Ben's Review
For my birthday I was tasked with choosing a place to get dinner with Erin as her mom had offered to watch the kids while we went out. In typical fashion I had a hard time deciding and enlisted the help of my coworkers. I got several awesome suggestions and settled on Ward 6 in Saint Paul.
Ward 6 is on the east side of Saint Paul in an old saloon (apparently the bar is the same one that was installed in 1903) and has a retro feel to it, even though the place has obviously been spiffed up a bit. I could tell it had opened not too long ago since the paint on the trim wasn’t even dirty yet.
Pints of beer are $5, except for Hamm’s which is only $3, and the tap beers are a great collection of local beer: Summit, Fulton, Flat Earth, Steel Toe, Indeed, Pour Decisions, Surly, and Lucid are all represented. They also have a full bar and several cocktail suggestions on the menu. I started with a Lynchburg Lemonade while we were deciding on food and had a Steel Toe Size 7 with my food.
The food menu is not huge, but there are several good looking options. Erin’s reuben even looked good to me, and I’m not a reuben fan. The daily special that day was a pork loin with warm potato salad, which easily sealed the deal for me. The potato salad was just as much of a draw as the pork, I love that stuff!
I had my beer and my German food and I was all set. The portions of food at Ward 6 are refreshingly reasonable, not the gargantuan plates you get at many places these days, and the prices are proportional as well, which I appreciate.
The pork had good flavor, but was not as moist as it could be, but paired with the potato salad, it was excellent and I wolfed it down in no time, leaving me to finish my beer as dessert :) We were done so quickly that we had to figure out something to do, lest we get home to Erin’s mom too early! We went for a walk down Grand Ave where Erin had some ice cream and I got a cigar, great ending to a birthday dinner.
Erin's Review
For once, I left the dinner decision completely up to Ben! We are completely out of the loop on restaurant openings lately, so I wasn't too shocked to hear that his coworkers had recommended several places we hadn't even heard of! I did look at the website for Ward 6 before we went, but wasn't quite sure what to expect.
This is definitely an awesome place that I WISH was closer to us! It's not like it's that far away, obviously, but it would be nice if it was even within a few miles, or not on the other side of downtown St. Paul. We went to downtown St. Paul for a drink at Barrio prior to heading over to Ward 6, which is pretty close to The Strip Club. It's one of those places that is casual but feels nice, serves really great food, and is affordable. Definitely kid friendly, too, I'd like to go back for breakfast with the kids sometime.
I saw that the bar had some ties to Hamm's (apparently the actual bar itself used to be in the brewery which was next door or something) so felt it was my mission to have a Hamm's while we were there. Also it was $2 cheaper than everything else, and I think we ALL know that I don't care what kind of beer I'm drinking, and in fact the closer it tastes to water, the better.
The Reuben was calling my name - to think of my younger self, never even trying a Reuben because it sounded gross to me. Now I love them! They are pretty rich for me, so I actually only ate half but the other half reheated well for another meal. The fries were delicious as well.
Really loved this place - excellent service, friendly atmosphere and good food. Worth the few extra miles from Minneapolis even!!
Deets
858 Payne Avenue
St. Paul
