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My father is Norwegian by birth, and so some Norwegian characteristics have come to me naturally. Having hearty tolerance of long winters and cold temperatures has been truly helpful throughout my life. Even so, I have wished on more than … Continue reading
Ngon Vietnamese Bistro – 799 University Avenue, Saint Paul, Minnesota Telephone: (651) 222-3301
Last night we made a great discovery, Ngon, one of our favorite restaurants currently offers a great special on Monday nights: Two Traditional Vietnamese Entrees, Pork or Vegetarian Vietnamese Spring rolls and a pitcher of beer for $30. It has only been a few weeks since I wrote about the lovely, secluded patio, and a few months since I first wrote about Ngon’s selection of local-only beers, and traditional and inventive Vietnamese cuisine with locally sourced, sustainable meat and produce. It seems a bit soon to write about it again, but the offerings at Ngon are unwaveringly well-prepared and delicious, so we keep going back. We started with crispy vegetarian spring rolls which immediately cut our hunger. Fortunately, after the indulgent, fried appetizer, our main dishes were lighter. I ordered Bún, a rice vermicelli salad with organic greens, cucumbers, bean sprouts with saucy, fried tofu, garnished with pickly carrot, herbs and peanuts— my new summer go-to dish at Ngon. Bjorn had a steamy, flavorful bowl of meatball Phở and piled on bean sprouts, slices of fresh jalapenos and basil leaves which are provided as garnish. We managed to polish off a pitcher of Northwest Passage IPA by Flat Earth Brewing Co, a super-hoppy IPA made with Canadian malts and four American hops. Flat Earth Brewing Company reports that “Northwest Passage goes well with Phở, Buffalo wings & bon fires.” Bjorn completely agreed, and I will enthusiastically add that Northwest Passage also pairs well with spring rolls and Bún. This meal was a great deal–had it not been for the Monday night special, we probably would have only ordered our entrees and a pint of beer, it was Monday, after all. But, then again, why shouldn’t dinner out on a Monday night be tasty and a little extra nice? We’re fortunate to have Ngon in our neighbourhood and to have discovered that they offer a deal that makes a special and relaxing meal possible on the unlikeliest of nights.
I’ll be back soon with a garden update!
This is the third post in a short series about restaurant experiences we’ve had around the Twin Cities in recent months — in this post, I will share a little taste of the Midtown Global Market.
Sonora Grill – Midtown Global Market 920 E. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN, Telephone: (612)871-1900
I will begin and end this post with the same question: If you haven’t been to the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis for sight-seeing, shopping and a meal, what are you waiting for?! Midtown Global Market is an indoor market located at the intersection of Chicago and Lake Street, housing interesting sights, sounds and tastes around every corner. I will cut to the chase and say that the area it excels most in is food. To begin, there is the Sonora Grill. Sonora Grill appears to be a totally unassuming taco stand. I don’t blame you if you confuse the signage for a Chipotle knock-off. The presentation is casual and the price-point is similar, but the comparisons stop there. Sonora Grill is in fact the place in the Market to head to directly, if you like the thought of a chef who cut his teeth at Bar La Grassa, Solera and Barrio running his own show and serving up inventive, tasty South American and Spanish food all from scratch, and with zero pretense. When I first read about Sonora Grill, we had already been to the Market a few times. Our first attempt to eat at Sonora was a fail — we got to the market too late on a Sunday. More on that later…. With better planning, we finally made it for lunch at Sonora, and my eggplant Carmelo, a “Sonora style taco” consisting of breaded, fried eggplant, chimichurri aioli, roasted pepper and sautéed onions on a double layer of corn tortillas was super delicious. On its own the eggplant Carmelo has the power to beckon me back to the Market… possibly this weekend. For their size and price ($2.50 a pop) you can easily eat two or three Carmelos. I had one, but only because we had chips, black beans and rice on the table to share. If eggplant isn’t your thing, Carmelos also come with pork, chicken, tilapia and beef skirt steak for the same price. 
