Ichiban (aka sushi with my babies)

Ichiban, at 13th and Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis, is one of my favorite places to get sushi in the Twin Cities. They have hibachi, where you have your own private chef who cooks food for you on a hibachi, a large griddle-type heating platter, with many theatrical tosses of cooking utensils. They also have a sushi bar, which is where I like to go, because it's a better value for the money, where you get all of the sushi, potstickers, miso soup, and green tea or orange ice cream you want for about $30. The sushi bar is round, with an open area in the middle, where the sushi chefs prepare the sushi, surrounded by a small waterway upon which plastic boats float. The sushi chefs put the prepared sushi, along with other side dishes, such as edamame, on the boats and you take what you want when the boats go by you. There is seating for about twenty people around the sushi bar, and the seating is first come, first served, so you can't make a reservation for it. If you come early, you usually don't have to wait, though. The sushi chefs prepare a wide variety of sushi, and oftentimes, you can request sushi if you want a certain type. When I went there with my friends last Saturday, they served everything from salmon sashimi (raw salmon on rice) to sweet potato tempura sashimi to sushi rolls with green fish eggs in them, along with more traditional sushi fare. I have been going there for about six or seven years and I think the quality of the fish they serve has improved in that time. I feel like it's a really fun place to go with friends, I always have a good time there eating delicious sushi. Unfortunately, the quality of the pictures isn't super great, the lighting in the restaurant is rather dim, so sorry about that.

 The sushi boats

 A smoked salmon roll with avocado

 The green tea ice cream

Glam Doll Donuts

Glam Doll Donuts is one of those places where you go and want to try everything they have, but then always go with what you have had before because it was so good last time. It is located at 26th and Nicollet on Eat Street. It won the City Pages' award for the best donuts in the Twin Cities, and I definitely agree with that award.I have tried the Calendar Girl, which is a raised donut with chocolate icing and salted caramel on top. I think this is my favorite donut that I've had from there. I always enjoy chocolate and caramel, and this combination on top of a delicious donut is just perfect. I also really like the Cosmopolitan Girl, which is a chocolate cake donut with peanut butter icing on the donut and chocolate icing drizzled over the peanut butter icing. Another favorite of mine is the Misfit, which is a raised donut with orange, ginger, and cinnamon infused glaze. It sounds a bit strange, but is excellent without being quite as sweet as some of the other flavors. I still need to tear myself away from my favorites to try one of the donuts with bacon on them, which I have heard are very good.

 The Cosmopolitan Girl, a chocolate cake donut with peanut butter and chocolate icing

My favorite donut, the Calendar Girl, a raised donut with chocolate icing and salted caramel, above, and below, the Cosmopolitan Girl

Victor's 1959 Café

Victor's 1959 Café, located at 38th and Grand in southwest Minneapolis, sells excellent Cuban food at very reasonable prices. I especially like eating on the restaurant's deck during the summertime. The deck is shaded by colorful umbrellas and surrounded by wooden flower boxes filled with flowers and herbs. I ordered the picadillo, which is sauteed ground beef with green and red peppers, green olives, and capers and raisins in Creole sauce. The picadillo is served with rice, black beans, and sweet plantains. I also ordered the guanabana juice, which is a mixture of banana and guava juices. Part of the reason why I wanted to order the picadillo is because it was featured on the Food Network. And I can see why. The dish was delicious; it was spicy, but not overpoweringly so. The plantains that came with it were very sweet and very good. The guanabana juice was good, although I think I would rather have had the mango juice, which was sold out at the time, because mango is one of my favorite fruits. If you haven't had guava before, it tastes similar to papaya, and less similar to but still somewhat like pear.

 The picadillo with beans, rice, and sweet plantains. 

 One of the flower boxes on the patio. The plant on the left is a basil plant. 

 Victor's 1959 Café patio

This is a cool mural that is painted on a wall next to the restaurant. 

Sebastian Joe's

My family has been going to Sebastian Joe's since I was a child. They have really delicious, high quality ice cream and unique ice cream flavors. I consider it to be some of the best ice cream in the Twin Cities. My personal favorites are the Oreo flavor, the raspberry chocolate chip, and Pavarotti (caramel, bananas, and chocolate chips). They redid the Linden Hills location a while ago, and it now has really awesome outdoor seating area and a fireplace, along with more seating. They have two locations, one is at 43rd and Upton in Linden Hills and the other is at Franklin and Hennepin. They also sell coffee and baked goods which are baked fresh everyday. They also have ice cream cookie sandwiches and ice cream cakes made with their signature flavor, raspberry chocolate chip ice cream, which I have not yet had the chance to try, but definitely would like to. The shop is named Sebastian Joe's after the three founders' grandfather Sebastiano, who was nicknamed Joe after arriving in New York from Italy.

