Concord Bar and Grill

Dump

We decided to take a break from South Minneapolis and move on into South St. Paul to the Concord Bar & Grill.   We had a 2 for 1 coupon which would allow you one free entree with a  purchase of an entree which was the sole purpose of our trip there.  Our first clue that this was going to be an interesting venture was that the restaurant was in a hotel.  (Not that all Hotel restaurants are bad).  Our second clue as we walked in was the raunchy music blaring down the hallway directing us to its location.  As we went to walk in we were greeted by Rhianna’s song “S&M”.  Mistake?????

Arrival Time: 5:20

Upon entering the 700 square foot hole in the wall, we noticed a very small bar and even smaller dining area with only 8 tables and about 8 TV’s…..LOL They had flat screens and then there was one lonely 1990′s 13″ tv in the corner as if it was being punished.

We were not seated and there was no direction on whether or not we seat ourselves, so we just took it upon ourselves to sit down.  As we sat waiting for a waitress to show up, we were looking around and noticed a kitchen?? No it couldn’t have been a kitchen as it was set up in the corner of the room.  We thought maybe a dance floor?? No, we saw toasters and microwaves and everything covered by table cloths.  We came to the conclusion that A. we are in a hotel and B. we are in the only restaurant so C. we were in their continental restaurant.  We also definitely noticed that this was more bar than grill.   

The waitress finally showed up with menus and we ordered our drinks.  She noticed our coupon laying on the table and informs us that they no longer accept that coupon but that happy hour was on and we could get $2 off of any appetizer but we were not in the mood for that.  As we were looking over the menu the music went from Rhianna to hard core rap as Mystikal’s “Dangaaa” came on.  Mind you, this music was so loud, you had to literally scream across the table to hear.  We had to learn sign language in 5 minutes to communicate.

The menu was your typical bar menu.  It had burgers, sandwiches, pizza, pasta, appetizers and specials.  Suzanne decides on the Chicken Caesar Salad and Steph opted for the Beer Battered Chicken Sandwich and according to the menu “Rand Dressing” (we’re thinking they meant Ranch).

Oops the music just changed! Now we are listening to some honkey tonk country song “I’ll think I’ll just stay here and drink” by Merle Haggard (courtesty of Shazam app on Suzanne’s phone)

While waiting for our food, we were looking around to check out what kind of local folk frequented this place. 

Oops music change…..”Porn Star Dancing” by My Darkest Days (hard rock) (again courtesy of Shazam)

Still waiting for our food, we noticed a woman enter and sit down at the table next to us.  She had a mocha-chino drink from Star Bucks with her.  The waitress finally came over to her and she asked for a menu.  It took the waitress 10 minutes to get her one. 

Time Check: 5:43  we had been there 23 minutes and still no food.

Suzanne noticed there was one cook and 2 waitresses on staff.  not good.

33 minutes later, we received our food.

ICK

We dig in.  We noticed we had no silverware so the waitress brought us some and the strange part about it was the napkins were cloth!  Suzanne’s salad came with a warm roll and she thought it tasted pretty good.  However, how can you screw up a salad?  Steph took a bite out of her chicken and OMG was it nasty.  First of all one must NEVER put Beer Batter on chicken. It tasted more like fish. she did double check to make sure it wasn’t fish it was so gross.  The fries were also not good. The seasoning on them sucked so bad. So she decided to get a side of ranch to drown out the taste.  It took 5 minutes for her to bring it to her.  At that point she pretty much gave up on the fries.  She choked as much of her sandwich down as she could.

Speaking of choking, the lady next to us had a friend come join her.  She was one hot sexy mama being that she was 65 wearing her skinny jeans in her size 16 frame (seriously not that there is anything wrong with being a size 16!!!) and leopard skin tight top and hooker shoes.  She also had dyed bright red hair. We had to take a triple take. We would have taken a picture but that would have seemed way too obvious.

The bill came and it was $21.59 (by the way, they charged $.50 fricken cents for the side of ranch or should we say Rand)

We ended our visit with a little Johnny Cash….”Folsum Prison Blues”–kind of how we felt eating here LOL-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr0Vt7E7U7w

Our ratings on a scale of 1-5 Bitches

Menu Variety-3 Bitches

Taste/Quality-1 Bitch (Only because Suzanne liked her salad)

Price-4 Bitches (Even though the food sucked, the pricing was actually reasonable)

Overall-2.5 Bitches

Honestly we would NOT recommend anyone eat here. If you want a drink then go for it but beware of the loud music!