Bjorn ordered a Pork Guajillo Bocadillo ($8.50) which is described as a Spanish and South America-style guajillo-marinated pork sandwich with sautéed onion, Chihuahua cheese, tomato and arugula, served with fresh-cut french fries and cilantro aioli. My cousin Alice who dined with us had the most impressive looking meal: a Pork Pincho ($8.95), which is a skewer of guajillo-marinated pork shoulder served with guajillo beans and Peruvian rice. Let me emphasize the high quality that comes with the inviting low prices and casual atmosphere of Sonora Grill. The Head Chef Alejandro Castillon and his small band of hard-working sous-chefs show up early so they can do things like make the aioli from scratch beginning with eggs and marinate the meat. They buy their buns at the Salty Tart, a bakery in the market, and their tortillas from another local maker nearby. 
What to drink with your Carmelos, Brocaderos and Pinchos? A bottle of Jarritos soda ($1.25) of course!
After our meal we strolled around to see what interesting things we’d find in other shops and stands around the Market. We ran across Smoked Trout and quail eggs. I have never tasted a quail egg, and I am going to buy some the next time I make it to the market. I am not sure how I feel about eating duck and quail eggs; I am reserving judgment at least until I’ve tried them. We browsed through Fiesta in America, a shop full of bright colour, Mexican souvenirs, decor and an extensive selection of candy from Mexico. Then we headed over to Holy Land, a Minneapolis-based Middle Eastern Grocery and Deli with a large presence in the Global Market.
I have yet to eat at the extensive buffet at Holy Land, but I always find something interesting at the grocery store. Pictured just above is a selection of cheeses, including Bulgarian Feta and Egyptian Cream Cheese for sale from behind the deli counter. Holy Land Hummus and Pitas are available in grocery stores all over the Twin Cities, and I often try a new flavor of hummus, or pick up a bag of pitas. In my opinion, Holy Land sets the standard upon which to judge all pocket bread and hummus.
Holy Land also sells olive oil and Basmati rice in large-volume packaging, for those with a serious appetite for Basmati. Or, for restaurants, I’m guessing.
A La Salsa Restaurant Mexicano and Bar — 920 E. Lake Street, Minneapolis (612) 872-4140
We also have eaten at A La Salsa in the Midtown Global Market several times. When you are at the market, it is a great place to choose if you want to sit down and be served at your table, if you want a beer or a margarita with your meal, or if you are like us and you get to the Market late and other stands are closing. Most importantly, visit A La Salsa if you enjoy authentic Mexican food. A La Salsa has an extensive menu of traditional Mexican dishes that are delicious and well-priced. Pictured above is Bjorn’s plate – Flautas de Pollo – ($8.50) Three tortillas filled with spicy-seasoned chicken, rolled, fried and topped with refried beans, crumbly, moist queso fresco and crema. Flautas are served with lettuce, guacamole, pico de gallo and a dollop of sour cream. I ordered Chille Relleno ($5.50) and a vegetarian tamale ($2.50) a la carte, which were delicious, but did not photograph well.
Along with our main plate we were served a generous side plate of mildly spiced black beans. I love black beans and crave them at breakfast and supper alike. A plate of black beans with their comforting smooth and pleasant soupyness and a mild, cumin flavor makes certain that you won’t leave A La Salsa hungry. 
The Midtown Global Market is a fun place to visit to eat, shop and sight-see and grab a quick, casual meal with your family. This taste of Sonora Grill, Holy Land Middle Eastern deli and grocery and A La Salsa only scratches the surface of the vast shopping options and eating establishments available at the Market from around the world. As I said before, if you haven’t been to the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis for sight-seeing, shopping and a meal, what are you waiting for?!
If you happen to live in Minnesota, and pay attention at all to local food media, you’ve probably heard mention of Pizzeria Lola. Every food blogger worth their salt has already been there, snapped photos and gushed about the Sunnyside [here, here and here]. I know, I know–this place has been around for a couple of years. It’s been said! It’s been done! But I consider myself to be a passionate participant in the local food scene so I have to grab a few eager eaters from my circle and harness the energy to drive 20 minutes to check it out, snap a few pictures with my mobile phone, [no flash of course! I don’t want to ruin the night for others] so that I can add my two cents to the dialogue about this hip, wood fired neighborhood pizza joint. Without further adieu, our first trip to Pizzeria Lola.
