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BEST FRIES Café Lurçat, Bar Lurçat Golden French fries in a silvery bucket on a white china tray--Bar Lurçat doesn't serve mere fries, it presents a treasure of spuds. The fries themselves are ultra-fried, crisp as the dickens outside, creamy and potato-rich inside. Each bite of these tawny 3-D stripes has you reveling in the texture of the moment, and chasing the next bite: Will it be more crisp? More earthy? More creamy? And hence an obsession is born. The béarnaise that accompanies them is less like a béarnaise and more like an intense cheese--piquant, salty, and lush. The price of $6 is steep, but the portion serves two, and you should keep in mind that you aren't just paying for fries, you're investing in treasure.
Readers' Choice: McDonald's BEST BURGERS Band Box Diner We went far and wide searching for the best burger. We traveled the highways, the byways, and even the skyways, hunting for a burger with great flavor and also great spirit. We tried burgers stuffed with foie gras, burgers filled with molten cheese, burgers as soft as cream cheese, burgers made from cows with elaborate provenance and pedigree. But no matter where we looked, the burger that kept appearing in our mind's eye was the Band Box's humble, all-American "baby burger"--so we went back to this teensy diner in the shadow of the Metrodome and discovered that yes, this icon is in fact king of an overcrowded field. The key is simplicity. Take the meat patty, to start with: It's crisp, flavorful, and humbly unadorned, the flavor created simply by the magic of caramelization, from the ever-going grill. The bun, then, is soft and grill-griddled, a treatment that renders it sweet and crisp. The toppings are classic--leaf lettuce, fresh tomato, pickles, slices of red onion. Tuck them into the bun with the patty and you discover that sacred American combination of rich, sweet, salty, and crisp-fresh. That's all! A burger that costs less than a cup of fancy coffee, covers less acreage than a Krispy Kreme, but manages still, in every bite, to convey the very taste of authentic Americana.
Readers' Choice: Matt's Bar BEST PIZZA Punch Neapolitan Pizza For the record, the issue is the crust. You can have the finest salami, the freshest mushrooms, the most attentively tended sauce, but without a good crust, it all falls apart in a flat flabby mess, like a teddy bear without any stuffing. Punch's pizza, now in three locations, has that crust: It's buoyant as a cloud, given incredible lift by the expansion that happens when pizza dough hits the inside of a wood-fired oven that's been going all day. It's weighty, though, too, given dimension by the real wood smoke that infuses every open pore of fresh dough. It's simple, made with nothing artificial, no extra sugar or malts. And it's complicated too, complicated in the way that only the simplest human achievements are--poker, marriage, the sound of a flute. Buoyant, weighty, simple, complicated--the stuff is a modern miracle. That you can get it in about 15 minutes on a Saturday night, topped with a lively San Marzano tomato sauce, graced with the freshest mozzarella, and otherwise crowned with the finest toppings on offer in either Italy or America is merely the gilt on the lily. We'd drive across town for these pies even if the place wasn't called Punch Pizza, but merely Punch Crusts.
Readers' Choice: Pizza Lucé BEST SOUL FOOD Lucille's Kitchen There was a scare this year--for a while it looked like Lucille's Kitchen, the anchor and rainbow of the north side, might close. What, a world without the crispiest fried chicken, the smokiest collards, the creamiest ever macaroni and cheese? Surely that would not be a world fit for living! Luckily, the good Lord heard the prayers from down here and Lucille's got a reprieve--as of this writing, they're as open as ever and still dishing up catfish as crisp as potato chips, yams as thick as the love between brothers, and all the other good things they do so well. Of course the values are still there; check out the cafeteria-line lunch weekdays till 2:00 p.m., or the spectacular Sunday after-church buffet ($11.72 adults, $5.95 kids under 12, $2.95 under 5 years old). Get in your car already! What are you waiting for--a personal invitation with the clouds parting and the sunbeams? You already got your miracle, that Lucille's is waiting for you, just like always.
BEST SUSHI Origami A local critic recently wrote that all Twin Cities sushi tastes the same--thus revealing that they'd never had the blissful experience of sitting at the bar at Origami and ordering the "omakase," or chef's choice. That's where the sushi chef sitting before you creates magical course after course of ultra-fresh, inventive fishy treats, like fresh scallops glistening like pearls of cream, interleaved between see-through-thin slices of lemon. Like house-made unagi, each slice of eel as plump as a berry, rich and roasty with the special house grilling sauce. Like pretty little stripes of kohada, the speckled gizzard shad, wearing pretty Easter bonnets of fresh ginger. These meals run $40 to $60 per person or so, and present the restaurant in its best light, allowing the well-trained chefs, who have decades of sushi experience between them, to show what they can do. That what they can do is quite marvelous goes without saying. That it exceeds what others can do is something you can only appreciate if you care to pay attention.
