Abby B's Profile
Cooking Club (Rochester MN)
Am a transplanted Texas myself. Take yourself to El Gallo, the taco place in the Barlow Hy Vee shopping center (between the wedding dress store and Weight Watchers, hee hee) for your Mexican fix. If you ask nicely, they'll put on this awesome video of bull riding disasters, I think it's called Golpes Peligrosos or something like that.
New in Rochester
I sampled a couple of the specialty rolls when friends ordered them. I'm with you, though, I don't care for mango, cream cheese, or chipotle in my sushi. Their straightforward traditional items were quite good though, and my friends who like the fusion stuff were as pleased with their orders as I was with my tuna roll, octopus sushi, etc.
Oh, and I didn't see the anesthesia roll, but the owner's wife is an anesthesia resident - perhaps the item was named for her and her hungry colleagues who have turned out in droves to support the restaurant.
New in Rochester
Oh - and there's a good sushi joint now in town.
Sushi Itto is new in Rochester (MN that is). I've been twice in the couple of weeks it's been open and have pretty much rave reviews. The sushi is very good - not as good as a really fabulous place in, say, San Francisco, but quite good by big-city-in-the-flyover-zone standards. That is, on par with Fugiya in Minneapolis. It's right downtown on Broadway, with cozy, comfortable atmosphere. They're still working out a few kinks in the service - the place is way too small to seat parties until all members have arrived, and the wait staff is still working out what is on the menu and how to deliver said items expediently to the same table that ordered them, but that will come. In addition to the sushi, the standard things you expect a decent sushi restaurant to have are done very, very well. The seaweed salad and miso soup are out of the park hits. The sushi is the proper temperature, and the fish sea-watery fresh. Prices are pretty reasonable for such good quality ingredients, and the atmosphere is perfect for a fun night out with friends. Two thumbs up.
New in Rochester
New in Rochester this spring:
Chester's
New in the Galleria Mall downtown. Trendy decor, pretty good food, and a fun atmosphere make it a good choice for a night out or a happy hour drink near work. I had a grouper fillet that was terriffic - very good quailty fish and cooked just right. Both friends I went with had pasta dishes, both quite good. Overall, I'd say the food was good for the price and the town, but not particularly inspired. I wouldn't go out of my way to dine there if it were located in a big city, but overall a good place for a decent meal in a setting worth putting on some lipstick for. Also, they have brunch. I haven't tried it yet, but this combined with the fact that Daube's now has brunch (see below) fills a hole in the weekends of we who love to brunch.
300 First
This is a re-do of Broadstreet. The decor is trendy and the use of space much more effecient than the staid old Broadstreeet. The food presentation is less pretentious, which is a nice improvement. The menu was sort if "TGI-Friday's pretends to be Sontes," but it works, at least, there are plenty of crowd pleasers and no one is going to be unhappy with their options. Their beef sounds seriously nasty so I steered clear. It's described on the menu as "naturally raised, corn fed for more than 300 days" which is an oxymoron. Why would I go out of my way to order beef that has been confined on a feed lot for almost an entire year? With most finer restaurants moving toward sourcing local, grass-finished beef (some of the best I've ever had comes from less than 20 miles from here) why advertize that their cows stood in their own diarrhea being pumped full of antibiotics for more than twice as long as the average big agribusiness steer? Yuck. So I had the grouper, which was a bit overdone and the fillet could be of better quality, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was served in a very nice buerre blanc with capers and not in one of the cloyingly sweet cornstrach thickened sauces favored by the old Broadstreet. They seemed to really shine with the salads - the Amish blue cheese side salad was terriffic, and the best dish ordered at my table was my friend's Asian chopped rare tuna salad - that's what I'm having next time. The chocolate bread pudding dessert was wonderful and fully worth going back for. Overall - a decent place to go for a pretty good meal. Not nearly as good as Sontes, which sources excellent quality products and has an inspired chef. You just can't make as good a meal with the poor quality building blocks 300 First starts with, but they do a pretty good job for the price in a fun setting. Just don't order the beef.
Daubes now has brunch!
Daube's, already a great place to enjoy coffee, pastry, and the New York Times on a weekend morning now has full plated brunch on weekends. The corned beef hash is seriously the best I've had. Hand pulled chunks of good quality corned beef fried with lyonnaise potatoes, perfectly flipped over easy eggs on top. A perfect brunch dish with Cynthia Daube's characteristic attention to detail. Even the humble granola with fruit and yogurt is terriffic. Mrs. Daube makes her own granola for the bakery, using only the best ingredients. Brunch at Daube's is like having a lazy morning at your own mother's house, if only your mother was an amazing Alsatian chef and you were left at liberty to puruse the paper while your tuck your way through an excellent breakfast and hot mugs of coffee.
under-used treasure or garbage? what ingredient do you think people are wasting?
