key's downtown has moved

hey y'all, don't go to tenth and nicollet looking for key's because it's a condo. they should put up a sign that says "condo" because key's is now in the foshay tower. okay, it's not a condo yet, but it's gonna be, which kind of sucks, and it's terrible that let it be has been forced out, but on the other hand, downtown sucks. who wants to go there anyway? plus, now you can enjoy your favorite omelettes and pancakes in the foshizzle tower. it's on the first floor and i risked a parking ticket (avoided!) the other day to bring you the poop on the new locale. it feels a little like you're in the lobby of a fancy hotel, but it's hella big and has a bar. that doesn't impact breakfast much, but i'm assuming that now you can get bloody marys. which isn't a bad thing at all. the menu remains the same, that is, i got the same thing i always get (cheese omelette with italian sausage, garlic, onions, and mushrooms—don't even try to kiss me after that) and it was good, although expensive. it's a crazy pricey joint and may have gotten even pricier, but when you want that omelette, you want that omelette and nothing else will do. it's probably on my top ten of comfort foods all time.

so it's lost the diner feel, but i still think it's the best key's to go to, although that roseville key's pseduo-perkins vibe is still kind of nice every once in a while.

the great egg-in-a-frame experiment

martha stewart calls this egg-in-the-hole, but personally i think that's a little gross. she probably learned to make it in prison, is why it's so dirty.

so the other morning, graham (the littlest) and i set out to make this taste treat based on the recipe from everyday food, which calley now has a subscription to and which i heartily endorse. we've made pasta with sausage, bleu cheeseburgers, eggplant salad, rhubarb muffins, and asian chicken wraps. martha, you're a dirty bird but your staff make some kickass recipes.



so that's the recipe. look at those tasty little bread frisbees. those'd be good fried in some olive oil. what? that's what we're going to do? that's awesome.



here's calley cutting the hole (i mean frame) in the bread with a glass. we didn't have any cookie cutters, but it's got muppets on it, so that's good. we're still considering trying some thicker bread, although we've since gotten star-shaped cookie cutters. yeah, we're that awesome.



and these bad boys are ready to go. that's olive oil. i'd upload the recipe, but really, you'd have to be a moron to not be able to figure this one out. take the bread, make the holes, get 'em soaked up in olive oil, crack eggs into holes, cook, eat, digest, expel. now you are strong like prawn, not weak like shrimp.



here they are flipped over, which let me tell you, is the hardest part of the whole operation and a problem for which we have not yet found a good solution. because the whole point is you want some runny yolk up in that mug for that ass, but it's hard to accomplish. i'd advise not cooking so long and risking the salmonella. here, we've overdone them a bit, and the bread didn't get enough olive oil love on the side that is now face down. something to fix in the future. did i tell you to put plenty of salt and pepper up in there? do so.

i took a picture of it on the plate, but it doesn't look half so good as it does right there. it's damn hard to photograph food. you need glue and nail polish and stuff and then your breakfast is pretty much ruined. good for looking at, not so good for eating.

hotel breakfasts

this entry comes to us courtesy of my own dad on father's day, regarding hotel breakfasts. he's an expert, and if you're traveling, you'll find some good info here. holiday inn express, here i come.

Hotel breakfasts

As one who spends more than his fair share of time in hotels, I claim authority on hotel breakfasts. There are three kinds of hotel breakfasts.

1. Free continental. Think Best Western.

2. Ordinary breakfast buffet/order off the menu.

3. Serious breakfast buffet (a la late lamented Nicollet Island Inn).

(Are serious breakfast buffets really hotel breakfasts? Usually not. Here is the test: when they bring the bill, is it a hotel charge bill or a credit card charge bill? If the latter, then it’s not really a hotel breakfast. If the former, and you need to pay with a credit card, you face the Mount-Everest-level challenge of getting the waiter’s/ress’s attention after s/he thinks s/he is done with you and you have therefore become invisible.)

So, free continental. No free continental is better than a seven, but the best are decent and the worst are … the worst. (This is a seven where 10 is your hotel room has a balcony and 1 is your hotel room is a balcony.) Bad: bread for toast laid out so it gets stale; spongy little bagels, soggy fruit salad. Good: real bagels, choice of cereals, plausible pastries. There was a golden moment some years ago when some free continentals had uncooked batter alongside waffle irons, creating an adventure in self-help. Undoubtedly also an adventure in lawsuits. Best free continental at a chain: Holiday Inn Express, which generally holds the title as best mediocre hotel chain that will never surprise you. Best thing about free continental: you don’t have to talk to anybody.

Ordinary breakfast buffets generally suck. Because the food’s not good, only people with no option (ie hapless lazy transients like me) eat them. Hence the vat of scrambled eggs is old and cold, the bacon is soft and greasy, breads aren’t fresh, etc. Ordering off the menu is a better option, but you have to order something that’s not available at the buffet. What’s worse than ordering scrambled eggs and bacon only to watch the waiter/ress walk over and make up your plate with the three-hour-old stuff that’s on the line?

Serious breakfast buffet. Probably not really a hotel breakfast (see parenthetical statement above). Often only on Sunday. At its overpriced luxuriant best though, it conveys the promise of a breakfast so self-indulgent you won’t do a damned thing all day, an impression only enhanced by a make-your-own bloody mary bar. (All breakfasts in New Orleans have this high-point-of-the-day, now-we’re-coasting quality.) One good test of a serious buffet: they can’t fit the whole buffet in one room. Award goes to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, which has, as I recall, a separate room for meats and another for seafood. The most pretentious brunch that is good (or maybe that’s the best brunch that is pretentious) is the Four Seasons in Chicago. Other worthy brunches: the Equinox Inn in Manchester, VT and the jazz brunch at Barclay’s Intercontinental in Manhattan.