Readers' Choice: Fuji-Ya BEST WINE AND LIQUOR STORE Zipp's Liquors Scrappy, feisty, and spirited. Not much to look at, but a dynamo in the aisles. How could anyone resist Zipp's? You might know Zipp's as your collegiate party headquarters--is it the friends or the keg that makes drinking when you're 21 so especially sweet? Oh well, leave that riddle for the Sphinx, but know that when your parties have shrunk to the number of folks who fit into your living room, Zipp's becomes even more valuable: Only in these overstuffed wine aisles will you find dozens of double-take-inducing bargains among the hundreds of unusual offerings. Like what? Like carignane from 114-year-old vines for $10.99, like fresh, dry grenache rosés, like prestige California chardonnays priced at half of what the suburban chain stores charge. True, other liquor stores in town stock more cordials and whiskeys, but what Zipp's lacks in those categories it makes up for in customer service. They're delighted to special-order any high-end anything you have in mind, and will get it for you in a mere two or three days. More than a liquor store, if slightly less than a personal wine steward and valet, Zipp's has taken the finest wines and spirits and, of all things, democratized them for the common folks.
Readers' Choice: Surdyk's BEST SALAD Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant The salad of the year was a mushroom salad. Well, not really. It wasn't really a mushroom salad, officially. Officially, it was a spinach and arugula salad, but it had a whole forest floor's worth of pale mushroomy marvels in it: ghostly oyster mushrooms, spidery enoki mushrooms, a few golden chanterelles with that subtle fruity scent they have. The spinach and arugula were dressed with a bit of fragrant rosemary oil, scattered with all those mushrooms, planted with a dollop of fresh, sharp chèvre, and scattered with toasted hickory nuts--it was a gorgeous thing. Understated but bountiful. Another Dakota salad was the year's runner-up: It was a beet salad, which, of course, is a classic, but this beet salad had many, many chunks of roasted beets combined with a bold, good blue cheese and topped with sweet crisps of fried fennel that perfectly accented the sweet points of the salad. It's unprecedented, we think, that the best salad and the runner-up should live in the same restaurant--it takes a certain maturity to make a great salad, to showcase strong ingredients, to understand them, and then not to trample all over them with your ego. But that's just the kind of mature restaurant the Dakota is. Could salad, the freshest dish, be in fact the ultimate food of wisdom?
Readers' Choice: Olive Garden BEST BREAD Bakery on Grand We're sure that Bakery on Grand has the best bread in town--just, we refuse to pick which bread exactly. There are many to choose between! The baguette happens to be so airy, so weighty, so filigreed, so robust, so very full of holes and yet also full of the heavy substance of bread that if you told us that it was not made like regular bread but in fact crocheted, we would believe you. A crocheted baguette? You have to see it to believe it. The épi, the "pain d'épi," too, you have to see to believe: This thing is a wreath, a sunburst of bread petals, a bread made to resemble the head of a stalk of wheat, bent into a circle, and it's so beautiful you can almost resist pulling it into its constituent petals and slicing into them for fancy, fancy bread-and-butter sandwiches. The brioche--rich, custard-scented and egg-yellow--is another marvel. It also makes toast fit for the Queen of England, and French toast fit for anyone you love enough to stand over the stove for. The semolina is another in this Super Friends-style allegiance of mega-stars. It's as sturdy as a house, heavy as a promise, and hearty as Tarzan--rap on it with your knuckles and its chest thump-thump-thumps with just that noise. And if you think it's weird to rap with your knuckles on a bread, try it with some lesser bakery's bread sometime. You know what you'll hear? Nothing. Nothing but squishy silence.
BEST MIDDLE EASTERN BREAD Abu Nader Deli & Grocery Perfecting pita bread requires more than a good sense of geometry. This round flat bread with the pocket inside is the staple of many Middle Eastern cuisines, and it has many important jobs. Scooping up baba ghanoush, for one, or cradling spicy falafel balls smothered in tahini sauce. The Ailabouni family bakes its own pita, and their loving effort pays off with just the right balance of form and function. Pillowy soft yet tough enough to hold a hefty helping of gyros, this bread is also ample in diameter, and simply delicious, even without its familiar sidekicks. At just under $2 per half-dozen, this bread's a bargain, too. Abu Nader offers up an array of appetizer staples to savor with your pita, including a fiery little pepper and feta cheese pie, lemony humus, tangy tabuleh salad, and spicy stuffed grape leaves, not to mention soups, sandwiches, and a golden-hued baklava that sings a siren song to your sweet tooth.