As I alluded above, every blog entry that I have found dives right into gushing about that Sunnyside pizza. From me, this will come later. For me, the first trip to Lola started with swag. I love fun restaurant swag. I don’t expect it, but when a restaurant sets out a fridge magnet, an interesting business card, a poster or a book of matches for their patrons, I’ll take it and save it to make a collage. We walked in the door and I helped myself to a business card and a box of wooden matches, which have been useful for lighting candles and a fire in the fireplace, thank you very much. All of the tables were full, and we were told there would be a wait. My brother-in-law bought a round of beers and I purchased a couple of trips to the photo booth. I love photo booth snaps. I consider a photo booth to be a medium for producing spontaneous and lighthearted art. We were supposed to leave our contact info on the back to the photo booth passes, and a few pictures on the wall, but there were already an entire wall full of very nice photo booth pictures so we, as a group decided it would be better to keep all of the above photos for ourselves so we could all have some. Somehow I still have all of them. Oops.
As usual, the wait wasn’t bad. I am always optimistic about restaurant wait times, though I do appreciate when a host makes a worst-case-scenario prediction about the anticipated wait time. It never fails to give me a lift when I wait for 20 instead of 40 minutes. When we were seated, we started by sharing the Lola Antipasto Platter. It came on a large bamboo cutting board and contained house made bacon from Hidden Streams Farm, grainy Dijon mustard, a few slices of natural casing pepperoni, La Quercia Prosciutto twisted into rolls, a dish of mixed olives, some kind of olive-loaf-type bologna thing,* a dish of cashews, slices of toasted bread and a few wedges of a creamy cheese. ** This was an ample appetizer for four of us to share, and even though I didn’t eat the meat, I thought the antipasto platter was great. It was probably my favorite part of the meal, along with the Surly Furious.
I enjoyed the intersection of Korean and Scandinavian touches throughout the restaurant. I don’t know of any other restaurant that thoroughly references these two cultures in its decor. This is a plate that is perched in the ladies room. Girls iss funny tings vot? I agree. Girls are funny.
We ordered our pizzas, and then the server brought plates for us to eat from. Mine is pictured just above reads Var så god. When I was little, after my family finished eating a Sunday roast beef dinner, my Grammie, who moved to Norway to marry my Grandfather taught me to circle the table and curtsy, and clasp hands with the hosts [my parents] and say “Takk for Maten!” which translates to “Thank you for the food!” Each person would reply Var så god! which translates to “There you go!” but means “You’re Welcome.” Pizzeria Lola, you may not be my new favorite pizzeria of all time, but you had my heart at Var så god!
I see on the website that posters by Aesthetic Apparatus are for sale. I am not sure if Aesthetic Apparatus made these fun I Heart 피차 design that appears on the matchbooks and posters and throughout the restaurant. I have several band posters by Aesthetic Apparatus in my collection, and I Heart Pizza too.
I am going to be honest and say that I am not going to rave about the pizza I ate at Pizzeria Lola. That isn’t the pizza’s fault. I wanted a pizza with mushrooms on it, so that is what I had, a Pizza Margherita, which comes with Italian red sauce, fior di latte, olive oil and fresh basil with the addition of sautéed oyster and cremini mushrooms, which is available on all pizzas for $2. I get it, foodies. When I go to a place that uses good ingredients, and creates things artisanally, I should order dishes from the menu as they are envisioned by their creators. But a plain pizza with no veggies doesn’t do it for me and, tonight I just didn’t feel like a Forager, a mushroom pizza without sauce. I have a penchant for controlling the things I eat, and I’m pretty much obsessed with mushrooms. I won’t apologize for customizing my pie. I know that even though it was not my favorite pizza of all time, it was good.
My cousin and brother-in-law both tried out one of the night’s specials. Above is Alice’s pizza. It was described as Russian. It contained slices of sausage and red and green peppers. I think Alice liked it, but maybe liked my pizza a little bit more. She is also a fan of mushrooms.
Brett’s pizza was also a special that evening, and it contained some kind of meatballs that look a lot like crumbled fennel sausage to me. He has been to Lola before and sampled the Lady Za-Za, a pizza topped with House-made Korean sausage with kimchi, serrano peppers, soy chili glaze, scallions and sesame oil. This pizza was a little less adventurous than the Za Za, but he reported both to be good.