Chicken skins. Whenever I cut up a whole chicken for pieces, I render fat from the skin and save it to make crust for savory pies and tarts. Especially good with whole wheat. (To render the fat, just put the skin in a pan and cook it at medium-ish heat until the fat all comes out as liquid. Give the cripsy skins to the dog as a treat and pour the fat into a jar.)
Best Dim Sum restaurant in Mpls/St. Paul, MN
I have to second Jun Bo. Easily the best.
What to do with too much buttermilk?
Make some good cornbread (preferably the skillet variety) and then break up the hot cornbread in a glass of buttermilk. Very Southern, very good snack.
New Recipe Ideas For Vegan(ish) Mother
A twist on the usual risotto would be to use farro instead with wild mushrooms (fresh or dried.) Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" has great vegan recipes, as well as excellent recipes for the non-vegetarian or flexitarian.
Recipe request for South African or Botswanan food
My experience in Botwswa was not a lot of high cuisine. Mostly stewed beef over some sort of dumpling or sqaush. That said, Botswanans know how to party and no party in Botswana is complete without a brai - that is grilling meat on an open fire. If you want to throw a party like a true Botswanan host you'll grill a bunch of meat and serve it mixed-grill style.
Anyone got a good de-fatting equipment/techinique?
I use the same technique of refrigerating and then peeling the fat off the top. But there's no need to waste that tasty solid fat! Use it instead of butter when you're making savory pies or tarts or use it as your fat instead of olive oil for sauteeing vegetables. I also render the fat from chicken skins when I cook chiken sans skin and save the fat from bacon for similar purposes. Adds a flavor boost to lots of recipes and helps you keep from wasting the animal.
Rochester, MN update
Not many Rochester posts lately, so I thought I'd post my current faves. Remember, Rochester is not a food town (previous posts, esp by Garris, describe this well and postulate possible reasons). But, should you find youself here, you'll need to eat:
Casual:
Mexican:
El Gallo Taqueria, hands down. No place in town comes close. Very good, very authentic Mexican food. The mole enchiladas, menudo, posole, and tamales are especially good. Absolutely no atmosphere, located in a strip mall near the big Hy Vee, but you can eat awesome tacos, watch telenovelas on TV, and drink beer. It reminds me of neighborhood joints back home in San Antonio. Dos Amigos is popular, but mostly the only reason to go there is to have a drink on the very pleasant outside patio when the weather is fine. Do yourself a favor and don't eat there though.
Asian:
Not much for good Chinese down here, so don't bother.
There's a vietnamese cafe on Broadway just north of downtown called, I think, Vietnamese Cafe. It's quite good for pho and such, but the owner/chef/waiter/host really excells at seafood. Get whatever is fresh in his ginger sauce.
Indian:
There is a new Indan place on Broadway just south of highway 14 (south of downtown) on your right where Phnom Phen used to be. Standard not too exciting indian cuisine, but reasonably good and not afraid to make it spicy. (Minnesotans are well known for considering garlic and ketchup to be spicy, so the waitress will let you know you still have to pay even if you don't like your dinner should you order it spicy.)
Burgers:
Newt's has great burgers and a wide selection of beer. Crowded at peak hours (6 to 7pm here) you'll have no trouble getting a table at 8:30.
The Break Room is a wonderfully dive-y bar that happens to have great burgers. My husband swears by the peanut butter bacon burger, which sounds gross to me, but their cheeseburgers really can't be beat. The burgers fall into the category of flat-well-done and are the best in town for that category. Newt's has the rounded patty-cooked-to-order variety.
Sandwiches - Nelson Cheese is on broadway just north of downtown. Great sandwiches and ice cream too.
Pizza - there really isn't a very good place in town. The best pizzas are at Sontes, a tapas restaurant described below. The pizza at Redwood room is okay, if too salty. Don't let anyone send you to Billotti's. It's close to downtown but not for eating. Pizza Man, Paradise Petes, and O'Neil's pizza pub are reaonable places to get a pie, but by no means good.
