Shanghai Bistro - Stillwater

Visited on Sunday, September 11th

Erin's Review

So, as some of you may have guessed by the lack of posts here for a long time, or knew if you read my other blog or follow me on twitter, I am pregnant! And haven't really wanted to go out to eat to any new or exciting restaurants for awhile. At nearly 4 months pregnant, I'm just now starting to get my appetite back, so hopefully we can resume more regular posting... I'd been bugging Ben for a date since we went to the U2 concert, and finally we got it arranged - decided on an weekend afternoon so hopefully I wouldn't be as tired.

I got a few recommendations of restaurants from people on twitter - one was Shanghai Bistro. I'd been craving sushi for awhile, so that was my choice. I had pretty good luck when we went to Ronin during my first pregnancy with cooked sushi and them being accommodating about altering rolls, so I was hoping this would be the same.

When we got there, we discovered that this was the same location as the former Stones, which we'd been to a couple times. It appeared that they'd changed absolutely nothing about the patio - I even recognized the same furniture. It's a nice patio, so it's not like they needed to change much. There were tons of open spots on the patio - kind of odd for a nice weekend night. I think most people maybe want a view of the river? The inside was totally empty and dark.

We were seated immediately, and our server came out and took our drink order. I said I wanted something fruity and non-alcoholic and explained I am pregnant, and she recommended a fruity blended drink that was pretty tasty. I'm not sure what it was as it isn't on the menu online, but it involved coconut and strawberry. We also immediately ordered crab rangoons, which I loved but may have ruined my appetite for my meal. The bees DEFINITELY loved my drink - thankfully the garnish served as a way to keep them away.

I explained to the server that I could only have cooked sushi rolls and asked if they could make any substitutions for me. She seemed wary - and helpfully let me know that she has been told that pregnant women can have 6oz of raw fish a week. Whatever, lady. I'm certainly not about to take that risk at some random sushi restaurant in Stillwater, and I'm NOT taking pregnancy advice on what I can eat from a 20 year old. Whatever. So I said that I wasn't comfortable with that and would only be eating cooked fish. Then I asked if the California Roll was cooked - she said no. I said... are you sure? (because I know it is at every place I've ever been) and she said she would check. She came back, informed me they could bake any roll for me, and had forgotten to ask about the California Roll. I made her go back, and she found out that yes, indeed, it is cooked. So I got that, along with one roll with eel and shrimp tempura where they were willing to remove the one additional raw fish from the roll. So a lot of fiasco for not anything THAT exciting.

Once I actually got the sushi, it was pretty good, although the California Roll seemed a bit lacking - just the crab and avocado. It seemed most other places have a bit more going on. The other roll (Red Dragon) was quite good, but fell apart really easily. This was where I really could tell how much my appetite has gone down - normally I could down these 2 rolls no problem, but I could barely finish half and nearly had to run for the nearest trash can when I had one too many rolls after I was full. Not my finest moment, but thanks to a jolly rancher, I was once again good to go.

After that, I was pretty much done and completely full. We had intended to check out Nelson's Ice Cream after dinner but I couldn't even fathom having room in my stomach for that! Next time for sure. I've yet to go to a restaurant in Stillwater that really wowed me... this one was fine, but nothing special. Next time I plan to try dock cafe, which was also recommended.

Ben's Review

Since we hadn’t really been out without Annie since the U2 concert in July, we arranged to have Erin’s sister Liz watch Annie on Sunday evening while we went to spend a couple hours in Stillwater.

Erin got a couple recommendations of restaurants in Stillwater and decided on Shanghai Bistro as she was wanting some sushi (of the non-raw fish variety). We arrived in Stillwater a little after 4, with plans to walk around Main St. until dinnertime. We happened to park right in front of the restaurant, and it turns out we had been there a couple years earlier when it was called Stones.

We made our way back to the restaurant around 6 and easily got a table on the patio. I had seen earlier that there was a band that would be playing so I made sure we sat on the other side of the patio so it wouldn’t annoy me. Little did I know that it was just two dudes playing acoustic covers of some awesome songs. I heard some CSNY, Oasis, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, amongst the sweet cover songs they played. For ONCE I was actually enjoying the live music at a restaurant!

I saw the cucumber martini that sounded good and ordered that while Erin quickly ordered the crab rangoons with no hesitation. Shanghai Bistro has some standard Asian food and I was tempted to get my all time fave (but very boring) sesame chicken. At the last minute, I decided to go with the moo shu pork, but was then stymied by the fact that they were out of the batter for the stupid pancakes! With nothing to fall back on I got the sesame chicken :(

The martini and crab rangoons were both good. The martini definitely had something extra like simple syrup or something, because it was incredibly sweet; nothing like the pleasant face slap of cold vodka that I was expecting. For $10 I expect nothing to be watered down, especially with sugar. I don’t mind a little liver damage, but I will not tolerate extra sugar in my diet.