2 Classy Bitches Over and Out

Fat Lorenzo’s

We find ourselves in South Minneapolis for the 3rd week in a row! This week we dined at Fat Lorenzo’s.  It is located on Cedar Avenue in South Minneapolis across from Lake Nokomis. 

Yet again we find no parking.  They have a tiny parking lot which we believe the staff take up.  We found a spot right on the street across from the restaurant.  Arrival time: 5:15 pm. 

We were greeted right away by the gelato that was in the cooler right at the front door.  We were so busy drooling over the vast variety of dairy deliciousness that we didn’t really notice that Joseph (who was not gay) (not that there is anything wrong with that!) was waiting to seat us. 

We walked into the tiny dining room and were seated at a small table against the wall.  We noticed right away the mural on the opposite wall:

Joseph takes our drink orders and comes back with…..Can you guess??? Come on??? You can do it! Yup 2 cans of soda!   With a glass of ice   (Wink Wink)  This appears to be the “norm” in South Minneapolis.

As a side note, we wanted to make an honorable mention of the HUGE wine list that they have for those of you who would like a large glass of Vino! Salut!

We look at the menu and there was so many wonderful choices.  Steph noticed they had a pizza called “New Haven Pizza”  and right in the description said it was named after New Haven, CT Clams!!!!! For all you East Coast and CT readers, WOOT!!!  So Suzanne orders the Steak and Cheese Hoagie (MN calls Grinders, Hoagies) and Steph orders the Meatball Grinder! HEE HEE We also decided to split a piece of cheese pizza.  You can’t go to an Italian Pizzaria and not order a slice.

As we are waiting for our food, we notice that they were playing Italian music in the background. 

Joseph brings out our food within 8 minutes!

YUM!

We chow down!!! After a few minutes we both kind of noticed not one of us spoke a word to each other. We were just eating and eating!!! It was that good! Now this is for the Grinders.  As for the pizza-it was a bit soggy, Suzanne felt it had too much sauce (Steph liked the sauce)  It also tasted like it had been sitting there for a little bit. However both of us agreed the crust was good. LOL

At one point we put the fork down and thought “shit let’s order up some gelato”!  Joseph comes back (this was his 3rd time asking how everything was) and we order up 1/2 chocolate and 1/2 chocolate chip and split a large.

WOW!!!!!!

Now this photo does not do it the slightest bit of justice. We have to tell you, once again we did not speak! There were little chunks of chocolate heaven drops in both flavors.  We just about died and went to FAT HEAVEN!!!!!!!!!!!

The total bill was $27.83-We got all of that food for under $30! (We would also like to make an honorable mention that this was the cheapest can of coke we came across at $.93 per can)

Our Ratings on a scale of 1-5 Bitches:

Menu Variety-5 Bitches

Taste/Quality-4.5 bitches-due to the pizza

Price-5 Bitches

Overall-:

5 Bitches!!!! Not (S) Bitches

 

2 Classy Bitches over and out!

Battle of the (Jucy) (Juicy) Lucy’s

Matt’s Bar vs 5/8 Club

The definition of a (Jucy) (Juicy) Lucy is a cheeseburger having the cheese inside the meat patty rather than on top.  A piece of cheese is surrounded by raw meat and cooked until it melts, resulting in a molten core of cheese within the patty.  This scalding hot cheese tends to gush out at the first bite so servers frequently warn patrons to let the burger cool for a few minutes before consumption. – Care of http://wikipedia.com

Our definition-a burger with hot ass cheese in the middle that when bitten into makes cheese dribble down your chin!

Matt’s Bar spells this burger “Jucy Lucy” and 5/8 Club spells it “Juicy Lucy”.  Staff shirts worn at the 5/8 Club state “if its spelled right, it’s done right”, however at Matt’s Bar in its advertising state “if its spelled correctly, you’re at the wrong place”

Matt’s Bar

We started our battle at Matt’s Bar in South Minneapolis.  It is off of Cedar Ave N and 35th.  Right away you will notice that there is absolutely no parking. First come, first park.  We parked on the street in front as we got to the bar early at around 5:30.  It is a hole in the wall bar.

We get inside and there are tons of people already seated.  The bar is filled up and there were 3 tables open.  We sat ourselves and ordered our food right away as we saw it was getting busier, the line was getting to be long and outside the door.  They had a staff of only 3 people on.  The decor of the restaurant had a 1970′s feel to it.  It was quite small inside and we could watch the cook make everyone’s burgers.  The grill was no bigger than the table we were sitting at.  They make all their burgers with or without onions on this grill. The cook was huge and filled up the space of the grill!

