Great Taste

Best egg foo yung in Roch? Best steak just about anywhere?

Great Taste has enjoyed egg foo yung since before many readers of this blog were born. Of EFY consumed in Rochester, Great Taste likes China Star's best.

Note: EFY was ordered from CS's 1st Avenue location.

Other restaurant notes:

Michaels still keeps us satisfied with perfect steaks, prime rib, wedge salad, etc. In fact, for taste and precise preparation of steaks Michael's can go up against any steak house in the country. (Indeed Great Taste prefers Michaels steaks to those at Morton's, Manny's, and several other "big name" steak houses.) Also--unlike most fine dining options in Rochester--you can hear what your dining partner is saying, even on a Friday night.   

Jasper's Alsatian Bistro seems to be overlooked on many "best lists" and that's a mistake. Great Taste always starts a meal with house-made chicken liver pate....Jewish deli-restaurants aside, where else in the Midwest can one order this on a regular basis?   

Sontes continues to impress under Chef Bryce. This chic tapas restaurant also deserves more local acclaim than it seems to get. 

 

Charge up with diverse, creative recipes from Andrew Zimmern

                              And while we're on television topics: TV food show host and writer Andrew Zimmern has an amazing array of recipes on his Travel Channel website . 

Minnesota-based Zimmern offers inspired versions of American favorites such as Mac 'n' Cheese but also presents Mongolian Lamb Dumplings made with yogurt, Trinidad Salt Cod fritters, Brazilian Moqueca (a seafood dish), and much more.  

If you are a global foodie you may fall in love.

What to expect at Rochester's first outdoor farmers market of 2011

From Kari Dunn, manager of Rochester Downtown Farmers Market:  

"Weather has been pretty crummy for things like asparagus - but I expect we'll have at least 40 to 50 vendors and of course that number will grow as more produce becomes available. We have a total of 93 vendors this year! There should be ramps and watercress tomorrow, pea shoots, lots of lettuce varieties, green onions, salad mixes, radishes.....Do you visit our Facebook page? I'll be 'reporting' live to it from market this year."

For more news and information on one of the best farmers markets in the Midwest, check out RDFM's website here. 

There's just one big missing piece to RDFM being of the highest calibre. Great Tastes asks city leaders: When can RDFM have a specially designed area in central Rochester, instead of several congested parking lots? 

Stillwater and New Prague farms feature in gourmet loca-feasts

Twin Cities chef Scott Pampuch is presenting his annual summer Tour de Farm events at Cedar Summit dairy, New Prague; Axdahl's Garden Farm, Stillwater; and Riverbend Farm, near Delano.

Highlights: participitation by "it" chef Mike DeCamp of La Belle Vie, Minneapolis, and Twin Cities "bad boy" (or so sayeth Pioneer Press) chef Landon Schoenefeld at the Cedar Summit gathering.

More on Tour de Farm here. 

One of the best Caesar salads ever

Great Taste was recently in Palm Springs, California, where she dined at the famous locally-owned spot for steak, LG's Prime Steakhouse. 

A visit to this classy place was not complete without tableside Caesar Salad presentation. Great Taste always loves the showmanship of the waiter-turned-food performer. But the tossed romaine result was among the tastiest of Caesar salads in which this writer ever plunged her fork.*

LG's "Classic Caesar Salad" recipe is offered in a brochure that staffers cheerfully hand out to patrons. Great Taste may beg to differ that LG's Caesar is a "classic" recipe, but its version is arguably good enough to make it a new standard by which others may be compared.

Here is LG's recipe. 

*Yours truly made her first Caesar--minus the anchovies--when she was quite green herself at age 11.

Do review websites work for Roch restaurants?

If you have fallen into the habit of clicking your way to restaurant choices, Great Taste can relate.

But Great Taste offers special advice when it comes to the subject of southeast Minnesota: Take the consumer-driven review sites with a grain of salt. (Pun  there.) Also be wary of sites in which subjective editorial information is limited or incomplete.  

Why the words of caution?

