Short version: Find the Chef Shack and eat there. Breakfast, lunch, it doesn’t matter. I had a beer bacon brat for breakfast Saturday morning and it was the best breakfast ever.

Long version: Find the Chef Shack and eat there.

They just started parking one of their trucks at 5th and Hennepin, which is just a short couple of block walk from my office. A couple of weeks ago, the first day they were downtown actually, I headed down for some lunch. I ended up having pulled pork tacos (and they threw in some bonus mini donuts, probably because I had awesome hair that day) and they were ridiculous. There was slaw involved on the top of my tacos. I hate vegetables, but you know what Chef Shack does? They make vegetables delicious.

I don’t often talk about food and that’s mainly because my idea of a good sammich contains Wonderbread, Oscar Mayer bologna, a processed American cheese slice, and maybe some French’s yellow mustard if I’m feeling confident in my abilities not to leak it all over myself.

This weekend Amelia and I went to the Northeast Farmer’s Market. While we were trying to find a parking spot, we noticed Chef Shack was there, which clearly meant breakfast. I had the aforementioned beer brat with bacon on the inside and Amelia had a very large salad that looked like a garden on a plate, which was deemed the “Vegetarian farm salad with grains and peach vinaigrette”. I don’t even know what was on it, but it was good. It also marked the first time I’ve ever tried quinoa and I’m convinced that I could go a whole week without meet as long as I had some quinoa. (Also, I just love the way it’s spelled.)

We went to the downtown farmer’s market and, on the way home, decided to stop at the Mill City Farmer’s Market. Guess who was there. No, guess. More Chef Shack! We split some burnt caramel ice cream and I thought we were going to die from deliciousness. It was fantastic and now we’re determined to find out where the ice cream’s at every weekend. I’m not sure what will happen when winter rolls around, but until then, we’re so fans of becoming Chef Shack regulars.

For free (yes, free), I have 2 GB of online storage that I can easily access via Little Danger. This means that sense I don’t have a photo-taking option on the iPod, I can pull up photos from the 2 gigs of space I have online pretty much anywhere I am, and that makes me pretty happy. It’s pretty much vital for me to be able to pull up a picture of me standing in Cozumel in front of a U.S. Coast Guard ship with a penis-shaped balloon hat in one hand and a yard from Senor Frog’s in the other. I mean, who knows when I might meet someone at the laundromat that would want to hear my sordid tales and see all plenty of pictures of drunken debauchery, right?

2 gigs probably isn’t a lot of room if you were using the site as an online backup option for an actual computer, but considering Little Danger only holds 8 gigs of incredibly important information anyway, the 2 GB options works really well. And anything free works really well in my opinion, too.

Jenni, Matt, Stephanie and I had adopted a family via The Aliveness Project. Since Jenni and Matt are somewhere in the Southern Caribbean right now, I volunteered to drop it off tonight. The General and I decided to take The Kid with and just give him a chance to see what happens when a ton of people get together to help others. He’s so damn hard to read sometimes, I have no idea what he really thought about the whole thing. Seeing a back room that’s stacked to the ceiling full of donated Christmas gifts is always a feel-good type of vision, so I hope he was able to at least take a little bit away from it.

Following the do-good portion of the evening, we decided to have dinner at Matt’s Bar. We figured taking a 12 year old to a bar was the appropriate thing to do after exposing him to charity, right? (FYI, it’s not really a bar. It’s a restaurant that has bar in the name.) Dinner was just like it always is at Matt’s — greasy and delicious.

And then, before he went to bed, I gave him ten minutes to write what he liked or didn’t like at Matt’s Bar. I present to you a 12 year old’s review on his dining experience tonight. (Keep in mind, he probably would have went on and on had I not limited his time.)

I liked the Juicy Lucy because it had the cheese inside like a volcano!!! The fries were kinda boring and flavorless. The cheese was AWESOMAZINGLY DELICOUS!!!!! I wonder what kind it was. I always forget how little amount of sprite is in the can. This often leads me to drinking it all right away. The restaurant was very nice and small. This was cool because it made me feel more comfortable and relaxed.

Clearly, you should all go visit. And, since it was his first time jumping on the Jucy (Juicy) Lucy bandwagon, so we took pictures.

The sign says hamburgers, but I think if you ordered just a hamburger while at Matt's, the jukebox would stop playing, the waitress would drop your can of Coke, and everyone would stop and stare at you.

I love Matt's because they give you a can of soda. Oooh, and a bendy straw. WIN.

Taken by The General in my fancy new Old Navy sweater, yay for $12 v-neck sweater sales!

