Hot-lanta!

I know, I know..... this blog is supposed to be about us dining out in the Twin Cities. But it's my blog, and I'll write about what I want, including food eaten when I'm on trips! (By the way.... this is Erin writing)

I was just in Atlanta, GA for a week for a conference-type thing. I didn't have a ton of free time, but luckily I did get to see the city a bit and try out some of the great food that Atlanta has to offer! I had been to Atlanta once before, to visit Ben's family a few years ago for Thanksgiving, but that was a very quick trip - we just went into Atlanta once for an afternoon to go to the Coke museum, and that's it.

Here are the places that I ate on this trip:

The first night, I pretty much just followed the crowd to Max Lager's. I went with Shannon, Mark, Amanda, Kelly, Kyle, girl I can't remember her name, and.... Josh? This was a while back now and my memory sucks. This place was very similar to Herkimer, I thought. It was not as "chain-y" as Rock Bottom, and had a few unique menu items as well as the beers that were brewed in house. I had a "Max Burger" which was pretty good. I asked for it to be cooked medium, which it was not, but I'm willing to forgive (but not forget). All photos here are from Kyle's iPhone since I left my camera at the hotel. Thanks Kyle!

The next stop was Mama Ninfa's in the Peachtree Center with Janelle, Melody, and Carlie. We wanted somewhere close to our hotel and that could satisfy carnivores, vegetarians, and gluten-free dining. This place fit the bill, but didn't do it THAT well.

Melody and I split one of the combo dinners - it was alright, but nothing to write home about. The cheese dip was ok, but very bland, and didn't have much "chili" in it, so I had to load it up with salsa to make it taste good. It was fine, and reasonably priced.

(Before, and after adding the salsa)


(The meal Melody and I split)

The next night, I was very glad that Janelle and Melody were willing to venture outside of downtown Atlanta to see a different neighborhood. We took the recommendation of someone who had lived in Atlanta to go to midtown and try the Flying Biscuit. I really liked this place, and midtown was a very fun part of Atlanta - I'd highly recommend checking this area out if you are there.

Janelle asked the waiter for some recommendations, so we got the Fried Green Tomatoes for an appetizer. I thought these were great! They came with a huge hunk of goat cheese on the top. Despite my repeated trials, I can't seem to develop a taste for goat cheese. This makes me very sad, since there are many dishes that I would otherwise love if it weren't for the goat cheese. It didn't ruin this appetizer for me though, because I could just take the cheese off. Maybe someday I will like goat cheese, just not yet.

(On the menu it says: dredged in seasoned flour, sauteed in a cast iron skillet and topped with a cashew-jalapeno relish and goat cheese)

Janelle and I both had drinks. Below you will see her reaction first to her beer, and then to mine.

For our main dishes, Janelle got a salmon salad that she said was good, but that she got a little sick of by the end. Melody got Love Cakes, which are: three black bean & cornmeal cakes, sauteed and topped with a tomatillo salsa, sour cream, feta cheese & spears of red onion. She seemed to enjoy them. I got the Eggs-ceptional Eggs, which were basically love cakes topped with over-medium eggs. De-lish! I also got a side of potatoes AND grits, because I just couldn't decide. I didn't really like the grits.

Moving on. The next night was the night where I had pre-chosen the restaurant based on input from Shannon and Eric. We even had reservations. Amanda, Kelly, Shannon, Kyle, Eric and I set out on the Marta from downtown to go to Buckhead.

The chosen restaurant was Lola. We had a slight wrong turn from the Marta stop and thus walked several blocks in the wrong direction, but eventually (40 minutes late for our reservation) we got there!

This place is pretty posh (and filled with a-holes, as Shannon so eloquently stated when we walked in the door) so we didn't really fit in. Luckily we had a nice cozy booth and didn't really have to see any of Atlanta's beautiful people while eating. Our waiter bordered on too friendly, but he was entertaining. He had great recommendations. Lola is a beautiful restaurant with great decor and atmosphere, despite the snooty clientele.

You get a little drink of some stuff like champagne when you get there. It is a Bellini bar, so apparently it is the stuff that is inside Bellinis. I tried 2 Bellinis when there, and really liked both of them. Unfortunately, I don't know what they were called. One of them had something to do with oranges.

(first little drink, my first Bellini, and Kelly's Bellini that she didn't really like. My orange Bellini didn't photograph well so that isn't on here, although it was VERY good)

We ordered a bunch of starters for everyone... here they are. If you hold your mouse over the photo you will see what each thing is.