After Erin’s deliberations with our server about her sushi, our food came out after a few minutes. I got a hearty sized bowl of breaded and fried chicken along with a separate bowl of rice. Our server even brought out some chili oil and sriracha for me to jazz it up a bit, which I appreciated.

The sesame chicken was everything you expect and demand - all white meat chicken, breaded and fried with a little sesame sauce. It was certainly better than typical delivery places in the cities, but nothing spectacular. For $10 it fit the bill. I ate nearly all of it, as that stuff doesn’t do well for lunches the next day. I also finished off my meal with a dessert cocktail of an old fashioned, which oddly enough tasted to have less simple syrup than my martini, go figure.

Service: Eh, this was just ok. Erin had to have some back and forth about the sushi and then she was even telling Erin how much fish a pregnant woman could have. As if she was going to take any pregnancy advice from our server.
Food: The food was good, but nothing special.
Drinks: Decent beer and wine list, with a full bar. Avoid the specialty martinis.
Ambiance: Awesome cover band and a chill patio crowd on a Sunday night. There were actually a lot of children and families.
Convenience: Shanghai Bistro is right on Main St in Stillwater. We even got a parking spot right out front.

Deets

Shanghai Bistro

324 Main Street

Stillwater

World Street Kitchen - Minneapolis Street Food

Visited on Thursday, August 4th with Scott

Ben's Review

Erin has been wanting me to go downtown and meet her for lunch at one of the food trucks that now exist in Minneapolis. A couple weeks ago I biked downtown from home and met her and Scott for a trip to the World Street Kitchen food truck located near 5th St and Nicollet.

I started noticing the buzz around food trucks last year when an ordinance was passed that relaxed many of the restrictions on them and they seem to have exploded this year in downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Nearly every day on twitter I see several people hitting up different food trucks and the food has looked amazing.

Since Erin works downtown she has had a chance to try several of them out and wanted me to try World Street Kitchen. I met Erin and Scott outside Erin’s building and we walked over to the truck’s location. Erin had seen that they had ran out of gas (??) and had to run to get more, so we weren’t even sure if they were operation yet, luckily they had solved their issues and were indeed serving food.

WSK helpfully twits a picture of their menu everyday, so we knew what was available before we got there. I was absolutely starving after biking in so I wanted whatever was the largest portion. Erin said the spicy beef torta was good and large, so my mind was made up. I also got a Mexican coke, as those are too good to turn down.

The order taker at WSK also uses Square on an iPhone to accept credit card payments, which was cool to use, this was the first time I’d seen Square out in the wild. After you order you get a ticket stub and then you hang back and wait for the people in the truck to call out your number. The numbers do not appear to be sequential as they were calling out numbers all over the place.

After what felt like a half hour we FINALLY got our numbers called and raced to get our food. I was going crazy by this point and we still had to walk to a nearby courtyard to enjoy our food.

My torta was indeed very large and incredibly tasty. The beef was tender and juicy and it also had cheese in the pressed sandwich. The bread was kind of tough, which made it kind of battle to rip a bite out of it, but it was well worth the effort. After wolfing down my sandwich I tried some of Erin’s rice bowl which was delicious and deceptively large. Even though I was hungry as hell, the rice bowl would have done the trick just as well as the beef torta.

I really enjoyed my first food truck experience and the fact that there are several more means that I’ll probably be making my way downtown for a couple more lunches this summer, especially given that I work fairly close by these days.

Service: There isn’t much service at a food truck by definition. The order taker was a friendly guy, but our food did take awhile to get, probably an isolated experience though.
Food: Excellent food and freshly made.
Drinks: WSK has some soda, water, and juices, no alcohol or hot drinks
Ambiance: You’d think this wouldn’t even apply, but there is a crowd of people milling about waiting for their food, so this actually does give some ambiance. Mostly people making small talk while straining to hear their number called.
Convenience: If you work in one of the downtowns, these are really convenient and a great way to get some lunch on a nice summer day.

Erin's Review
I've been loving the food trucks all around downtown Minneapolis this summer. I've eaten at them way too many times, but I'm trying to sample a lot of them before the cold creeps in and I don't want to leave the skyways! So far my favorite, partly due to proximity to my work, is World Street Kitchen, which is owned by the same people as Saffron. Like most food trucks, the menu changes daily depending on what they've got cooking up, but there are some staples. I've had the opportunity to visit WSK a few times, so I will report on those visits in addition to this one with Ben and Scott.

