Emily Utne

This week, we visit Social House.

​​It is time to wrap up another fine week at the Hot Dish as the local scene bursts with super sexy food action. Let us tell you all about it with a few of the week's top stories. 

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Irish Coffee from the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco

​The fourth week in January is also known by another, more proper name: National Irish Coffee Week. To celebrate, we wanted to share a recipe from the place thought to serve the best Irish coffee in the states, the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco, where the recipe was perfected back in 1952.

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photo courtesy Haute Dish

High rent or lowbrow, the meeting of pasta and cheese is just so good

​If ever there was a loaded dish, it is this. A dish full of fat, cream, cheese, and nostalgia, and so hearty it can redeem the saddest, most downtrodden day. When eaters speak of comfort food, so often they speak of macaroni and cheese.  After scouring the Twin Cities for the dishes, armed with buffet pants and giant sporks, we've sussed out the cheesy best.

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​Looking for food and laughs this Valentine's Day? Well, you're in luck. Acme Comedy Club is offering a four-course dinner and show package for just $40. The comedian Brent Weinbach is known for his absurd and unconventional humor. The four-course menu includes roasted five-spice chicken osso busco (served with peas, carrots, and curried Yukon gold puree), a dinner salad with lime-cilantro dressing, your choice of chicken, salmon, or steak, and chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert. This is a pre-paid event; call 612.338.6393 for tickets.

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Solera's expanded wine list features 85 bottles from Spain

​I've finally stumped Jay Viskocil. For the last hour, Solera's general manager and beverage aficionado has been giving me a tour through the restaurant's expanded wine list, which now boasts 85 bottles from over 20 regions. As I've pelted him with questions about everything from Rioja to Rueda to Ribera del Duero, he's volleyed everything back.

Until now.

Dressed in a tailored dark jacket, he looks appropriately mid-day casual. And as the gray winter light filters through the floor-to-ceiling windows at his back, he thoughtfully taps his fingers on the copper tabletop between us.

"It's so hard to choose..." he muses. And then finally, looks over and gives me a smirk:

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Master Cicerone Nicole Erny

​Only four people in the world have earned the right to use the title Master Cicerone™. San Francisco Bay Area beer maven Nicole Erny is the youngest of them and the only female. What is a Cicerone you ask? A Cicerone is the beer-world equivalent of a sommelier; an expert guide to all things beer. Ms. Erny will be in Minneapolis tonight to share some of her expertise. She's doing a beer and food pairing seminar at the Kitchen Window in Uptown. For the beer-curious able to make last-minute plans this is a rare opportunity.

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Tot Boss: In tot pursuit of potato perfection

​With the snow and wet and cold and slush, food on wheels, a concept we tend to reserve for the summer months, may be the furthest thing from our collective culinary minds. But a newcomer to the food truck scene will be rolling through St. Paul this spring, the Pioneer Press reports, and he's got a narrow, deep-fried focus on tots.
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Eli's expands but doesn't stray from Hennepin Avenue

​Eli's Food and Cocktails at the edge of downtown Minneapolis and Loring Park has long been a well-kept secret of downtown denizens. With its good food, well-chosen beer and wine list, and killer cocktails, it's been a safe-bet dining destination where food snobs and less unadventurous eaters could all walk away full and satisfied. Last Monday Eli's officially branched out, bringing its special kind of neighborhood bar magic to a former sports bar. We stopped in to get an early look.

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Chef Shack gets more national attention

​Many of us are well aware that we can get amazing, global cuisine handed directly to us from the windows of our local food trucks, but now the rest of the nation is sitting up and taking notice. Chef Shack, already named one of Bon Appetit's Top 10 Lunches at Farmers Markets and one of Saveur's 12 Memorable Market Meals of 2010, can add another feather to its well-decorated cap.

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Joia Soda contemplates new flavors, needs your help picking

​Local, natural soda maker Joia has put out the call on Twitter and Facebook that it needs tasters. It's looking to expand its  flavor lineup and is offering a free tasting in exchange for a simple opinion. We participated in their taste test last night and can share that the new flavors have the same mix of spices and fruit with an added twist. As with their other offerings, cocktail mix master Dan Oskey (most often found behind the bar at St. Paul's Strip Club) created all the flavors.