For my main course, I went with the cheapest possible thing, the Bianca pizza. It was good, but there was a reason it was so cheap - there wasn't much to it. Oh well. Here it is:

Everyone else's meals looked way more fun. Here they are:

Since we have no willpower, we also ordered several desserts. Here they are.

Wow, if you are still with me, thank you for reading my longest blog post ever! My last meal in Atlanta was a chicken sandwich at Popeye's at the airport. It did not merit a photograph, and I would not recommend it.

The Sample Room

Visited on Monday, April 14th

Ben's Review
We went to Northeast Mpls right after work on Monday - Erin was going to take some pics since it was a nice day before we went to eat. The Sample Room is on Marshall, across the street from a residential area, its kind of all by itself, there aren't any other commercial buildings nearby, I don't think. The building is one of those old buildings you come across in Northeast, with the really high ceilings that have patterns carved in them, its almost worth going just to check out the space.

We knew it was half price wine bottles on Mondays even though we didn't see that on their website, I called ahead to confirm (its also half price on Sundays). We went with the Heartland Shiraz from Australia, on the menu it was spelled "Heartand" which I thought was a little strange, but I went out of my way to NOT pronounce the "L" in Heartland because I didn't want to look like an idiot, but as is the case most of the time, I felt a little dumb when the bottle came out WITH the "L". Whatever.

The wine was good, I'm not much of a wine drinker so I'm not that picky. For dinner we decided to try the Grand Sample Platter Combo, which is a sample plate from each of the vegetable, seafood, meat, and cheese menus. Going with the Grand Combo also gets you $3 off of the total. We choose the braised pork ribs, asparagus, seared tuna, and the chefs selection of cheese. I also ordered a cup of cream of onion soup.

The soup was pretty good, I liked the flavor a lot but the onions were a little soggy. I finished it before she could even come to check on us though, so I'd recommend it. When the food came out I was a little disappointed in the serving sizes - each item was pretty small, but I guess that's why its called the sample room. The cheese, tuna, and asparagus were really good, I think I actually liked the cheese and asparagus the best which is out of character for me. I especially liked the sauce that came on the asparagus, a balsamic drizzle, it was tasty. The ribs were dry and tough and didn't seem like they had been cooked fresh, as if they were just warmed up or something.

For dessert we got a Baileys Irish cream cheesecake and a flight of port. I'd never tried port before and it doesn't smell great, but it tastes surprisingly sweet. We got three, two ounce glasses to try, it was fun to watch Erin try to smell it without gagging. I think the dessert was the best part of the meal between the delicious cheesecake and the port. The port was $8.50, reasonable for trying something for the first time.

The ratings for The Sample Room

• Service: Our server was really attentive, prompt, and friendly.
  
• Food: The food was good, I wish the portions were a little bigger - and stay away from the pork ribs.
  
• Drinks: Pretty good wine list, from what I could tell, and they have a decent selection of pretentious beers on tap. No cheap beers on tap however, only in bottles.
  
• Ambiance: Aside from an annoying woman with the horse laugh dining that night, this place is cool, it is one big room in a well designed, old building.
  
• Price: I expected the tab to be a lot higher than the $64 it ended up being. It helped that it was half off the bottle of wine.
  
• Convenience: They have a parking lot and there's plenty of parking on the street since there's no other businesses nearby.

Erin's Review
Everyone that I talked to about Sample Room said great things about it - as with many other places on our list, this place comes with a lot of recommendations. There were a few things that I knew I wanted to try: the asparagus, based on co-worker Amy's recommendation, and the tuna, based on Nicki's recommendation. We decided to go on Monday night because of the half priced bottles of wine - a lot of times this can be only the house wines, or just a few of the cheaper bottles, but in Sample Room's case, it was the whole wine list which I thought was great.

I let Ben picked the wine, he picked the Heartland Shiraz which I really liked. It had a twist off cap so it probably wasn't really a good wine. Who knows. We sure don't. As Michael Scott would say, this wine had a real oakey afterbirth.

(Bread that came out - I noticed on the menu that they charge for a second basket...)

