Local edition: giveaway for Bonfire on Grand gift certificate - Dairy Foods

Today's giveaway is for my lovely local (Minnesota) readers for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Bonfire on Grand Avenue. I wish I could win my own giveaway!

Bonfire on Grand is an awesome restaurant that holds many special memories. My honey and I had our first "real" date at Bonfire and I can clearly remember all the details about the night; the table we sat at next to the fireplace and how cute he looked in the blue sweater he was wearing. We also had our rehearsal dinner at Bonfire and more than I can count nights drinking martinis and listening to dueling pianos.

Bonfire serves American and Southwestern cuisine and has some great specials throughout the week including:

- 1/2 price bottles of select wine every Monday
- 1/2 price house margaritas every Wednesday
- 1/2 price on all appetizers and pizzas Sunday-Friday 3-5:30pm
- $2 off all drinks Monday-Thursday 3-6pm and 9-close, Fridays from 3-6pm.

To enter the giveaway for a $50 Bonfire gift certificate comment on this post on one of the following:

- A favorite Bonfire memory
- A food/drink menu item you love or want to try

Entries close at 11:59pm CT on Sunday, January 31st and I will announce the winner on Monday. Good luck!





{Photo credits: Bonfire on Grand}

Local edition: D'Amico Kitchen - Dairy Foods

I recently had an awesome lunch with a couple of my fave coworkers at D'Amico Kitchen. D'Amico Kitchen is the recession-chic Italian restaurant that replaced Chambers in Minneapolis.

I love the decor of this place; light, airy, feminine, classy and a bit minimalist. What drew Diane, Amelia and I in for lunch last week was the 3 items for $10 lunch special. The menu includes a choice of three of the following:

Tomato soup
Caesar salad
Mixed green salad
Beet salad
Spicy fried calamari
Mushroom risotto
1/2 suckling pig panini
1/2 grilled asiago sandwich
1/2 meatball sandwich

Our food was absolutely fantastic.

Tomato soup, 1/2 meatball sandwich and the beet salad.

Tomato soup, spicy fried calamari and grilled asiago sandwich. The soup was velvety and delicious, with a perfect tangy flavor. The calamari was arguably the best I have ever had. It included fried capers, red peppers and parsley which gave it an awesome texture.

The lighting was just right in the restaurant to take some decent photos.

A pretty chandelier above the parmesan round.

The cool bar. I'd love to sit here drinking a glass of Prosecco after work.

I would definitely recommend D'Amico Kitchen to anyone looking for a quality lunch for a really good price.

Local edition: Loto Life Cafe - Dairy Foods

My sister and I went to Loto Life Cafe for happy hour on Saturday afternoon. After two visits, I like this place, but I really want to love it. The location is ideal, about 3 miles from my house, in Lowertown St. Paul (Loto is short for Lowertown). It's owned by David Fhima, Twin Cities restaurteur (also owner to Zahtar in Minneapolis and no-longer-opened Fhima and Louis XIII). The decor is modern and simple with a touch of chic, the floor to ceiling windows have a gorgeous view of Mears park. The menu is casual; sandwiches, wraps and pizza. This place has all the right ingredients but still somehow falls a bit short.

I am a sucker for a good happy hour menu which led me to Loto in the first place. Their happy hour menu is a nice blend of drink specials and lower-priced appetizers. The downside is that during the week happy hour is from 2pm - 5pm. I'm not sure about you but most people I know work until 5pm. The upside is that they extend happy hour throughout the weekend (pretty much all day Sunday).

During happy hour they have a $5.50 daily pizza. The one shown below is pepperoni and mushroom. It was solid, oozing with cheese, just enough sauce and a nice crunch in the thin crust. We also ordered risotto croquettes, they were alright but needed more cheese. Overall, I would say the food is decent, but not great.

If you live anywhere near St. Paul, Loto is worth the trip but don't have super high expectations. If you do check it out and let me know what you think.

{Photo credit: Loto Life Cafe}

Note, I know the photos I take myself are complete crap. I have a 3 year old digital camera that is pretty worthless and admittedly, I know nothing about photography. One goal I have for 2010 is to purchase a new, nice camera that as long as I point and shoot, will take a decent food photo. Anyone have any suggestions?

Latte art - Dairy Foods

I've been to Black Sheep Cafe two weekends in a row because I am a coffee fiend, love breakfast food and enjoy spending lazy mornings at cafes. My mom, sister, aunt and sister-in-law had a "ladies morning" and met for coffee on Sunday.

Unfortunately, Black Sheep was out of quiche (get there early, they only served it on the weekend mornings!) but did create some beautiful latte art for us to enjoy.

Check out the lattes my mom and I ordered below, how cool is that?! Click here for the post on Black Sheep from a few days ago.

The huge cupcake my mom had for breakfast. Yum!

Black Sheep Cafe - Dairy Foods

One thing I really love about living in South Saint Paul is Black Sheep Cafe. Black Sheep Cafe embodies all things that make a wonderful coffee shop; amazing food, great coffee, a relaxing and well-designed space and live music.

I go to Black Sheep as often as I can. It's the kind of place you can hang out in all day long; all you need is a cup of coffee, a slice of quiche and a seat by the window.

It doesn't get much better than meeting up at Black Sheep with my lovely sister, sipping coffee and tea and spending the morning together, which is exactly what we did last Saturday.

This quiche is so amazing and only $3.50 a slice. I've made quiche a few times and it has never tasted like this. It is light, fluffly, creamy and so delicious.

