Another Mystery Date

Another busy week! After Wednesday’s malbec tasting, I had the Keith Urban concert at Xcel Center in downtown St. Paul Thursday night. I met up with Dee Dodge and her brother beforehand for drinks/snacks at Pop!!, the successor to the Pop! Restaurant in NE. It took over the old Fhima’s space and did a nice makeover. Their food is nothing amazing, but it is darn cheap on happy hour special. The concert was, of course, awesome, and I am looking forward to seeing him again in Milwaukee in June.

Friday night we went shopping for light fixtures as, for no apparent reason, our townhouse has hardly any ceiling lights so we have been living primarily by lamplight. We finally decided to get smart and hire an electrician to put lights in four rooms. Shopping for lighting fixtures was fun; for the first time ever in my life I “got” the allure of the home improvement center! Al put in two of our lights Saturday and will finish the other two tonight. We are unbelievably excited to have light in our house!!

On Sunday we had a fairly lazy day, which included going to see Angels & Demons (not my fave), massages at Elements and naps! But on Saturday…

Mystery Date
Saturday night was one of my mystery dates, which was essentially a tour of St. Paul. First up was dinner at W.A. Frost, in the Cathedral Hill area. Frost’s is classic St. Paul, but I had only been there before once on their patio and once in the bar, so going to dinner was a different experience. (Mind you, one should always hang out on their patio on a nice summer day!).

They had a 6-course tasting menu, so we decided to go for it. Josh got the regular tasting menu, and I got the vegetarian one. Not because I don’t like meat (love it!), but because it was fun to get something different and there were several yummy-looking pasta items on the vegetarian menu, which is always good in my book. We also got the wine pairings. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask for a copy of the menu on our way out, so I’ll have to recreate as best I can.

My amuse bouche was a single mascarpone ravioli in a sweet pea/mint puree. Very good and fresh tasting, though you really couldn’t taste the ravioli. Josh’s was a short rib in an jalapeno sauce.

Next up was a corn bisque with a sweet chili oil drizzle. Mine had a poached egg in the middle and Josh’s had shrimp and chorizo croquettes in it. The bisque was delicious, mostly because the chili oil kept things interesting.

Next I had an herb and mushroom gnocchi. It was good, but almost seemed as if it was served too hot to get much flavor from it (maybe it didn’t have much flavor to begin with). It reminded me of onion-flavored tater tots and I feel like they were overdone compared to other gnocchi I have had. Josh’s dish was skate wing with cabbage in a foie gras juice. He said the skate wing was pretty fishy tasting, so I didn’t try it. My newfound willingness to try seafood only goes so far!

My main entrée was a raspberry risotto with walnut topping. I didn’t eat very much because it was fruity and therefore very dessert-tasting to me — almost like a rice pudding or something. Josh’s was some kind of lamb, very tender and buttery and tasty. Mm, lamb. Baa.

We sort of missed out on our next two courses as we had to get moving on to the next stage of the mystery date. A little bit of poor planning, I guess, except we didn’t know we were going to get the tasting menus! We should have warned the server we were on a schedule and didn’t, so I felt bad about that.

The fifth course was a cheese with a lavash cracker. The sixth course was dessert, with samples of three things: creme brulee, a warm chocolate cake with crushed orange (candy?) on top and an almond torte of some kind. Hard to remember since we took about one bite of each thing and got the heck out of there.

Wine-wise I know we started with a (cava?), which was quite good, went on to a pinot gris, then a couple of reds. The last two – again, which we barely tasted, was something liquorice-y (blah) and then a basic port. I wasn’t too sad to have missed out on those two!

Phase Two of our date was to see comedian Steven Wright at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul. We skated into our front row seats all of about 60 seconds before the lights went down and he came on. Steven Wright is famous for whipping off one liners one right after another, which he did for 90 minutes straight, except for a random song or two in the middle. It was entertaining and he had some good jokes. I was surprised there was no opening act. I also decided I would be pretty scared to meet him in a dark alley based on appearance!

After the show we went to the bar at Kincaid’s, mostly to kick back. We did order the Kobe beef meatloaf sliders, which were three for only $4 (happy hour special). Even though Josh thinks turning Kobe beef into anything as mundane as meatloaf is sacrilege, they were darn good! Josh had a vanilla sky martini and I had a moscato, and then it was home and off to bed!