Gahndi Mahal

Visited on Friday, June 5th with Jamie and Daniel

Erin's Review
Jamie has been telling me about how great Gandhi Mahal is for awhile - we had a plan to go before our trip to Europe, but that didn't end up happening because of a few illnesses in the group - this time nothing was standing in our way! Ben goes into a lot of detail in his review below, so I won't really write too much so it doesn't get repetitive :)

A little appetizer that was brought out

I debated my order the whole day but finally settled on Chicken Tikka Masala, which is my normal Indian place order. I just love that stuff, and feel like I'll be disappointed with anything else. It's a habit I should break... but maybe some other time :)

I was very glad Jamie and Daniel wanted to split the bread basket - it was delicious! My favorite was probably the garlic naan or the puffy bread. Yum! There was plenty to go around, and Jamie even took some home. At Daniel's recommendation, I also got a Mango Lassi, which was probably my favorite part of the whole meal - slightly creamy and delicious!

The chicken tikka masala did not disappoint - it was perfectly sweet and flavorful and not spicy just as I ordered :) Plenty for me to eat, share with others, and have enough to bring home for leftovers!

I loved Gandhi Mahal and have since recommended it to a number of people! The service is great and it's a cute little place. Nothing fancy at all, which I like. It was also rated as Best Indian by City Pages this year, so you don't just have to trust our opinion! Definitely check this place out.

Ben's Review
Last Friday we went to Gandhi Mahal (I still have trouble spelling that) with Erin's co-worker Jamie and her husband Daniel. Daniel is a big fan of Indian food and was excited to go, especially since we had plans to go previously that fell through. Gandhi Mahal is located at Lake & Minnehaha, right near the old location of Midori's Floating World Cafe and a short drive from downtown as we headed there after work.

We had made reservations but you don't need them, at least not at 6pm. It's not a big place, but there were only a couple tables occupied when we arrived. I had seen on the menu that live music started at 5:30 which made me a little leery, but clearly that was a bit inaccurate because they hadn't started playing, even by the time we left.

The hostess was friendly as she showed us to our table that needlessly had a 'Reserved' sign on it. We were a couple minutes early and just perused the menu while we waited for Daniel and Jamie. I had scoped out the menu awhile ago, before we went the first time, and had nearly made up my mind then to get the Rogan Josh, described as "A traditional North Indian dish cooked in a medium hot spicy sauce and an exotic blend of spices in spiced garlic sauce", sounded good to me! I was nearly convinced to get a form of Korma on the menu by Daniel, but he offered to let me try his so I stuck with the Rogan Josh. I did switch from chicken to lamb at the server's suggestion. One thing I love about Indian food is that most of the dishes have your choice of meat and your choice of spiciness so you can tailor your dish to what you like.

Our food came out rather quickly, in about fifteen minutes, along with the bread bowl we ordered to share. In hindsight, getting the bread bowl was a fantastic decision as you get a tons of various types of naan: garlic naan, cilantro, plain, and this real big, bubbly piece on top of the pile. Naan is a great way to deliver Indian dishes into your mouth :) However, it does make you full faster.

My Rogan Josh was delicious, though next time I will bump up the spice a notch (I got mild/medium). Rogan Josh is a dark sauce so I guess the lamb is better suited for it. I wasn't impressed with the lamb itself, I couldn't really taste much of a difference between the lamb or beef, and lamb was a more expensive option. I think I'll go for chicken next time, in addition to more spiciness. I held off to leave myself enough for dinner the next night and I made some basmati rice with tumeric, which tasted really good for a Saturday night meal :)

(note from Erin: one of these two was Ben's meal... neither of us can remember now though since they look very similar :)

Gandhi Mahal was excellent and I would go back in a heartbeat. The food and service were both great and the prices were reasonable for getting two meals out of the deal.

• Service: Everyone was friendly and our food was brought out quickly.
  

• Food: Excellent food, I tried everyone's dish and they were great. The naan is awesome.
  

• Drinks: They had a couple beers, but nothing that really interested me, so I passed.

• Ambiance: It was quiet when we were there, although there is supposed to be live music.
  

• Price: Entrees were $10-$15, but you can easily get two meals out of them. The naan basket was $12 for the whole table, it was worth it.