Amazing Thailand

Amazing Thailand is located on Hennepin Avenue South between Lake Street and 31st Street in Uptown. I really enjoy their pad thai. They also have really good cream cheese wontons that come with a sweet and sour sauce that is much better than the corn syrupy sauce that is often served with cream cheese wontons. When I went there for this blog post, I ordered the jalapeno cream cheese wontons, which were like the normal wontons, but with an extra kick of jalapeno flavor. I ordered pad thai with chicken as my main course. Pad thai is made with pho noodles, a type of rice noodle, eggs, fish sauce, tamarind juice, red chili pepper, bean sprouts, tofu, and meat of your choice. It is garnished with crushed peanuts and lime. Amazing Thailand serves large portions, which I enjoy, as I have a big appetite, and because it's nice to be able to take some food home with you to eat later. I ordered the mango coconut sticky rice for dessert, which was served in a boat-shaped dish. It was very sweet and was made up of sticky rice drizzled with coconut sauce and with mango slices on the side. The restaurant also serves a lunch buffet during the week, which is only ten dollars, where they serve a variety of dishes ranging from pad thai and curry to a salad buffet and fruit.

Cookies and Cream Chocolate from Godiva

The last time I went to Godiva in Southdale, I was given a sample of their new Cookies and Cream chocolate. It's white chocolate with little, Oreo-like cookie bits in it. On the packaging, it says that the flavor is based off of the popular ice cream flavor. The cookie bits are a good match for the white chocolate and taste vaguely of coffee, which is probably because of the cacao content. One bar of this chocolate is $3.99. Some of the other Godiva chocolate flavors that I enjoy are milk chocolate with hazelnut, dark chocolate with sea salt, and white chocolate with vanilla bean.

Lu's Sandwiches

Lu's Sandwiches is one of my favorite places to get sandwiches in Minneapolis. It is at 26th and Nicollet near the Black Forest Inn and Glam Doll Donuts. They sell Vietnamese sandwiches called Banh Mi, along with smoothies that you can get with or without tapioca pearls or fruit-flavored jellies and some Vietnamese desserts. The sandwiches are made on very fresh and delicious baguette bread and are made with a variety of different topping choices. My favorite is the shredded chicken, which is coated in a delicious mix of spices, one of which is cinnamon. The sandwiches have a butter-mayonnaise, fresh cucumber slices, cilantro, shredded pickled carrots, daikon (a type of radish), and slices of jalapeno pepper. The combination of toppings is unusual and refreshing compared to more usual toppings like lettuce and tomato. Lu's is also very reasonably priced, the shredded chicken sandwich that I always get is just under $5. The sesame balls that they sell taste of honey, are very sweet, and are definitely good for satisfying a sweet tooth. I also really enjoy their smoothies; my favorite flavors are honeydew and mango. I have also tried the avocado flavor, which the employees of Lu's say is the best flavor. It was recommended to me by a friend, who described the taste as "like pancake batter, but in a good way". If you're feeling adventurous, definitely try the avocado flavor; it's very sweet and does taste like pancake or cake batter, with a hint of avocado flavor. All of the seals on the tops of the smoothie cups have funny pictures of animals on them, such as a dog looking at a pizza box or a dog resting its head on a stuffed animal, such as on the smoothie below.

The Birdhouse

I went to the Birdhouse at 25th and Hennepin with my friend Patty on Thursday for lunch. It was the first time I had gone there. It is in what used to be a residential house, but it has been re-purposed into a restaurant. From the inside, you can tell that it used to a house, too, but that lends it kind of a nice atmosphere. I ordered the lamb burger with yogurt and cilantro sauce, and Patty ordered the roast beet salad. We also order their "westies" (fries), which are served with aioli, to split. Patty's salad looked very artistic, it included beets, goat cheese, some type of sprouts, and a balsamic vinaigrette. She let me try some and it was very good. I felt like the portion was a little small, though. My burger was good; the yogurt-cilantro sauce was quite delicious. It was served with some fries. We both agreed that we would have preferred somewhat crispier fries, as the fries were kind of soggy, but it does say on the menu that the fries are in the style of In-N-Out, where I have not been, so the Birdhouse is probably staying true to that. So maybe don't order the fries if you like crispy fries. My friend said that their cocktails are good, too, I thought I would pass on them at the time since it was noon. The cocktails have interesting flavor combinations, such as white pepper, lavender, and chamomile infused vodka, ginger beer, and lemon bitters, which are in a drink called The Raven. Apparently they make their own lemon-lime and cream sodas, too. I definitely want to go back there to try more of their drinks.