BEST BAGELS H&H For some, the arrival of Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the upper Midwest was reason for celebration, carbs be damned. Sure, we waited in long lines in Maple Grove for those famous just-off-the-conveyor-belt sensations, but now that you can get a Krispy Kreme fix at a Holiday gas station, next to the Hostess for goodness's sake, well, the thrill is gone. The same cannot be said, thankfully, for the marvelous H&H bagel. Flown in fresh from Manhattan's West Side and keeping a suitably low profile in select locations (kind of like Woody Allen), these circular wonders show the wannabes just who's worthy of the finest lox. The dark brown crust is simultaneously crispy and chewy, giving way to an airy and somewhat moist interior that really comes into its own when toasted and smeared with cream cheese. The basic flavors are best--plain, sesame, onion, cinnamon raisin--all giving credence to the simple genius of a well-made bagel. They say New York water is the secret ingredient, and given there's nary a better specimen to be found outside the five boroughs, let alone in Minnesota where most bagels are an uninspired beige and sometimes square (the horror!), we tend to agree. Readers' Choice: Bruegger's Bagels BEST BBQ Ted Cook's 19th Hole Bar-B-Que If you've spent any time in the South or ever stumbled upon a hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint in Kansas City, the barbecue capital of the world, you know that tacky trinkets and contrived shack charm don't make for mouth-watering, forehead-dripping barbecue. And Ted Cook's 19th Hole Bar-B-Que knows this too. Here, only smoke-stained white walls and framed photographs of meat and side orders ornament the room, and the only thing screaming Southern charm is the creaky screen door that greets you. Current owner Moses Quartey, who took over Ted Cook's four years ago, has been grilling meat and whipping up sauces at Cook's for more than 16 years. The place offers takeout only, and a full-sized rack of ribs will cost you $17.95. If greasy fingers and red-stained cheeks aren't an option, check out the barbecue beef dinner ($10.85), which includes mesquite- and hickory-grilled beef slices so delicate and thin they're almost transparent, sweet coleslaw, bread for soaking, and a heaping of Jo Jo Potatoes. These crispy fixin's are the perfect sponge for Ted Cook's tangy and sweet sauce, which comes as hot as your taste buds can stand.
Readers' Choice: Famous Dave's BEST BURRITO La Cucaracha Located at the edge of Victorian Village--a preppy area usually packed with college students and people looking for a beer on their way home from work--La Cucaracha fits in more than one might like with its bar and happy hour specials. But what's really great about this Mexican restaurant is its food, and although there are many great burritos in the Twin Cities, La Cucaracha offers a triple threat: quantity, quality, and personalization. For example, those feeling experimental should try the Jimmy burrito--a concoction of cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, cabbage, zucchini, green pepper, and mushrooms, all baked until the outside tortilla is a crispy golden brown. And here's the twist: You can add any special topping (such as guacamole, goat cheese, or chorizo) for just a bit extra. Other ambitious burritos include the del mar (a seafood-themed meal of shrimp and crab sautéed in garlic lemon butter with feta cheese, all baked with queso blanco and veggies), and Bob's buffalo burrito (a pocket of hot spicy cubed steak with veggies and sour cream). Or try one of their classic favorites, a beef, chicken, bean, or chorizo burrito. All come in huge portions, stuffed with Colby cheese and served with lettuce and tomato. Muy rico!
BEST CANDY STORE Candyland In a place called Candyland, moon rocks are two-inch jawbreakers, comets are heavenly hash-covered marshmallows, and the swirls on colorful, old-timey suckers look like palm-sized galaxies. It's a universe of colors, shapes, and scents that will set synapses firing and mouths salivating. The Swedish berry jujus are Day-Glo red and perfectly sticky, and the sour fruit salad leaves you sucking your cheeks, which is a good thing. Here, it's okay to play with your food: Create a teeny candy family with a crawling gummi army guy, a licorice baby, and some lime-green sour-patch kids. Then gobble 'em up. An institution in the Twin Cities since 1932 (when it was called Flavocorn), Candyland is a must-stop mom-and-pop candy shop that serves up everything from melt-in-your-mouth popcorn to sweet-tasting sugar-free goodies.
