The Quest for “Our Place” – Part 1: Annie’s Parlour

Today was the first day since Grandma’s closed that my wife and I tried to find a replacement.  In actuality, we’re looking for two things that we would hopefully find in one restaurant.  The first thing we’re looking for is for fantastic burgers.  The burgers must be juicy, with a hint or so of bite from the grill, and not be a simple pre-made patty topped with random accoutrements (I just used the word “accoutrements” to describe burger toppings.  Ha!). 

As mentioned in the previous post, we had previously tried Fuddruckers, and were generally satisfied.  It wasn’t a wonderful burger, but it was better than average.  However, we’re looking for a fantastic burger.  More importantly, we’re looking for the aforementioned second thing, which is more pressing than the quality of the burger.  We’re looking of a place that can be considered “our place”; a place in which we would almost always want to go, and can easily function as a fallback should other plans fall through.  Fuddruckers clearly fails this test.

The “our place” requirement is stringent, but not too stringent.  In fact, it doesn’t even need to have good burgers at all.  What it needs are a few excellent menu items in general.  The entire menu need not be great, but there needs to be a few things that stand out. 

Quite importantly, the place also needs to have a very laid-back atmosphere, preferably that of a non-generic bar and grill or a somewhat realistic Irish pub.  For the former, we do have The Chatterbox Pub in Minneapolis as a possibility.  But while the Chatterbox has a decent atmosphere (unfortunately, the clientele can be a little yuppie at times), food and drink is expensive, and there are no menu items that stand-out.  They used to have a very tasty chicken with garlic sauce french bread pizza, but they got rid of that a little over a year ago.  So now, when I leave after a meal and some drinks at the Chatterbox, I inevitably find myself rather unsatisfied and my wallet emptier.

For the latter, the Irish pubs, there is Kieran’s and The Local.  While Kieran’s is pretty good as far as atmosphere goes, and a great place to hang out and have a beer, especially on the patio, the food is anything but special.  As for The Local, well, I’ve had my problems with The Local.  Plus, it’s not really an Irish pub.  It’s an Irish pub in a warehouse filled with Nicollet Mall yuppies.  However, they do have two great food items: Irish Whiskey Chicken Shots and Wee Burgers.  So I do find myself there periodically, but it will never be our place.

Enough with my extremely long-winded preamble and let’s get to today’s attempt to find a place.  Number Seven on Citysearch’s 2007 Best Hamburgers in the Twin Cities list: Annie’s Parlour, located in Dinkytown near the University of Minnesota, at 313 14th Ave SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414.

The place itself is located upstairs above Dinkytown shops, and has a nice outdoor patio.  It’s primarily a malt shop, but does serve beer and wine.  The inside is essentially what you would expect from a malt shop atmosphere.  That is, it is very parlour-like (who’d a thought?).  That’s a problem at the outset.  Annie’s does not feel like a place where you would sit around for awhile sipping a beer.  In fact, I would feel a little uncomfortable doing so even on the patio.  It has a very strong family-friendly feel.  That’s not a criticism, per se, but it violates the standards for becoming “our place.”

The food itself was quite tasty.  I did enjoy the burger.  It was nicely juicy, but without the bite of the grill I was hoping for.  The toppings were decent, but the tomato was too strong, and the pickles has a slightly odd flavor.  But again, the burger itself was very good, so I don’t want to knock it too much.  I do want to give them kudos for the malts, though.  My wife and I shared a chocolate malt, and it was one of the best I’ve had in the Twin Cities (far better than Grandma’s or Fuddruckers, which I was never a big fan of anyway).  It’s not something to go there solely for, but it was very good.

And, I hate to do this since it sounds like I’m really knocking the place, getting to and from Annie’s is a bit of a pain.  With the 35W bridge being out, there is no convenient way to get to it (and, depressingly, we had to pass by the empty Grandma’s to get there), and parking in Dinkytown is always a pain.  We went there on a Saturday afternoon and not evening for a reason, we did not want to fight parking.

This was the final straw in the attempt to make Annie’s our place.  While the burgers were good, they weren’t great, and the far more easily accessible Fuddruckers has better.  The atmosphere was better at Annie’s, but like I said, it’s just not the style we’re looking for anyway.

