Grecco's on the St. Croix

Visited on Saturday, January 7th

Notes from Erin:
When I decided on St. Croix River Inn as the location of our B&B weekend away, I started to be on the lookout for good restaurant options in that area. Only a few days later, a serendipitous LivingSocial deal to Grecco's on the St. Croix popped up in my inbox, so I felt it was fate. Kate assured me that it was a good pick, so I went ahead and bought it and am so glad I did because it was exactly the same as the normal tasting menu, just 50% off - really, can't beat that.

I'm going to format this review in the same way I did for our tasting menu at La Belle Vie - unfortunately I have no details of this tasting menu since I forgot to ask them to write everything down. It seemed that the items we got were not nearly as inventive or unique as La Belle Vie, but the idea is the same as in any tasting menu.

The one overall note I'll make is that the service was odd to me - Ben says he thinks it was great, but I disagree - it seems when you have so many people waiting on you, no one takes any ownership. The courses were also really oddly spaced - there were several times we were sitting there for nearly 20-30 minutes in between courses. It was wonderful to be able to enjoy a leisurely 3 hour meal, of course, but some consistency would have been nice because other courses came out on top of each other. There were also a few times where it was hard to find a server, or water took awhile to come out - I just prefer to have one go-to person at a restaurant versus being waited on by seemingly everyone working.

Notes from Ben:
As part of our weekend at the bed and breakfast in Osceola, Erin had bought a Living Social deal to Grecco’s in St. Croix Falls, about 10 miles away. The deal was a buy-one-get-one deal on their six course chef’s menu, a value of $70, not bad!

We had reservations at 7pm and arrived right on time and were seated immediately. Grecco’s is deceptively large, with several different rooms as you go further back. It looked like there was bar seating in the very back room, but I never went back further to inspect. I liked the separate rooms, each had their own decor and their own vibe. We were seated at the second room in, adjacent to the wine bar in front. It took a little while for our server to stop by, but after that the service was excellent.

We did get some bread quickly, thankfully, because I was starving by that point. I noticed that they had a wine pairing that you could add to the meal for an extra $25. Since we had already paid for our dinners several months ago, I had no problem adding that in, and told Erin “you’re driving home” :).

The server seemed to time the wine a little off from the food. Sometimes I would get the next wine several minutes before the food arrived, and once or twice the food would come out and the wine a few minutes later. It kept me on my toes a bit as I would sometimes get another glass of wine before I had finished the last course. These were full glasses of wine too, so it was definitely worth the $25 in my mind.

Ben: We started off with a spinach salad that was paired with a white zinfandel. I prefer red wines over white and blush wines, but this wine was still good and very cold. The salad was good as well, it came with onions and a red (raspberry?) vinaigrette dressing.

Erin: I thought this salad was nothing special. There was way too much dressing. It seems I'm getting far pickier about the quality of my salads lately. Anyway, I ate it all and it was FINE, I guess, but seemed like an odd choice for a tasting menu.

Ben: The next course was pasta with truffles, mushrooms, and feta cheese paired with a pinot grigio. The pasta was excellent, I could have eaten an entire meal of it. Again, the wine was good and seemed to work well with the pasta, but me not being a wine buff, I just have to go with what they tell me.

Erin: LOVED this pasta - since everything was taking forever, and all I'd had was a little piece of bread and the salad, I devoured this very quickly. Perfectly creamy and flavorful.

Ben: The third course was whitefish over rice paired with a sauvignon blanc. The fish was generously seasoned and delicious. The rice was plain, but with all the flavor from the fish they worked well together.

Erin: The fish was fairly good - I didn't finish it because the dish overall was kind of bland and I wanted to save myself for future courses that might be better. Turned out to be a good decision!

Ben: On the fourth course I finally got a red wine, though I do not recall what kind it was. It was served with seared duck and wild rice. Again, both the food and the wine were fantastic. The serving sizes thus far were also small so while we were having a variety of food and several courses, at no point did I feel painfully full, which was nice.

Erin: The duck was delicious - it was cooked perfectly and was well seasoned. The wild rice I was a little less jazzed about, it was a little too al dente for my tastes. It was fine though, and I think I finished most of it.

(Forgot to take a photo of the wine - imagine a glass of red wine here)

Ben: Next up was beef tenderloin with mashed potatoes and another red wine. I love that there were three meat courses all in a row, yum! The steak was excellent as were the mashed potatoes, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with this, in my book.

