A fairly amazing-sounding Better Beer Society brown bag series event at Butcher & the Boar, some revised menus at local restaurants, a local foodie’s epic Mother’s Day feast, tasting notes for Summit Pilsner and Steel Toe’s Provider, the Star Tribune’s Taste 50, and a new urban farm in Minneapolis.
Jill Lewis / Heavy Table
Forget the corn dogs, Sweet Martha’s cookies, and various items on a stick — fried pickles from the Preferred Pickle always have been my favorite Minnesota State Fair indulgence. The crispy, salty coating combined with the briny pickle and a dunk in ranch dressing is nirvana. And until recently, I only reached this level of pickle enlightenment once a year because I hadn’t been able to find a true contender outside the fairgrounds. The now-departed Town Talk Diner featured “frickles” on its appetizer menu, but the skimpy layer of batter draped over the too-sweet pickles failed to excite me. But recently I’ve discovered some local versions that, while not quite achieving Fair fried-pickle perfection, come awfully close. At least they keep my craving in check until the next Great Minnesota Get-Together rolls around.
Blue Door Pub — The Adequate Substitute
Jill Lewis / Heavy Table
Though you’re probably thinking about a Jucy Lucy when you head to the Blue Door, the St. Paul pub offers deep-fried pickles ($6.50, right) as an app, too. Because, you know, you need more grease before scarfing down a cheese-stuffed burger and a pile of fries. While it’s hard to resist the hot, thinly battered chips when they arrive straight from the fryer, their appeal fades away along with the heat. The coating turns soggy as the chips cool, and even the garlic aioli can’t pep up limp pickles. We didn’t even finish the basket, which says a lot. (I don’t like wasting food, especially pickles.) Adequate if you’re desperate, but there are better choices in town.
Town Hall Tap — The Crunch Maker
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
My friend Deanna, who shares my fried-pickle fanaticism, introduced me to Town Hall Tap’s version ($6.50) one recent Saturday afternoon. Though I was skeptical of her claim that they were as good as the Fair’s pickles, I arrived with an open mind and ravenous appetite. While the cream cheese nestled next to the pickle slice initially threw me for a loop, the thick, panko-like crust on each chip made me an instant admirer. How come so few pickle-pushers can get that coating right? Bravo, Town Hall Tap, bravo. After a couple of pickles, I began to appreciate the cooling quality of the cream cheese since there seemed to be a dash of hot sauce thrown in the batter, and the accompanying sweet and tangy blackberry chutney contains jalapeños. But truth be told, that coating was so good that I preferred it sans dipper. These are fried pickles are reason enough to return to Town Hall Tap, but still, they’re the runner-up to… Continue reading Fried Pickles at Blue Door, Town Hall, and Hazel’s »
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
This past June, in the same week that The Heavy Table made its way through 14 Minnesota- and Wisconsin-made pies, the folks at Serious Eats in New York took on an even bigger challenge. The team visited a New Jersey Cheesecake Factory and tried every flavor of cheesecake on the menu. That’s 33 flavors, if you’re counting. Impressed rather than disgusted, we asked ourselves, What would be the Twin Cities equivalent of such a feat? The conclusion: We’d try every dessert at St. Paul staple Cafe Latté.
Why Cafe Latté? Though the Grand Avenue institution boasts an extensive menu of sandwiches, salads, soups, and pizzas, it’s best known for its rich, toothsome, and generously proportioned cakes. In particular, its turtle cake has a devoted following and attention from the Food Network. (You can find the recipe on the Food Network website as well as Cafe Latté’s site.) But as we discovered during our feast, not every dessert is worthy of such lofty praise.
Budget and time limited our selection to $75 worth of treats (individual slices range from $4.50 to $5.50), but considering that we purchased nearly every cake, cheesecake, and tart in the bakery case on a recent Sunday, we think we got a more-than-representative sample of the sinful and sugary slices Cafe Latté offers. And with a pot of hot coffee at the ready, we dug in — tasting, debating, and, surprisingly, agreeing on almost every favorite.
Natalie Champa Jennings / Heavy Table
Best Chocolate Dessert
We sampled four chocolate desserts — Cafe Latté’s famous turtle cake (above), the chocolate buttercream cake, the chocolate chocolate cake, and the chocolate cupcake — and came to the conclusion that all followed the same basic cake recipe. But the dark, cocoa-rich cake didn’t receive universal raves. We found that it was the topping and filling of each slice that ultimately made it a satisfying dessert.