Great Taste has seen the best restaurants in the area rated below simple take-out joints. She has noted terrific spots that don't make the "top" lists and are nowhere to be found. Many of the so-called reviews do not seem to reflect any relative knowledge of expectations for style of restaurant and/or price range. 

This writer humbly suggests Great Taste Picks for assistance with dining selections. Great Taste Picks is a category you can click to on this blog. Great Taste encourages you to write with questions, comments, and feedback.

Southeast Minnesota has a surprising number and variety of food options....And Great Taste's two foodie contributors want to provide plenty of recommendations for your tastes and budget.   

PS--GG is happy to share her food writing/culinary bio on request. 

How's that diet going? Time for a Jenny Lind Bakery reward?

Your Great Taste blogger weighed in last night almost 9 pounds lighter than a few weeks back.

Time to start dreaming up a sweet little reward. Red Wing, perhaps? Did anyone just think--Jenny Lind Bakery? 

Drool over this: http://www.jennylindbakery.net/bakery_menu.html#half 

The Upper Midwest and chocolate: Let's go crazy

News and views about "healthy" chocolate seem to only get better (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/chocolates-startling-heal_b_825978.html) and what's more, some of the best chocolatiers are right in our midst--in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and (just a tad south) Chicago. 

Let's start local with B.T. McElrath, out of Minneapolis: https://www.btmcelrath.com/index.asp. Offered by a number of Minnesota retailers, its shiny-as-if-buffed, refined candies can be discovered south of the metro Cities at ZZest Market & Wine Cafe, Rochester, Slant Avenue Mercantile, Laneboro, and Present Perfect, Northfield.   

Fresh from Duluth, 185 Chocolat (http://185chocolat.com/links.html) is featured in Rochester at Sopra Sotto.  

Our next door neighbor, Wisconsin, claims greatness with artisan dairy products and now can also pride itself on Candinas Chocolatier, made and sold only in the Madison area. (http://www.candinas.com/) 

Traveling via the northern route around Lake Michigan, GG arrives in Fudge Country--but that's for another blog post. Here is Grocer's Daughter Chocolate, in Empire, Michigan. /http://www.grocersdaughter.com/ Then its on to truffle specialist The Chocolate Garden, Coloma: http://www.chocolategarden.com/

Last stop, all off, Chi-Town USA. Vosges Haut-Chocolat, popular for its bar chocolates, offers bittersweet-and-salty selections, among numerous concoctions that give tastebuds a sensory high:  http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/?gclid=CIL02sW4nqcCFQgHbAodtXSQcQ Vosges is sold in Rochester at Zzest Market & Wine Cafe.

Ah, this was such a hard blog to post....The agony. GG indeed has tried candies from all of the makers listed here and can confidently state they are right up there (or close) with fine Belgian chocolates, yet they stand on their own in mix-it-up, witty American style. GG is undoubtedly missing some other splendid makers; please comment on your faves. 

GG's top 3 fast food burgers

Let's face it, in the depths of winter, local fresh foods are limited. At times GG--that is, Great Taste's incognito foodie Gourmanda Galore--wants that midwestern slam-dunk of red meat and carbs, aka, a drive-thru burger.

It's hard to put the following burgers in an order of preference. Maid-Rite is a "loose meat" style. Wendy's burger meat is cut square.  In January in Minnesota they all satisfy. 

1. Culver's Deluxe

2. Wendy's 1/4 lb. Single with American cheese and the works

3. Maid-Rite Classic

Dry Soda: Lo-cal never tasted this good

Dry Soda Co.'s pop is an alternative when you want something more than a Perrier  but you would rather not drink a 140-calorie can of Coca-Cola. A 12-ounce glass bottle of cucumber flavored Dry Soda goes down well at 45 calories. 

The taste is glorious--refreshing and not overly sweet.  More flavor choices include lavender and juniper berry.  (These two are GG's faves.)

Though based in Seattle--which is more than 1,700 miles from Rochester--there is a green, locavore philosophy behind Dry Soda Co. and you can read about it:  http://www.drysoda.com/about-dry-soda.php

Find Dry Soda at Zzest Market & Cafe, Rochester.