BEST CHOCOLATE B.T. McElrath Husband-and-wife team Brian McElrath and Christine Walthour have a rack of awards that would make Lord of the Rings king Peter Jackson jealous. Aside from being showered with local accolades, their artisan chocolate company, B.T. McElrath, has received press mentions in Bon Appétit and USA Today, won honors from the Food Network and the Travel Channel, and was recently named one of the Top 20 Artisan Chocolate Makers in the United States by Chocolatier magazine. Using Minnesota-made fresh cream and butter, artisan chocolatier and visionary McElrath provides a modern twist on traditional chocolate flavors, spinning new creations every season such as the tasty recent additions, Chile Limón and Kaffir Lime with Coconut and Ginger. And McElrath, who was trained at the California Culinary Academy, relies on a timeless cooking tradition that originated in Grandma's kitchen: Everything is hand-done. An eight-person staff stirs every batch of chocolate, and each piece becomes a work of art that is fastidiously decorated or airbrushed with cocoa butter. Life is sweet indeed. B.T. McElrath's award-winning chocolates are sold in stores around the Twin Cities, such as Byerlys, Lunds, and the Wedge.
BEST COFFEE BY THE POUND Dunn Bros It's always ironic--or oxymoronic--to see the words "fresh roasted" inscribed on the cans of coffee lining the grocery shelves. That's especially true if you get your beans at one of the many Dunn Bros outlets around town. Every locale except for the one at the Mall of America has a bean roaster right on the premises that is pretty much used on a daily basis. If you walk into a Dunn Bros and ask for the freshest roast, odds are the beans will still be a little warm through the bag as you tuck it under your arm. True, prices--currently about $10 to $12 per pound, depending on the bean--are a little steeper than the gourmet grounds at the grocery. But you usually have over a dozen options to choose from (we're partial to beans from Kenya and Celebes), plus a couple or more decaf choices. Even "old" roasts by Dunn Bros standards are likely to be fresher than most anywhere else. According to the waitstaff at two different locations, beans older than three days are thrown away.
Readers' Choice: Dunn Bros BEST DOUGHNUTS Lone Doughnut Café Look for Kieran's pub on the ground level, walk in off the street, climb to the skyway level on the daffy staircase--one of the stupidest-looking pieces of interior architecture in American history--and behold the modest retail counter that is Lone Doughnut Café. Could it be that this establishment harbors the finest doughnuts in the Twin Cities? The cinnamon-and-powdered sugar oval makes a compelling case for the affirmative position. The flavor is subtle; some seasoned tasters might find it a little meek, even. But the texture is a textbook example of how to fry dough in oil: firm and crumbling on the exterior, cakelike on the interior. The maple-sugar glaze comes with coarsely chopped walnuts, creating a tasty, delicate skin. Perhaps best of all, you can enjoy these wonders--which range in price from 55 to 90 cents--while seated in a glass atrium decorated by a preposterously large American flag, with Sheiks Palace Royale visible across the way. The old Stars and Bars! Lady dancers! Hard-drinking immigrants! Doughnuts! This is City Pages' America.
BEST CHEESE SELECTION Whole Foods Market The cheeses include goat's, sheep's, and cow's milk, and you can find both artisanal and conventional types. But what distinguishes the Whole Foods selection from the rest of the pack is its ability to seduce a rather bland palate with funky choices. Adventuresome contestants need apply. (Advice: Don't settle for the cheese samples found in various locations throughout the store, have the cheese staff give you a sample of whatever your heart desires.) There's rhyme and reason as to how the cheese is displayed: Typically the blues are lumped together, then the soft-rinds and the washed rinds. Also vaguely by country: England, Spain, Italy, and America are represented here. (France doesn't claim an exclusive spot but is represented in each and every cheese type.) And the selection gets even more heady from there. For starters, look into Colston Basset Stilton (English); Dolce Latte Gorgonzola (Italian); Papillon or Société Roquefort (French); or the Roaring 40s, a Tasmanian blue. Or try the French Bûcheron, and the American Cypress Grove Purple Haze, accented by lavender and fennel. The Aged Gruyère Reserve and a Gouda aged two and a half to four years are both good hard cheeses; as for soft, Camembert and Epoisses are nice choices. And on and on. Finally, it all comes down to the cheese staffers, all of whom seem to enjoy what they're doing. And they do it conscientiously, taking input as well as giving it, and offering honest and insightful opinions.