Nice places for a cozy glass of wine and a good/decent meal:
Jasper's is my favorite in this category. Very good Alsatian cuisine, OK if somewhat uninspired wine list, awesome desserts and an attractive atmosphere. On 3rd St SW between broadway and 1st Ave. (The cobblestone block downtown).
Sontes is a tie with Jasper's for my favorite place in town for dinner. On the corner of 3rd St SW and Broadway. Excellent tapas, a fun, varied wine list, and a stylish but cozy atmosphere. Some locals complain a bit about small portions and high prices, but the theory is small shared plates and the food quality is high with lots of meat sourced from local farms, excellent cheeses, and good produce. The people who with that complaint seem to overlap heavily with the people who love the Macaroni Grill and pine for a local Chilis franchise. Me, I prefer reasonable amounts of very good food to mountainous portions of cheap, bland filler.
Prescott's is at Broadway and 14 in the Crossroads strip mall. Really quite good food, sort of neuveau italian-y but not in a bad way. Excellent, well edited wine list and a sommalier who can always suggest something that I haven't tried before and love. Highly recommended.
Redwood room has a lovely atmosphere and live music most nights. A great place to hang out and have a drink, but the menu suffers from a heavy hand with the over-salting and the chef has a tendency to combine random ingredients that should never have met (just because you can doesn't mean you should) and loves to put sweet sauces on everything. Not really bad food, but I can't say it's good either.
Broadstreet is upstairs from Redwood room. The chef has a much higher opinion of his/her talents than is reasonable. Just about everything comes with a cloyingly sweet sauce, even things that you'd think really shouldn't. Good desserts, not a bad place to go if someone else is paying, but given that you're in for a good $50 per person, eat some tacos at El Gallo and save your money to head up to Minneapolis and eat somewhere actually good.
City Cafe has reasonable seafood much of the time. Owned by the same folks as Redwood Room and Broadstreet, technique in the kitchen can be VERY spotty and there is a heavy leaning toward the sticky sweet sauces. That said, not a bad place especially if you want something healthy. Also about the only place to eat after 9pm.
Chardonnay has great desserts and a wide selection of good wines, but their food has been abysmal each time I've tried to go and spotty by what I've heard from friends. Greasy, poor quality meats, cheap cheeses, etc. And yet very expensive. I've heard that there's a new chef, so maybe it would be worth trying again sometime (when someone else is paying.)
Avoid:
Victoria's is a popular italian place right downtown. Really terrible food, cheap ingredients, sauces thickened by something that is not cream and may be corn starch. One of the only places for a quick sit down hot lunch in between work obligations, but there really isn't ever a reason to go there for dinner.
Michael's is fun if you want to go a bit retro, but isn't all that good really. Old fashioned items like surf and turf. Not bad, but not good either.
A bit further afield but worth the drive:
Harbor View is awesome. About 45 min from Rochester in Pepin, WI. Closed in the wintertime, they have wonderful food, a varied, seasonal menu, and use mostly local products. No reservations and they take only cash, but you won't mind waiting for a table on the front patio sipping a Spotted Cow on tap and watching the boats on lake Pepin.
Nosh in Lake City is an inspired restaurant that uses amazing local ingredients and classic technique. Great service, great wine list, I can't say enough good things. About 20 minutes from Rochester.
Provisions - If Rochester suffers from a paucity of good restaurants, it makes up for that deficiency with a wealth of amazing local provisions for the home cook. The farmer's market is one of the best I've ever been to, the locally grown vegetables are comprable to what you'd find in Northern California markets, and there are really wonderful farms nearby who produce humanely raised meats.
My provision picks:
The farmer's market is Saturdays in spring, summer, and fall at 4th St SW and Mayo Park. Amazing selection of fresh, local produce and meats. In winter it's every other weekend indoors at the fairgrounds. Some storage crops, still lots of good meats and some cheese, butter, etc.
My picks: Rock Spring farm for veggies (they also do a killer CSA) and also a church co-op of Hmong farmers for beautiful vegetables. Misty Meadows farm for grass-finished beef and lamb and Hidden Stream Farm for pork. Both also have excellent chicken and eggs.
Bread/desserts/cakes/pastries - Daube's bakery on Civic Center Drive. Mrs Daube does great work. Beautiful cakes, excellent breads. Also a nice place to relax on Sunday morning with a kolache, coffee, and the New York Times.
Produce, cheese - Rochester produce on 2nd St SW, west of Hwy 53. Excellent produce with lots of local options. Best selection of quality cheeses in town, as well as other hard to find items (hard to find in Rochester that is) such as Israeli couscous and Italian farro. Also lots of local meats.