For food, we did the 4 sample plates. You don't have to pick one from each category, I don't think (as Ben says above) I'm pretty sure you can just get 4 of whatever off of any of the sample plates. I'm not really sure what Ben was expecting when it said "small sample plates" but I thought the portion sizes were fine - they are supposed to be small. I was not really full after eating my half of the meal. I would recommend getting a starter. I didn't because I knew I wanted dessert, and since I passed 25 my metabolism has slowed to the point where I unfortunately can't eat EVERYTHING I want. Sad.

By far my favorite was the cheese. It was the chefs special - which that night was a Crucolo cheese. I think this would be a very crowd pleasing cheese - it doesn't have any odd flavors or aftertastes. I also really liked the asparagus - it was crunchy and was flavored perfectly with salt and the balsamic sauce - VERY good! I'm glad Amy recommended this to me - I would have never chosen it on my own. The tuna was good too - the best part about it was the wasabi aioli that came with it. I did not like the ribs at all - they were very tough.

I chose the Bailey's Irish Creme Cheesecake for dessert - this was delicious. I did not like the port. It actually tasted better than it smelled, but it didn't taste good enough for me to ever want to order it again!

The Sample Room is a very beautiful restaurant. I think pressed tin ceilings must be all the rage now because they seem to be at every place we go. This one seemed particularly nice. I also liked the huge windows in the front. I would love to go back to try more of the dishes there - some of the entrees and other sample plates looked very good.

(One of the ceiling tiles)

Deets

The Sample Room
2124 Marshall Street
Minneapolis

Highly recommended for the food, atmosphere, and cheap(er) wine on Sunday and Monday nights!

Crave

Erin visited on Sunday, April 13th with Mom

My mom and I wanted to grab some lunch before heading over to Southdale to do a little shopping on Sunday. Neither of us had tried Crave yet, so we decided to go there and wander around the Galleria for awhile before heading over to Southdale.

I had heard that it can get pretty busy at times, so I made a reservation on Open Table for 12:30pm, but it wasn't that full when we got there so this might not be necessary.

The menu at Crave is very large - they really do have something for everyone, which is key in a mall restaurant. Both my mom and I decided to go with the Sunday brunch menu, which was different than what is shown on their website. (As a side note, what is with the trend of annoying music on restaurant websites? I hate it. I hate music on all websites. I hope that trend dies a quick death VERY soon.) There are many more options for brunch on the menu - such as a Minnesota Omelet with duck confit and some other things in it, quiche, and a few other things that I can't remember. They do have eggs benedict here but I decided to get something else for once.

I was deciding between a few things - the salmon omelet, Minnesota omelet, and the quiche - I asked our very friendly waiter for a suggestion, and he recommended the Salmon omelet. He said that the Minnesota omelet sounds better than it actually is, so keep that in mind if you go! My mom also got fresh squeezed orange juice - this was very good, but obviously it had a lot of pulp in it being fresh squeezed.

My omelet was very good - it said it had dill Havarti cheese in it, but I could barely taste that which was disappointing. It was a lighter omelet, and the salmon tasted delicious. I was pleasantly surprised that the omelet came with a side of potatoes and toast - that wasn't specified on the menu and sides were listed separately so I wasn't sure. The potatoes were cut almost too small - I would have liked the cubes to be just a little larger to have more potato and less .... edges, I guess? They were well seasoned and had peppers mixed in too. The bread was nutty and delicious.

My mom had the fried egg on foccacia with bacon and cheese - that looked REALLY good. I had a tiny bite of her bacon and it was great!

Crave also has a full sushi menu - I glanced at it and it seemed pretty expensive, but I'm not sure how much you get. It was a really pretty restaurant for being inside of a mall - they had really cool light fixtures and nice decor. They also had an okay patio - if you are into sitting outside overlooking a parking lot and Southdale.

(Light fixture)


(Patio)

Even though Ben didn't go here with me, I will use his rating scale:

• Service: Excellent - our server was very friendly and attentive.
  
• Food: My omelet was slightly bland but still good, my mom's sandwich seemed great. Very extensive menu.
  
• Drinks: The OJ was good... they have a full bar and a large wine list.
  
• Ambiance: Very nice for a mall restaurant. Even nice for a non-mall restaurant too, I guess.
  
• Price: Both of our meals were approximately $10 so it was right in line with what I expected from a place inside of the Galleria.
  
• Convenience: Lots of parking, near major highways.
  

Deets

Crave
3520 West 70th Street (in the Galleria)
Edina, MN

Recommended if you happen to be in the area. I wouldn't make a special trip or anything.