One More Puzzle Piece

Our neighborhood is awesome. But it could use...

5. One more nice bar
4. A co-op (credit goes to Emily for that suggestion)
3. Thai food restaurant (True Thai is close, but I want one even closer)
2. An Indian food restaurant
1. An easier way to get to all of Minneapolis west of Hiawatha Avenue.

Well, we can scratch item #2 off the list.

Thanks to Nora's observant parents, we learned that an Indian food restaurant has indeed opened in our neighborhood! Gandhi Mahal is located along 27th Avenue (that funny little street that runs between Minnehaha and Lake Street, right by Town Talk Diner).

Great food. We did take-out, but the restaurant interior is very attractive.

Click here for a review.

Click here for the restaurant's website. So many restaurants have come and gone from that location, but they haven't been as good as this one. So if you like Indian food even half as much as Emily and I do, you should go.

Back In The Saddle

I went out for my quarterly sortie to Matt's Bar for Jucy Lucys with, among others, Fancy Kirk, Awalt, Los Deets, and Mrs. Los Deets.

I do not know if Los Deets will post a field report on his Jucy Lucy website, but I do know this: the waitress was the most organized and, dare I say, regimented server that restaurant has ever seen.

Anyway, Mrs. Los Deets scolded me for not blogging anymore. And I know she loves lists. So I thought I'd get back into the blogosphere with what's new. I have a new...

1. Favorite Restaurant Brasa has a simple menu and really good food. A great summer spot. Ride your bike there and then you can head over to St. Anthony Main for a nightcap. It looks like I have the next date night planned for Emily and me.

2. Favorite Bar The Hexagon Bar. Great live music that is usually free. Cheap beer. Half the bar is for the music; the other half is quiet enough to socialize. It has a mix of quasi-hipsters, locals, and aging lamies like me. It's like a cheap First Ave without the scene.

3. Netflix Series Emily and are caught up on Weeds (well maybe not, season three might be out now) and are now making our way through Entourage It's like Sex and the City for guys. But so far Emily has been watching it with me.

4. Favorite Twin Carlos Gomez. The Strib ran a story last week about how he was scared of a ghost in his hotel room. He sometimes tries to steal third for no appearant reason. He can outrun a comebacker to the pitcher (okay I exaggerated on that one). What's not to like?

5. Training Plan I will train for both the 5k and the marathon for the rest of the year. Is such madness possible? I will tell you after my first injury. I pretty much knew after my last race in college I'd never run that fast again, much less break 15:00. I knew I was too lazy to keep training that hard. But I always figured I could hop off the couch and break 16:00 until I was like 70 years old. Obviously I was an idiot back then; but I would like to break the 16:00 barrier one last time (I ran a 16:20 a few weeks back). I'll focus on a marathon goal after the Victory 5k in September.

6. Favorite Snack Kettle Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper Chips. A friend of mine introduced them to me last week. I have eaten an entire bag since then and I am still wanting more. Damn those sons of bitches at Kettle make good chips.

7. Hobby Biking everywhere. The same friend who got me hooked on those chips, got me hooked on biking everywhere. On Saturday I a) ran 18 miles through Afton State Park with Fancy Kirk and Grizzly Christ, b) worked in the yard for three hours, and c) biked to Dominguez with Emily. So I was pretty tired, but we had a summer solstice party to go to. We were both thinking we didn't want to go, due to fatigue. But as we rode our bikes there, we got so energized.

8. Favorite Day of the Year Summer Solstice in Minnesota just beat out Thanksgiving. We went to that party, which was a summer solstice patio party with awesome food and great beer, and last night we had a our solstice meeting at Matt's. It's like two Thanksgivings without the turkey.

9. Horrible Idea A Jucy Lucy turkey for Thanksgiving. Instead of stuffing, inject the bird with cheddar.

10. Blog to Read Coincidentally, it's all about one lady's quest to do new things. Check it for yourself. I have know Maureen since college, so I know a lot of things she's already done and therefore can't count them as new things. You know, things like "watch Mike shotgun a can of Busch Lite" or "chant ' PARTY! PARTY! PAR...' with a bunch of idiots." That would describe the four years she had to come across me in college.

I Have Measured My Life With Grand Slam Breakfasts

This afternoon at work I was talking to one of those twentysomething crazy college kids. Part of his story involved a late night sortie to Perkins on a Friday night. And that got me to thinking about restaurants like Perkins. Is there a name for this genre of restaurant? The Diner Chains? You know the ones I'm talking about: Perkins, Denny's, Bakers Square, Jim's, Village Inn...

So far as I can tell, for a restaurant to be included in this group it must have at lest seven of the nine following traits.
-Open 24 hours a day.
-Breakfast served at all hours.
-Has to be a chain or franchise.
-Wide range of desserts, especially pie.
-Standard, dutiful hamburger and sandwich menu.
-Bright, low hanging lights.
-Utilitarian seats, booths, and tables.
-Laminated menus with lots of pictures.
-Nicknames for their menu items (i.e. Grand Slam Breakfast, The Perkins 7)

It seems to me these restaurants fade in and out of our lives. Here's the stages I've come up with.

Stage I The Home Cooking and Fast Food Phase. Birth to five. Kids are too young to really enjoy restaurants outside of saw dust nuggets, er chicken nuggets, marketed with the help of a clown and shitty plastic toys from China.

Stage II The Introductory Phase. Age five to 11. These restaurants are a special treat at this age. A nice place to get an awesome breakfast or lunch. As a kid I used to frequent the Denny's by mom's bookstore. It was a great place to eat breakfast or have breakfast food for my lunch. It was also a big deal if we got to go to Jim's for lunch and get what, in retrospect, is a very standard hamburger.

Stage III Hiatus #1. Age 11 to 15. During this age kids are too busy with school, sports, or other hobbies. Also the palate becomes a little more refined so there is now a wider range of places a kid will want to eat at. This combination of schedule demands and a refined palate leads to fewer trips to Denny's or Perkins.

Stage IV Keep The Party Going Phase. Through high school, college, and the immediate years after college, these restaurants serve as great gathering place post-moive, post-party, post-barhopping... You don't go there for the fine dining and ambiance, so much as for the fact they are open late and you can get pancakes at 2 a.m. Dude!

Stage V Hiatus #2. The Boring Grown-Up Phase. Welcome to me. If I am going to spend my money going out-to-eat, it sure better be with good company, over good food. So breakfast and lunch at Bakers Square is out. Also, my Friday nights usually end by 10 p.m. when my Netflix movie is over. So a late night run to Perkin's is out.

Stage VI Stage III Revisited. This is for all you parents who have kids aged between five and 11. They want to go to Denny's for breakfast. You take them.

Stage VII Hiatus #3. This is when your kids have outgrown stage III. Once again, you have no reason to go to Village Inn.

Stage VIII The Blue Hair Phase. I don't know why, but I always see senior citizens at Perkins. Maybe the food is easy to digest. I guess I'll find out for myself in 35 years if all goes well for me.