Minneapolis Restaurant Review

My trip to Minneapolis was relaxing and I think the highlight was the food!...oh and of course, the time spent with my family! My brother is a kindered spirit and shares my foodie soul. And yes, we have a tendency to over-order. Our eyes are much bigger than our stomachs and when we are together, we pretty much order the whole menu and there’s nothing that anyone else can do to stop us. So we chartered out a plan to try out a lot of new restaurants and squeeze in some old favourites as well.

Bar La Grassa

An Italian restaurant with amazing food and lovely service. My mother is extremely allergic to eggs and they went out of their way to make sure she had a good experience. We started with 2 orders of the bruschetta. I’m not sure if I would order those again – they were nice but quite filling and you definitely need space for your main course. We then ordered 2 small portions of pasta for each person – which looking back now, I realize was way too much. I think 3 half portion for 2 people would be a better bet. We were intrigued by the silk hankerchief pasta – which was silky smooth ribbons of pasta in a pesto sauce. All the pasta we had was lovely.The only dish I was not happy about was the raw tuna – that was just plain weird.

*Update* - My brother informs me that the head chef for the Bar La Grassa was named one of the best chefs in the country. Well-deserved :)

Isaac Becker, chef/co-owner of 112 Eatery and Bar La Grassa, named Best Chef: Midwest by the James Beard Foundation.

Brasa 

Go there for lunch. They have amazing lunch deal where you can get a half sandwich (which is pretty big) and a side order. My favourites are the chicken sandwich, the pulled pork sandwich and the creamed spinach. DELISH!

Oh try the pickles with the sandwich and the guac with chips. This is what I love about America – you’ll find this gem of a place that serves amazing food at really cheap prices.

Travail

I felt like I had a very strange meal and I did not appreciate the wait. We waited 2 HOURS! I expected the meal to be like manna from heaven but it was ok. I got the whole ‘we-are-just-a-group-of-guys-who-started-their-own-restaurant-with-our-own-cool-rules-and-are-having-fun’ vibe and I appreciate what they are doing - they seem a talent bunch of chefs but I did not like the way they dealt with my mum’s egg allergy.

We specifically called them before and asked them if my mum would be able to eat anything at the restaurant given that she has a severe egg allergy. The guy on the phone said ‘sure, don’t worry we will take care of you’. We go there and they acted like they did even know what an egg allergy was. Sure they were nice but to be honest, they seemed like they had just smoked up and I didn’t appreciate how casual they were about the allergy. They could have just been honest and said we’re not sure but they just gave out conflicting information about which dishes she could have. Very unprofessional.

That aside, the food was good and quite interesting.  The menu is up on a board and we were initially excited to try out practically everything. There are no descriptions so it does feel kind of exciting to see what you're going to end up getting on your plate. The sweetbreads and tater tots were my favourite but that’s probably because they were fried and had to taste good. The deserts were strange – someone in the kitchen was obviously trigger happy with the liquid nitrogen – everything was just frozen this or frozen that. The novelty soon wore off.

However, the restaurant does have good reviews and the diners did seem to be enjoying themselves and they are very popular judging by the queue and waittime. There are no reservations so I would recommend going on a weekday to beat the queue or trying for either 6pm or after 9:30pm.

For me, it just wasn’t worth it and I don’t feel like returning after this experience.




Sea Salt 


We spent the most lovely day at Minnehaha Falls and then went over to Sea Salt Eatery which serves a whole bunch of seafood. We tried the fried fish, the fried catfish, the fried calamari and surprise, surprise, the fried prawns. Everything tasted really good and the servings were huge! But my favourite was the fried fish tacos. Light and lemony, the fish was perfectly balanced with the salsa. I dream of fish tacos now.


If you visit the falls, you must eat at Sea Salt.