Almost every time I've gone, unless it's before noon or after 12:45, there is a fairly significant line, but it moves quickly. This particular time it took the longest to get our food, but that could be because I think they prep a lot of similar items together and Ben and I ordered different things. Who knows. It really wasn't THAT long, we were just starving and hot so it felt like forever! At this visit, I finally decided to try the chicken yum yum rice bowl, after hearing Scott rave about the veggie bowl many times. I LOVED it - it probably was my favorite thing I've gotten there, depending on what you're in the mood for. It certainly offers the most food. It comes with a ton of basil, cilantro, rice, something crunchy (not quite sure exactly what it is but it was my favorite part), delicious and flavorful chicken, more veggies and, the proverbial cherry on top is definitely the slightly runny egg that you can mix in with everything. Seriously so good. It's been off the menu for a few days, and there has definitely been some push back from loyal fans about it on twitter!

Chicken

Veggie

After this particular visit, I forced Ben to walk with me ALL the way down to 10th and Nicollet (he was a bit peeved) to get a cupcake from the Cupcake food truck. In order to make this an experience worthy of a blog post, I needed to visit 2 trucks in one day :) Worth the walk, but I was still so stuffed from my rice bowl that I had to wait to eat the cupcake until later in the day. I got Lemon Raspberry, and I actually liked it a lot better than the cupcakes I've had from their main store on University, oddly enough.

Other items I have sampled on my visits to WSK are pictured below, with my brief review. Summary: I've loved everything I've had, with my tops definitely being the bahn mi and the yum yum rice bowl.

Smokey Beef Torta - my first visit to WSK back in early June. This was very good - I was glad it was pulled beef versus a big slab since that's easier to eat. Also had cheese, and mine had some avocado pieces. Ben's had peppers. Ben mentioned the bread was tough - I do not remember this, and I would because I hate that, so perhaps Ben is just a pansy.

Curry chicken banh mi - my other favorite! Everything about this is awesome. The flavorful pulled chicken, simmered in a curry sauce, the variety of crisp fresh veggies, and the soft bread that is crunchy on the exterior yet easy to bite through (my main complaint of many baguettes). This was the perfect amount of food for me. My 2nd WSK visit, only 2 days after my first :)

Finally, the chicken pita sandwich, which I just had a few days ago. This is a new menu item, and the day after I went, they posted this explanation of it on twitter: Shawirma aka middle eastern gyros: marinated chicken, Turkish pickles, french fries and garlic sauce wrapped in pita bread.

I basically had no idea what I was getting here, so I was a bit thrown by the combination, but it was definitely good and SUPER filling.

If it's not obvious, I love this place. The street food movement has been awesome for expanding my lunch time variety - I've managed to visit quite a few so far this summer and hope to try out more before they go into hiding for the winter! A great directory of all the known food trucks can be found at MSP Street Food.

Deets

World Street Kitchen

Location varies - check twitter feed for details. Typically on 5th between Nicollet and Marquette during the lunch hour

Minneapolis

Masu Sushi & Robata

Visited on Thursday, June 2nd

Erin's Review

I originally heard about Masu from Kate, and Heavy Table. Once I saw the post on Shooting the Kitchen, that sealed the deal for me - we needed to go, and fast! We aren't usually this quick with visiting new restaurants, but hearing about it from so many places and a huge craving for sushi did it for me. I had heard the service totally sucked, but the food was awesome so I was mentally prepared for that experience.

We got there around 7:30, and I jumped on the few open seats I saw at the sushi bar. I've always wanted to sit at the sushi bar, but never end up doing it because we're usually out with a bigger group. We took advantage of being a party of 2 that night, and I'd highly recommend doing this if you go to Masu, because I think that is a big part of what made the experience so fun for us. We started off ordering drinks, and not being a big drinker anymore, I really loved that Masu had a good selection of non-alcoholic beverages that were actually something other than soda and lemonade. I did end up getting a sparkling berry lemonade, but it tasted nothing like the sickeningly sweet stuff you'd get most other places.

A few servers helped us throughout the night, and I'm pleased to report that we never experienced poor service at any point in the evening. My water glass was kept full, and everyone answered our questions patiently. Since we are used to eating at 5:30 with Annie, we were pretty starving by that point, so quickly ordered the crispy pork kara-age appetizer. It came out quickly, and was enticing enough to get the people next to us to ask what we were eating. These were tasty and addicting - not too chewy, but had good structure and weren't overly greasy despite being fried.