Ketchup at Matt's Bar! With pre-teen bokeh!

The Kid at Matt's Bar! He wanted to take his own pictures and I wasn't about to argue. I'm all about fostering creativity... or something like that!

DINNER. A Jucy Lucy (or is it Juicy Lucy??) at it's very finest. And now that's all in my belly. And coating the inside of my arteries. BUT I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT.

The General, The Boy, and I decided to go out for dinner. We’d both had really good days and decided just have a nice night out. We got there around 7:45 and it looked like the Happy Hour crowd was just heading out. We stood at the podium, where one would think there would be a host/hostess, for about ten minutes. Normally, I would have seated myself, but in all the times I’d been there, someone’s always seated me. I didn’t figure it’d be any different

After comparing everything in the restaurant to a game of Diner Dash, we were seated in the backroom and given menus.  Another ten minutes rolled by before our server, whose will remain anonymous since I’m nice, dropped off our waters. She came back to take our drink orders (two Cokes, one Sprite) and as she brought them to our table, some other employee came bounding down the stairs, slamming right into her. Carbonated drinks went everywhere and it took another 5-10 minutes to refill them and bring them out to us. By this time, we were more than ready to order.

The host that eventually seated ended up bringing our our appetizer round – a basket of fries for The Boy and I, a starter salad for The General. The food? Pretty amazing, as usual. They use sea salt and fresh cracked pepper on their fries, making them so good that I kinda didn’t want to stop eating them.

An ample amount of time passed before the same host brought out our burgers.  The General had ordered fries, but instead wound up with mashed potatoes. The Boy and I were set with our burgers and garlic mashed potatoes. As the host was getting us situated, the server came over and The General pointed out the incorrect side dish that was brought out. Instead of, you know, apologizing or saying “my bad”, the server says “I thought you said fries” and walked off. We assumed she was getting more fries, so didn’t think too much about it.

(Fries. Garlic mashed potatoes. Just wanted to double check and make sure they didn’t sound the same.)

Eventually, The General’s fries came out and we were pretty much set on stuffing our faces with as much food as possible. The burgers? Holy Lord, they were good. We’d all opted for bacon cheeseburgers and were kind of in love with dinner.

It took a while for the server to come back, but she eventually, after we were all sitting in completely over-stuffed mode, asked if we needed dessert or coffee. We said no, and I handed her our gift certificate. When she brought the tab back, it had the original dollar amount on it with her handwritten “-$25″ underneath the total. No big shake, I thought, and handed her my debit card.

She ran it and came back with the receipt for me to sign. I looked at it and noticed she’d charged me the complete total of $61.28. I waited for her to come back, thinking it was an honest mistake, but as soon as she saw me looking at her, she came over. The only word I could get out of my mouth was “hey” before she responded with, “Oh, did I put the whole amount on your card?” She grabbed the card and receipt before I could really say anything and walked off to fix it.

I got a completely uneasy vibe off of it and so did The General. It was almost as if she’d done it time and time again, just to see if she could get away with it. We’d specifically discussed it with her when I handed the certificate over to her, making sure she knew what it was. When she originally handed the receipt back to me, she said she took the $25 off. It was just an incredibly weird vibe; I just got a funny feeling from it all and not in a good way.

And the more I’ve thought about it in the 45 minutes we’ve been home, the more pissed off I keeping getting. Sure, it could have been an honest mistake, but I just didn’t buy that with the server. It seemed way too rehearsed when she brought the amended receipt back and said, “Both charges will show up on your statement as pending, but this first one will eventually fall off”. That’s nice and all, lady, but now I’m sitting here with $100 worth of pending charges, meaning that’s a lot of money I don’t have access to, because you’re either A) a world class scammer or B) completely retarded and inattentive to what you’re doing with customers’ credit cards.

Whatever the case is, Joe’s Garage has me feeling really icky right now. I love them and can’t imagine it being a restaurant-mandated rule of trying to fuck over local patrons. I’m probably overreacting, but I’m just super angry at their server’s unethical actions.

The menu was almost impossible to pick from, but I think it’s safe to say we were all extremely happy with what we ordered. Our appetizer, though, is work writing in detail about. Either B. or The Cuz mentioned it and after giving it a lot of thought, we decided to go ahead and order one to split between the four of us. And, because we’re nice, we gave Clara Jane crackers.

What is the Ballistic Elvis? Oh, let me tell you.

American cheese, strawberry preserves, sliced bananas, peanut butter and red pepper flakes. (Read that twice, just because you’ll need to in order to remember it and make it at home.)