Decor

We both order the Jucy Lucy and a basket of fries.  We ordered a diet coke and a regular coke.  When we got our sodas they were cans.  If you see in the picture above, the poster on the wall says “no ice. no plates. We spent our budget on the napkins”.  They were not kidding!!!

Before.....

It took 45 minutes to get our 2 burgers and a basket of fries. We were excited to get this show on the road!  We take our first cheesy bite and cheese started dribbling out so fast you had to grab some fries to sop up the cheese. It was very hot and gooey. 

Gooey!

Steph then noticed she tasted onions.  She asked Suzanne if she tasted onions. the consensus from her was yes.  Honestly both of us hate onions so it kind of put us off.  It got easier to eat as the cheese cooled down, however we noticed as we got to the end of the burger it got a little dry.  We finished up our meal and went to pay.  Be aware!! Matt’s Bar only takes Cash or Checks.  There is an ATM machine in the bar for those of you that didn’t know.  There was a line at that ATM.  Thanks Suzanne for dinner!

Our Ratings on a scale of 1-5 Bitches:

Menu Variety-1 Bitch (They only specialize in Burgers and Fries)

Price-4 Bitches (The soda was $1.65 per can)

Taste/Quality- Suzanne rates this 3 Bitches, Steph rates this 2 Bitches (only really liked the fries due to the onion taste)

Overall- 2.5 Bitches

Side Note:  Suzanne was very disappointed having just been there 3 weeks prior.  Everything tasted really good.  She had hoped Steph would have the same experience. BOO!

5/8 Club

The second leg of our battle took place at the 5/8 Club in South Minneapolis about 3 miles from Matt’s.  5/8 has its own parking lot, however it is very small and it was filled up so we parked in the church across from the restaurant.  We arrived there at 5:30 and  God must have been on our side because we took the only available table in the place.  (It helps to park in the church lot)  This place is bigger than Matt’s and has it’s own bar area and kitchen.  The decor is your typical bar scene. 

We sat down and looked around and saw that the patrons were pretty much your local MN blue collar beer drinkin socialites.  The line for seats started to form outside the door.  We looked over the menu and noticed right away that the variety of food was so much better than Matt’s.  The Juicy Lucy menu in itself was quite impressive. See menu below

Juicy Lucy Menu

We both decide upon the “Pig Pen” we were feeling quite piggish. oink oink.  It is a 1/2 lb. burger with cheddar cheese and bacon inside.  We ordered and added fries and sodas, which also came in cans but unlike Matt’s, we received a glass full of ice! (YEE HA!)

Before

The food arrives within 10 minutes and while we were letting the food cool, we saw that “America’s Got Talent” was there!!! The show did auditions at the Mall of America a few months ago and the producers were back in MN to interview Minnesotans at a restaurant for their promos.  We were still distracted by the fame around us when we decided to start to dig into our food.  Steph thought this was the most fabulous Juicy Lucy ever! Suzanne was somewhat disappointed by the lack of dribbly-ness of cheese down her chin. She also felt the flavor of bacon was lacking and the flavor of the meat took over.  As for the french fries, hands down Matt’s takes the cake! These fries were not good at all!

JUICY!

Pan back to the America’s Got Talent and we notice that they were picking the most Big, Beefy Men to do their promos. They wanted them to sit down at a table with a huge juicy lucy and a huge pile of fried onions and talk like they had a deep MN accent. YA YOOOO KNOOOWW Minnie Sow Ta ! These guys are your typical meat and potato lovin dudes.  Burlesque!

Our Ratings on a Scale of 1-5 Bitches

Menu Variety-5 Bitches

Taste/Quality-3.5 Bitches

Price-4 Bitches

Overall-4 Bitches

2 Classy Bitches Over and Out!

 

Good Earth & The Buffet at the Bear

Good Earth

The review of Good Earth will be done by Classy Bitch Suzanne.

Every three months a small group of us get together for lunch.  This month we chose the Good Earth Restaurant.

Having not been there before, I was kind of excited to try something new, however I had no clue that this was a “all natural”, “organic” (not that there is anything wrong with that) restaurant. 