Erin: This was probably my favorite course - surprising since I'm not normally a beef person, but I AM a mashed potato person. These mashed potatoes were so good - very rich and creamy.

Ben: I had seen a tres leches cake on the dessert menu, but since we were having a chef’s tasting menu, I was worried that I wouldn’t have any dessert options. I asked our server before the dessert was served if the tres leches cake was available, and she said “yes, I think that’s what they’ve been serving”, so I got very excited.

Then, without another word to us, she brought out the coconut pound cake with a blackberry sauce. Now, this cake was fine, though I’m not much of a dessert person in the first place, but you’d think after I specifically asked for a different dessert, she would have at least mentioned that it wasn’t available. Seriously, I LOVE tres leches cake. Love it. I was sad. And my emotions were running high after six full size glasses of wine.

There were no tears shed and we enjoyed our dessert and the rest of our time at Grecco’s. Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable dinner that lasted around three hours. Even if we didn’t have a Living Social deal, I would consider doing this again just because it’s rare that you get a dinner experience that lasts that long, it was a lot of fun. If you’re ever looking for a day trip with a long dinner, I definitely recommend the tasting menu at Grecco’s.

Erin: The dessert course was the most... eventful, shall we say. I decided I wanted a decaf coffee with the cake - mostly because I too had been hoping for the chocolate tres leches cake I kept hearing about, so I figured the coffee would make the pound cake a bit more interesting. It took me awhile to find someone to actually order from - and when I did, the bartender brought it out and made some completely strange comment to me after pouring cream into my coffee, saying "Soon you'll be seeing someone else doing this!" and then awkwardly coming back a few seconds later and saying "I meant your child!" Ohh, pregnancy comments. They really are something else. Oh, and the cake was just fine. Nothing great, but it satisfied my need for something sweet. Pretty sure I also had a few cookies when we got back to the B&B as well...

I'm not sure I would have wanted to pay full price for the tasting menu, but for 50% off, it was certainly worth it. The food was all on the range of pretty good to delicious, and it was a really fun experience - it had been probably since our meal at La Belle Vie that we were able to spend that long just enjoying our food and each other's company - overall a great evening!

Ben's ratings:
Service: The service was great and we were waited on by three or four different servers.
Food: Excellent food. Fresh and hot.
Drinks: Since I got the wine pairing I didn’t look into the drink situation much. I believe they have a full bar in the back, not sure what the beer list looks like.
Ambiance: A little subdued when we were there on a Saturday night. Mostly older adults.
Convenience: Again, a little far from the cities.

Deets
Grecco's on the St. Croix (website not functioning - here is the yelp page)
115 N Washington Ave
St. Croix Falls, WI

Tangled Up In Blue

Visited on Friday, January 6th

Ben's Review
Erin and I planned a weekend away before baby #2 arrives, so last weekend we were off to a bed and breakfast in Osceola.

We already had plans for dinner on Saturday night (in the next post), so for Friday night we did some searching around and eventually settled on Tangled Up in Blue Restaurant in Taylors Falls.

A few people had mentioned to us that the decor was............eccentric. As we pulled into the parking lot we were prepared for the worst. Maybe we had oversold the decor in our minds, because while it was a little much, it certainly wasn’t the most awful thing in the world. (Just for an example of the decor, we were seated “at the table under the two sconces”).

The restaurant is rather small and is handled, seemingly, by one server with help from the cooks, so it took a few minutes for us to get water and drink orders. The bottled beer list is rather small and I started with a Samuel Adams.

We were both starving when we had arrived so we quickly ordered the crab cake appetizer while we decided on our entrees. Several of the entrees choices sounded good, but I was sold on the beef Wellington as I had just seen a friend of mine having some leftovers at lunch, and was intrigued.

Our crab cakes came our after we had ordered and they were piping hot and delicious, served with some greens and tartar sauce. We devoured them quickly due to our hunger. I don’t know if I was influenced by how hungry I was, but they were some of the best crab cakes I’ve ever had.

My beef Wellington came out awhile later, reinforcing that it was probably freshly made. I ordered a Fat Tire to go along with the steak. The steak came with sides of asparagus and au gratin style potatoes. As an aside, for some reason asparagus is the vegetable that I always notice being served ridiculously out of season. It’s winter and there’s no way that asparagus was grown anywhere near Taylors Falls. It’s ok to use seasonal vegetables, people shouldn’t expect asparagus in the winter.