Room service is a whole other topic.

MIMOD @ barbette wrap-up

well, i'm hoping that nell can post some photos from the breakfast summit, which was a rollicking good time on a rainy saturday morning. that barbette has some nice decor, and it feels classy, but not too pretentiously so. the little bits of colored glass around the mirrors behind the bar match the lights that hang over the bar. that's good design.

i had the omelette with ham, mushrooms, and caramelized onions. one thing everyone could agree on is that it's cool to serve mixed greens with eggs instead of hash browns. it makes you feel almost (almost) healthy. i'm split on the caramelized onions because while they added a great smokiness to the omelette, i think they also made it excessively runny, i think. otherwise, a pretty good on-the-gourmet-side omelette.

calley had the buckwheat crepe with spinach and tomatoes and goat cheese, which i think won for taste, personally. goat cheese is just so damn good. j-no won the pretty breakfast award with the granola and fruit. the fruit included starfruit, which is exotic and star-shaped, just as the name would imply.

martin held down the eggs and breakfast meat end of things. this inspired us to consider specializing in different breakfast areas, much like delta force or the S.E.A.L.'s. so i specialize in omelettes, nell specializes in non-standard benedicts (she had the salmon benedict at the summit, which was good, although the toast was a little stiff), martin in workingman breakfasts and breakfast burritos.

overall a resounding success and it makes me happy to meet with people who love breakfast like me. barbette itself gets a 7.9 for being good and easy to be in and not too expensive and generally delivering the goods, although it's the kind of place where you're probably going to find one or two things that are quite great (like the crepes) and stick to those. these kind of places aren't bad, you just got to know what to get. 1 is a hot and humid day when you have to move, and 10 is any day when you're not moving.

MIMOD

is not an acronym for What the Fuck is an Acronym. it's an acronym for Most Important Meal of the Day. apparently there's been some confusion. so now you know, and knowing is half the battle. go joe.

barbette – mimod summit

all right, it seems like barbette is someplace that many of us here at mimod are in need of trying so let's get it together. what does everyone's schedule look like? i'm thinking either saturday or sunday, which isn't terribly creative but i'm assuming the most people will be free. alternatively, if everybody can do it late week is fine with me. let's say saturday at 11:00 am unless somebody has a good reason not to be there. if anybody who's reading wants in, post a comment and we'll pencil it in.

louisiana cafe :: somethingsomething selby ave, saint paul

i'm too lazy to check the address right now. get off 94 at dale and then turn right. it's on selby and dale. here's an oddity: there are four places with the same menu and different names in the twin cities: the grandview grill, the louisana cafe, the calhoun grill, and the uptown diner. same ... exact ... menu. but there are like three keys cafes (at least) in the metro area and they're all way more different than these ones with the same name.

and do you spell omelette like or like omelet? alex and i are going to have words on this one.

okay, enough. i was there for a breakfast meeting, so i couldn't focus totally on the food, but i know what to expect. coffee is good, delivered in pot form, which is good, but the half and half is in creamers, which isn't as good. i kept meaning to ask for skim milk, which is a nice option when it's provided no questions asked, but i kept forgetting, so now i'm fat. -ter.

i got the cajun benedict, which is nell's favorite there, but i didn't switch out the hash browns for sweet potato fries. she recommends that. and the cajun benedict is great. they have some of the best hollandaise sauce ever, and the andouille sausage is perfectamundo. or perfectomundo. i don't know. there tex mex is also fab as is the straight up cajun breakfast, although with both those i recommend the half-orders. these breakfasts are just freaking huge. atmosphere is kind of diner-y, in a midwest kind of way. if you're from the midwest, just think of it as diner-y.

so i give it an 8.5 out of 10, where 10 is getting a check in the mail from your gas company from like five years ago because you overpaid your last bill and 1 is paying your gas bill.

Top Ten Twin Cities Breakfasts

In no order:

1. Al's Breakfast
2. Mickey's (either)
3. Bryant Lake Bowl
4. Sunny Side Up
5. Uptown Bar
6. Louisiana/uptown/calhoun/grandview diner
7. Uptowner (St. Paul Grand Ave.)
8. Triple Rock
9. Victor's
10. Parkview Cafe

11. What?! No Key's??? well, I haven't been there in over a year, so that disqualified it. Also, I feel like Bonnie's in St. Paul on University has potential...still gotta check it out.

Modern Cafe Sat., May 28

Well, this was a letdown. After having heard good things about this place, it did not live up to my expectations. First the pros: Good coffee, quick refills. I like the atmosphere and my friend's wife works there. Alex and I arrived before Dan and enjoyed these elements of the Modern. We were, however, hungry in that one-track mind kinda way.

The menu is too specific. Strange things that are set in stone. And Alex couldn't get tomatoes in her omlette. Not that big of a deal, though. I ordered two eggs over easy (see: undercooked and runny), bacon (excellent, thick), hashbrowns (fine, yawn), and wheat toast (a little underbuttered). Dan's sausage was weird. But his eggs were fine. Go figure.

It deserves another chance, I suppose. I really like their counterspace--seems like a good place to sit on a rainy Tuesday.