That said, I do want to say that the service was impeccable.  Very attentive and friendly.  Our waitress even informed us that we should order a smaller, less expensive, order of fries because the one we were trying to order would be far too much for us.  And, wow, was she right.  The smaller one we ended up getting was still way too much.

So, in sum, while it was a good place, Annie’s Parlour just isn’t good enough to frequent often, especially given its inconvenient location.

“Inconvenient location.”  Oy, I’m becoming old.

Cheers,
Charlie

Goodbye Grandma’s Saloon and Grill

Since I apparently don’t update this weblog at all anymore, especially with anything more than a link or two, I feel it necessary to at least do a quick summary of the two events I’ve been meaning to write about, but for which I will apparently not get to long posts.  I’m not one for the descriptive writing, so bear with me.  The first event I speak of is the shame of the closing of Grandma’s Saloon and Grill in Minneapolis.

In my law school days I would routine the restaurant far more often than I’d ever want to admit.  Their burgers were the best in Minnesota, hands down.  They had a great amount of greasy/juiciness, with just the right amount of bite from the grill.  Complete with tomato, pickles, mayo, and caramelized onions, they were unbeatable (and I’ve tried a number of the “best burger” places in the Twin Cities, and there is no comparison.  Matt’s Bar or The Nook?  Please, those are second-rate rather tasteless hunks of meat with cheese in the middle).

In addition to the best burgers, Grandma’s also had wonderful mozzarella sticks.  You haven’t had mozzarella sticks until you’ve had Grandma’s.  The stick is far larger than your average stick, and is always full of melted, stringy mozzarella, with no cavities like most sticks.

See, I like food, and while I’m generally not into the more gourmet-fare, I am an aficionado of the medium-brow food.  So much so that I am completely convinced that the best medium-brow food can beat the best high-brow food any day.  Give me a slice of Ginelli’s pizza, and I’ll show you the gateway to heaven.  Give me a filet mignon, and I’ll, well, eat it and enjoy it, but I won’t absolutely love it.

Because of this, I am very unhappy that the Grandma’s in the Twin Cities closed on May 22nd.  My wife and I made sure to make three trips within a two week period to get as much as possible before it closed, and even though it was a bit too much grease in too short a period, I now find myself desiring one of their burgers.

As I said, we’ve tried other burger places, and are now on a quest to find a replacement.  I was quite surprised to find that the burgers at Fuddruckers were pretty good.  It reaches nowhere near the level of Grandma’s, but still better than your average restaurant, where what passes for a good burger is a non-spiced pre-made patty topped with “special” items.  No people, a good burger is not solely about what it’s topped with, it’s about the juiciness and flavor of the burger itself.  Most places don’t understand this, including many of the “best burger” places in the Twin Cities.

As for Fuddruckers, like I said, the burger was good, not great, but the main problem is that it’s just not what could ever become “my place”.  It’s too generic, and too family oriented.  In addition to the great food, Grandma’s was a fun bar and grill atmosphere.  It was near a few professional schools at the University of Minnesota as well as fairly near the Metrodome, giving it a decent clientele.  Almost all fixtures and booths were made of wood, there was plenty of silly kitsch on the walls, and the windows were accented with stained-glass.

Please forgive the bad cellphone pictures.

The three-story building itself is quite a fixture of Minneapolis, and I’m afraid that it will probably be torn down to build a smaller version of what’s across the street; a monstrosity of yuppie-ville apartment living.  It’s obnoxious modern apartment architecture that will inevitably look as bad as 70s design looks to us now.

This would lead me into my second topic, but I’ve written far longer on Grandma’s than I ever expected.  As such, medium-brow food tour of Iowa City, complete with more rants about yuppie-ville architecture encroachment, will have to wait until later.

For now, I just want to say goodbye to Grandma’s.  There are still a couple near Duluth, and that will probably finally give me the final motivation to actually make a trip there, but I’ll very much miss having Grandma’s as our go-to restaurant here.  Oh, the burgers.  I want one now.

Cheers,
Charlie

July 24, 2008 Update:
It appears that Grandma’s is now an Applebee’s.  This could hardly be more of a kick in the teeth.

August 4, 2008 Update:
Correction, Grandma’s is not now an Applebee’s.  It’s currently empty.  I don’t know what my friend was thinking.

