Teddy Hobbins

112 Eatery's seared ahi tuna

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Timed with the release of it's new 155th anniversary cookbook, California's Mirassou Winery hosted a recent wine dinner at 112 Eatery as chef Isaac Becker had contributed a recipe. With Becker focusing his time at his new restaurant, Bar La Grassa, through the holidays, I claimed a seat at the table for another chance to sample his 112 fare.

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​ Galaxy Drive In is great and all if you need to entertain a pack of kids, but whenever I eat there I can't help but get the feeling that the fare's been marked up to cover the cost of all the retro-futurama kitsch--$4.95 for pronto pup that's not hand-dipped?

At the original Uncle Franky's in Northeast, not an extra nickle goes towards ambiance. The place is no more than a roadside shack, with a chalkboard menu and a handful of tables and stools, that specializes in burgers, sandwiches, and hot dogs. (If it didn't have such an exuberant, child-like logo, designed by Chank Diesel, you could pass by the place a million times and not notice it.) The Chicago version, for one, comes in fine form: Vienna beef dog topped with pickle, tomato, onion, sport peppers, celery salt and perhaps a little too much of that florescent green relish. And it's cheap eats, to boot, at $3.25 a pop. Extras, like the malts, aren't the typical fast-food stuff: instead of the typical low-cost soft-serve, Franky's malts are old-school, made with hard ice cream, and blended to order--not what you'd expect for $3.50 price tag.

Sea Salt co-owners Jon Blood & Chris Weglinski

​The one good thing about the dreary weather we've been experiencing (the last couple of days being an exception): short lines at Sea Salt. The place closes for the season after Sunday, October 25, so you have just one week to get in and try their secret weapon: the specials. If you're like me, you always order the same thing at Sea Salt, because you don't get over there too often and you arrive with a hankering for one of the po'boys or the tacos or the crab cake sandwich. But tucked into the lower corner of the chalkboard menu, they usually have a few daily specials: seafood gumbo, a whole fish, or, the item I ordered recently, mahi mahi garnished with cilantro, avocado, and papaya and served with a side of red beans and coconut rice. The entrees tend to be spendier than most items on the menu (I think this one was about $16), but they're large enough to share and the flavors were so fresh I could almost pretend I was looking out over some tropical ocean instead of the darkened treetops over Minnehaha Falls. So, seriously: Get over there, stat. If you don't make it to Sea Salt this week, you'll have to wait until April 4 for your fix...

​ I've always thought that the best thing Cafe 28 had going for it was its space: a charming, historic fire house on 43rd Street in Linden Hills. In the few visits I'd made over the years, I found the food was fine--more interesting than the former D'Amcio and Sons it replaced--but I never really got as excited about it as I did the cozy dining room with all the wood and the windows and the *actual fire pole*, which was leftover from the building's former fire-fighting function. Ever since southwest hotspots Cafe Maude and Blackbird had opened, I had pigeonholed Cafe 28 as more of a breakfast/lunch place, and had kind of ignored it as a dinner destination.

But recently I went back to Cafe 28, curious to see how it was faring now since the phenom Italian eatery Tosca had opened in a few blocks away. And you know what I found? That I'd been seriously underestimating the place.

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​ I stopped by Pak Zam Zam recently and lucked into the restaurant's new $10 buffet--a real coup for those of us who have trouble choosing just one of our favorites off the regular menu. I helped myself to several items I'd had before--lentils, chickpeas, chicken, rice--plus a few dishes I hadn't yet tried, including curry beef, spicy okra, and a sweet semolina pudding for dessert. The only thing I missed by going with the buffet were those deliciously flaky paratha flatbreads...next time!

Eric__I_E/Flickr

Birchwood Blend comes from Peru and Indonesia, Twin Cities Blend from Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, Espresso Blend from a single Peruvian source and on down the line. Peace Coffee's "Map My Beans" application lets you dig a little deeper than the label with some creatively adapted Google mapping.

Just click on the type of beans you've got -- or even type in your UPC code -- and bean icons pop up on a global map. Click on the beans and you get some background information, including photos, detailing the environment the beans are being grown in, harvest times and how long each farm has been in operation. Check it out!

watchwithkristin/Flickr

Jane Krakowski

If you lingered around like I did after last week's season finale of 30 Rock, desperate for any type of preview, postview, or blooper before launching in to the long wait til next season, you surely saw the new ad for Breyers ice cream featuring Jenna, i.e. Jane Krakowski, in a Gone With the Wind spoof as a modern day Scarlett O'Hara. Krakowski essentially plays her Jenna character in the spot, which is for Breyers' low-fat "Smooth & Dreamy" product line and plays on Krakowski's affections for Clark Gable vs. the ice cream (Who has the perfect amount of Smooth & Dreamy?? Oh you just guess). The ad, which utilizes actual footage from Gone With the Wind, includes some very choice, very 30 Rock lines. My favorite is when Krakowski prefaces a request to take Gable's pic with her cell phone with "I don't mean to seem stalker-y." A King Kong spoof also starring Krakowski will reportedly be released within the next couple weeks.

adactio/Flickr

La Quercia prosciutto. Perhaps you've heard of it. Well, the Norwalk, Iowa-based artisan meat curers have made it to Minnesota. Specifically, to Broder's. Broder's is a La Quercia "subscriber," which means it has committed to a whole pig. The South Minneapolis pasta bar will host a luncheon featuring said acorn-fed porcine beast on April 19. Act fast!

La Quercia has been hailed near and far, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from Bon Appetit to The Local Beet. The shop pays keen attention to its sources. Its acorn-fed pork and meat for its prosciutto comes from Becker Lane Organic Farm in the Eastern Iowa town of Dyersville (home of the Field of Dreams).

PinkMoose/Flickr

Aero Bar, anyone? No? How about a Mr. Big then? This fairly dated application hidden in the Science Museum of Minnesota's website still has some modern relevance, that being that people still like a) candy bars and b) frittering time away on the Internet.

Let's play ... Name That Candy Bar!

uberculture/Flickr

Mancini's is kind of like Christmas. You love it while it lasts, but it's really best just having it once a year or so. That way, when the time comes, you can relish anew the novelty of the redhued straight-out-of-the-Sopranos steak den.

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