The chocolate buttercream cake was the standout — the light, moderately sweet frosting was on par with the sugar level of the cake and added an appropriate amount of moisture to each bite. Though some felt the buttercream was a bit grainy, overall the cake was the most successful of the bunch. The turtle cake, on the other hand, was often cited as too sweet, depending on how much fudgy frosting and caramel sauce each taste tester got on his or her piece. Deemed a “good milk-and-cake cake” by one, the turtle also was called “unsatisfactory” by another — the same person who said the chocolate buttercream “satisfies the id.” Continue reading Heavy Table’s Dessert Picks at Cafe Latté »
Tags: Cafe Latte
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
We here at the Heavy Table got a plaintive letter from Las Vegas earlier this month. A pair of Minnesota expatriates had a Christmas crisis on their hands: “We have to tell you that we have searched high and low and have not been able to find anything even close to the Tom and Jerry batter we both so fondly remember. Most people here don’t even know what a Tom and Jerry is!”
Indeed! Will there even be snow in Las Vegas this Christmas? Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?
Meanwhile, in Duluth, another scary scenario was playing out: Duluthians, partisans of their own Connolly’s brand of Tom and Jerry batter (see our story on Connolly’s, here), were unable to find it on the shelves. Readers of the local blog A Perfect Duluth Day started trading news of sightings. And then, the bad news came: Upper Lakes Foods was unable to find a manufacturer for the batter this season. They’re hoping to line someone up next year. So, no Connolly’s for anyone, whether in Vegas or here.
The Heavy Table team decided to step in. While we couldn’t include the beloved Connolly’s in a taste test, we could at least help Roy and Kathy in Las Vegas and all the people of Duluth find the best replacement. We decided to test the two most common brands of batter, in the Twin Cities at least, against a couple of homemade recipes.
Kate N.G Sommers / Heavy Table
First, some background. If you didn’t grow up in Minnesota or Wisconsin, you’ve probably completely given up by now on trying to figure out why anyone wants to make batter out of a cocky cartoon cat and his cheeky mouse nemesis. If you are from this area and your family did any entertaining at all around the holidays, then you’re also wondering what the fuss is about: Doesn’t everybody already agree that your dad’s recipe / favorite store-bought brand is the best?
A Tom and Jerry, in the drinking sense, has nothing to do with cats and mice. It is, according to the Dictionary of International Food and Cooking Terms (Myra Waldo, 1967), “a hot frothy alcoholic drink made with beaten egg yolks, stiffly beaten egg whites, rum, sugar, boiling water, bourbon, and spices, served in mugs with a sprinkling of nutmeg.” Most modern aficionados replace the water with milk and the bourbon with brandy.
Online sources, from Wikipedia to Esquire, all seem to agree that the Tom and Jerry was created as a publicity stunt in the 1820s by the English writer Pierce Egan, to promote his book Life in London, and was named after the main characters. The drink was once common enough across the country that vintage “Tom and Jerry” bowl and mug sets are common finds in antique shops and on eBay — and in Minnesota grandmothers’ china cupboards.
But one mystery we couldn’t solve was why Minnesota and Wisconsin seem to have made the Tom and Jerry their own while it has faded into obscurity in the rest of the country. Yes, it is cold here around Christmas time, but it’s cold in New England, too. Any theories are welcome.
On to the tasting. We tasted Flaherty’s and Mrs. Bowen’s brand batters, both easy to find in grocery stores and liquor stores, against a rather simplified homemade recipe, one that involves mixing the entire drink on the stovetop, rather than making a batter to be mixed with liquor, and also included the rather untraditional butter in the ingredients.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
I’ll cut to the chase: Mrs. Bowen’s was the best of the bunch. Flaherty’s, although it listed eggs as the first ingredient, lacked any eggy flavor. It was all milky sweetness, and rather too much of each. The homemade drink, on the other hand, wasn’t quite sweet enough. It was richer, thanks to the butter, and had a nice thick texture, but it lacked the depth that additional spices might have added.
Mrs. Bowen’s had a more balanced flavor, just sweet enough, and it held its foam nicely. It wasn’t, however, the ideal Tom and Jerry for the Minnesotans among us (who admitted that they had grown up with the “one in the red container,” i.e., Flaherty’s). And it wasn’t something that the non-Minnesotans were eager to adopt as a new holiday tradition.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
So we dug back into the Heavy Table archives and found a piece from last year on the beloved, elusive Connolly’s. It included ingredients for an updated Tom and Jerry (and Audrey) as featured on the fun and plucky TheDairyShow.com. Find the full recipe here.