Pizzeria Lola is known for a great pizza crust. The creator is a certified pizzaiola, trained at the International School of Pizza in San Francisco. I liked the crust. The dough was a little bit sweet and had the charred crunch and slight chewiness I’ve come to know and love in a wood fired pizza. We have several strong options for pizza cooked over coal or wood fire in the Twin Cities. I’ve been to Pizza Nea, Blacksheep and Punch Neapolitan Pizza. Punch in Highland Park is in my neighborhood, I have been there the most. The meltingly thin Neapolitan wood fired crust, with San Marzano tomatoes and Mozzarella di Bufala with basil and added mushrooms is impossible to oust as my favorite wood fired pie. For me, Nea just didn’t have enough cheese, and the oddly topped, dry pizza I had at Black Sheep didn’t win my praise either. For me, Lola comes in second for pizza, but probably tops all 3 for beer selection and has a great atmosphere.
And the moment you’ve all been waiting for… The Sunnyside. I first experienced a soft egg on a pizza when I was 14, visiting my cousin in Leysin, Switzerland. There, the egg was fried, sunny side up and placed in the middle of the pizza, which was topped with otherwise typical western pizzas toppings. Bjorn ordered Lola’s Sunnyside. Of all of the pizzas at Lola, I think the Sunnyside has received the most media attention and praise. It is topped with La Quercia Guanciale, pecorino, cream, leeks and soft eggs. These days, it seems that soft eggs are everywhere served with vegetables, pastas and meat dishes. The one I think sounds the best is grilled bruschetta with soft eggs and lobster at Bar La Grassa. The warm, running egg yolk has achieved show stopper status in the food world. Let’s face it, there is something undeniably rich in the simplicity of a perfectly poached egg. I appreciate restaurants employing simple creativity, but I’m not dying to have more soft eggs in my life. What can I say? I like mozzarella, tomato and mushrooms on my pizza, and soft eggs with salt and pepper on toast. Even so, I applaud restaurants for challenging our palates and expectations by putting together unique flavors and artisanal ingredients, and so I’m glad we tried it.
We shared our pizzas around the table, and ended up with leftovers which were wrapped for us to carry away in puffed up paper bags.
The check arrived to our table in a vintage tobacco tin. Another unique and interesting touch! I give atmosphere and presentation at Pizzeria Lola A +. And for the pizza, I will go back and try another some day–probably when I am more in the mood for a mushroom pizza without sauce, and definitely to try the Calabrian Chili Roasted Cauliflower which sounds yummy. I bid Pizzeria Lola belated welcome to the Twin Cities. When you are feeling up for wood fired pizza with a great crust and toppings that are just a little bit off the beaten track, I encourage you to try it.
*I am sorry, I cannot identify that meat. The server described the antipasto platter rather quickly, and I missed that part of the description.
**I also cannot identify the cheese. It was mild in flavor, creamy and soft. I think it may have been a toscano fresco, a delicious sheep’s milk cheese from Tuscany.
If it hasn’t already become extremely obvious, pasta is one of my all-time favorite foods. There are so many variations, from basic buttered noodles to whatever-you-have-in-the-fridge, to traditional recipes: stroganoff, Bolognese, or pasta all’Amatriciana. I’m usually a “concept cook” who has something in mind [e.g. pasta with veggies] and the actual ingredients I use depend on what I’m in the mood for or what needs to be used up. I haven’t been one to follow many recipes. I enjoy the freedom of my slapdash approach to cookery, but I have tasted enough really good food in my years to know that recipes, carefully chosen ingredients, timeless techniques and even a little precision are equally as necessary in the kitchen as passion and creativity. It also pays to take a few tips from the experts. I have long loved food blogs, food magazines, food television, cookbooks and hanging out in other people’s kitchens. Reading about cooking, talking about it and observing other cooks in action are my source of inspiration. These are as much my hobbies as cooking and writing about food. I became aware of the noticeable difference that good technique and ingredients yield in restaurant meals, but the breakthrough did not occur at home until I learned about the perfect pesto.
It was just another Wednesday night. I found myself watching short programs on the Chow network on our Roku on cooking and food. There was an episode on soup dumplings,* and on the perfect beer,** and then a segment on the perfect pesto aired and changed my approach to pesto forever.