BEST FRIED CHICKEN Nardie's Café Lately KFC has been spending millions trying to convince us that its familiar acronym stands for "kitchen fresh chicken" and while it's laughable to imagine any fast-food franchise achieving a homemade, just-like-mom's taste experience, the underlying message is clear: KFC knows we all want at least the illusion that our fried chicken is made with tender loving care. Well, the folks at Nardie's Café really do care about chicken, wings to be exact, and there's nothing fake about their simple menu offerings. The sassy wonders that swoop out of Leonard Lowe's kitchen offer more than the typical two or three bites of meat. And the coating, well, it deserves at least a couple of rhapsodic sentences. The rich and complex dark brown crust glistens yet is relatively light on the grease. It's crispy and succulent, and when you add hot sauce, the New Orleans spices kick off a mini Mardi Gras parade inside your mouth. Laissez le bon temps rouler, indeed. Add any of the winning soul food side dishes, from red beans and rice to collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, potato salad, or thick-cut fries (a dinner with two sides is $9 or throw a party for 25 of your pals for anywhere from $12 to $17 per person), and you'll be vowing many a return visit to the nurturing arms--er, wings--of Nardie's.
BEST HOT DOGS The Wienery Those who love big, sumptuous hot dogs know exactly what goes into making them: beef, pig knuckles, Sasquatch meat, compost, industrial-strength artery-clogging juice, and a whole lotta love. But here at this tasty West Bank dive, you can get even more than that. How much is that doggie in the window? With a side of fresh French-press coffee and French fries, it's still less than the price of the Lipitor you'll need after eating to your heart's content. Vienna beef dogs come encased by a thick, natural skin that, when pierced with the front teeth, delivers the satisfying snap of a pigeon's neck beneath your shoe. Polish wieners, Italian wieners, and dozens of other lewd 'n' juicy options share the menu with the brawniest vegan dog in town--perhaps the only one in the world that doesn't taste like a deep-fried water chestnut. And while you're piling your briny brats with some delicious combination of relish, cheese, mustard, onions, sauerkraut, celery salt, and--god help you--hot peppers, you can choose between two dining options: "Smoking" and "More Smoking." (Okay, so there's a "Non Smoking" table for you hypochondriac healthmongers, but what are you doing here anyway?) Those who come for the excellent frankfurters will return to the Wienery for its idiosyncratic '70s film vibe. Sitting at the faded countertop in this super-sized walk-in closet, you'll find yourself chatting with cabbies, bartenders, and various other fast-talking characters who share your grease-wiping preference for jeans over napkins. And while you're scarfing down tubesteaks with the locals, remember to tip your dog-tender. He'll make sure the next one's real meat.
BEST ICE CREAM PARLOR Crema Café It was just a few weeks from the end of the summer last year when, enjoying a Crema cone after a particularly zealous playground session, the nickel dropped. Here we were, in the middle of an impossibly bucolic afternoon, in once-pedestrian southwest Minneapolis, enjoying ethereally delicious ice cream on a tiny alleyway of a patio that might as well have been in Tuscany. We pinched ourselves several times in quick succession and are compelled to report that, yes, Virginia, our neighborhood ice cream parlor does indeed flavor its sorbets and ice creams with balsamic vinegar, Cabernet Sauvignon, lavender, cardamom and black pepper (our personal favorite), rosewater, and the highest-quality chocolates and real vanilla, of course. And someone, either one of the owners, Ron Siron and Carrie Gustafson, or Ron's dad Sonny, was probably behind the lovely hand-plastered wall against which we leaned, cranking out small batches of these exotic ice creams by hand. And later, after we'd gone home, someone would close the door to the freezer, come outside and tend to the plants that graced that lovely little wrought-iron-enclosed terrace. And later still, someone would be serving grown-ups on dates fancy pastries from the case inside and frothing milk for their cappuccinos and changing the concerto tinkling out of the hidden speakers. That this was our neighborhood ice cream parlor was one big reason why it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood, indeed.