And there it was, right in front of our noses the whole time. A drink Minnesotans and transplants could all get behind. The foam floating on top of the thickish bottom layer was just right. The additional spices gave it a fuller flavor, the bitters a little bit of depth. And the addition of cognac in place of brandy gave it a little more Happy New Year! So, merry Christmas to you, Roy and Kathy in Las Vegas. And to you, bereaved citizens of Duluth. Christmas just got a little brighter.
And, for those of you who need a little alone time with a great cocktail to make it through the tail end of the holiday season, here’s a simplified single-serving adaptation.
Tom and Jerry for One
1 egg, separated
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1 oz rum
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of cardamom
¼ cup hot milk
¼ oz brandy
freshly grated nutmeg
Warm a mug with hot water. Beat the yolk with the sugar and spices until thick. Stir in rum. Beat the egg whites until very stiff. Fold the whites into the yolks. Pour into heated mug and gently stir in milk and brandy. Top with freshly grated nutmeg.
Kate N.G. Sommers / Heavy Table
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
It’s tough to get a bearing on Uptown’s dense cluster of Thai restaurants. They often seem so interchangeable – ubiquity confused with uniformity. In an effort to begin distinguishing them, what better litmus test than Pad Thai? It’s the spaghetti and meatballs of Thai cuisine, an ever-present standby, a simple dish that’s hard not to like. Lightly stir-fried noodles with chunks of meat and veggies, flavored by peanuts, cilantro, a tamarind-based sauce, and some spice – it’s a simple canvas that leaves ample room for personality.
The general consensus is that True Thai in Seward is one of the current standard bearers for Thai in our metro. So we spoke with Anna Prasomphol Fieser of True Thai to get an expert opinion on what makes for truly good Pad Thai. (The Heavy Table has previously commented that Anna’s Pad Thai “will enhance your understanding of the dish’s true potential.”) That was not an overstatement. Her Pad Thai strikes the perfect balance between sweet and spicy with its rich, enveloping sauce. The big chunks of flat chives and crispy bean sprouts create a nice balance to the thinly sliced, flavorful pork. The noodles are light but substantial enough to hold up the rest of the flavors.
“Dry radish and tamarind are very important as Pad Thai must be salty, sweet, and sour,” says Fieser. “Many restaurants soak the noodles in hot water before cooking. This makes them mushy. You should instead soak the noodles in cold water overnight to get the proper al dente firmness. You then blanch the noodles in hot water just before cooking in a hot pan with cold oil.” True Thai’s well-known success with this dish provides a great control sample on which to judge the pretenders to the Minneapolis Pad Thai throne.
This truly blind tasting was conducted by seven eager participants feasting on take-out Pork Pad Thai (though one restaurant did not offer pork as an option) from the five restaurants closest to the Hennepin-Lake intersection. The judges were asked to write notes on the dishes’ appearance and aroma, quality of the noodles, vegetables and meat, and the spice level (all were ordered with “medium spice”), then to assign an overall score of 1-20. The results are listed here from last to first place.
Katie Cannon / Heavy Table
Sawatdee Express ($6) 1404 W Lake St, 612.825.4054
This author was skeptical whether the order we received for our taste-off was representative of the normal product at Sawatdee Express. It took a return visit to confirm our fears: Their Pad Thai is extremely sub-par. This review does not speak for the Pad Thai at their numerous sit-down locations across the metro, nor their Express location in the downtown skyway. What is clear is that their Uptown location is in serious need of technical re-adjustment. Continue reading Uptown Pad Thai Showdown »
by Emily Schnobrich on November 5, 2010
Lars Swanson / Heavy Table
Every Midwestern kid discovers the golden wonton at their local Chinese buffet — a fried treat to load the plate with before beelining to the soft serve. Children love the innocent crunch of the cream cheese wonton. It’s simple and smooth and basically makes them think they’re getting away with dessert before dinner. But let’s face it: The cream cheese wonton doesn’t really rank high on the adult list of palate pleasers.
