Author Archives: My Annoying Opinions

El Super Taco x 2 (Burnsville + Apple Valley, MN)

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After a string of write-ups of meals at more expensive/fancy restaurants (Tenant, Hyacinth, Bucheron), let’s close out the month in restaurant reviews with a report from the opposite end of the spectrum.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I need to spend more time exploring casual Mexican restaurants in the southern suburbs of the Twin Cities. We’ve been seeing more and more of these on the occasions when we take the scenic route from Burnsville or Apple Valley down to Northfield where we live but we haven’t really tried any of them (beyond Homshuk). Which brings us, in a roundabout manner, to El Super Taco. They have two locations: the original in Burnsville and another in Apple Valley. Continue reading →

Hakushu Sherry Cask, 2013 Release

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By the time this review posts I will hopefully have just landed in Tokyo. To mark my first proper visit to Japan (outside of transit lounges) here is a review of a Japanese whisky.

This is the Hakushu sherry cask release from 2013. I’m too frazzled by last minute packing right now to go look up when these releases began or ended. I know that I’d tried and failed to get my hands on the previous year or two’s releases—I only managed to get this bottle because when the Whisky Exchange sent out their email in January 2014 announcing it was on sale, I was sitting jet lagged in my parents’ flat in Delhi and so managed to jump on it almost instantaneously. I also got a bottle of the Yamazaki Sherry Cask from that 2013 release in that order. That one I ended up selling at auction in the UK a couple of years later when the price it was commanding became ludicrous—I have no regrets about that sale: I sampled that whisky from a friend’s bottle and didn’t think it was anything very special. I’m sure this bottle of the Hakushu Sherry Cask would also be worth a lot of money now (and probably has been for a while). After all, it’s been a long time since there’s been much quality Japanese whisky on the market. But this one I’ve held on to for myself. And here I am now, drinking it. Let’s get to my notes. Continue reading →

Tenant XIII (Minneapolis)

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It doesn’t fully feel like summer in Minnesota till we’ve eaten dinner at Tenant. It now feels like summer in Minnesota. We went back to one of our favourite restaurants in the Twin Cities this past weekend and enjoyed another excellent meal.

We arrived a little early for our 8 pm reservation and decided to begin proceedings in their Next Door space. I am pleased to say that the vibe there is still chill and the cocktails still both priced and mixed very well. The missus got the current incarnation of their Collins (with rum, pineapple etc.) and I got their Martini. We enjoyed both drinks very much. We hadn’t gotten very far into them before we were summoned to the dining room through the interconnecting door. We were seated at the counter and it wasn’t too long before proceedings were underway. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Lagavulin 16, Feis Ile 2017

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June’s whisky reviews began with a 22 yo Littlemill from a boutique German independent bottler. The second review of a month is of an official release from one of Scotland’s most iconic distilleries, Lagavulin. This is a 16 yo but it’s not the well-known and much-loved standard Lagavulin 16. This is a cask strength 16 yo that was released for Feis Ile, the annual Islay whisky festival, in 2017 (almost exactly eight years ago). And, no, it ‘s not a cask strength version of the regular 16 yo either. This was double-matured in casks that had previously held moscatel, a sweet wine. In case the name sounds familiar in a whisky context, the Caol Ila Distiller’s Edition is also double-matured in moscatel casks. I assume there are a number of these casks lying around in Diageo’s warehouses and so this was probably a convenient way to come up with a Feis Ile release in 2017. (I may be misremembering but I think there may also have been a Diageo special release slate one year that featured malts from iconic distilleries being double matured in the casks used for other distilleries’ Distillers Editions.). Anyway, I’ve had this bottle sitting around for a while and am glad to finally have it open. This review joins my reviews of the 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2020 Lagavulin Feis Ile releases. I have a bottle of the 2016 release on my shelf but I don’t have the 2019—so I’m afraid I’m probably never going to complete that sequence. Anyway, let’s see what this is like. Continue reading →

Hyacinth IV (St. Paul, MN)

