’s Brewhouse – Duluth, MN

Despite the fact that I don’t like the taste of beer, I’ve never had any issues eating food at brew-pubs. Fitger’s was no different. The brewing of all their microbrews takes place in the basement of this large building which houses shops, restaurants, a night club, and a hotel. The brewhouse makes its beer for the restaurants upstairs and also sells growlers to beer lovers who stop in. D.Rough and I tried to eat here a few months ago when ManJar, D.Rough, and I were in town for a roller derby event. The place does REALLY good business, so we were told it could be an hour and a half to two hours before we got a table. That means it’s good, right? We didn’t stick around that time, but said we’d come back and eat when the wait wasn’t as long.

When we got there this time, we were told 40-45 minutes wait time, which was much more acceptable, especially since you can walk around the shops in the building and check things out in the brewhouse while killing time. … Which we did. We got seated in just under 40 minutes and opted for a table outside since it was a stellar night.

I still had to drive home, so I couldn’t order a handful of scotch and girly drinks, so I went with a cider. Nice and light and seemed appropriate for a crisp fall evening after watching colorful leaves in nature. D.Rough amazed me by ordering a homemade rootbeer from the brewhouse. And when they arrived, I was really jealous of her’s. The rootbeer was delicious.

I was in the mood for a burger, but sadly I’ve been burned out on burgers lately and wanted to give something interesting a shot tonight. I opted for the Artichoke Chicken Sandwich. Why, you ask? Because it’s soooooo close to a choke-the-chicken joke that I couldn’t pass it up. D.Rough got the Philly Steak Sandwich to relive her roller derby tournament days in Philly this summer. She got regular fries with hers and I got the sweet potato fries. We waited around and watched dbags walk past in the leaves. Fun times.

The food showed up a short while later and looked pretty good. The Philly was on a wild rice roll (rice cooked into the bread) with lots of Monterey jack cheese melted all over the meat, onions, mushrooms, and peppers. D.Rough said it was really good, just oniony, even for her. I had a couple bites (without onions) and was really impressed with the quality of meat and flavor. This was a pretty good sandwich. The regular fries were just kind of ok, though. I ate all of the ones that D.Rough didn't, but I still ate way more of the sweet potato fries.

My Artichoke Chicken Sandwich was also good. It’s a grilled chicken breast covered with artichoke dip, lettuce and tomato. The sandwich was a little sloppy, but it ended up being tasty. The chicken was good and the artichoke dip was a much better dip than you’d buy at the grocery store for veggies. My sweet potato fries absolutely killed her regular fries. They were delicious and I think I probably ate more than I was supposed to, since we were sharing. I couldn’t stop eating them though.

The meal wasn’t terribly expensive, even with drinks, and we got out of there at a reasonable hour without being stuffed to the gills or sleepy. Fitger’s Brewhouse is a good restaurant. I don’t think I’d make the trip to Duluth to eat there or anything, but I’d eat there again if we were in that neck of the woods.

Top 5 things about Fitger’s Brewhouse
1. Artichoke Chicken Sandwich
2. Homemade rootbeer
3. Nearby shops to browse while waiting
4. Philly Steak Sandwich
5. Really expansive menu with lots of options

Bottom 5 things
1. Long wait time
2. Regular fries just tasted… uhhh… regular compared to the sweet potato fries
3. The Duluth bar scene appears to be full of dbags after a certain point in the evening
4. Philly sandwich could have utilized fewer onions
5. Trampled By Turtles wasn’t playing that evening – maybe next time

www.brewhouse.net/2005/site/

Date DAY Road Trip – Duluth, MN and Beyond

I’ve got some vacation time saved up and what better reason to use it than to take my lady out of town with a specific intent to relax and take it easy. It started by sleeping amazingly late, which then called into question even hitting the road. We didn’t even have a destination, so we waffled a bit about driving somewhere. We had no plans the next day, so we said, “Screw it!”, and threw some clothes in the car just in case we ended up driving too far and had to stay in a hotel or something along the way.