Some Twin Cities establishments have tried to elevate the dish. Take Thom Pham, for example, the chef behind Thahn Do, Azia (R.I.P.), and the brand new Wondrous Azian Kitchen. Pham’s cranberry cream cheese puffs (below) are a favorite that made the cut in the move from Azia to Wondrous. They are listed on the menu as Thom Pham’s Wondrous Cranberry Puffs, in a special curling font. And their appearance is just as fancy schmancy. Biting into one reveals a practically fuchsia (okay, the lights were pretty low) interior, speckled with cranberry bits. They are plainly sweet, slightly squishy, and cheesy, sparked occasionally by a bit of scallion garnish.
Lars Swanson / Heavy Table
But there are some new cream cheese specimens on the other side of town that just might take the wonton from good to yowzer. You can find them at Wok in the Park, St. Louis Park’s newest Asian spot, and funnily enough, the brain child of Thom Pham’s three sisters. Cheekily labeled Puffs in the Park, the little fried packages (pictured, top) are composed of “cream cheese, scallions and Crais’n Curry” — a similar description to the Wondrous Puffs. Nevertheless, they are hot and crisp, and their filling is a balanced and punchy combination that echoes a spicy homemade tomato soup rather than a super sweet bagel schmear. With a heat that fills every corner of your mouth, the wontons at Wok transcend what can sometimes be an overlooked appetizer or pseudo dessert.
Lars Swanson / Heavy Table
The Puffs in the Park are just a glimpse into the what sisters Charis (left, above), Grace (center), and Hannah (right) pour into their first restaurant. From Perkins to Thahn Do, the three women grew up working in restaurants, often alongside their other siblings. Continue reading Cranberry Cream Puffs at Wok in the Park and Wondrous »
Good challah tastes like a prize for making it to the end of a long week. It’s a rich and doughy, slightly sweet pat on the back: Hey, it’s Friday, whatever is done is done, and whatever hasn’t been done, well, it’s just going to have to wait.
Observant Jews — and even some tied more to tradition and culture than religion — light candles and bless bread and wine to mark the beginning of the Sabbath on Friday night. The Sabbath itself — the prohibition on work and the commandment to find joy, rest, and prayer for the next 24 hours — begins with the lighting of the candles 18 minutes before sundown. But, for me at least, the week truly ends with that first bite of egg bread, torn off in chunks, drizzled in honey, and passed around the table. And, exhale.
It’s probably the carbs triggering a major serotonin release, but I’ll take it.
Until recently, it was hard to find a challah in the Twin Cities that felt truly celebratory, that made you want to hang around the table after dinner, tearing off just one more piece. An airy, dry loaf feels more like an obligation than a gift. But, with the expanded Rustica bakery and the brand-new Patisserie 46, Friday nights — and Saturday-morning French toast, and Sunday-afternoon sandwiches — just got a little bit sweeter.
Patisserie 46's crown challah with raisins for the High Holy Days
Patisserie 46
We’re ready, right here, right now, to crown this the best challah in the Twin Cities. It’s so rich and buttery I was wary of serving it with meat dishes to kosher-keeping friends. But, nope, John Kraus, owner and baker at Patisserie 46 swears that there is no dairy involved (though the bakery, and therefore the challah, is not certified kosher). He got the recipe from a Swiss friend who had been baking it for years. Inside a thin crust is a soft, dense loaf with that stretchy, chewy crumb that makes you keep going back to break off yet another piece. But what really sets it apart is the depth of flavor, with a slight sourness that suggests a nice slow rise. Kraus makes 50 loaves each Friday and won’t take orders, so when they’re gone, they’re gone. “I think people like it fairly well,” he says modestly. “We can’t decide whether people like raisins. And then there’s the poppy seed debate. And the sesame seed debate…” We’ll take one of each, please.
Rustica's crown challah for the High Holy Days
Rustica
It was a photo finish for the top prize, really, and Rustica’s challah came in behind Patisserie 46 by less than a nose. This beautiful loaf has a thick crust lined with lovely crackles in the braid. It’s a deep mahogany brown, because bakers in the French tradition aren’t afraid of truly browning their breads and pastries. Inside, the loaf is the perfect density, though not quite as chewy and stretchy as it might be. Lightly sweet, it has a nicely developed flavor. Continue reading The Best (and Worst) Challah in the Twin Cities »
Tags: Breadsmith, Byerly's, Cecil's, challah, Fishman's, Great Harvest, Patisserie 46, Rustica, taste test, yum
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