Previously, I have only had a modest appreciation of pesto. The first pesto pasta I ate was a lunch back in my teenage years at the now-shuttered Grandma’s Restaurant in Fargo, North Dakota. It was so heavily garlic-y that I was afraid of both pesto and garlic for almost a decade. I still shudder to think about how much raw garlic I consumed before realizing it would be with me for days. More recently, I have tasted a pretty good silk handkerchief in a mild, dark green pesto at Bar La Grassa. Having grown basil in our garden, I’ve also made basil and parsley pestos at home that have been fine on toasted sandwiches and roasted vegetables. None of these looked anything like the marvelous green pesto I saw that evening on the Chow network.
According to the food writer, Marcia Gagliardi who appeared in the segment, perfect pesto can be had in San Francisco at a restaurant called Farina, on a pasta dish called mandilli al pesto. I do believe Marcia is right. When you read about Farina, you get a sense that they are better at what they do than everyone else. The chefs of Farina make known their belief that only Italians can cook the true foods of their region. I am not going to dispute that or attempt to prove them wrong. But I am going to try to learn as much as I can from them about making pesto. In the segment I watched, Chef Paolo Laboa of Farina explains the process of making pesto while shifting naturally from English and Italian, translating himself, and pausing to emphasize the importance of each detail of his approach. What becomes immediately clear even through the television is the fact that his pesto is different. It is bright green and creamy and is almost a perfectly emulsified, glistening paste. When Chef Paolo adds the pesto to the pasta, it melts, enveloping the thin sheets in a perfect, translucent, green coating. I’m guessing it is a meal that dreams are made of. Just looking at it makes you want to be in the Mission District for supper tonight. Or at our house…
Back to a winter day in Minnesota… I may never duplicate Chef Laboa’s pesto, but in listening to him, I learned a few things about how to make a better pesto. First, for a pesto worthy of freshly rolled pasta, you have to ditch the food processor and use a mortar and pestle. Fortunately for me, I just received one for Christmas from Bjorn. The one he selected for me is a nice small size that I can comfortably manage to hold. It is made of non-porous porcelain and a smooth wooden handle and a red exterior that I am happy to store on the open shelves in our kitchen.
I learned from Chef Paolo that the origin of ingredients matters a lot. Basil pesto universally contains basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese and salt. Sure, you can make pesto out of these ingredients produced anywhere, but to begin to approximate Paolo Laboa’s pesto, you need basil that is similar to that grown in Genoa, Olive Oil from Liguria, Pine Nuts from Pisa, and carefully-selected Parmesan. And you need time. Lots of time. After watching the segment and trying to make it myself a few times I realized the making of Paolo’s pesto takes longer than it appears to take on TV.
I did the best I could gathering ingredients. It is winter, and the basil I found at the store wasn’t the best. I do believe that the Genovese basil from our garden will be an improvement on the basil available at the supermarket in a clamshell package in January. I didn’t spring for $18 Italian Pine Nuts but got some from Spain instead. I tried a few of Chef Laboa’s tips. Since Ligurian olive oil is not available to me I used light olive oil instead of extra virgin which is too strong and kills the taste of the basil. I soaked the basil leaves in water because, I learned if you don’t soak the basil there is too much chlorophyll in the leaves. I crushed the pine nuts with garlic and coarse salt and added 15 basil leaves. I put my heart into the process of grinding all of the ingredients together and then mixing in the oil. When the pesto was ready, I added a little pasta water to the pesto to melt the cheese before tossing hand-rolled handkerchiefs of pasta in the pesto. The end result of my effort did not yield the solid bright-green cream produced by Chef Laboa. Not even close. Even so, we thought the result was delicious and immeasurably better than the oily, basil-heavy, oxidized, chunky sludge that I’ve made in the food processor. If pesto is worth making, it is worth making well. Will I spend 45 minutes with the mortar and pestle to make pesto every week? Certainly not. It is a time-consuming process and a rich dish you can’t eat every week. Come summer though, when the basil is bursting forth I will make pesto again. I might not achieve “perfect” pesto, but delicious will be good enough.
*The segment about soup dumplings made me want soup dumplings which are little pouches made of dough that are stuffed with meat and fatty broth that liquefy upon cooking. Are there vegetarian soup dumplings out there? I want to try them!
**The writer of the beer segment claimed Supplication Ale by Russian River Brewing Company to be the best beer in the world. I’m sure I’d like it, but that I’d disagree about it being the best.
