Eastside - November 28, 2015
If you’ve read more than a few of these, especially the ones that are dated for a Saturday, you know that I like to volunteer on Saturday mornings with a great organization called Open Arms. I want to take shifts in the kitchen preparing the food, because I love to cook, but I’ve got some pretty big hands. You know what they say about guys with big hands, we need big gloves, and the largest ones they have tend to rip apart when I’m trying to put them on my man mitts. So I deliver the food. In a round about way, I’m really thankful that my hands were too big for gloves and took up delivering, even though I’m not a huge fan of driving.
Delivering the food lets me see parts of the cities I’d usually never find myself in unless there’s a new restaurant I want to check out, or a friend was going to move to the area. More importantly though, it puts a face on why everybody is volunteering. There’s something really humbling, almost spiritual, about helping another human. Before I started volunteering I didn’t believe that, I felt donating money to causes was enough. Now I feel and believe different. Now I believe, if one is able, one should endeavor to help in any ways one can. Donating money, doing outreach, physically taking part in the process. (Sorry if I got off track there.)
Beyond attempting to volunteer every Saturday, and spending the first weekend in February in California, I don’t have a lot of traditions. Depending on where I’m at with trying to save money for a trip or a big donation, one of my newer traditions is stopping by a local doughnut shop and getting a donut before I volunteer. I get one and a coffee usually, then take a similar picture every time and tweet about it and volunteering. I try to be humble, and the intent of the tweeting isn’t to brag, humbly or not, but to try and encourage people. I’m trying to say “hey, look at me, during the week I’m a lazy privileged guy, but on the weekend I get less lazy and go volunteer, if I can do it, you can too!” If even one person is inspired to go volunteer, it’s worth it. Plus I get doughnuts occasionally.
Sometimes after volunteering, depending on how long it takes to do the route and get back to Open Arms to drop off the cooler bags, I’ll do brunch or lunch. Not a lot of spots in town do a Saturday morning/noon brunch. St. Paul has Strip Club, which no surprise, has a solid brunch, I’m assuming their sister spot St. Dinette is great too. Minneapolis, where Open Arms is located, doesn’t have as many Saturday brunch spots. My favorite Sunday spot, Spoon & Stable is only open for dinner AND late night ramen (next post), Nighthawks is solid, and now there’s Eastside.
I visited Eastside with Kat for dinner a few weeks ago, loved the peppers, loved the crispy scaled fish, thought the desserts could use some work. The week after we ate there they were starting a brunch service that runs on both Saturday and Sunday. I was busy with some other things on different weekends, but on this Saturday, I finally decided to check it out.
Beignets with powdered sugar: good, but would be more aptly called mini-beignets. the surface to interior ratio is a little off given their size, you don’t get all of the chew you’d expect from the interior. They’re tasty, I’d recommend an Irish coffee or maybe a coffee with a dash of nut bitters so it seems like you’re getting a traditional chicory coffee experience.
I need to go back for the pastry basket, all of their pastries are sold as a set unlike other establishments where it’s a la carte. This doesn’t allow for survival of the fittest and necessitates ordering something you may already have had if they only change one pastry and you want to try a new one - unless they plan on changing them all at the same time every iteration - then I’m a little intrigued.
Shrimp and Grits with Spicy Sausage, Sweet Corn, Scallion, and Cheddar (I added poached eggs): The grits and sausage were great, the shrimp were a tad too done for my liking. The eggs? Perfect. Probably the best traditional poached eggs I’ve ever had (Spoon & Stable’s red wine poached are still my fave, even thought they look like testicles). A lot of spots end up up slightly over doing the bath and you end up with a yolk that’s too firm to run with a consistency between cold honey and peanut butter. These were great.
A funny, or rather interesting, thing happened while I was dining at the bar. When I initially sat down I thought the air from the vents was blowing rather hard, but I didn’t say anything, it wasn’t bothersome, just noticeable. Apparently it was problematic though. While the barkeeps were busy at the other end of the bar or out on the floor delivering a drink, a glass fell off the racks and shattered. I looked closely, and noticed that a number of glasses were swinging in the breeze from the aforementioned vent. They’d rock back, tip up slightly and then rock forward, sliding forward just the tiniest bit, and the way the bases were weighted, they weren’t sliding back. Blow, rock, creep, blow, rock, creep. I’m not sure how they’re going to solve the issue, but I suggested blocking that vent, adding spacers to the back end of the glass holder rails, or not filling the holder full. Did I mention the ice well is right by the counter where the glass shattered? It wasn’t pretty. Luckily a member of management was sitting at the bar and saw that it wasn’t a bartender that broke the glass. I joked that I’d blame ghosts, but since the building was brand new, faulty design was the more likely culprit.
Since I like to end my brunch on a sweet note, and I wasn’t feeling the eclair, I recalled that Strip Club posted a picture of their weekend special doughnut, so I headed east.
Sweet Potato Doughnut with charred marshmallow meringue topping: I was expecting a sweet potato based dough, but it was their standard, but still tasty, brioche. The sweet potato ended up being a cream/puree. It was pretty and pretty tasty, it’s definitely given me some ideas of ways I could try to replicate the concept, if not the same format and execution.