Minneapolis / St. Paul Food Blog

​ If you haven't been to Anchor Fish & Chips yet, check out this photo slideshow by Michelle Leon and Steve Neuharth.

​Andrew Zimmern's recent suggestion that Agri was closed is not the case: Agri is still open. We'll let you know if we hear anything more about the rumored Doug Flicker restaurant, Piccolo...

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Check out the food and the scene at Isaac Becker's new Warehouse District beaut, La Grassa, via the photos of Michelle Leon and Steve Neuharth.

Landii/Flickr

We really like this photo. Perhaps you've noticed. Doesn't it make you feel like dancing?

​Did you have any pan de muerto for Day of the Dead this week? What about a sandwich on National Sandwich Day? You know, National Deviled Egg Day was this week too. We don't really wish those on anyone though. You at least had a Honeycrisp or six in honor of our man R.T. on Election Day, didn't you? Here's our favorite Hot Dish posts from the last week:

• Can we vote restaurateurs some of the more inventive and bold businesspeople out there? If what they name their restaurants is any indication, they'll win.
• Sandwich Expert Teddy Hobbins can't eat just one this week. He compares Brianno's Hot Dago and Italian Beef sammies.
• They may at any moment be eclipsed by egg nog lattes, but we sat some pumpkin lattes side-by-side for a quick taste-off.
• We pondered some of our cities' best sandwiches. And speaking of voting, can we vote every Tuesday National Sandwich Day? Ok, good.
• Our Cocktail Queen Michelle Leon gives a big thumbs-up to Bar La Grassa's "silky and lush" White Spider drink.

hlkljgk/Flickr

​Every year, Hastings' Alexis Bailly Vineyards takes some of its Marechal Foch grapes and prepares them, beaujolais-style, into its "Nouveau" wine to celebrate the harvest. This year's "Nouveau 2009" -- bottled just last week -- will be available at the vineyard this weekend only during its annual Open House event.

Like beaujolais -- a French wine made with the Gamay grape -- Alexis Bailly's Nouveau is fermented in a yeast-free process called "carbonic maceration. Whereas with most wines the grapes are crushed after being picked, with this type of speeded up process, they are sealed in an airtight container for just up to a couple of weeks max before being bottled up.

​Is Summit Winter available yet? I don't see any announcements on their website, but I've heard rumors it's on tap in select bars already. Any truth to this rumor? I like to ensure my liver gets plenty of facetime with my favorite seasonal beverage (f**k eggnog).

Thanks-
Monicaholic

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Single malt scotch selection

St. Paul Grill
350 Market St., St. Paul
651.224.7455
website

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photos by Steve Neuharth

There are some places where the atmosphere of the room provides the guide to selecting your drink. While I stumbled into the St. Paul Grill to peruse their cocktail menu, this was clearly a place where scotch is meant to be drunk.

Christian Cable/Flickr

​Would you rather eat whatever you want and be depressed or eat a diet composed of heathy, whole foods and be happy? That's how one Englishman breaks down his decision to forego sweets and other processed foods (including that most English of English treats ... biscuits!) in favor of living his life free of depression.

Breaking the cycle of depression could actually be just as easy as that according to a study by University College London, which kept track of the diets and mental health of 3,500 people for five years. Their findings seem to leave no question about the correlation.

After accounting for factors such as gender, age, education, physical activity, smoking habits and chronic diseases, they found a significant difference in future depression risk with the different diets.

Those who ate the most whole foods had a 26% lower risk of future depression than those who at the least whole foods.

By contrast people with a diet high in processed food had a 58% higher risk of depression than those who ate very few processed foods.

Landii/Flickr

​You know that saying "You never get a second chance to make a first impression?" Restaurant owners, as a breed, seem to like to give the phrase the finger, bestowing crazyass names on their restaurants -- Thai Tanic, anyone? -- in hopes that a) the "first impression" they impart will get you a'running on in and b) their hilarity and/or vulgarity and/or sincerity make you fail to recognize the absence of a relationship between a place's name and its food. It's kind of awesome.

The Twin Cities have their own share of awesome restaurant names. These are less crazyass and more like badass. The best ones bear a little of both. Here's our Top 5:

​The PiPress reports on new dining digs in downtown White Bear Lake: Manitou Station. The restaurant is in a large building with a spacious bar and patio, plus banquet facilities upstairs. The menu offers basic American fare, plus English specialties, including fish & chips, Guinness beef stew, and hard-to-find Scotch eggs.