Organic meats, produce, bulk items, spices - The Good Food Store on 6th St NW just north of Civic Center Dr is a great organic co-op.
Indian provisions - Rice and Spice
Fish, seafood - the Asian Food Market on Broadway, on your left as you go north from downtown with a red awning. Hy Vee has some good fish sometimes, but doesn't do as much turnover and things are not reliably fresh. I've had much better luck at the asian market.
Butcher - Ye Olde Butcher shop. Not local or organic, but a real butcher with very good quality meats and they'll cut it any which way you ask.
Supermarket - Barlow Hy Vee at Civic Center Dr and 11th Ave. Good for staples, pretty good produce section, but cheap factory-farmed meats and iffy fish counter.
a "NICE" dinner mpls/wi
In that general neighborhood, Nosh in Lake City is very good. Also Harborview in Pepin WI, but that's closed for the winter and will re-open in spring. Good places in Rochester for a nice dinner would be Prescott's or Jasper's, but nothing else in Rochester would be worth eating if it's just as easy to drive to the twin cities.
Rochester, MN - Where to EAT
A bit further afield from Rochester:
Nosh has re-opened overlooking the Marina in Lake City. I've not been since it's been in the new location, but I hear from friends who have that the food is every bit as good as it was in the Wabasha location, and that the chef continues to use top notch local ingredients in thoughtful, beautifully excecuted dishes.
Harborview is my new favorite place. It's been around a long time, but I've only just discovered it this summer. It's in Pepin, Wisconsin about a 1 hour drive from Rochester. It's open only in the summer, doesn't take reservations, and takes only cash. Local ingredients, skillful preparation, and food that's always excellent but never pretentious. Because the menu space is limited to what fits on a chalkboard, you get the rare pleasure of being pleasantly surprised by what's on your plate. Last time we were there, my husband ordered a beef tenderloin dish that turned out to have chunks of perfectly seared foie gras in the sauce - I thought he was going to explode with happiness. There's usually a wait, but sitting on the front sidewalk looking out over Lake Pepin drinking Spotted Cow on tap isn't a half bad way to work up an appetite.
Best Seafood in Rochester MN
Rochester is a long, long way from any ocean. I've not found much seafood worth eating in restaurants. City Cafe is hit-or-miss. Depending on the day, they have some decent seafood dishes, but the quality of the ingredients and of the preparation vary. Sometimes their fish is awesome, but other times you can taste that it's not so fresh. Sometimes they take a perfectly good piece of fish and smother it in a greasy heavy-hand overly-sweetened sauce.
For buying fresh seafood to cook at home, the best fish counter in town by far is at the back of the Asian market with the red awning on Broadway. It's on your left if you're driving north from downtown. The Hy-Vee fish counter sometimes has good stuff, but best to take a sniff as they don't do enough volume to have consistently fresh product.
If you're up in the cities, it's worth taking a cooler and bringing back some excellent fresh fish from Coastal Seafood at Snelling and Grand in St Paul.
Looking for Rabbit in Minneapolis
Please post where you end up finding it and how it was! I've been looking for rabbit to cook in a French stew-type dish and haven't run across it at the farmer's market or any of the meat counters I frequent.
Fun times in San Antonio?
There are so many wonderful restaurants and bars in San Antonio!
When it comes to hotel bars, V Bar at the Valencia Hotel is the best see-and-be-seen bar of them all. Club Cohiba at the Havana Riverwalk hotel is also an awesome place for a drink. To round out your hot 20-something downtown bars, hit Zinc Bar and the Davenport.
If you wanted amzing cuisine at break-the-bank prices, Le Reve, Silo, or Biga. The truth is, though, truly outstanding restaurants are sort of the same all over. San Antonio is such a fun, quirky place you'll want to take your friend to restaurants that you just wouldn't find anywhere else. And none of the places below will put you into debt.
My favorite restaurant for dinner and drinks to start kick off a night out with the girls is Liberty Bar. It's funky, unique, and the food is quite good.
At some point during her visit, you'll need to take your friend for serious, authentic San Antonio tex-mex food, and you won't find it at the tourist spots on the riverwalk. Go to Los Barrios. Everything on the menu is good, especially the enchiladas. However, the mole and the cabrito are truly outstanding. La Fogata is also very good (but not as excellent as Los Barrios) for Mexican Food. The draw is the beautiful outdoor setting. Margaritias are pretty good (am prepared for flames, many San Antonians swear by them) and very potent. The queso flameado appetizer is incredibly tasty and makes a dramatic presentation.