All grilled on what looked to be Texas Toast. And, because we couldn’t say no, we added bacon, as the menu suggested.

It came out and I wanted it to be absolutely disgusting. How can you combine all of that and have it be delicious? I love each of the ingredients. On their own. Or perhaps PAIRED together. But all in one? I was scared! I didn’t want one sandwich to ruin my love for bananas or bacon or discount American cheese slices!

It wasn’t disgusting. At all. It was fantastic. So much, in fact, that neither one of us Ballistic Elvis virgins have been able to stop thinking about it ever since. Now, we have groceries to make our own version of it. I hope we get it right, but I’d imagine more testing will be necessary when we return to St. Louis.

• From Riverfront Times
• From Sauce magazine

While waiting in line behind either the thugs, the homos, or the families of 8 where each kid gets one treat as long as it’s under $1, I had the opportunity to look over the fine selection of breakfast sandwiches. I saw one, for the low low price of 99 cents, that I just couldn’t pass up. On the label, it claimed to have gravy INSIDE the biscuit. That particular morning, nothing sounded better than a gravy explosion in my mouth for less than a buck.

And let me tell you this: it was worth every single one of those 99 cents. As far as I’m concerned, very sandwich should contain some type of gravy in the middle. I could live on Super America’s Gravy Explosion Sandwiches every morning for breakfast. Unfortunately, I think everyone in the vicinity of 35th and Nicollet has the same thought, because lately those sandwiches are nearly impossible to get your hands on!

It was awesome. It really was. My Work BFF gave me goose bumps when he sang, and I think that’s because when he sings at work, he always sings ridiculous songs in ridiculous voices, but holy crap – all of the reviews that I’ve read say things like he gives his character “a soul that soars vocally and emotionally” (via the StarTrib) and “[the] shocker here is [my Work BFF], who turns in an absolute masterpiece as Jamie’s left-behind, lesser-known brother” (via howwastheshow.com). And as we were walking into the lobby, The General overheard someone talking about how awesome his performance was. Of course, had someone said something bad, I probably would have gotten into a rumble…

I really loved it, and if you’re local, you should probably go see it before it’s run is over. It’s only about an hour and a half long, but it goes by so quickly, it seems like you’re sitting there for even less time than that.

When I walked into the theater, I was kind of surprised at the crowd. It was mainly older people, and by older, I mean quite possibly old enough to be my grandparents. Jodi ran into the same thing in her neck of the woods, and it’s kinda funny! The previews they’ve been showing on TV don’t exactly scream Your Grandparents Movie.

The whole movie was pretty fantastic – the cast, the soundtrack, and obviously the script. I hoped it would be a great movie and worth my $7.25 matinee price, and it didn’t disappoint at all. After hearing all of hype and the five billion awards it’s been nominated for already, I had some doubt in the back of my head going into it, but they were easily erased during the first five minutes. If Hollywood allows Diablo Cody to maintain the type of writing style she’s become known for with Candy Girl and now with Juno, then I’ll be more than excited to see or read anything else with her name attached.

And, because I’m a super nerd with way too much time on my hands and a New Years Resolution to keep track of all the movies I watch, I made a spreadsheet! And because I thought it’d be fun to look at later in the year, I also added worksheets for movies and sporting events, too. SUPER LAME. At least I know this will last all of about six weeks before I get bored with it.

Other things to write about: the Wolves game last night, the Dragon afterwards, and how I need to pack really bad.

Restaurant Miami is Uptown’s hot new spot that embraces the glitz and glam of the Miami nightlife scene (circa 1983). Nothing was lost in the transport of time, from the extravagance, debauchery, socialization, and neon that epitomized the time.

It’s one of those things that you read about and out of nothing more than morbid curiosity, you can’t continue one more day of your life without seeing what you’re missing. And that’s what we did last night.

We’d already eaten dinner, so we didn’t sample anything on the menu, but holy God, the peanut butter sauce they bring out with the Peanut Butter Chicken was awesome enough to drink through a straw. I know this, because I did it. I don’t normally drink peanut butter out of a straw, but after sampling some of their drink menu, well, you get the picture.

This is the front of their drink menu. Yeah, red font wouldn’t have been my first choice either, especially when trying to read it in a not-so-well-list room, after a couple of drinks. But I suppose the early 80s was full of horrible color combinations.

All I Have in This World Are My Balls and My Word was my first drink choice, and I later drank a I Always Tell the Truth Even When I Lie. Jenni may have had a drink called Her Womb is So Polluted, and I think Cindi drank the insides of a stripper covered with suntan oil I’m Tony Montana. You Fuck with Me You Fuckin’ with the Best. Why, yes, all the drinks ARE named after Scarface quotes!