BEST APPLE ORCHARD Afton Apple We admit that part of the allure of Afton Apple is the beautiful drive to Hastings. From I-94, the nearly 12-mile stretch along Manning Road and County Road 76 oozes rural charm, especially on a crisp fall day when the leaves are blazing and the sun is out. Then there's the hayride across some of the orchard's 170 acres of rolling hills toward whatever apples are ready to be picked among the eleven different species available. Naturally, you chomp a couple already on the ground, but not yet rotted, hearing that unmistakable "keroosh" as your teeth cut into the fruit and set off all the sweet and tart sensors on your tongue. The more you pick, the better you get at it, looking for that gem at the back of a cluster hidden behind the leaves, so corpulent and fresh that it falls into your hand with just the slightest rustle. It might be a Haralson, or a Cortland, or a Sweet 16, or something you've never heard of (call before you go to see what's ripe that week), but you know the apples you pick yourself taste the best. Afton Apple also features strawberry picking in the early summer, raspberries later in the season, and pumpkins and a corn maze in the fall. They also bring in blueberries, cherries, and peaches from Michigan. But keep your eyes on the prize: fresh apples, best picked from Labor Day through Halloween. And after you get your hayride back to the main building, indulge yourself in a glass of hot cider.
BEST GOURMET GROCERY Whole Foods Market Always a contender for the Best Natural Foods Grocery, Whole Foods also racks up a healthy, affordable line of gourmet selections. For one, the national chain with a local vibe offers ingredients for every level of cooking ability. If you're a single computer geek with a pallet for gourmet, you can pick up hot, ready-to-go wild mushroom lasagna for $7.99 per pound. That's cheaper than you could whip it up in your high-tech kitchen, especially considering ingredients like shitake and porcini mushrooms. Another option would be the frozen salmon or shrimp burgers and lobster cakes ($5.99 for a four-pack). For those aspiring gourmand extraordinaires, you can score veal scaloppini, osso bucco, and Herbes de Provence veal chops, all for about $14 per pound. Finally, if you're an organic disciple and the mention of veal just made you gag, the produce section and salad bar will wow your fair-trade socks off.
Readers' Choice: Byerly's BEST BAKERY Patrick's Bakery & Café A great bakery should have great ambition, lofty standards, arresting charm, and great prices. It needs ambition because otherwise you could bake cookies yourself. It needs standards because otherwise you could get worse quality stuff from the grocery store. It needs arresting charm because you're so busy! To get you to diverge from your usual path, it has to offer inducements to both palate and soul. Patrick's does all of this, and does it more than anyone else in town. The ambition couldn't be greater: A true croquembouche takes both the knowledge of a lifetime and the work of an entire day, but you'll find these marvels, these rings of cream puffs coated in caramel and lassoed with spun sugar, in the pastry case at Patrick's every day in the holiday season. The standards are sky-high: Chocolate-robed cylinders of the best chocolate mousse in the state are further enhanced with gold leaf, a sunken treasure of a small disk of cake supporting a circle of hazelnut praline. The charm can barely be described: At the new Bachman's location you can sit beneath a bright yellow umbrella, eat your chocolate mousse from a china plate, and gaze at the orchids stacked gaily around you--and you can even do this in January, since the whole outdoor café is safe under a greenhouse-glass sky. The prices? Fantastic. Six dollars for a sandwich and salad, $5 for an individual cake, and a few dollars for a baguette, a croissant, or an éclair as good as any in Paris.
Readers' Choice: Wuollet Bakery BEST DELICATESSEN The Brothers Delicatessen Just when you thought nothing could get better than a jar of pickles on the table, the Brothers have gone and topped themselves--now the pickles are out of the jars and lolling around in a huge pickle buffet, waiting for you to gorge yourself upon them. That's right, they're just lying there, kosher dills, pickled beets, pickled tomatoes, half-sours, the works, alongside bowls of potato salad, coleslaw, health salad, and the rest of the works. Isn't that the very essence of a delicatessen? Eat, baby, eat, eat more--you look hungry! The pickle and deli salad bar comes complimentary with all sandwich orders at Brothers, your little bit of old-city soul in the skyways. So the question is, what to order? Something fundamental, like the textbook-perfect pastrami or homemade corned beef? What about a little chopped chicken liver on egg bread? Or the lush and decadent Reuben? Or maybe something more contemporary, a tomato mozzarella sandwich with roasted red peppers, perhaps? Whatever you get, just remember, it all tastes so much better with a pickle, or three.