To sample some robata, we chose the bacon wrapped asparagus and beef and burdock rolls. The asparagus was crisp and had a bright flavor, while the bacon was pretty chewy which made for a good combination. Surprisingly, I LOVED the beef and burdock rolls, which were a recommendation of one of our servers. These were very tender and not tough at all,which is my typical complaint of beef.

It is always difficult for me to make a decision on what rolls to order at sushi places, as if I had my way, I'd order about 10 and try one piece of each. We again went with the recommendation of the server and got the rainbow roll, basically because of the wide variety of fish it sampled. I knew I wanted spicy tuna, and eel nigiri as well. I love caterpillar rolls, but didn't see any rolls with eel on the menu. Since it was offered as nigiri, I'm not sure why that is, but the eel nigiri was very good. I loved seeing the sushi chef preparing our order. This fish all tasted very fresh and there was a good balance in the rolls between veggies, rice and fish. This is definitely some of the best sushi I've had in the cities!

The atmosphere at Masu was really low key but fun. It wasn't that loud, and I could best describe the crowd as yuppie hipster. The place was full when we went there, and from all accounts I've heard, is typically pretty busy. The decor is very colorful and vibrant - I love the wall art, and the sushi bar is beautiful. The row of games in the bar also provides something interesting that you aren't likely to see at other places.

Masu has a great combination of a great vibe, excellent food and (at least when we were there) good service. I'll definitely be back!

Ben's Review

Erin had been craving sushi for a bit so we arranged for the neighbors to watch Annie a couple weeks ago while we tried out Masu Sushi & Robata in NE Mpls, a newish place that has been getting some high praise lately.

Masu is located across the street from Whitey’s on E. Hennepin; I dropped Erin off at the door and found a meter about a block away to park. I found Erin at the beautiful sushi bar which, it turns out, is made from reclaimed lumber dating back to the 1850’s. The bar is shaped like a “J” with the curved end cap blocking off the bar as well as the three sushi chefs, which is where we sat. These seats are great as the sushi chefs give you quite a show as they prepare the sushi for the entire restaurant. For one of the rolls they even break out a propane torch to roast the top a bit, very cool.

Masu has several specialty cocktails that I felt obligated to try instead of a plain old martini. I went with the “Double Precious” (that’s my nickname, actually) which is described as a “Sparkling Jasmine Gin Elderflower Martini”. At this point in my life I have relegated myself to the fact that these drinks will never be strong enough for my liking, which really makes them a waste of money, but it sounded good, so what the hell. It was very tasty, but I probably could have pounded the whole thing, it was fairly sweet.

Having never heard of “robata” we had the server explain it to us; it’s a way of cooking the food on a charcoal grill. All of the robata options were in the $3-$6 range and are intended to give each person a bite or two. Our server recommended a couple orders of robata items and a couple sushi items. We got two robata and one regular appetizer: asparagus wrapped in bacon, beef and burdock rolls, and crispy pork kara-age. All of these were delicious and served beautifully as you can see from the pictures.

For sushi we ordered two rolls, the rainbow and spicy tuna, and one order of eel nigiri. Again, sitting at the bar we were watching them make all of the sushi, guessing which order would be ours. It was cool to see it all come together into the final presentation that you see in the photos. I enjoy sushi, and while I’m certainly not a connoisseur, this tasted great.

After putting back my precious martini in quick order, I got an old fashioned. This was much better suited to my tastes and was, as with everything else, delicious.

I had a lot of fun at Masu and definitely plan to be back in the future.

Service: The service was good at the bar, it seemed like all the servers wait on everyone because we were helped by a couple different servers during our stay.
Food: Awesome food, absolutely delicious
Drinks: They have several “fun” cocktails and sake, as well as a full bar.
Ambiance: Loud, but not overwhelming. We don’t sit at the bar often, but I was surprised to find that I liked it better than sitting at a table. In a loud environment it’s obviously easier to talk to someone when they are right next to you.
Convenience: This area is hit or miss (I feel like I say that for every place we go), but we always manage to park without much trouble.

Deets

Masu Sushi & Robata

330 East Hennepin

Minneapolis

Black Forest Inn

Visited on Friday, May 27 with Jake and Allison

Ben's Review

Erin heard about spargelfest at Black Forest Inn and wanted to check it out. Her parents took Annie up to the cabin one day early on Memorial Day weekend, so we took the opportunity to meet our friends Jake and Allison for dinner before heading up ourselves on Friday night.