The restaurant is located on 70th and France in the Galleria in Edina, MN. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Galleria, this is a very upscale shopping center).  We got to the restaurant at 11:30 am and had to wait to get a table for 5 for 20 minutes.  After finally being seated, we grabbed the wine list and salivated at the choices.  We decided upon Wine and Mimosa’s.  (I do NOT like wine).

Suzanne's Mimosa

We grazed over the menus trying to decide what to eat and I came to the conclusion that I did NOT like anything on the lunch menu.  At that point, my mother said “why don’t you get something off of the breakfast menu”.  To which I hastily grabbed from her hands and proceeded to graze the breakfast menu.  Finally decided to get the Ham and Cheese Omelet with Fruit.  By the way, you should know, my ham was “nitrate free”. for those of you pregnant and cannot have nitrates….

Omelet

My niece Hannah also ordered off of the breakfast menu and ordered the French Toast with strawberries on the side.  They had different fruits you could choose from.

That little dish on the side of her plate is scrambled eggs, which by the way is extra.    

For those of you truly into the organic way of life, please note that they do have a larger lunch menu with a variety of choices which include, homemade soups, roasted root vegetables, hearty pastas, risottos, and stews. 

Suzanne’s Ratings on a scale of 1-5 Bitches

Menu Variety- 5 Bitches

Price-5 Bitches

Taste/Quality-3 Bitches (I am not into organic)

Overall-3 Bitches

Side Note:  The portions were adequate for the price range.  The staff was very friendly and knowledgable, and the decor of the restaurant was very homey and down to earth.

Buffet at the Bear

The review of the Buffet at the Bear will be done by  Classy Bitch Steph

This weekend my husband and I decided to take his mother 3 and 1/2 hours north of the twin cities (almost to Canada) to go to a rinky dink casino called Black Bear Casino.

We had eaten lunch at 11:30 am right before we left.  We got there and gambled right away. All of a sudden I was playing at a slot machine right in front of the buffet.  I felt hungry all of a sudden. Not just hungry but fatally hungry and if I didn’t eat something right away I was going to pass out.  I looked at my phone to check the time and it was 7:40 pm.  It had been 8 hours since I had lunch. I quickly scurried around trying to find my family.  When I did we ran to get in line at the Buffet.  The line wasn’t too terribly long.  We had to wait around 10 minutes, however when you are fatally hungry, 10 minutes feels like 10 hours!  There was a HUGE guy in line behind us looking like he wanted to cut in front of the line by opening his mouth and swallowing us whole.  He seemed to be with his mother.  They were your typical “Casino Folk”.  Now I’m cautious when I say that because I guess I go to the casino enough to be lumped into that category. But if you consider who you typically see at a casino you will know what I’m talking about.

The buffet was $14.95 per person and we had 2 coupons for $2 off.  Very reasonable compared to other casino buffets.  Unfortunately I was so hungry that I really didn’t pay too much attention to the details but from what I can remember here goes:  Decor looked like a cafeteria.  The buffet itself was small.  There was a variety, but not nearly what I have typically seen in a buffet.  It was Prime Rib and Shrimp night.  I got a piece of meat and some shrimp and seafood.  I loaded up a couple of plates worth as my eyes were huge.  I sit and begin.  The Prime Rib was hardly Prime.  It was terribly fatty and had no flavor. I ate about 1/4 of it.  The fried shrimp was ok. what can you say. It is your typical cheap shrimp….  I did have a pasta dish made of alfredo sauce, shrimp and scallops.  That was excellent! I chowed that down and tried some fried pike fillet.  That also was great.  Passed on the chicken strips after 2 bites.  I dumped the remainder of my meat, shrimp and chicken strips on my husband’s plate and moved on to the desert!  I grabbed a slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream and sat back down.  There was way too much nutmeg in it so I ate about 1/2 before I decided I was way to stuffed and this piece of pie was not worth being even more miserable.

At that point, I really wanted to gamble some more but my family was still eating. DRAG! I felt it to be rude to leave them, so instead I went to the restroom.  I got in there, did my business and when I came out to wash my hands, there was a woman there dressed in her best (faded jeans, flannel button up shirt and a vest). She was smoking a cigarette and stinking up the whole bathroom. I looked at her and she said she was hiding from her husband who thought she had quit smoking. (had she not said that, I could swear she was a lesbian) (not that there is anything wrong with it). I said enjoy sista and walked out.

We left the buffet full but yet not satisfied with the taste of the food.