BEST FRESH PRODUCE The Wedge Community Co-op Year after year we've waxed long in this very space about the Wedge's consistent success in offering up absolutely pristine produce at prices that should (but don't) shame the local upscale chains. We've written passionately about the completely blemish-free organic Fuji apples, the candy-counter-pretty chiogga beets, the sweet, mellow garlic scapes, the made-for-stuffing Gypsy peppers, and countless other cultivars no one else seems to think of stocking. We've written about the oddities tucked here and there in this small but mighty produce section, the electric green gooseberries, the fat stalks of fragrant lemongrass, the organically grown cut flowers. This year we want to take a break from celebrating the shiniest bunch of dinosaur kale to moralize a little. We'd like to point out that the aforementioned bounty is the product of years of relationship building on the part of the Wedge's produce-obsessed magicians. Before there was such a thing as an organic standard, they were out trying to help local farmers figure out what consumers wanted, trying to coax shoppers into paying a premium (and not a hefty one, we'd argue; been to Lunds lately?) to help keep those farmers in the game, and forming alliances with other co-ops so as to have some wholesale buying power. To market to market, indeed.
Readers' Choice: The Wedge Community Co-op BEST INDIAN GROCERY Flavors of India Flanked by The Donut Connection and across from Lyndale Garden Center, Flavors of India, with its faded window sign and dull lighting, is easy to miss. But once inside, the fragrance of dried rose petals, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, and musk mark this exotic and authentic place. You'll find shelves of freshly ground spices, whole seeds for grinding, with names we can't spell, plus legumes and nuts, three types of Basmati, two kinds of Jasmine (in short, lots of rice) for half the price you'd pay in most grocery stores. There are rows of canned and jarred chutneys, sauces, pickles, and preserves; quarts of fresh mango and papaya juice; plus fresh odd little cucumbers, curry leaf (much different than dried curry spice blends), tiny eggplants, and peppers. If you don't know how to use them, the woman at the counter in a beautiful mauve sari with gold threading and a red mark on her forehead will tell you and then sell you the makings of a great meal. If you're not quite that adventurous, then take home frozen entrées (curried vegetables, Pooranam, or steamed dumplings) in slick microwaveable packages. Offering the latest Indian movies in DVD and VHS, music CDs and cassettes, vases and religious totems, this passage to India is well worth the trip.
BEST LATINO GROCERY El Burrito Mercado All this place needs is a few live chickens to peck at the crumbs on the floor and it could be any market in Guadalajara. This grocery-cum-cafeteria supplies its Latino neighbors with guisados, homemade tortillas, and red pork tamales in a voluptuous smoked chili sauce, as well as saint's day votives, Virgin Mary bird baths, paper flowers, wooden dolls, and baskets. The takeout is made fresh on the premises, and you can select from five different salsas at different levels of heat made with tomatoes and/or tomatillos. The place smells of fresh and dried peppers, smoke, leather, and sweat. Shiny red peppers spill from bins, some tiny as pinky nails, others that look like bananas; and there are dried peppers on ropes and woven into wreaths, or stacked on the shelves like old shoes. Here you will find fresh and dried tamale husks, as well as ample advice on whether to fill them with yellow cornmeal or white. If you speak Spanish, you're in luck, though most of the clerks speak English when they feel like it. It's just like south of the border.
BEST MIDDLE EASTERN GROCERY Holy Land Bakery and Deli The recently expanded Holy Land Bakery and Deli proves that super-sizing is not always a bad idea. It was, after all, impossible to contain the depth and breadth of Middle Eastern fare within just one normal-sized Northeast storefront. Case in point: the oils. At Holy Land you can spend hours pondering the merits of olive, palm, sesame, and grapeseed varieties from Turkey to Tunisia. Olives will require a similar effort--the selection features the best of Lebanon, Jordan, and Greece. Have a hankering for Turkish delight? The sweets aisle offers more kinds than you can imagine. Holy Land also sells halal meat (beef, goat, and chicken), stuffed dates, pistachios in a host of flavors, and a spice selection where all of the containers are extra-large (no Minnesota fear of fire here). The bakery items, including pita, Afghan breads, and a newer addition, East African injera, are always fresh and eager to be accompanied by any of the feta cheeses on display at the center of the store. Whether it's Pakistani kheer you're after, or ginger paste, Moroccan sardines, or teff flour from Ethiopia, chances are Holy Land will have it amongst the already full-to-bursting inventory. And if you just can't wait until you get home to eat, there's always the sit-down deli, where during a recent Saturday visit, a steady line circled the buffet laden with crisp salads and savory entrées. It's the perfect place to spend an afternoon taking a world tour with your taste buds.