If you're set on haging out at the riverwalk, the two best margaritas (my favorites anyway - San Antonians are highly devoted to their favorite margaritas) are at the Naked Iguana bar and the cactus-ritas at Zuni Grill. The best Mexican food on the riverwalk is at Rio Rio, not to be confused with Casa Rio.
For a leisurely brunch, go to Mad Hatter's tea house in the King William district. They have a serve yourself mimosa bar on weekend mornings. That and the eggs benedict with chilpolte hollandaise should begin to cure what ails you from the previous evening.
Lunch in downtown St Paul
I need ideas from fellow chowhounds for lunch within walking distance of Rice Park on a Friday.
Rochester, MN - Where to EAT
Also, a couple of other categories:
Overall best dinner date spot:
Jasper's is easily the best overall restaurant in town. The atmosphere is very pleasant - cozy and intimate, and not in a strip mall. The Alsatian food is excellent, and the soups are often fantastic. The service is pretty good for Rochester, and while it may take a little while to get noticed and seated, the service is usually competent and your waiter won't "explain" the bread basket, a significant risk at other restaurants in town. Save room for dessert - there are cakes from Daube's bakery. Call me retro, but I like a nice slice of cake and cup of coffee to end a meal. Try the chocolate carrot cake. It know, it sounds strange, but it's amazing.
Outside on a warm evening:
Dos Amigos and City Cafe have pleasant spaces for outdoor dining. I don't particularly like the food at either one, but they do have good outdoor tables for summertime. I especially like that I can walk my dogs to city cafe, tie them up, and have a bite to eat. Feels like being in a city again.
Coffee and newspaper on Sunday morning:
Daube's on Civic Center drive. Good coffee, excellent baked goods with a German bent, and they sell the New York Times. It's a great place to walk to on a weekend moring for a cup of joe, a kolache, and a pleasant hour reading the newspaper.
Rochester, MN - Where to EAT
I thought I'd add to the discussion comments on the smaller places in town that my husband and I frequent and solicit any other comments.
Mexican:
Hands down the place by Barlow Hy-Vee. We're from San Antonio Texas, so have pretty high standards for Mexican food, and many of the dishes at this little place (sort of between Mestad's and the military recruiting place) are good enough to compete with some of my favorite little joints in San Antonio. The tamales particularly are excellent, and on weekends they serve posole and menudo that remind me of home. (The posole can be quite salty, but that's part of its appeal.) No liquor license, but they serve horchata and jamaica, as well as Mexican sodas. I have to disagree with the posts praising Dos Amigos. The food is servicable mall-style americanized Tex-Mex, but I wouldn't go so far as to say good. That being said, the 4th St SE location is a wonderful place to sit outside for a margarita on warm evenings in the summertime.
Chinese:
There's nowhere in town for Chinese that's particuarly authentic or good, but for americanized Chinese food, the least bad place in town is Hunan Garden, located in the shopping center at 7th St and 11th Ave NW. That holds us in between trips to Minneapolis for Mandarin Kitchen or dim sum at Jun Bo.
Thai:
Phnom Phen can be quite good for Thai food. I haven't had as much luck with their Chinese or Vietnamese dishes, and they can have off nights, but most of the time the Thai dishes are very good.
Vietnamese:
Pho Hoa, on 37th St NW serves very good Pho. Their range isn't great, and the hot pots are hit-or-miss, but for a big steaming plate of pho and some spring rolls, it's quite good.
Indian:
Natraj is at Broadway and Hwy 14 (Crossroads area) and is okay. There's another Indian restaurant in town, Indian Garden, on Broadway north of downtown, but I haven't been there recently enough to comment.
NEED SWANKY CHRISTMAS EVE MENU SUGGESTIONS
For holiday dinner a stuffed, roasted pork loin is pretty, swank enough for the occasion, and a crowd-pleaser. Ask the butcher to butterfly a boneless pork loin with two cuts so that it opens up in three attached, relatively flat pieces. Make a stuffing that matches the rest of the meal. For Thanksgiving this year, we used dried apricots, figs, and dates macerated in port. You could also use any pesto variation if you're looking for color, or any chutney variation. Spread the filling on the pork loin and roll it up jelly-roll style. Tie with bakers twine and roast. You can deglaze the pan drippings with about any combination of fruit and liquor (such as dried cherries and port) for a sauce.