Steph’s Ratings on a scale of 1-5 Bitches:

Menu Variety-4 Bitches

Price-5 Bitches

Taste/Quality-3 Bitches

Overall-3.5 Bitches

2 Classy Bitches-Over and Out!

CRAVE

Welcome to our first blog! We are two girls (Suzanne & Steph) who are extremely bored and decided to hit up some of the Minnesota restaurant hot spots and review them.  We hope you enjoy!

Our first stop was CRAVE at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN.

Fancy Napkin

We were brought to CRAVE to celebrate Suzanne’s new full time job!! YEA! We decided to go there because we had heard rave reviews. So here is ours:

Not knowing what to expect as far as crowds go, Steph decided to make a reservation on www.opentable.com. She made it for 5:15 pm.  We arrived at the Mall of America around 5 pm.  We parked on the south side of the mall by Macy’s as the restaurant is located on the 3rd floor just west of the food court.  There was plenty of parking available and we parked right in front of the main entrance to the mega mall.  We found CRAVE right away and could see inside and noticed there was no one waiting, so when we walked in, we did not mention our reservation. (Bad I know) As Suzanne was talking to the young gay teenaged boy (not that there is anything wrong with it), Steph noticed a nice inter-racial couple at the bar, who were ALL over each other and the African American gentleman had his hand on the Caucasian Blonde woman’s thigh (apparently he was not a breast man).  Regardless, they asked us if we were there for dinner or for happy hour.  Suzanne said “Both”. The young girl working at the hostess stand informed us that happy hour was only in the bar. We decided to sit in the dining area.

As we were walking to our booth, we looked around and noticed the ambiance of the restaurant was very open, you could watch the cooks making your meal.  The restaurant was decorated in an Asian Flair not to be confused with Asian Filet-er as Suzanne thought Steph had said.  It had a night-club feel to it and the music they played was Hip Hop, which we found extremely odd being that it was so elegant looking and we were there for dinner.

We were greeted right away by our friendly, pregnant waitress, Mo.  She suggested a couple of cocktails she thought we would like.  Suzanne ordered a Pomagranate Martini and Steph ordered an Agave Nectar Margarita.  She brought our drinks to us and Steph immediatley noticed her drink was very small BOO! Suzanne had a martini, so martini glass.

Suzanne's Pomagranate Martini

 Ok so the pricing on the drinks were as followed:

Martini-$10.95

Agave Nectar Margarita-$9.95

Steph's Agave Margarita

Now we suppose this is fair for being in a upscale restaurant, however we are used to our buy one get one $5.00 drinks so it did come as a little shock.  For the Margarita I would not say that was worth the money. The drink was Awesome, don’t get me wrong, but had it been in a big 24 oz glass, it would have been even better!  The Martini was very good, and Suzanne felt it was very strong (she drinks foo foo drinks), but all in all being it was pure alchohol it would be worth the $10.95.

Menu:

We grazed the menu and there were so many wonderful choices. They had many appetizers, soups, salads and entrees which included steak, seafood, chicken, pizza and pasta and their very own Sushi menu.  Where bread is usually included, here you would have to pay $1.95.  Sides were also extra.  We pretty much were sticker shocked so we geared toward our favorite stand by-Baked Three Cheese Penne Pasta.  Suzanne had Chicken added to it, Steph had Shrimp. Steph foolishly told Suzanne that because pasta is cheap we should have a huge portion and would have left overs for lunch the next day. Can we say-WRONG!

YUM! Small-BOO!

YUM! Small-BOO!

We ch0wed down on this awesome meal, but as we were talking and letting the food settle, we noticed that if you went to take a bite, the cheese had hardened making the texture of the meal lack.  If you choose this entree, make sure you eat it while it is hot.

While we were awaiting our fate (the bill) Suzanne was listening to the very nice, gay waiter, not to be confused with the young, gay hostess (host?) talk about donating $1 to their non profit organization of the month. CRAVE chooses a different non profit each month and will match what you give. Thumbs up on this!!!

Then we received a visit from the manager asking how our meal was. This is a plus in our book.

The bill comes and the total was $64.23 for 2 drinks and 2 entrees and a Pepsi (guess who wanted that)

Our Ratings on a scale of 1-5 Bitches

Menu Variety-  5 Bitches

Price- 2.5 Bitches

Taste/Quality- 4 Bitches

Overall- 3.5 Bitches

We end this post while eating chocolate chip cookies which we will give 5 Bitches.

Until next time………….

2 Classy Bitches!