I had heard that Black Forest Inn had a great patio, but I wasn’t really excited to try this place out. After having what I considered to be bland, uninteresting food in Germany during our honeymoon, I had written off their food entirely. Spargelfest sounded cool, and I do like asparagus, so we headed over after work.

It was cold out the day we went, so the patio wasn’t going to happen, which was unfortunate. The inside of Black Forest Inn reminded me of the beer halls in Germany with the high, painted ceilings, the woodwork, and the customers and staff.

We had arrived early which gave us plenty of time to look over the menu and consider our options. I started with a beer (Erin insisted that I get a German beer, which I was going to anyway) and got the Paulaner Salvator.

I was surprised at how much of the food actually seemed good, not what my prejudiced mind was expecting, which was nice. I actually didn’t end up getting any spargelfest specialty, but I made sure to try Erin’s asparagus soup. I went traditional and got the bratwurst dinner which consisted of two bratwurst links, hot German potato salad, sauerkraut, and rye bread. I also noticed that they had a maibock mentioned on the spargelfest menu that was not on the beer list, so I got a maibock with my meal as well (can’t recall the brand now).

I was amazed at how good this food was. I don’t know if I just happened to get bad food in Germany, or if my tastes have changed in the past five years. The bratwurst was excellent, and I even slightly enjoyed my sauerkraut. The best part though, was the hot potato salad. I had breezed over the word ‘hot’ in the menu and was expecting the cold variety that we know and love. This potato salad was phenomenal and I fully intend to try making this at home because it cannot be that difficult.

Jake and I also got to have the lion’s share of Erin’s pork because she had ordered a ridiculously sized portion for herself and found herself not really needing her third slab of meat. Needless to say we left incredibly full and with leftovers for the cabin.

Service: The service was just OK, it took awhile to get our drinks and orders taken. Our server changed halfway through, so there must have been a shift change or something going on.
Food: The food was excellent and the portions were huge.
Drinks: Small beer list, but they have light and dark German beers and a couple macro brews.
Ambiance: Kind of loud and boisterous, while also friendly, which also reminded me of Germany.
Convenience: Black Forest Inn actually has a parking lot, which I did not realize. We parked on the street, and we’ve always managed to find a close street spot when we come to this area.

Erin's Review

Like many places on our list, I'd been wanting to go to Black Forest Inn for many many years. German food just isn't high on my wish list, however. The patio was the biggest selling point for me, so I was pretty disappointed that it was cold and raining on the day we planned to go. I do definitely think we'll have to go back sometime to sit on the patio, because it looks beautiful!

Ben and I took our honeymoon, now 5.5 years ago, to Germany, and Jake and Allison just went on a trip to Germany last year, so it was fun for all of us to reminisce about our time in the FATHERLAND (not Motherland as I sometimes have been known to mistakenly say).

I was having a REALLY hard time figuring out what to order. I started off with a refreshing root beer, and then stared at the menu for a good 20 minutes while we waited for Jake and Allison to show up. I knew I wanted SOMETHING with asparagus, and wanted a pretzel. Those were my basic requirements.

Finally I decided to order the asparagus soup as a starter - it was creamy and delicious, with mostly pureed asparagus but with enough chunks to make it interesting. It brought back pleasant memories of the asparagus soup I had in Amsterdam on the last night of our vacation in Europe 2 years ago.

After MUCH deliberation, I decided to go with the hausplatte - it was described on the menu as "A generous sampling of rippchen, bratwurst, polish sausage, red cabbage, sauerkraut, and potato salad. Served with a fresh-baked pretzel and homemade mustard". I mistakenly thought that this would be a "sample" plate - which is what it said on the menu. But no. This was FULL portions of EACH of those meats, PLUS a pretzel and full orders of each of those sides. Um. A bit much for me, you could say. I did think this was DELICIOUS - especially the pretzel. The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the "rippchen" which was some kind of huge slab of pork. No thanks. Anyway - my advice is that this plate is PLENTY for two people. I made good headway with the brat and potato salad, and some saurkraut but that was about it. Far too much for one or even probably two people. Despite the solo pretzels not being anywhere that I could see on the menu, you can just order one on the side. Probably a better idea than ordering an enormous meal just because it came with a pretzel. Oh well, live and learn.

Black Forest Inn was friendly and inviting - everyone seemed to be having a great time. Upon looking at their website, they have a kids menu and I saw plenty of high chairs too. We might have to go back with Annie in tow for a patio visit later this summer.

Deets

Black Forest Inn

1 East 26th Street

Minneapolis