We thought we’d head north up towards Duluth, where I’ve heard seeing the leaves change colors is absolutely beautiful. We left in the early afternoon, after a quick stop a Nina’s coffee shop – one of D.Rough’s favorites. We headed north and took our time driving. In fact, we stopped by the Black Bear Casino on the way so we could play some slot machines. Literally, like a 20 minute stop and then we left again.

We hit Duluth, knowing full well we were going to go further north than that. It was just a stop-over for a quick bite to eat and then back in the car. We wanted to go to Hell’s Kitchen, but it was strangely closed and may have had a change of ownership or a name change (I will have to investigate further). So we walked down the street to Grandma’s Saloon (touristy, but the food is decent and not terribly expensive). We thought it might be happy hour, and we were right – we have a knack for predicting things like that. We grabbed some wings and onion rings and a couple of girly drinks to tide us over until dinner. Then on the way back to the car, we just HAPPENED to stop by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for a turtle caramel apple… and some chocolate dipped graham crackers…

We stopped along the way and walked down next to the water of Lake Superior. It is absolutely beautiful up this far north this time of year. We took some photos of the lakeshore and had the perfect lighting for some awesome shots. [Side note: D.Rough’s roller derby team won the “Golden Skate” at the 2010 season championships this past year and all of the skaters have been taking it on various road trips and fun events with them. We had the Golden Skate with us on this road trip, so we took some photos with it on the shore.]


We got back in the car and headed north a bit further. There were a couple of really awesome tunnels that we drove through, so I thought that was pretty awesome. We drove past a pretty cool looking stream dumping water right out into Lake Superior, so we decided to stop and check it out. We weren’t in a rush or anything, so we hiked down to the water and checked out how cold it was. Oddly enough, it was very cold (yes, that was sarcasm).
How often do you get to walk in a beautiful stream in the woods – not often enough, I say.
So we took off a couple layers of clothes we didn’t want to get dirty and hopped in the frigid water. D.Rough even saw a giant fish swim by.




And we did freak out another couple that hiked down the hillside to the stream and saw a pile of clothes… They just kept walking further downstream – hahahaha.



We got back in the car and kept going north. We drove past Betty’s Pies, which is a famous pie place in Minnesota and probably worth a stop. We thought we’d hit it on the way back, either tonight or tomorrow, depending on what happened. We had decided we were going to hit up Canada and spend the night… right before we realized we would need passports to complete this plan and neither of us had brought our passports. Sigh… Oh well. We would drive until it got dark and then head back home maybe.

We drove through the awesome town of Castle Danger at one point. We both determined it would be an awesome place to own a summer home. It’s a very quaint little town without a lot going on. Plus, when your friends asked you what you were doing that weekend, you could reply with, “I’m headed to CASTLE DANGER!” in a super creepy ominous voice of doom!!!!.... DOOOM!!!! DOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!

We saw a sign for Gooseberrry Falls, which apparently is some sort of state park on the North Shore. (Also, not at all related to Cap’n Crunch.) It was starting to get dark now, but D.Rough was convinced we could make it… We DID, in fact, make it. But seriously, it was dark at this point. We walked through the woods down to the falls and there were people heading back up the trails with flash lights. We didn’t care – we were still going to see the falls. Once we got down to the falls, we took what photos we could with the point and click camera she brought. D.Rough tried a couple settings and ended up with a shutter speed slow enough to almost make out the falls in the picture. Here is what it looks like without a flash - I TOLD you it was dark. I have NO idea how D.Rough's photo turned out as good as it did in the darkness.
We then took a couple photos with the flash that ended us blinding us on the super slippery rocks. Once we actually saw how slimy and slippery the rocks were in the pitch black, we started getting a little more reserved about leaping over what we first thought were small puddles or streams. They weren’t small at all.