St. Croix Chocolate Company in Marine on St. Croix

Last Sunday my friend Beth and I went to the St. Croix Chocolate Company in Marine on St. Croix, which is between Stillwater and Taylors Falls on the St. Croix River. Marine on St. Croix is a small, very picturesque town that has one main street with some shops and a few restaurants. The St. Croix Chocolate Co. won The City Pages' prize for the best chocolate store in the Twin Cities, and rightly so, in my opinion. All of their ingredients are sourced from only a few miles away, for example, the chocolate that they use is made across the river in Osceola, Wisconsin. You can taste that the chocolate is really high quality and the chocolates they sell are truly works of art. They are probably the best-looking chocolates I have ever seen. I got the Madagascar bon bon, which is decorated to look like a cocoa bean and has 65% cacao, the honey whiskey bon bon, which is the one with the white swirl, the raspberry bon bon, which is red, and a violet bon bon, which has a violet on top and tasted a bit like the flower, too. Beth got the Madagascar, the raspberry, and one called Salt and Smoke, which she said was made with milk chocolate and filled with salted caramel. It was covered with hickory-smoked almonds. They were all really good; it is definitely worth the drive to go there. We also went to the bar and grill in Marine on St. Croix, where I had an avocado turkey burger with sweet potato fries, which was quite good. The bar and grill has a nice atmosphere; it kind of feels like a cabin. I have also heard that the ice cream shop in town is very good. Unfortunately, it was quite cloudy when we went there, I'm sure it would be even prettier on a sunny day. We stopped in Stillwater on the way back and walked through town and along the river, which is always fun. We stopped in a few antique stores, too.

Pizza Luce

I went to Pizza Luce at 32nd and Lyndale yesterday for dinner with my friend Becky. We got the artichoke dip, which had lots of artichokes, cream cheese, garlic, and parmesan cheese in it, and which was cheesy and delicious. It was served with two loaves of focaccia bread, and both the dip and the bread had lots of parmesan cheese sprinkled on them. We also ordered a medium shrimp al pesto pizza to share, which is my favorite pizza from there. It has lots of basil pesto, diced tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, garlic, and shrimp on Bianca sauce (their white sauce). It was delicious. Another pizza that I've had from them in the past that I really enjoyed is the Pizza Athena, which is a Greek-inspired pizza that has spinach, tomatoes, feta cheese, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, Greek oregano, toasted garlic, and mozzarella on Bianca sauce. My friend pointed out that she really likes Pizza Luce's crust because it's of medium thickness; it's not thin crust, but also not thick crust, and it's doughy without being too doughy. We thought about getting their tiramisu for dessert, which is also good, but were ultimately too full for it. They also have a peanut butter brownie that's really good; it's a brownie with peanut butter on it and a layer of chocolate on top of that. Now they have a sundae that is made with that peanut butter brownie that I think sounds delicious and I want to go back and try. They also have these paintings hanging on the walls there right now, that are kind of cool, but also kind of creepy, that are paintings, some of them quite large, of extreme close-ups on people's faces. One of them was of Snoop Dogg and another looked like it was of Bob Marley, but I didn't recognize any of the other faces.

The Uptown Diner

This morning I went to the Uptown Diner (26th and Hennepin) with my friend for breakfast. I really like going there because it has really good breakfast food, a lot of different options ranging from sweet to savory, friendly, competent servers, a pleasant atmosphere, large portions, and reasonable prices. I got the Crab Cake Benedict, which was basically  two eggs benedict, but with crab cakes instead of ham, so an english muffin with a slice of tomato and a crab cake with hollandaise sauce. The eggs benedict were served with hash browns. My friend got two chocolate chip cookie dough pancakes, which she said were good. Sorry, I started eating the food before I remember to take the picture. My food was only about ten dollars, which I thought was reasonable, considering how large the portion was, and I even took some of it home with me because I didn't finish it all. We then went across the street to the Tea Garden and got bubble tea. I got green tea with lychee and peach flavoring and tapioca pearls. It was a good mixture of sweet and sour flavors with the zing of the lychee and the sweetness of the peach flavoring.

Chocolove Chocolate

I really like Chocolove Chocolate. It comes in a wrapper that looks like a love letter, thus the name, Chocolove and each chocolate bar has a love poem printed on the inside of the wrapper, which is kind of fun to read to your friends. The chocolate is of really good quality and is available in lots of different flavors, from milk chocolate hazelnut to 70% cacao dark chocolate. Some of my favorites are the dark chocolate peppermint, which is very minty and refreshing, the dark chocolate raspberry, which I think has a really good combination of flavors, and the milk chocolate pretzel, which everyone in my family (including my mom, who's from Germany) agreed was delicious. Chocolove is made in Boulder, Colorado, but the chocolate itself is made from Belgium chocolate made with African cocoa beans. It is available at a little fancier grocery stores such as Kowalski's, Lund's, and Whole Foods. Another thing that I like about it is that it is a good value for the money, as it only costs about $2.60.