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I wasn’t sure last week if we were going to end up going out to eat this past weekend but, as it happens, we did. The younger boy has just finished middle school and the older boy is headed to 11th grade and we decided to take them out to a nice dinner to celebrate (it’s also the case that we haven’t taken them to a nice meal out in a while). They got to pick the cuisine and they asked for a place with pasta on the menu. 112 Eatery is always a good bet for our family—and their stringozzi with lamb ragu is one of our favourite pasta dishes in the Twin Cities—but we decided finally to go with Hyacinth. The boys had enjoyed our dinner there in 2022 and we decided to give them another go. The only tables they had at short notice were at 5 pm or quite a bit past the boys’ dinner time and so we ate very early. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Littlemill 22, 1989 (Glen Fahrn)

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To kick off June’s whisky reviews, here is an older Littlemill. This is another of the many casks of 20+yo Littlemill that were bottled by various indie outfits in the early 2010s, well after the distillery had closed, been demolished and the ground it stood on plowed with sand. Well, the latter only happened in a figurative sense. The distillery closed finally in 1994 and was dismantled in 1997. What was left of it burned down in 2004 and now a housing development stands on the site. As I never get tired of noting, Littlemill had a very negative reputation among whisky aficionados when it was open. The official releases were not very inspiring. But a number of casks that remained in storage were aged into an excellence that the official releases never reached and many of them were released 15 odd years ago. As the whisky market was not insanely overheated at the time, bottles from these casks were available at quite reasonable prices from various indie bottlers (my spreadsheet tells me I paid just about $114 for this one) and I socked a few away. This cask was released by a German outfit named Glen Fahrn. The latest release Whiskybase logs from them was in 2017—I’m not sure if they’re still a going concern. Anyway, I’m glad to have finally opened this bottle a few nights ago. Here now are my notes. Continue reading →

Bucheron (Minneapolis)

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Bucheron opened last year on the corner of Nicollet and 43rd in South Minneapolis and quickly garnered local and then national acclaim. They are currently up for a James Beard award for Best New Restaurant (in the entire country). That they should have gotten all this attention is not surprising. While the restaurant is not directly a part of the Gavin Kaysen Restaurant-Industrial Complex, the owners and other key figures are graduates of it, having worked at Spoon & Stable, Demi and Bellecour (and doubtless other properties as well). When you have a certain pedigree, attention is guaranteed. But a restaurant still has to deliver on the promise of that pedigree. One year on, on the basis of our dinner there this past weekend, I can say that the promise is being kept. We had a very fine meal. Details follow. Continue reading →

May/June 2025

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I somehow didn’t notice that I’d left this post in draft status over the weekend. You’ve probably been beside yourself wondering what the most-read posts on my blog in May were and what I might be posting about in June. I understand and apologize for the pain you have experienced. But here is all that information now. I would advise reading it slowly and in pieces, not trying to take it all in at once. There’s no sense in risking further harm.

I’d reported in the previous installment of this series that both page-view and unique user counts had been down in April. Well, they picked up a little bit in May but not a lot. As to whether the drastically-lowered pace of my postings is leading to people in checking in less frequently or it’s just another symptom of the fallen world we live in, I don’t know. I can’t promise you that things will be very different in June. Well, they might be a little different towards the end of the month (see below). But first let’s see what things looked like in May. Continue reading →

Taqueria Los Paisanos (St. Paul, MN)

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I said last week that our next meal out in the Twin Cities was likely going to be at Taqueria Los Paisanos in St. Paul and, for a change, I am not a liar. The boys and I ate lunch there on Saturday on our way to pick up the returning missus from the airport (we also squeezed in a quick stop at Ha Tien in between). We hadn’t eaten Mexican food in a while and were jonesing for tacos in particular. I am very pleased to say that Los Paisanos was not a letdown. This will not be a surprise to anyone who has eaten there before—it was our first time—or to anyone who knows how solid the Twin Cities’ Mexican food scene is. I really feel that the local media needs to do a better job of broadcasting this information: affordable Mexican food may be the single-most reliable genre of food in the Twin Cities. Which, I suppose, may be true of every large city in the US at this point. It’s just that a lot of people—including many people who live here—don’t know that Minnesota has a large and growing Mexican population and, as a result, an ever-expanding Mexican food scene. Continue reading →

