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neogrammarian is back in Minneapolis this weekend and last night we (me, her, buttonlass, and her friend named Heather) went to Auriga. Auriga used to be her favorite restaurant, the first 'good' restaurant she had ever gone to regularly. So we went back there, even though the chef has changed (I think? Like a guy who was sous chef is not head chef? He won "Best local chef" this year from the city pages) and its not really the same place. We figured, hell, it's a good restaurant still and we'll see what happens.
Result: Good wine. One good entree. One pretty good vegan entree. Two bad specials. Pretty lousy service. Neat amuse bouches. Decent starters.
We got there on time and our table wasn't ready. No big deal, but the entryway had no good spot for real loitering, and we didn't want to sit down. It was also odd because half of the restaurant was empty (on a Saturday night?) and yet the table they wanted to shuttle us to wasn't prepped. A big obnoxious New Yorker came in after us, also with a table of four. They got seated first and consistently served first throughout the night. This was irksome.
The waitress was nice enough and had perfunctory answers about the food, but seemed to lack any real knowledge. She certainly didn't have any good answers about the wine. I picked (I am not used to being the guy to pick the wine, though I am getting better at it. I wore a blazer. They called me Mister Perry) the "Venica, Collio, Tocai-Friuliano, Friuli, Italy 2003" because I like Tocai's from Friulia and Surdyks, where I buy my wine (thanks to a discount) only has one Tocai and it is miserable. It was refreshing and tasty and went well with their little amuses.
They were not prepared for a vegan. They were also not really prepared for a vegetarian, although they could have thrown together some pasta things easily enough, and they have nice little gourmet pizzas. This is fine - I didn't know Heather was vegan so didn't prep them, and the chef, ultimately, produced a very nice cooked veggie plate that seemed to make Heather happy. The problem is that the waitress was incoherant and not reassuring about the process. When asked if Vegan food could be produced, she should have smiled, told her that the chef would be happy to put a dish together, and asked her if there was anything she didn't want. Instead she seemed to expect Heather to tell the waitress what to cook ... not very comforting.
The amuses: a "truffled dwarf peach" (it looked like a caper berry) and salmon carpaccio were delightful. My starter of lamb tartar and polenta was lovely. Shannon had a nice little spinach/chevre pizza we shared. Heather had an odd cold melon/artichoke heart soup which she enjoyed, but didn't seem to quite work as a dish (bites with artichoke were entirely different than bites without). We switched to "Abbona 'Papa Celso', Dolcetto di Dogliani, Dogliani, Italy, 2001" which was really a splendid red (I lack the lexicon to describe wine. I need to learn that someday) and went marvelously with my roast squab. It did not go particularly well with the swordfish special (which we knew, but decided as a table to order red anyway). The real problem is that the fish was terribly salty (with big crystals. I think it was a choice of the chef. A bad choice) and no one really liked it. It was served with fiddlehead ferns - ferns are fun, but these didn't seem to be very interesting. A little flavor from the olive oil on some, but unevenly applied. It also didn't seem to go with the fish particularly.
So lousy service. Ok food. About 60$ a person price tag all told. Next time, we'll go to Levain.
neogrammarian is back in Minneapolis this weekend and last night we (me, her, buttonlass, and her friend named Heather) went to Auriga. Auriga used to be her favorite restaurant, the first 'good' restaurant she had ever gone to regularly. So we went back there, even though the chef has changed (I think? Like a guy who was sous chef is not head chef? He won "Best local chef" this year from the city pages) and its not really the same place. We figured, hell, it's a good restaurant still and we'll see what happens.Result: Good wine. One good entree. One pretty good vegan entree. Two bad specials. Pretty lousy service. Neat amuse bouches. Decent starters.
We got there on time and our table wasn't ready. No big deal, but the entryway had no good spot for real loitering, and we didn't want to sit down. It was also odd because half of the restaurant was empty (on a Saturday night?) and yet the table they wanted to shuttle us to wasn't prepped. A big obnoxious New Yorker came in after us, also with a table of four. They got seated first and consistently served first throughout the night. This was irksome.
The waitress was nice enough and had perfunctory answers about the food, but seemed to lack any real knowledge. She certainly didn't have any good answers about the wine. I picked (I am not used to being the guy to pick the wine, though I am getting better at it. I wore a blazer. They called me Mister Perry) the "Venica, Collio, Tocai-Friuliano, Friuli, Italy 2003" because I like Tocai's from Friulia and Surdyks, where I buy my wine (thanks to a discount) only has one Tocai and it is miserable. It was refreshing and tasty and went well with their little amuses.
They were not prepared for a vegan. They were also not really prepared for a vegetarian, although they could have thrown together some pasta things easily enough, and they have nice little gourmet pizzas. This is fine - I didn't know Heather was vegan so didn't prep them, and the chef, ultimately, produced a very nice cooked veggie plate that seemed to make Heather happy. The problem is that the waitress was incoherant and not reassuring about the process. When asked if Vegan food could be produced, she should have smiled, told her that the chef would be happy to put a dish together, and asked her if there was anything she didn't want. Instead she seemed to expect Heather to tell the waitress what to cook ... not very comforting.
The amuses: a "truffled dwarf peach" (it looked like a caper berry) and salmon carpaccio were delightful. My starter of lamb tartar and polenta was lovely. Shannon had a nice little spinach/chevre pizza we shared. Heather had an odd cold melon/artichoke heart soup which she enjoyed, but didn't seem to quite work as a dish (bites with artichoke were entirely different than bites without). We switched to "Abbona 'Papa Celso', Dolcetto di Dogliani, Dogliani, Italy, 2001" which was really a splendid red (I lack the lexicon to describe wine. I need to learn that someday) and went marvelously with my roast squab. It did not go particularly well with the swordfish special (which we knew, but decided as a table to order red anyway). The real problem is that the fish was terribly salty (with big crystals. I think it was a choice of the chef. A bad choice) and no one really liked it. It was served with fiddlehead ferns - ferns are fun, but these didn't seem to be very interesting. A little flavor from the olive oil on some, but unevenly applied. It also didn't seem to go with the fish particularly.
So lousy service. Ok food. About 60$ a person price tag all told. Next time, we'll go to Levain.