The beef Wellington was excellent, as I had imagined it would be. It seemed a little different than the example I had seen a few weeks ago, but it was awesome nonetheless. The mix of the flaky pastry with the steak was delicious and everything was hot and fresh.

Erin was scanning the dessert menu as we finished, but decided instead to grab some ice cream on the way back to our bed and breakfast (and some whiskey for me, thanks Wisconsin gas stations!) and enjoy our lovely suite.

Service: The service was very casual and friendly, almost like you were a guest in their home.
Food: The food was fantastic.
Drinks: Decent wine list, but very small (four, I think) beer list. No cocktails.
Ambiance: Small, cozy restaurant, but it wasn’t close to full when we were there.
Convenience: A bit of a drive from the city. I don’t think Metro Transit makes it out there.

Erin's Review
After telling a few friends that we were headed to the St. Croix Falls to stay at a B&B for the weekend, we got a few recommendations for Tangled Up In Blue... but were warned about the decor (I also was particularly fond of the URL). I'm really not sure what I expected, but I think it was along the lines of scarves hanging from the ceilings, lots of mirrors, maybe some bells hanging from the chairs. Something completely over the top, that's for sure. What we happened upon was tame by comparison, but I guess could still seem to be a bit much, especially considering the glitter on the table. To those friends who recommended the place - was the decor "worse" when you went?

We actually were originally going to try out a pizza place in Dresser, but as we approached, it was super bright with about 100 small children running about inside. Not something we wanted to see after leaving our still a little sick (first ear infection - great timing!) Annie with the grandparents. I'm definitely glad we went the extra few miles to go to Tangled Up In Blue - the atmosphere was much better suited to what we wanted our weekend to be - quiet and calm.

Because, as Ben mentioned, we were absolutely starving by this point, we quickly ordered an appetizer. I ate a bit less than half because I wanted to save some room in my limited stomach area for my main dish - I decided to get just soup and salad and to try some of Ben's beef wellington, mostly because he was concerned about the cost of the meal. I was battling a cold and couldn't taste much anyway so didn't want to waste a ton of money on a huge entree I wouldn't be able to taste or eat all of anyway.

I had the house salad and a tomato soup. I liked the soup, but I swear there was some mention of pasta being in the soup on the menu (which isn't updated on the website) - tortellini or something, but that was nowhere to be found in the soup. It had chunks of green pepper and tomato in it, and was very creamy... but no pasta. Oh well, it was good, and soup is easy to eat when you're stuffed up so it hit the spot.

The salad was pretty meh - there wasn't quite enough dressing and the chunks of blue cheese were not flavorful at all, and I felt there should have been more cheese overall.

I did look at the dessert options, but was glad I passed on them to just enjoy some ice cream by the fireplace at our B&B - it gave me some time to actually want to eat again too. Tangled Up In Blue is definitely a good option in this area - although I liked our next meal more (Grecco's) - but if you are looking for 2 nicer dinners for a weekend trip, these 2 seem like the best choices in the area. I noticed they won some award "restaurant worth the drive" several years ago, and that might be a BIT of a stretch since there are far better restaurants in the Twin Cities, but if you are already in or near Taylor's Falls - it's a great option.

Deets
Tangled Up In Blue
425 Bench Street
Taylor's Falls, MN

CaliFORnia

Here comes another very long post unrelated to the Twin Cities! Last weekend, my 6 college roommates (in no particular order: Becky, Kimberly, Camille, Mindy, Chelsea, Laura) and I (Erin) flew out to visit Maria who moved out to sunny California to be an astronaut. Ok, not really, but that's what we all like to believe. Maria lives in Valencia, a suburb of Los Angeles, and we all stayed with her. Over the course of the 4 days we were there, much food and drink were consumed.

On Thursday, May 8th, we piled into our rented minivan and drove the 1.5 hours up to the Santa Ynez Valley to go wine tasting.

The first winery we went to was Sunstone. This winery features organic wines and is fairly small and cozy. Their Eros wine was particularly good - it is a blend of merlot, cabernet, and... something. Sunstone had a beautiful picnic area, where we sat for a good long time enjoying the sunshine and great food. Thanks to Trader Joe's for the food, and to the Bride & Groom Cookbook which provided Maria with the recipe for the Orzo Salad with Lemon, Feta, and Pine Nuts. Mmm mmm good.