Ben Nevis 22, 1991 (Signatory)

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May was going to be a month of single malt Scotch reviews but it turned more specifically into a month of reviews of sherry cask single malt Scotch whiskies. Things kicked off with an Ardmore 1977-2003 bottled by Scott’s Selection; next up was the 2011 release of the Glendronach 21, Parliament; last week I reviewed the 2018 release of the Springbank 15. And here now is a review of a Ben Nevis 22, 1991 bottled by Signatory. Whiskybase lists seven different casks of Ben Nevis 22, 1991 bottled by Signatory, but only two were at cask strength. This is one of the two. I’ve actually reviewed it before, back in 2020. That review was of a sample that had come to me from Michael Kravitz of Diving for Pearls (whose reviews I hope you are all still reading). I have to admit I had forgotten that I had already reviewed this but I’m always happy to re-review whiskies, especially when the first set of notes had come from a sample. Well, I really liked it back in 2020 from the 2 oz sample bottle and—spoiler alert—I can tell you that I really like it now that I have my own bottle open. These notes are being taken from the fourth pour from the bottle. Let’s get right to it. Continue reading →

Grand Szechuan, April 2025 (Bloomington, MN)

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We didn’t go out to eat this past weekend. The missus is out of town and the boys and I spent what felt like the entire weekend setting up our community garden plot in advance of the rain that has been pissing down in southern Minnesota since Monday evening (and will continue through Wednesday). But I have a Twin Cities meal report for you anyway this week. It’s of another meal at Grand Szechuan in Bloomington. We’d eaten this meal with friends just about a month ago. At the time, I’d only just reported on another meal eaten at Grand Szechuan just a few weeks prior, and so I’d held off on posting the report, expecting to merge it with a report on our next meal there. I do hope we’ll eat there in June before our summer travel plans get going but if not the memory of this meal will have to tide us over till the next. Continue reading →

Springbank 15 (2018 Release)

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I last reviewed the Springbank 15 more than six years ago. That review was of a bottle of the 2017 release. Today I have for you a review of a bottle from the 2018 release. Or rather, as per the very hard to find code on the bottle, it was bottled in 2018: my guess is it didn’t hit the market till 2019 (if I am reading the code correctly, it was bottled quite late in 2018). By the way, the code is not actually hard to find. It was for me because before opening the bottle I was squinting around the bottom, as that’s where I remembered it being etched/printed. Of course, when I gave up and removed the foil, there it was right at the top of the bottle. An exciting story, I think you will agree, full of the kind of dramatic tension and moral ambiguity that marks great works of literature. You’re welcome. More pertinent information is that the Springbank 15 used to be one of my very favourite whiskies, and the fact that I have lost touch with it has to do only with the fact that all Springbank seems to have become heavily allocated in the United States—with prices rising to match. Not that I buy very much whisky any more but even before I’d slowed down/come to an almost complete stop, it had become very hard to find any Springbank in Minnesota. A far cry from when we moved here in 2007, when a store in Minneapolis—famous for retailing a very wide selection of OB single malts at only 10% markup—was selling it for all of $68. Ah, those were the days. Anyway, here are my notes on this bottle. Continue reading →

Tenka Ramen (Minneapolis)

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We ate in Minneapolis’ Lyn-Lake neighbourhood a few weeks ago—see my report on dim sum lunch at Jade Dynasty—and were back there again this past weekend. This time we were eating Japanese, not Chinese food, not dim sum but ramen. Tenka Ramen is located just a few doors down from Lake St.’s intersection with Hennepin, not very many blocks away from Jade Dynasty. I’m not sure when they opened; they only flashed on my radar when someone recommended them in a comment elsewhere on the blog. Having recently begun to check out the Twin Cities’ ramen scene in earnest—see my reviews of meals at Ramen Kazama in Minneapolis and at Tori in St. Paul—I’d made a note to check them out at some point. That point turned out to be for Mother’s Day lunch. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Glendronach 21, Parliament (2011 Release)

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No, you’re not experiencing deja vu: this is my second review this year of a Glendronach Parliament from the early 2010s. Back in February, I reviewed my bottle from the 2012 release, which was the second year that Glendronach released the Parliament—a 21 yo named, if I remember correctly, for a parliament of crows that perched somewhere near the distillery. In the introduction to that review I’d noted that I had emptied a bottle of the original 2011 release a few months before launching the blog, and wondered if I might have put away a reference sample from the bottle—as used to be my practice at the time. Well, it turns out I did. Past me saved 4 oz for future me to drink. Future me is now present me and I have now enjoyed past Glendronach 21. I drank half of it yesterday to make sure it was still in good shape—it was/is—and here now are my notes on the remaining 2 oz.