• Convenience: Located at Minnehaha and Lake, you can take a bus, the light rail, a bike, or park off-street.

Deets
Gandhi Mahal
3009 27th Ave S
Minneapolis

Upcoming Event: Taste of the Nation

Twin Cities Eats just let us know about the upcoming Taste of the Nation event happening on June 12th! It sounds like an awesome event, with all proceeds from ticket sales supporting organizations that fight childhood hunger.

Check it out at the link above! Unfortunately we won't be able to make it because Ben is riding in the MS150 that weekend, but it would have been really cool to see the Mixology Duel between Bradstreet Crafthouse and La Belle Vie!

Capital View Cafe

Visited on Saturday, May 23rd

Ben's Review
My co-worker Erik told me about Capital View Cafe and their fantastic breakfasts so we added them to the list. We went there on Saturday morning after checking out the St. Paul Farmers Market.

As the same suggests, you have a perfect view of the capitol building if you stand in the middle of Smith Ave. outside of the restaurant. It's pretty cool actually, considering how far away you are, and the building is nicely framed between the trees on the sides of the road.

Capital View Cafe is larger than I would have guessed and it looks like they may have expanded by purchasing their neighbors location and tearing down some walls. (Something that I hope Blue Door Pub will do soon!) You seat yourself and I chose a table by the window which lasted for about five minutes after Erin decided that the sun in her eyes wasn't going to work. Fine. So we moved to the booth she wanted in the first place :)

Erik had raved about the Cajun eggs Benedict so I knew what I wanted and Erin always gets regular eggs Benedict anyways, so ordering didn't take long this morning. The food also came out very quickly, which surprised me since they had a decent number of people in the place. The Cajun Benedict didn't disappoint. It's like regular eggs Benedict with Andouille sausage instead of ham and the hollandaise sauce is spiced up a bit. I'm not a huge breakfast fan, but this was damn good. The spicy sausage was a great substitute for the ham, I think I might work this into my breakfasts at home in the future.

Another thing that I liked was that I had a choice of potato. I don't care for hash browns, so I always feel like it's a waste when I have to get them. I substituted American fries instead and they were pretty good, but I didn't come close to finished them anyways after the eggs.

The service was very good as well, they were cool with us switching tables after getting our coffee and making them clean off the table we had used for only five minutes. One oddity is that you can't pay with a credit card unless the check is over $50. I've seen that restriction elsewhere, but I feel like the limit is usually $5 at convenience stores. At the very least they have an ATM inside so it's not a huge deal (although the ATM isn't from any MN bank, so no matter who you are you're going to get dinged with a charge to get your money).

All in all it was a great way to start our gorgeous Saturday morning.

• Service: Good, prompt service and they filled up the coffee quickly.
  

• Food: Great Cajun Benedict and good choices for sides.
  

• Drinks: Not for breakfast, we aren't savages.

• Ambiance: The restaurant is very well lit which is great on sunny mornings.
  

• Price: Prices were on par for a breakfast place, $9 for the Cajun Benedict and $8 for the regular Benedict.

• Convenience: Plenty of on-street parking, they are located in a neighborhood area. Great view of the capitol.

Erin's Review
It's been almost a month since we last went out for the blog, largely due to our 2 week trip to Europe in the middle of this month! After eating out for 10 days straight, we weren't really in the mood to jump right back in. Since we had already decided to go to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, we decided to find a breakfast place in St. Paul to hit up after we got our veggies. Ben suggested Capital View, which sounded just fine by me.

When we got there, the place wasn't very full at all - it is actually pretty large as Ben mentions above. I don't think the reason it wasn't full is their fault at all - it was just a beautiful holiday weekend and most people were probably out of town!

We both got coffee - Capital View has HUGE mugs which is very nice. They don't have jars of cream and sugar though, which always kind of annoys me because then you have a little pile of trash at the table constantly with the individual creamers and sugar packets, especially with the amount I put in :)

As usual, I ordered the eggs benedict. Our meals came out fairly quickly and looked delicious. The eggs benedict were pretty good, the one weird thing was that the english muffins had a very strong cinnamon taste to them, to the point that after a bit, I just stopped eating the muffins and had the eggs and ham with my hash browns instead. It was still good, but I'm not sure who thought cinnamon was a good idea. It's not.