BEST NATURAL FOODS GROCERY Mississippi Market Whether you shop at natural grocery stores out of dietary necessity or because you're a selective eater, Mississippi Market has you covered. Looking for free-range chicken broth? No problem. Green tea and ginger root ice cream? They've got it. Gluten-free pizza crust? Yup. Vegan jello? Check. The deli, always a mark of a good grocery store, contains items ranging from all-natural meats to hundreds of cheeses, curried lentil salad, and hummus. Why pay for packaging when you can buy in bulk? Save money checking out the tons of staples available in bulk, such as brown sugar, rice, and oatmeal, as well as rarities like thistle, polenta mix, and fennel. But that's not the only way to save money--often people assume that natural foods grocers are more costly than the average supermarket. While some items are certainly more expensive, there are also deals to be had. For example, Reed's Original Ginger Brew was about two dollars less than it would be at a regular grocery, and several commercial tempeh and tofu products ran about 50 cents cheaper as well. With deals like this, you can afford to stop by the juice bar on the way out.
Readers' Choice: The Wedge Community Co-op BEST ITALIAN GROCERY Broders' Cucina Italiana It's hard to know where to direct the eyes when inside Broders', so innumerable are the things you want. Do you look inside the case at the rich, fresh puttanesca sauce, bursting with olives, capers, anchovies, garlic, and red peppers, and just crying out for a bruschetta to ennoble or a pasta with which to dance? Or do you look into the back room, where the trays of said fresh pasta await your whim? There's always fettuccine, linguini, or pappardelle noodles just made, or full pasta sheets you can cut into whatever shapes you want, for ravioli, cannoli, or even maltagliati. But if you keep looking at the savory case with its bewitching array of salamis, cheeses from all over Italy, fresh, crispy slices of pizza, salads like the one of arugula topped with fresh-shaved parmesan or another of lemon-dressed asparagus, if you keep looking down there (hey, are those roasted figs? Yes!) then you might miss the cookie case. That cookie case, up a step near the back register, has Italian-American treats like real tricolore cookies and almond horns imported from bakeries in New York and New Jersey, confections that simply explode with the flavors of Italian American abundance. So the question remains: Where to look? No matter, wherever you rest your eyes your tongue will find something in which to delight.
BEST ASIAN GROCERY United Noodles It was the surf clams that caused us to fritter away damn near an entire afternoon in this vast, but hard to find, market. As confirmed Asian food lovers, we were predictably agog over United Noodles' bounty even before we spotted the pretty clams. We'd ogled the vacuum-sealed cuttlefish, scanned the wall-long array of pot stickers and frozen dim sum items, and contemplated the very nicely priced bags of genmaicha, green tea with roasted rice. Then, there it was, a one-pound box of frozen giant surf clams--big, thorn-shaped beauties with wide white bases and brilliant crimson tips. We'd ordered them before, at various sushi restaurants, but it had never occurred to us that for $9 we might take them home. In an instant, we were committed. An aisle over, amid the produce, we found baby bok choy and napa cabbage. A little ways more, we picked up blistering sambal, fish sauce, and other condiments with which to dress our concoction. Oh yeah--and noodles. We got some fresh rice noodles to toss in with everything. Reader, it was an inspired trip. And all because of the surf clams.
BEST FISH MARKET Coastal Seafoods Dining at a fancy-pants boîte not long ago, we fell in love with a filet of skate, sautéed till crispy on the outside and napped with its classic accompaniment, brown butter. (Skate is a kind of a winged manta ray-looking critter that's a member of the shark family.) Days later, increasingly desperate to re-create the experience, we rang up Tom Lauer, general manager of Coastal Seafoods. Folks, Lauer didn't even draw breath before he launched into a veritable lecture on skate-ology. He gets skate some three times a week from Rhode Island, Oregon, and sometimes Washington. Because skate spoils easily, he gets it more frequently in the cooler months than in the summer. East Coast skate is smaller and more finely grained; West Coasters can get "really big." More to the point, Lauer was pretty sure we could re-create our restaurant revelation at home. (Indeed, where do you think those hoity-toity chefs get their catch of the day? A-yup, Lauer's their man, too.) The big drag with skate, he explained, is cleaning it. "It's hard to skin, it has sharp barbs on it, and if you cut yourself your cut can get infected," he said. We were relieved to learn that Coastal Seafood's fishmongers would clean our skate for us. Here's the bottom line: Coastal Seafoods will special order just about anything, and the staff is happy to help customers figure out the best cooking methods. You can either chat up the staff while you check the glass cases at one of Coastal's three outlets, or better yet, sign up for a class at either the Minneapolis or Wayzata shop.
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