Cafe Latte - Dairy Foods

I have a favorite street corner, Victoria and Grand Ave in St. Paul, MN. What this corner means to me is my first apartment right out of college, eating chocolate cake with Amy at Cafe Latte too many times, meeting my bridesmaids at Bread and Chocolate the day before my wedding for breakfast, having an amazing rehearsal dinner at Bonfire, getting massages and facials at Juut, having pumpkin spiced lattes with Jill just days before she had her baby, etc. The list could go on and on.

Below are photos from last Saturday. Good friends Kristin, Libby and I went wedding dress shopping for Kristin's wedding that is coming up in about 10 months (I am her matron of honor, so excited!) We oohed and aahed over how gorgeous she was in each and every dress and then because shopping builds up an appetitie of course, we stopped off at Cafe Latte for lunch.

I love Cafe Latte. The soups, salads, location, the space, the nice people, the desserts...oh my god the desserts.

Chicken caesar pasta.

Spicy chicken salsa chili. I get this 9 out of 10 times I am at Cafe Latte.

Kristin's chocolate cupcake. Yum.

Palomino's happy hour - Dairy Foods

I rediscovered Palomino's happy hour a couple weeks ago with a group of coworkers. I used to go to Palomino all the time when I first started working downtown Minneapolis. I remember drinking way too many cosmos and staying out too late on a weeknight. But hey, I was in my early 20's and that's the kind of stuff you can get away with at that age, right?

Fast forward a couple, er six years and I found myself back at Palomino, but this time I drank a beer and left at a reasonable hour.

The pretty drink below is a cranberry mojito (My coworker Amelia's drink of choice) and it was only $4. We also got a pepperoni pizza (all pizzas are only $5 during happy hour) and a platter with pita bread, roasted garlic, blue cheese and tomato chutney. That was half off and I believe it was only $6-$7ish. We had great service, the food was delish and the bar area had a cool vibe.

Happy hour is all day Sunday-Thursday, Friday and Saturday 4pm-6pm and 10pm to close. Check out the menu here.

Al Vento never disappoints - Dairy Foods

I've been to Al Vento in South Minneapolis a few times now and each time the food is delicious, service is great and I am pleasantly surprised by the reasonable prices on the menu.

Emily and I met for dinner to celebrate her 30th birthday towards the end of September. We were lucky enough to get one of the last nice days of late summer and sat on Al Vento's lovely patio.

What we ordered:

Sample of four bruschetta
Gnocchi with mushrooms
Pizza with salami toscano with tomatoes, artichoke and fresh mozzarella

I can't remember what day of the week we were there but they also had half priced wine which was awesome. I've been to Al Vento each time with girlfriends but it would also be a great date night restaurant. The space is small, intimate and romatic.

Date night at Bar Lurcat - Dairy Foods

I love date night with my honey. Dates nights don't always have to include dinner and drinks at a fancy smancy restaurant, I can hang out at home in my pj's with a good bowl of homemade soup and a movie, but the nights out on the town are nice too! And that's exactly what Erik and I did last Friday night at Cafe/Bar Lurcat.

If you read my blog then you know Bar Lurcat is one of my favorite restaurants. The lovely, crystal chandelieres and the to-die-for french fries with bernaise are among the many reasons it is a fave of mine.

Last week was restaurant week which meant we got an awesome deal of a 3 course meal for $30. We shared one of the 3 course meals and supplemented that with an appetizers and too many sides, we ate and ate and ate. Oh, and drank quite a bit. I got some really special news at work last week and we celebrated with champagne and martinis. I'm not sure it gets better than that.

On the menu was the following:

Oysters on the half shell
Ginger fried rice with shrimp, sausage and egg
Roasted cauliflower
French fries
Halibut with proscuitto butter and roasted cherry tomatoes
Homemade mini donuts
Lavendar martini
Cava (x 2, for me)
Dirty martini (x 2, for Erik)

Wolfgang Puck's 20.21 - Dairy Foods

When I'm not blogging, cooking or throwing parties I can be found downtown Minneapolis working at an ad agency. Yup, that's my day job. I consider myself pretty darn lucky to have a job over the past 5 and a half years that I actually like, a lot. Some days I'd even say I love it. It's my ad agency gig that allows me to dine at fabulous places like 20.21 in the Walker Art Museum. I work in Media which means I get to hang out with great Media brands/content providers like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fortune Magazine, BBC network, Architectural Digest, Better Homes and Gardens, social media like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and the list goes on and on.

These partners take me and my team at work out to dinner on a fairly regular basis. Did I mention above how much I like my job (oh yeah...I did). Fortune magazine took my team and I to 20.21 the other week and we ordered the tasting menu. Oh my god it was the most amazing array of courses, 10 courses to be exact. By the end of dinner I was experiencing physical pain from eating too much.

I won't say much more because the photos speak for themselves. If you can swing the steep prices at 20.21, go immediately.

My bellini - champagne with passion-fruit puree. I could have drank 99 of these, they were so good, but I practiced some self control (with the drinks, not the food) and only had one.

Possibly my favorite part of the entire meal, the tuna sashimi cup. Everyone should experience this once. Chicken cashew salad. My boss, Kathy's favorite.

Shrimp tempura.

Chicken in a lettuce cup.

The dinner entrees piled on my plate. I can't even begin to remember everything here.

A cookie buffet for dessert. Those are homemade marshmallows on the left.

Some sort of chocolate dessert. I had a bite but at this point in the dinner I was beginning to hurt. The best part of the dessert is the chocolate spoon with the cherry, to replicate the sculpture in the garden in from of the museum.