At one point while we were walking around in the dark, there was a pair of people (husband and wife maybe?) walking around with a flashlight. One of them went down hard into one of the streams and we sort of stuck around to make sure they didn’t need help back to the top. Thankfully they didn’t. We stuck around for another 15 or 20 minutes after they left to see if a ranger would eventually come down and check out the falls for stragglers. It never happened. On the way back, we got a little bit turned around in the dark (whoops!), but we eventually made it back to our car. Really, it was quite a fun trip to the falls. We both now wonder what the falls look like in the daylight.

Since there wasn’t much point in heading further north, due to our lack of passports, we headed back south for home. We pulled into Betty’s Pies for a fantastic dinner RIGHT as they were kicking people out and closing down for the night. It was awful – you get your hopes up for world famous pies (well, SOME of the people in the car had their hopes up higher than others), and then those hopes are dashed on the rocks. We decided we’d eat at Fitger’s in Duluth. Fitger’s is a brew-pub in an old hotel-type building with some shops and restaurants in it. We meant to eat there earlier this year when we were in town for roller derby with ManJar, but we couldn’t get a table without waiting for 2 hours. So we thought we’d check it out since we had time to kill. I’ll post that review separately from this, but dinner was decent here.

We ended up getting home about midnight from our little adventure. It was really nice to get away and not be on a schedule and not have to answer to anybody, especially work. I have a feeling we’ll be doing this again sometime soon. Hopefully, it will involve an actual trip – with passports – to Canada so we can witness their crazy metric system first-hand!

Top 5 things about Date Day Road Trip
1. No work. No schedule. No pressure.
2. It’s beautiful countryside
3. Gooseberry Falls (even in the pitch black)
4. Super cold stream on the side of the road
5. Beautiful photos of the lake shore

Bottom 5 things
1. Betty’s Pies shot us down
2. We all know what cold water does…
3. It gets dark earlier, so we couldn’t see as many leaves as we’d have liked
4. Forgot our passports
5. Black Bear Casino would NOT let us take photos of the Golden Skate in the casino. Sadface.

Duluth, MN - Yeah, the whole city.

Since it was the last weekend we have free for a while, we decided to go relax in Duluth, MN. People from the Twin Cities talk about it, so we went to see what the hubbub was about. We weren’t going to stay, since hotels there are expensive – it’s kind of a touristy get away right on Lake Superior. We stumbled on a cheap motel, so that changed our mind about staying. There are a lot of big name hotels, but there are a lot of quaint places that aren’t scary, so plan accordingly.

Duluth seemed to be a two street shopping/tourist attraction. There’s Superior Street which has shops and a couple of restaurants overlooking the Lake – which is an awesome view, by the way. And there’s the Canal Street area, full of touristy chains and the Grandma’s compound. That’s about it. I can sum it up in one sentence. “If you’re not in the cute part of town, you’re in the BUSTED part of town.”

It’s a good place to spend the weekend, but don’t get too excited about staying there longer. You’ll run out of things to do (unless you like to eat 24/7 – which they have PLENTY of awesome restaurants). There is a decent disc golf course at the local college and a lot of homeless people at 8am on a Sunday morning (totally unrelated).

Top 10
1. The local strip club had a special feature erotic contortionist performing. Now THAT’s culture, my friends.
2. Amazing food, everywhere we went
3. Everything (except hotels) is affordable. Not tourist inflated.
4. Got to see an oil tanker go under the lift bridge. Very cool.
5. The Superior Street area is connected with the Canal street area by a long skyway
6. Plenty of beaches for the 50 degree water, which people were utilizing
7. Decent disc golf course (Miller Creek) where I played golf with Dale – random local – Happy Birthday, Dale!
8. It’s one of the best views of nature in Minnesota
9. Duluth is home to DBU – which I assume is Douche-Bag University
10. Superior, WI (right across the river) has a whole corner of town filled with dirty, scary strip clubs.

Bottom 5
1. The Leif Ericson Viking ship was covered with a tarp in hopes of soliciting funds - angrifying!!!
2. Has some serious economic downturn
3. Still had kind of a white trash touristy feel to the whole thing – lots of tank tops and Disney clothing
4. Grandma apparently owns everything on Canal Street
5. I’m guessing it’s frighteningly cold in the Winter….