kitkat's Profile
No Mas - Jfood gives up on Chinese in MSP
I, too, have trouble finding americanized Chinese food I like in this area. Home was the affluent suburbs of a different city (not a coastal one, though!) I found this thread because I got a craving for dumplings, but am too short on restaurant budget to play around. Now I've been on the internet for a while, feel like I still haven't found a sure bet, and the small restaurants are closing and I'm getting tired and less hungry anyway! :-) I miss having dumplings and moo shu pancakes taste like they did when I was a kid. And I did like crab rangoon better than cream cheese wontons (though now that I'm all grown up I can't eat so much of that.) Maybe I'll have to ask to eat americanized Chinese food next time I go home!
Somalian Restaurants in Minneapolis?
Hee--I always thought "Safari" was a little funny of a name for a Somali place, too! But then I found out the proprietors had spent a good part of their lives in Tanzania, where one would expect a lot more safariing. Thanks for the sambusa tip! (I had tuna at the...I can't remember the name...the cafe/internet shop/recreation area on the corner of 15th & Nicollet. They're only available when the person cooking them has been available to bring them by. But I do remember tuna.
Somalian Restaurants in Minneapolis?
If you're interested in Somali snack food, try just about any Somali-owned coffee shop on Cedar, Nicollet, etc. Last time I was at one, you could get a tuna-filled or beef-filled triangle-shaped pastry for $1, and 2 of them made me happily content like I'd had my lunch.
In Search of a better Pho. [MSP]
I also don't think that a $2 surcharge is an unreasonable surcharge for ingredients with a particular (and expensive) set of constraints and for ambiance!
Thanks for pointing out the expensive ingredients, though--I guess you might be right about the % markup being the exact same.
Anyway, I posted as I did because I didn't get the impression that the poster was necessarily looking for ingredient constraints or ambiance.
It sounded to me like the poster was looking for pho he/she liked the taste of better. I thought mentioning price might encourage him/her to give the restaurant-hopping advice a try.
In Search of a better Pho. [MSP]
That could very well be! But, y'know, if Thousand Hills grass-fed beef isn't important to you, it isn't important to you. If a simple, "I like this pho!" is important, which it seemed to be to this poster, I thought price might be a good thing to mention to encourage him/her to adventure.
(Also, I stand corrected about % markup over cost.)
[MSP] Bangkok Thai Deli, University Ave St. Paul?
I didn't know it was moving! Guess we didn't cover everything as we talked last night. No idea if the air conditioning was running. I was 100% perfectly comfortable, temperature-wise (if not just cool enough to tie my sweater around my waist to close the midriff gap, I think?), so maybe...but it's been so cool this summer, I wouldn't be able to tell if the place was AC-cooled or fan-cooled. Sorry!
Somalian Restaurants in Minneapolis?
I'm pretty sure Safari still has a home base on Nicollet Avenue around 14th St. or so. (Not just in the Midtown Market.)
Good to hear about Hamdi--and good to hear what I should try. I keep meaning to try it. (It's just that I only end up near it when I've already got my heart set on something else in the neighborhood and have already come into the neighborhood for THAT restaurant as a desination.)
FASIKA-NOT IMPRESSED [MSP]
I think of Blue Nile & Fasika as very different. I like both, for sure, and 6 years ago, I know there was a significant price difference (Fasika being cheaper). But I've been to both, I like both, but know that they're definitely very different in flavor. I can see someone liking one but not the other.
MSP: Fasika chowdown report
Fasika is home to one of the 2 teas tied for my favorite in the Twin Cities. I love the "Ethiopian tea." They told me what was in it, and it was just a seasoned bag of Lipton, yet I never have been able to get it right at home. So I'll always order it when I go there, despite their generosity with the ingredients.
Minneapolis - T's Place
I found out about T's Place when Tee asked me for advice about which pot to choose for plants for his new restaurant as we browsed the same store. :-)
I finally got around to actually trying it over a year later when I was moving and had already packed up too much kitchen equipment to cook well.
It was good. I said I was in the mood for greens, and the person serving me (can't remember if it was Tee) recommended not only the collards, but another dish he'd bring out. (One dish; half-portions.) I think that "other dish" must've been the "Tikel Gommen," because it was full of cabbage. I don't remember there being any meat in my collard greens (as listed under "Zilbo Gommen" on the web site)...maybe mine was made to order.
Anyway, both were delicious.
I can't remember if it was the same trip (a three-way split) or another trip where I went back and the person who knew how to make the collards was out of the restaurant or something... :-) ...but I had a red-lentil dish (probably the "Yemisir Wot"), and I liked that, too.
I thought everything I ate was flavorful, even though I ordered mild food.
I would take my family or friends there to eat. I enjoyed it.
MSP - Culinary Butane Torches?