You May Have Already Not Won the Lottery!

I was just randomly checking my non-political blog (the blog you’re currently reading) stats, and even though I haven’t updated for about two weeks or so, and to my amazement my site-views have shot up dramatically over the past few days.  I was quite surprised, honestly, and then I figured out why.  The vast majority of the views were of my lottery scam post, and the vast majority of them came from searches related to the scam email.  Which means, of course, there must be a new wave of these emails, and people wanted to figure out if it was legitimate.

Now, I’m happy that people know enough to at least question these emails, but I’m also very disturbed that to a certain level, some think it’s even a possibility that these emails are legitimate.  In fact, it rather scares me.

So, if you’re one of those people who have found my blog through a search of some keywords in a lottery email, please take note of the following: you have not won the lottery.  You will never win the lottery.  When you receive an email stating that you won a lottery you never even entered, you have not won the lottery.  When said email comes from a country you’ve never even been to, again, you have not won the lottery.  When the email also contains innumerable typos, say it with me now, you have not won the lottery.

That said, if you’re reading this you have just won the Rumpusgoopus/Comrus lottery!  To collect your winnings please send me all your personal information, bank account numbers, social security numbers, and your mother’s maiden name, and I’ll send you a check for 9,340,000,000,000 British Pounds Sterling ($3,000 of which you’ll have to send back to me for tax purposes).

Cheers,
Charlie

The Best of Comrus: The Coffee Machine Incident

This post originally appeared on January 24, 2007 at http://weblog.xanga.com/ComRus/565442860/item.html.

It’s amazing how much I can make a fool of myself.  I’m an intelligent human being, but for some reason I continuously find myself in an awkward situation, usually of my own doing.  Yesterday, I tried out coffee for the first time in many, many years.  In fact, I hadn’t had coffee for eight years now.  The last time I had coffee I was a Freshman in college cramming for an exam (hehe, cramming for a college exam.  How inappropriate my stress, especially given my eventual law school experience), and I ended up “overdosing.”  Okay, I exaggerate, I didn’t exactly overdose.  What happened is that I had too much vending machine coffee so that I ended up shaking and too hyper.  The end result was failure to study, and excessive shakiness.

And thus ended my coffee drinking days.  To be honest, I never really liked the stuff to begin with.  Sure, I put in one part sugar to half-parts coffee, but I still had to throw it down my gullet in order to drink it.  It’s just something I’ve never been able to handle.  But it did promise caffeine, and that was enough to give it a shot.

And the promise of caffeine is exactly why I tried it again yesterday.  You see, I’ve had many a can of Diet Mountain Dew while working of late.  It really has done nothing to improve my situation, especially when I was working the demeaning temp job starting at 6:30 AM.  But now that I work more reasonable hours, I though it would do something for me, but unfortunately the grogginess persists.

It’s not like this is anything new, my opinion of caffeine is that it works to keep me awake when I’m trying to sleep, but completely fails in making me feel more alert.  And yet, I continue to try.

At about 9:00 yesterday I broke down.  My eyes were as droopy as Droopy’s eyes (oh, that’s why he had that name!).  Luckily, I wasn’t as groggy as I was last week, when I would have taken a few hours struggling with the concept of multiplication (two apples times two apples equals four apples?!  What the hell is two apples times two apples?!  And then I would realize it’s actually two apples times two, and everything would still be equally as unclear), but I wasn’t quite fully awake. 

I headed to the break room to find the coffee dispensers completely empty.  Darn it.  So I waited a bit to see what people do when that happens, since I had no idea what I was doing.  A person finally came in, but alas, she headed off to the pop machine.  I was not out of luck, however, as she had coins, and the pop machine had been rejecting them of late.  Sure enough, her coins were rejected, and she headed to the coffee machine.  She pulled a mug out of the cabinet (ah, so that’s where they were), and pushed some button on the coffee maker and filled her cup.  So that’s how it’s done, you push a button and it’s dispensed from the coffee maker.  This was no ordinary home coffee maker, this was a commercial coffee maker.  However, I couldn’t figure out how the coffee dispensers/makers to the right of this coffee maker were different from this coffee maker.