I really enjoyed Capital View Cafe - the service was great and it was a cute place in a neighborhood I don't often get to. I'm not sure I'd go back because it isn't exactly close to our house, but I'd certainly recommend it - just make sure to ask for your eggs benedict without the cinnamon, unless you're into that kind of thing :)

Deets
Capital View Cafe
637 Smith Ave.
St. Paul

Cafe Bonxai

Update on 12/13/10 - Cafe Bonxai is now closed

Visited on Wednesday, April 29th with Scott and Christie

Erin's Review
It was Scott's birthday last Wednesday, and he was paralyzed with the choice of restaurants. Somehow he and Ben came to the decision of Cafe Bonxai, which is just about a mile from our house. For some reason, despite being told by Becky and Rett at least a year ago that they liked it, I was never very excited about trying it out. Probably because that stretch of University isn't exactly beautiful, and I've never really seen anyone going into the place.

Well, the day finally arrived for me to give Cafe Bonxai a chance, and I'm glad I did. As I expected, the ambiance left much to be desired, but we were there pretty late for Minnesota weekday standards - probably about 8pm or so. It was empty, and the music was so low that you could barely make it out at all, so it just seemed silent. Good thing this wasn't a first date, or it would have gotten REAL awkward!

The menu told me that their Coconut Basil soup was voted best soup a few years ago by someone, so I wanted to try that. Plus I was feeling a bit under the weather so soup sounded perfect. I also went with the Mango Chicken for my main course.

Both the soup and chicken were fantastic. The soup could have been a little hotter, but it was so flavorful and I ate it so quicky that it didn't matter. As expected, it was very sweet, but not overpoweringly so. The chicken was basically sweet and sour chicken with a few slices of mango on top :) But it was GOOD sweet and sour chicken - crispy and tender. I tried everyone else's meals and all of those were great too - especially Christie's green tofu curry.

I really enjoyed the food at Cafe Bonxai and would be interested in returning on a weekend night to see if it's more hopping than it was the night we were there. Definitely check it out if you are in the area!

Ben's Review
I had suggested Cafe Bonxai to Erin several times in the past, being that it's so close to home and had good reviews. I finally convinced Scott to go there, so Erin had no choice in the matter. We went last Wednesday night with Scott and Christie after a martini at Axel's on Grand Ave.

(Scott's birthday martini)

Cafe Bonxai has been open for over two years so at this point I am not concerned with its livelihood, but on this night the place was dead. I think there were two other tables of people, besides the four of us. Granted it was a rainy Wednesday night, but it felt very stark that night, especially because there was no music playing.

Cafe Bonxai's web site also leaves much to be desired. The menu section has no pictures or even descriptions of the dishes, and it's out of date as the meal I ordered is not on the web site. The blog has no entries and you have no idea if they serve alcohol at all (I had to call to check). However, don't let the lackluster web site fool you, the food here is AMAZING. :)

I ordered the Hmong sausage pasta after deliberating between the pasta, a mahi mahi dish, and the General Tang's chicken which Scott ordered. This pasta dish was fantastic, the sauce was a rich, cheesy red sauce with penne and tons of sliced sausage. I could barely finish all the food but it just tasted SO DAMN GOOD that I couldn't help myself. Seriously, this was probably the best pasta I've ever had.

Every dish we had was really good. I tried some of Erin's coconut soup, Christie's green curry, and Scott's General Tang's chicken and they were all delicious. Scott even had enough to bring home, and he's not the type to leave food on plate.

The only downside to the whole occasion was that they had run out of Summit. I nearly offered to go down the street to refill their stock for them, but I settled for having a Bass Ale instead. There ought to be a law about running out of Summit for a St. Paul restaurant.

Here are my ratings:

• Service: The server was a nice guy, no problems.
  

• Food: Awesome food, just awesome.
  

• Drinks: Beer and wine only, I wonder if they are trying to get a liquor license?.

• Ambiance: Not much ambiance on the Wednesday that we were there. Hardly any customers and no music.
  

• Price: The prices were reasonable, but it seemed like you had to spend either $9-$10 or $15-$17, there was no middle ground.

• Convenience: They are located just west of Snelling on University Ave. and they have their own parking lot out back with meters on the street.

Deets
Cafe Bonxai
1613 University Ave
St. Paul