Glendronach 21, Parliament (48%; 2011 Release; from a reference sample saved from my own bottle)

Nose: A big rich sherry nose with leather, figs, damp earth and a touch of apricot jam. On the second sniff there’s a fair bit of salt and a little ham. Continues in this general vein with a bit of pencil lead popping out as well. With a drop of water the fruit expands (plum and apricot and dried orange peel) and the ham turns to beef broth. Continue reading →

Myriel II (St. Paul, MN)

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We ate at Myriel for the first time almost exactly three years ago. They had then been open for just about a year and had already received rave reviews locally. We liked our meal fine but it did not blow us away (and there were some aspects of the meal we found a little cloying). This, by the way, was also the experience of the friends we had originally been supposed to eat there with. Our original reservation had been scuppered on account of a positive covid test at the restaurant and we ended up eating instead at St. Genevieve. And then we ate separately at Myriel a couple of months apart. We had both independently set them aside in our minds as “decent enough but nothing we need to go back and try again in a hurry”. And when I posted the first edition of my Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation last year, I put Myriel in the “Once Every Few Years” tier. Well, three years is certainly a few. In the intervening period their local reputation has become even stronger and they’ve also picked up a fair bit of national recognition, including a finalist nod for Chef Tomlinson in the “Best Chef: Midwest” category in the 2025 James Beard Awards (I guess results will be announced soon). We checked with our friends to see if they were available and interested to finally go back and eat there together. They were and so we did. Did we like this meal better? Read on to find out. Continue reading →

Ardmore 1977-2003 (Scott’s Selection)

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After a month that featured no whisky reviews—instead, I reviewed a rum, an Armagnac, a Calvados, and a mezcal—let’s do a month of nothing but whisky reviews. Don’t get too excited now—it’s still just going to be one whisky review a week.

First up, is an Ardmore bottled by Scott’s Selection in 2003. It was distilled in 1977 and so would have been either 25 or 26 years old. Scott’s Selection was always reticent with detail on the label. Though in this case they somewhat unusually specify that the cask type was “sherry wood”. They don’t say it’s a single cask, mind you. In fact, I can’t remember if Scott’s Selection ever released any single casks from this era. Or at least any that they marked as such. There was another 1977-2003 “sherry wood” Ardmore, by the way, that was released in Europe at a different strength; this is the one that was released in the US. 15 odd years ago, you could still find bottles of this—and several other Scott’s Selection releases of whiskies distilled in the 1960s and 1970s—hanging around in whisky stores for prices that now seem like they must have been out of a fantasy. Those days are long gone. But at least I have a bottle of this left and now it’s open. Continue reading →

NCC (Delhi, March 2025)

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Here, in an effort to get done with my reports on meals eaten out in Delhi in March, is a quick look at another meal I ate on this trip in Humayunpur. If you’ve been following my Delhi reports over the years—or if you know Delhi well—you know that Humayunpur, a village incorporated into South Delhi, is one of the major hubs of North Eastern Indian life in Delhi. It is home to a large number of people from the North Eastern states and it also contains stores that serve them, and an ever-growing number of restaurants that serve their foods. It has become my very favourite part of Delhi to eat in. When I lived in India, I knew very little of the foods of North Eastern India beyond Assam, and now I feel like I am making up for lost time. I ate lunch by myself in Humayunpur in the first week of this trip. That was an excellent Naga lunch at a tiny restaurant named Shilloi. The next week, just a couple of days before my return to Minnesota, I was back to eat another Naga lunch, this time with a friend at NCC. Continue reading →