Potato Soup, need recipe
I make this quick easy soup often for a weeknight dinner. It's a rustic, chunky soup, but you could puree it at the end if you wanted something a little fancier. It's adapted from a Deborah Madison cookbook devoted to farmer's markets. It takes about 30 minutes.
Ingredients:
A couple leeks, an onion, or some shallots
Some smallish potatoes such as Yukon Gold
Consider using some turnips, about 1/2 and 1/2 with potatoes
Stock or broth or some sort - chicken or vegetable
Thyme, savory, or rosemary, fresh if you've got it
A little cream, yogurt, or buttermilk
Butter or olive oil
Technique:
1. Sautee some leeks (or onion or shallot) in butter in a heavy stovetop pot over medium-ish heat (or use olive oil if you prefer.)
2. While this is cooking, dice potatoes and turnips. The smaller the pieces, the quicker it cooks. Make the turnip pieces just a bit smaller than the potato pieces. Just scrub and chop, no need to peel the potatoes, and no need to peel the turnips if they're relatively petite.
3. Add the potatoes/turnips and stir to coat with butter/oil.
4. Add stock or 1/2 broth and 1/2 water, or even just water, to cover the veggies.
5. Bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer. Simmer until fork-tender, about 30 minutes or less if the pieces are pretty small.
6. Toward the end of cooking, add the fresh herb (add earlier if using dried herb).
7. At the very end of cooking, add a couple tablespoons of cream (or you can use buttermilk or yogurt) for a creamy mouthfeel.
Makes a nice weeknight dinner served with some crusty bread.
Rochester, MN - Where to EAT
I'm sorry to hear they'll be closing. But, I'll keep my eye out for the new place.
Rochester, MN - Where to EAT
Rochester is NOT a great food town, but there are some things to eat for the intrepid chowhound.
Fancy:
Prescott's is the best fancy place in town. The food is good, the wine list is intelligent and well edited. For Rochester, the service is actually pretty good, once you realize that this is the rural midwest and your waitress will feel the need to 'explain' their bread basket to you. Avoid Broadstreet. It's okay if someone else is paying, but every sauce is cloyingly sweet. The presentation is pretentious and the food quality inferior for what it costs. Chardonnay is best for dessert. The desserts are excellent and the wine list long. For dinner, it's a bit overpriced and I've found it to be hit-or-miss with even basic dishes like a veal chop. However, I've had a couple good meals too, the atmosphere is lovely, and did I mention the desserts? Jasper's is very good. They serve Alsatian food, the restaurant has atmosphere, and the desserts are from Daube's bakery. This is probably my favorite restaurant in town.
Night out, but not really fancy:
Redwood Room has great atmosphere and okay food. A bit oversalted and heavy on the sweet sauces - the kitchen is shared with Broadstreet - but overall not a bad place for a bite. City Cafe is also pleasant, especially the outdoor patio in the summertime. The food is okay, though not imaginative, and the service is overly familiar. That being said, the seafood is not bad and while it's not worth going out of your way to eat there, it's someplace I go reasonably often.
New and exciting, we'll see how it goes:
Sontes is a new Spanish tapas place right downtown. The lighting is good, the decor trendy, and the bar-lounge pleasant. The food was imaginative and very good. There were several standard Spanish tapas, such as chorizo stuffed dates, as well as worldwide snacky. The wine and beer list was pretty broad but still well edited, as was the cheese menu. Service was a real problem, but I went on the very second night the place was open so I'll give them some time to get their act together.
Mexican:
There is a place in the Barlow Hy Vee shopping center that is brand new. No atmosphere, but all the right stuff - good tamales, menudo and posole on weekends. There's also a place off of Hwy 14 west of Broadway in the Cub foods shopping center that's good.
Hamburgers:
My favorite place is the Breakroom, on Hwy 52 headed south from 19th St. Awesome flat-grilled style burgers in a smoky bar with cheap beer specials. Newts is also very good. Burgers you can order medium rare, a large beer selection, and smoke free.
Surrounding area:
Nosh in Wabasha, Minnesota. Locally grown ingrediants, South American flavors, and French technique. Excellent food worth going out of your way for.
Cooking Club (Rochester MN)
A group of Mayo folks has a 'foodies' club - we pick a theme each month and do sort of a pot luck based on that theme. Past themes have included Spanish, Alsatian, Southern, etc. If you send me your email address, I'll put you on the distribution list.
