Busy Weekend

The nice thing about living in the Cities is you can be a day away from the weekend with no plans at all, and then suddenly your schedule is pretty full. Saturday night we met JenO and Ken for dinner in Eagan at a little neighborhood joint not far from their house. Bibo was formerly Vivo Italia, and was taken over by the i nonni people of Lilydale. Their wine list is a bit unusual for the casual drinker, but plenty of good stuff on there. I had the brachetto, which is a red sparkling and darn tasty! Their menu is not deep, but there is enough to choose from. I *highly* recommend the mostaccioli dish - it was wonderful. They also have a deep-fried grilled cheese app (or similar) that was quite good. It's nice to have a neighborhood place like that in walking distance - something E.P. does not seem to have.

On Sunday, we went for brunch at Spoonriver in downtown Minneapolis, right next door to the Guthrie. The wonderful thing about Brenda Langton's place is that everything tastes like it was fresh-picked out of the garden about five minutes before it arrives on your plate. If you are going for brunch, I definitely recommend the hash browns.

Next up was "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Guthrie. "Two Gentlemen" was Shakespeare's first comedy and therefore not one of his best, but the staging was interesting in that it was set in the 1950s. Some of the character actors were more engaging than the leads. In a nice twist of events, our tickets were free as they were donated to us by a former colleague of mine. Yay!