Aaron Landry

Tag Archives: restaurant

The Strip Club, Saint Paul, MN

The Strip Club, originally uploaded by Aaron Landry.

Chef J.D. Fratzke, previously of Muffuletta and Tim Niver and Aaron Johnson of the Town Talk Diner just opened their new restaurant The Strip Club. It’s situated in just east of downtown Saint Paul and probably a little too convenient for my commute home from work.

A group of over ten of us popped in on their opening to check it out. It’s generally unfair to judge a place by their first night open to the public but our food, drink and service were all fantastic.

I had three small plates: the walleye fritters, escargot and their fries, all of which were very tasty. Ang, who coincidentally lives in one of the condos above the Strip Club ordered the New York Strip and said it was probably one of the best steaks she’s ever had. (No doubt that having this place downstairs from her will be too convenient, for better or for worse.)

Everyone seemed to love the mixed drinks, all of which seemed to be modeled after prohibition-era cocktails. As Max from the Bottle Gang noted, “At least three of their cocktails use a brandy base. That’s really rare these days; usually they are made with bourbon nowadays. The original recipes were brandy recipes and they’re really good with brandy.” I agree wholeheartedly.

We were seated on the second floor which is accessible only by a small, tight spiral staircase. My first thought is that it’s likely difficult to be carrying food and drinks up it. It’s a very nice feature but probably would be my worst enemy if I worked there. Our service was fast, very friendly and made me forget about the staircase they were repeatedly scaling.

The view of downtown Saint Paul from the Strip Club is great, the interior is well lit and the place feels classic. There’s also a secret door on the second floor that leads to the Strip Club’s office. Cool.

I’m going to be back here a lot.

The Strip Club
378 Maria Ave
Saint Paul, MN 55106
651-793-6247

Also check out my photos from the evening, Brian Moen’s write-up on his visit during the friends and family opening, Courtney’s photos, Ed’s post on The Deets and Cristina’s post in The Rake.

¶ Posted 16 January 2008 § Food, Drink and Dining § Saint Paul ‡ Comments (10) ° Also tagged: the strip club

Buster’s on 28th Avenue, Minneapolis, MN

Pint, originally uploaded by s4xton.

A couple days ago Matt pointed me to Buster’s on 28th Street. As it wasn’t open yet, I passed the link to a few people expressing that I wanted to show up on opening night. Taylor deciding to live blog it, Ed Kohler blogged about it more and Greg Swan blogged about Taylor and Ed blogging about it. Heh. As a result…

The party that formed at 6pm tonight was Max Sparber, Courtney Mault, Max and Courtney’s friend Amy, Ed Kohler, Andy Brown, Mike McCarron, Steve McPherson and his fiancée Calley Graham. Taylor Carik couldn’t make it, but liveblogged it anyway by proxy.

Nick Miller, one of the owners of the Happy Gnome is behind Buster’s and one server referred it to “the sister to the Happy Gnome.” There were a couple similarities but don’t expect Buster’s to be anything like it.

~~On a side note, I think it’s pretty funny that they call themselves Buster’s on 28th Street when they’re actually on 28th Avenue. Sure to confuse locals and suburbanites alike.~~ Update: Mike Stier from Buster’s contacted me and said it was just a goof on a third party and it’s now fixed. The menu and and their web site were the only things that were wrong.

It was a hot and steamy day outside but it was a tad bit worse inside. Air conditioning wasn’t all figured out yet I don’t think and I made the mistake of sitting next to the open frier near the bar. I initially ordered a Left Hand Sawtooth from the menu. Four minutes later I’m told they didn’t have it and then I found out they didn’t have any Summit or Surly either. Their menu humorously listed “Rush River” as a beer. They were referring to Rush River Brewing Company without letting us know which beer of theirs it was. I ordered their “Rush River” and whatever it was, it was good and most of us ended up having one. A decent selection of local beers, microbrews and a few Belgians are on the menu too.

It’s unfair to judge a restaurant’s service on its first day but to their credit they were well staffed and friendly. Service was sometimes slow and some servers were confused: “Did you guys order this?” Humorously our server came up to us with a full pint glass and asked us if we’d like to try a Pabst. Ed said “sure,” and it was warm. Not sure why we got a warm pint glass of PBR. We never drank it.

I ordered their Garlic and Pear pizza which tasted more like a dessert than a dinner. Still quite good though. Everyone seemed pleased with what they ordered. Amy and Ed got their version of the Juicy Lucy. I’ll let them speak to that in the comments.

After a bunch of us were talking about blogging and I took a bunch of photos around the place, suddenly a bunch more beer showed up at our table. There were so many pints that we couldn’t finish them all; we left some untouched at the table when we left.

Again, not really fair to go into a real review on opening night. We had a good time, good beer selection (even if they didn’t have many on tap yet) and it’s really a nice new neighborhood joint in South Minneapolis. Once everyone has their bearings and they get the rest of their beers on tap I’ll be visiting again soon.

See the rest of the photos on Flickr.