Big River Pizza & Saint Dinette - November 13, 2015
Sometimes terrible things happen, if that thing is terrible enough it ends up etching the date of its occurrence indelibly on to our collective consciousness. In my life those dates are the Challenger Disaster, Oklahoma City, 9/11, the Columbia Disaster, the Spanish Train Bombings on 3/11/2004 (11-M if you’re in Spain), and now the Paris attacks on 11/13/2015. (I wonder if it will be colloquially known as 13/11 or if it will have some other denotation.)
This post isn’t totally about that, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge it happening.
I’m going to drop the whole “dining companion” and “fellow diner” thing. My friends have names and I want to be able to look back on these and know who I was with without resorting to some codeword based on something a food critic in Grand Forks did that I thought was clever. I might go back and edit the prior entries to reflect the names of those I was with, but know that so far “dining companion” is Kat Peterson and “fellow diner” is Rachel Welch, both good friends met via social media.
A couple weeks ago Kat, our mutual friend Andrew, and I went to Saint Dinette and followed it up with a trip to Strip Club. While at Saint Dinette, we had a really, really good panna cotta that Kat ranks as the best she’s had, I believe her, she’s a panna cotta aficionado. Knowing that restaurants frequently change their menus, and that we weren’t able to get it as the desired comfort food on Monday, we made a plan for Friday. We’d already ate most of the items on the menu and she wanted to try the pizza place across the street, so the plan was pizza for dinner, and Saint Dinette for dessert.
Big River Pizza
(Kat’s pic)
Dr. Zeus - Olive Oil Base, Shredded Mozzarella, Dice Tomato, Red Onion, Kalamata Olive, Artichoke, Spinach, and Feta, Finished with Lemon: Tasty. Good salt. The crust seemed a little thicker than the next one.
(Kat’s pic)
St. Pauli Girl - Organic Crushed Tomato, Shredded Mozzarella, White Onion, Prosciutto, and Arugula: My favorite of the two. Crusty in a good way, nice tartness from the tomatoes, a little salt and funk from the prosciutto, and some bitterness from the greens. This was good at the time and still great a couple days later cold out of the fridge.
Saint Dinette
(Kat’s pic - includes the below items too)
Dilly Beans & BBQ Nuts: Nicely pickled green beens and well spiced Marcona(?) almonds. Both are really solid bar snacks, especially the beans. I definitely recommend.
Biscuit with Mimolette cheese and old bay butter. Another good “cheddar” style biscuit addition to the Cities’ food scene. I can’t wait to get back for brunch and try it out with the biscuits and gravy.
Canadian Cold Press with George Dickel, Luxardo Amaro Abano, Maple, and House-made Cold Press. I’m a huge fan of cold press cocktails and seek them out on brunch menus, usually avoiding caffeine after 3pm on work nights. Friday isn’t a work night, so I went with it, based in large part on Kat’s recommendation. I’m glad, because it’s really good.
Creme Caramel with griotte cherry & feuilletine: It turned out we were a day too late. This is the dessert that replaced the Milk & Honey panna cotta. This is listed as a panna cotta on the menu, but I think it’s really a flan. Regardless it’s good. Not as good as the Milk & Honey, but if you get a spoonful of a cherry, some of the feuilletine, and a fair amount of the custard, it’s a delicious bite. The cherries have a little heat from their maceration in cherry brandy, and can be overpowering on their own, but with the cooling of the custard they really work.
While Kat and I were finishing up, she was regaling the staff about how much she loved, and would subsequently miss, the Milk & Honey. A few moments later, one of Saint Dinette’s big guns, Laurel Elm, stopped opposite us behind the bar and asked Kat something along the lines of “can I give you a weird gift?” When Kat agreed, Laurel produced one of those small quart containers that are usually used for liquid leftovers. Inside were the last vestiges of the perfectly creamy, and amazingly tasty, Milk & Honey panna cotta. It made Kat more than happy.
This container might not look like much, but it contains a perfectly executed panna cotta, and all the associated memories that it brings with it. If you want to see the original presentation you can check out Kat’s pic or my pic from before.
I don’t want to jump to hyperbole, and would never equate, conflate, or otherwise say they’re close to even, but on a day when something so terrible happened in the world; witnessing the thoughtfulness of a host, and the joy and appreciation of a dear friend was a good end to the meal and day. A reminder that sometimes it’s the simplest kindnesses that can mean the world when the world isn’t so kind.