(Outside of Sunstone)


(Sunstone Cellar - the pourer offered to give us a tour)


(The picnic area)


(My glass of Sunterra (Sunstone's "cheaper" line of wines) Syrah, and the Orzo Salad)

The next winery we went to was just down the road from Sunstone - Kalyra. We had no prior knowledge of this winery at all, it just looked cool from the road. We're very selective like that. It turned out that this winery was the place that Sandra Oh's character worked in the movie Sideways. The wines were alright, but not as good as the wines at Sunstone. The pourer was very friendly and personable.

(the view from the front of the Kalyra tasting area)


(These sort of count as food - the little cracker things to "cleanse your palate" or whatever)

Gainey was our next stop, because they had a 3pm tour. Once we got there, we learned that there was a private party doing the tour that day so we were SOL. Too bad. Gainey seemed slightly overwhelmed by the size of our party (8) and the pourer seemed distracted the whole time. His idea of explaining the wine was "this is the syrah" which was a very comprehensive explanation. Gainey was a little bigger and seemed a little more corporate than the other two places we had been. The wines were good, but the experience was just so-so.

(the pours were the smallest here of the 4 places we went)


(One bonus of going wine tasting in this area versus Napa is that you get to keep all of the tasting glasses)


(outside Gainey)

To round out the day, we made one final stop at Curtis Winery. This was a very pleasant experience. The pourers were both very nice and knowledgeable. I really liked their grounds and the artwork they had on the walls. By that time, I really couldn't remember much about the wines themselves, but Maria has been there a few times so if she keeps going back, they must be decent.

(the view from Curtis)


(Tasting room)


(one of the pourers)

For dinner that night, we stopped at State Street in Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, we did not do any research beforehand, so we ended up going to State and A, which was okay, but not great. They were very accommodating for us, and lit up some patio warmer thingies because it was getting a wee bit chilly outside. I had the nachos, which hit the spot. I didn't hear too many rave reviews about the food. It's pretty typical bar/grill fare.

The next day we stopped at In-N-Out Burger before driving to Hollywood. I wish I had captured on digital memory card the looks on my friends' faces as they waited in line. I had told them ahead of time that there were special ways to order things at In-N-Out, plus it was really busy at the time so I think they were a bit overwhelmed and confused. I got a cheeseburger, animal style, and it was tasty. I had a double-double animal style last time I was in San Diego which I remember as being better, but it's possible that I am romanticizing the memory. One great thing about In-N-Out is that they are relatively cheap. I got the burger, fries, and a drink for $4.25 which seems pretty good to me.

Our next couple meals were cooked at Maria's house, but after lounging by the pool on Saturday, a few of us headed out to the Valencia Town Center to see if Pinkberry was worth the hype. I enjoyed it, but I'd have to say that I wouldn't seek it out. I got mine with strawberries and I thought that was the perfect accompaniment to the taste of the "yogurt" or whatever it is.

(my Pinkberry, and the inside of the Valencia Town Center)

Our last meal was at Le Chene, a place about 25 minutes away from Valencia that Maria had been to before. I had the Filet Roquefort, which was quite tasty, but there was an excess of sauce. I heard great reviews of the salmon. I liked how every meal came with a salad that was pretty tasty and some warm bread. My only complaint is that each meal comes with 2 veggies, one whole and one pureed. I'd rather have one veggie and one starch of some kind.

(They give each table one chalkboard menu - kind of quaint, and also kind of annoying with 8 people sharing one menu)

My first and last dining experience were both at Wolfgang Puck Express. I had it at MSP before leaving, and at LAX during our 7 hour delay. I suppose that my real last dining experience was the Whopper that some dude bought with one of our 2 meal vouchers during the 3 hour wait on the plane while the pilot was accused of being drunk and they had to call in new flight attendants, but whatever. I won't count that one.

(MSP)

Anyway, in the battle of the Wolfgang Puck Expresses, I'd have to say that the LAX one is FAR superior to MSP. The MSP pepperoni pizza was much greasier. I noticed that LAX had a real wood burning oven so that could be why. If you happen to be stuck in LAX (and chances are good that you will) then the Wolfgang Express is highly recommended.

(LAX)

Update on 5/17 - I almost forgot one of the dining highlights of the trip - the IHOP down the street from LAX. It was a magical experience. I got the pancake combo, and it actually did hit the spot. Some others had some questionable items (such as brownish poached eggs) but my meal was pretty good.