Minneapolis / St. Paul Food Blog

As a countdown to the Best of the Twin Cities 2010, coming this spring, Hot Dish is serving up a hundred of our favorite local dishes. Send your own nominations to hotdish @citypages.com.​

​Is it just us, or were this year's Super Bowl ads pretty weak? Ok, so the Boost Mobile Super Bowl Shuffle reprise was pretty sweet. And Favre's self-mocking Hyundai commercial wasn't bad. But that Doritos commercial with the little kid slapping the letch who checked out his mom? Weird. Or the GoDaddy.com one with Danica Patrick getting a massage? Please. And those Denny's chickens? Those just don't make sense. Plus, where are all the celebs we've grown so used to seeing? The Super Bowl's all about high-powered celebrity endorsements. Are we actually supposed to be content with Charles Barkley's lame attempt at rapping, Betty White playing football, and T-Pain asking to "please pass the guacamole?" We were still able to weed some passable stuff out. The food ads, in general, were a cut above in general. Here's our Top 5 food-related ads from Super Bowl XLIV:

​The Green Room, a cute, homey bistro in downtown Waconia closed recently, dealing a big blow to fresh, seasonal, gourmet cooking in the far western suburbs. The good news is that a couple of former Green Room employees bought the place and will reopen it later this month as Terra Waconia. More info on that coming soon, so stay tuned.

​Well, there goes your next bar fight. Your next British bar fight, that is. With an estimated 87,000 violent, alcohol-fueled brawls -- also known as "glassings" (ouch!) -- per year, the British government's saw fit to intervene.

In an interview with NPR, a representative of the British Design Council, which came up with the prototypes for the new shatterproof pint glasses introduced last week, tells host Robert Siegel there are actually two kinds of glasses:

​After 145 years, conversation hearts of your youth--and the youths of your great-grandparent's youths--are disappering as NECCO "upgrades" its formula. Some Facebookers are crying blasphemy, but I, for one am thrilled: those chalky little bastards tasted no better than the original NECCO wafer discs.

As a countdown to the Best of the Twin Cities 2010, coming this spring, Hot Dish is serving up a hundred of our favorite local dishes. Send your own nominations to hotdish @citypages.com. ​

​The Strib reports that Staccato at 1125 Marquette in downtown Minneapolis has closed. I have to say, I'm somewhat surprised it stayed open as long as it did with its somewhat dated pasta-heavy menu. Other than Orchestra-goers, I was never sure who ate there. Did you? Will you miss it? What would you like to see come in as its replacement?

​Creme brulee at McDonald's? The Vancouver Olympics have inspired the burger chain's Canadian counterpart to invent more refined menu items. Well, sort of.

For the 2010 Olympics, the burger vendor is showing its enthusiasm with a handful of limited-time only menu items, including a creme brulee McFlurry, a S'mores pie and two McNugget dipping sauces: spicy Szechuan and "zesty" mango. Though not on the McDonald's Canada website, the chain has also supposedly unveiled a chicken parmesan wrap and is including Olympic mascot toys in its Happy Meals.

McDonald's is, somewhat strangely, a longstanding sponsor of the Olympics. (In 1968, the restaurant apparently even airlifted burgers to U.S. athletes who were homesick for its food.)

The new items are reportedly available in McDonald's Canadian franchises only.

​I recently received an advance copy of Kathryn Borel's debut novel, Corked, a memoir (are 26 year olds too young to be writing memoirs?) about Borel's tour through the great wine regions of France with her father, Philippe, a serious wine aficionado. Though the duo visits several wineries, and does plenty of spitting--and perhaps a little too much swallowing followed by driving--the book is less about wine than Borel's musings on her relationships with the men in her life, her father and her exes. Intrigued? Tell us your most memorable wine story--your last trip to Napa, your first taste of Domaine Romanée-Conti, the time you and your college girlfriend split a jug of Carlo Rossi--and I'll pick a winner from the commenters.

​Really gotta go? You might just have to hold it if you're at Mildred's Temple Kitchen in Toronto come this Valentine's Day. According to the Toronto Star, the upscale restaurant is advertising not its food, but its bathrooms as the place to be this holiday weekend.

"We've always had little trysts in our bathrooms," says chef/co-owner Donna Dooher, pointing to lingering weekday lunches as a popular time. "We're taking it to the next level on Valentine's weekend."

The restaurant's four bathrooms light up outside when occupied. Staff have learned to watch the light flicker twice when two customers enter the same bathroom, usually a few minutes apart.

Toronto Public Health says as long as there's no sex in the kitchen and the restaurant keeps its washrooms clean and sanitized, it's not fussed. "As far as bodily fluids, it's pretty much similar to the other human functions going on in there," says Jim Chan, manager of the food safety program.

Check it out --- the bathroom (pillows, candles ...) actually looks nicer than the average bedroom. And if bathroom trysts aren't your bag, the restaurant is also offering to arrange for "fuzzy handcuffs" to be left at your table. Awesome.