IF it's not too late, try returning it. I know that's not what you wanted to hear...but my friend who went to cooking school specifically to work in restaurants said no one in the industry uses culinary torches. They all buy hardware-store ones because the canisters are easier to find, they're more durable and reliable, and, well, they cost less for the exact same function. I hope this helps you find canisters!
(P.S. I got a kitchen tour of a bakery in Seattle from a different friend who'd gone to cooking school to learn to be a chef, and I noticed an ordinary hardware-store torch on the shelf there. He confirmed my other friend's assertion.)
Minneapolis ETHNIC Food Snobs, Your Help Is Needed!
Bilal's Restaurant in NE Minneapolis.
In Search of a better Pho. [MSP]
Try every single shop that's still open on University (while they are...the future LRT's lack of stops at smaller blocks, and lack of frequently-running #16 buses, might kill many of them) that is 100% run by people from Southeast Asia. You'll win some, you'll lose some, but you'll win a lot. I know that's not really specific, but names and restaurants change a lot in Frogtown. Give 'em all a try and write down the names & locations of your favorites. Seriously.
(This is reasonable because you'll spend less at many of them than you will at Ngon. Lower markup above cost.)
Hyderabad house minneapolis - Closed? Changing?
I am addicted to the "mansori dal" there. (I don't think it's a very common Afghani dish? No matter how I spell it, I can't find it in association w/ anything but Indian & Pakistani food on the internet. But DANG, do they make it well. Wowie.) $6 and it comes w/ a small salad + rice or bread + cilantro-hot-pepper chutney, which I think is tasty despite its heat.
Other good food--oh, crud; I lost my takeout menu. Well, anyway, the cauliflower was very good, and a beef & veggies dish we had was pretty good, too.
If you want a snack, pop in and ask for a piece of bread or two. They're $1 apiece, about the size of a large pita, and will come to you WARM. (It does take 5-10 minutes, so I like to order it before I go shopping at Patel Grocery and then come back.) I meant to order 2 to take home for sandwiches, but then I had to go back and get two more because I ate them before I even got past Patel. *blush*
I've been trying to learn some names, now that I know I'll be going back; I think Mr. Noor Jalali is an owner, whereas Bilal Jalali is a son who runs the kitchen.
[MSP] Bangkok Thai Deli, University Ave St. Paul?
I just went to Bangkok Thai Deli for my 2nd meal there last night (by the way, do visit it before the lack of stops and the lack of frequent buses post-LRT drives it out of business).
My friend got to talking to a woman--sounds like one of the owners--who encouraged him to spread the word & tell everyone.
(I'm not surprised one person got a "he" for an owner and my friend got a "she"--sounds like a family restaurant)
Then again, it was Wednesday last night.
Still--Ms. Yamthongkam likes to chat, and she had some interesting comments about her restaurant! She's from Bangkok and considers herself someone who lives both places, not a full immigrant--but her kids, at the age they're at, preferred America and wanted to go to school here. Not wanting to twiddle her thumbs all day while they're at school, she opened this restaurant. Or that's how I understood it, anyway.
I didn't get the last detail of her training, but the phrase she described herself with is "master chef" and explained it by saying that she trains other cooks. She definitely connects this to her beliefs about the importance of using high-quality ingredients and making things taste just like they do back in Thailand.
About the experience of eating at the restaurant: as a white non-vegetarian American, I enjoy the menu. Everything has descriptions by primary ingredients (as mentioned above), but almost everything also has a corresponding photo (so I can tell if something's more meat than veggies, vice-versa, how much variety of veggies is in a dish, etc.) Because of this easy-to-understand-without-asking-details menu, I actually grabbed a takeout menu and will be leaving it at the office!
Prices are, as stated, good. Not a high margin of markup over the cost right now, Ms. Yamthongkam mentioned. (Though wow, does that show how ingredients have inflated. Because it's still well above the prices I remember 7 years ago at similar restaurants.)
A different man (not Ms. Yamthongkam or her husband, but a similar age) checked in on us at the end of our meal and offered to remember my friend (who, against the advice of the waitress, ordered pho even though he loves spicy food) and said he'd really make him something spicy. (Sounds like he both cooks and waits tables.) As for me, who ordered something spicy despite not liking spice at all--he told me to be more confident about ordering without spice, because they could definitely feed me good food even if I did.
I'm not sure if the "but I'd have to hire more cooks" advice still applies or if the "Wednesday"/"Thursday" advice still applies, but at least ON a Wednesday night, we got a request to spread the word.
So there I go!
Can't post my first reply
I can reply here, but I can't reply to an actual food thread, too. (Let's see if posting here fixes that...)
P.S. Nope--it didn't. I still get taken to my profile page when I try to start a new real food topic or reply to a real food topic.
P.P.S. Looks like maybe I needed to reload the paeg I'd been reading, post-signup, first.