But they were empty, and I had a coffee maker/dispenser that apparently brewed fresh, so I decided to have a go at it.  I grabbed a mug from the large cache of mugs (which just rubbed in the fact that I didn’t have a real legal job, since every single one had the name of the firm prominently printed on them), and I was set to make coffee.  Well, I was set to make coffee if I could figure out just what button the woman had pushed.  There was a spout-like thing to the side, but it was clear that this was only for hot water.  There was a brew button, but since there was no carafe in sight, I pondered as to whether or not hitting the button was for just one cup.  Since the previous person had just filled up a cup, and because the brew button was actually a switch which can be turned on an off, I decided that all I would have to do is turn it on, and when the cup was full, turn in back off.

Luckily for me, there was a sea of coffee mugs in the cabinet.

I pushed the brew button, and instead of switching on, the switch/button returned to its original position.  In fact, despite the fact that it looked like a switch, it wasn’t.  The coffee started coming out, so I raised my mug, quite concerned as to whether it would stop after only one.  Naturally, it didn’t.

In true “I Love Lucy” form, the coffee just kept coming.  I sprinted to the cabinet (which was only a couple steps away, but given the situation, I think “sprint” is a good description of what I did), grabbed another mug, and put it under the machine after the first mug was full.  I scrambled to figure out how to stop this.  There was no carafe, and the machine just wouldn’t stop.  In fact, coffee came out faster and faster.  I decided to pull the plug, but sadly, this didn’t do anything.  The coffee just kept coming, and I kept grabbing mugs.

For a second, I pondered just leaving, but I couldn’t just leave such a mess in the break room.  Someone would eventually notice, and even if I wasn’t found out, I would feel extremely guilty for creating such a mess.  I just really didn’t want anyone to see the absurd situation I had created for myself.  And then someone entered.

Luckily for me, he continued straight through to the other door.  Phew, he never even looked over at me putting mug after mug under the machine.  But then there I was, a person with seven years of education beyond high school, a licensed attorney, struggling with a constantly pouring coffee machine with no carafe to save me.

And then, behind the microwave, I saw it.  A carafe!  I was saved.  I grabbed it… and it was mostly full.  No use!  I didn’t have the time to empty it, I still had to put mug after mug under the coffee maker.  I looked down at my collection of 15 filled mugs and took solace in the fact that if a person came in they might have thought that I was bringing back coffee to a lot of people; filling the mugs directly being the most efficient way.

I then saw a carafe at the other end of the room.  I took a chance, put an empty mug under the machine, and ran over to the carafe.  Luckily, it was empty.  I ran back over, and put it under.  Ah, saved.  But, um, this coffee maker appears like it might have a direct water line.  If that’s true, then it just might not stop when the carafe filled.  Yet again I searched for some sort of off button, but there was none.  I decided that it just had to stop when it filled the carafe, more out of desire to get out of this situation than actual conviction.  I quickly exited the break room and sat at my computer drinking the awful coffee that I brought with me (only one mug, of course, I dumped the rest down the sink), as I neglected to even add sugar in my quest to flee the room.

The thought of the coffee maker never left my mind.  Not only was I not sure that the machine would stop, but my unplugging it might have actually made it mechanically unable to stop.  Okay, just code documents, you’ll be all right… maybe.  Fine, go check, it’s not like they’ll necessarily blame you.  You can act like you just came into this mess, having nothing to do with the actual beginnings of it, acting all angered about the “person” who did do this.

When I entered the break room a person was attending to the coffee machine with a very confused look on her face.  She looked at me and said that someone had apparently brewed some coffee into this random carafe, and she didn’t know if it was regular or decaf, but if I wanted some, go ahead, although she was going to brew some more.  She then took one of the dispensers that were to the right of the maker, and placed it under the maker. 

Oooooooooooooohhhhh.  The dispensers weren’t coffee makers themselves, but actually carafes.  Well, that makes sense.

For the rest of the day, despite everything I ate, I couldn’t shake the coffee aftertaste.  Yet another reason for me not to drink coffee.

But hey, I found teabags today!  And the coffee machine has a hot water nozzle on it, so that I can… wait a minute… oh, yeah, that makes sense… the woman who poured “coffee” out of the machine poured out hot water for tea. 

Silly me.

Cheers,
Charlie