My quick review: the drinks were fantastic. They were big and fruity and strong and relatively decent-priced, which is exactly how I like my men. The decor was kind of hilarious – complete with glass tables, white furniture, and lots of neon signage. One of the bathroom doors had been kicked in and decorated with various graffiti. Quite honestly, the person in charge of picking out the website’s pictures has got to be a pure genius. Instead of the pimped out locale that Crockett & Tubbs may have used to relax after a long day of wearing pastel colors like the website portrays, it’s more of an open room with clearance IKEA furniture and some amazing wall decorations. But you know? What with drinks like the ones we had, they could have let a chimpanzee fling shit on the wall, and I’d still go back.

Matt has his version:

last night, after a good year of anticipation, we finally made it down to restaurant miami*, where all the lighting is pink and teal, all the fixtures are whiter than a mountain of cocaine, and all the drinks are named after lines from scarface: i had a ‘that piece of chit up there i never like him,’ two ‘all i have in this world are my balls and my word’s, and a damn good time. (as a collective, i know we also had a few ‘i always tell the truth, even when i lie’s and at least one ‘her womb is so polluted.’ no ‘fuck casper gomez and fuck the fucking diaz brothers,’ which will have to wait for another trip.

Jenni has hers:

Last night, we had dinner at It’s Greek to Me with Wendy and Cindi, then were joined by Willis, Dan, and Kate at Restaurant Miami. I’ve only been meaning to go there for a year now, so it was a huge accomplishment. It’s as delightfully tacky as promised, the $8 drinks are GIGANTIC and have names like ‘her womb is so polluted’ and ‘I always tell the truth, even when I lie’. Mostly we went there as tropical-drink preparation for the cruise, and, dudes, WE ARE READY.

This was 43.6 minutes (according to iTunes) of my life that I’ll never get back.

Gimme More: She performed this song on the VMAs. And by performed, I mean turned it into a mess where everyone hated her, including 50 Cent. I don’t love this song, mainly because of Britney’s robot voice, but I can absolutely seeing a techno DJ turning it into an awesome dance mix that they’ll play at the Gay 90s.

Piece of Me: More robot Britney, which is tiresome already. “I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17 / Don’t matter if I step on the scene / Or sneak away to the Philippines /
They still got pictures of my derrière in the magazine” Brit-brit. It’s pictures of your vagina that shows up magazines. That’s not the same as your derrière – is it? I’m pretty sure she refers to herself as Mrs during this song on more than one occasion, and, well, she’s not married, so that doesn’t make sense.

Radar: “ Confidence is a must / Cockiness is a plus / Edginess is a rush / Edges I like ‘em rough / A man with a Midas touch” – I’m certain this is dedicated to Kevin Federline. She may or may not call herself a lush in the intro of this song; I can’t really make out the words because, you guessed it, ROBOT BRITNEY. I can see how this could easily be turned into a bad ass dance remix, too.

Break the Ice: The intro to this song is Britney talking, and it sounds like it should be the voiceover to a really bad porn. I had to consult Wikipedia to find out why her heart was “beating like an 808” in this song. Apparently an 808 is a drum machine. BRITNEY SPEARS HAS TAUGHT ME SOMETHING. The porn I mentioned earlier? It should be about space aliens and robots doing it, because that’s kinda what this sounds like.

Heaven on Earth: MORE ROBOT BRITNEY. I understand nobody wants to hear her talk, but maybe don’t have her talk at all and just get right to her beautiful singing? Even her whispering sounds retarded. This song seemed entirely too long and boring, and sure enough – it’s almost five whole minutes long. No song should be that long, unless it’s a Justin Timberlake remix at a dance club.

Get Naked (I Got A Plan): Ooh, boy. The title of this song is super awesome, no? “Baby, I’m a freak and I don’t really give a damn / I’m crazy as a mother fucker” Except I can’t tell if she’s really saying mother fucker. I may have just wanted to hear it. She says “get naked” 20 times. I counted. Also almost five minutes long. I got bored again.

Freakshow: Um, the album should have been called Freakshow. But Blackout is also good, because it’s kinda what I want to do while listening to it. I thought she said “shave my ass”, but it was really “shake my ass”. Um, “Me and my girls like to get it on”? Me too, Britney, me too. Honestly, this song has a pretty awesome beat and it reminds me a bit of something Fergie would release, and you know how much I love Fergie.

Toy Soldier: (totally not the Martika version that I know all of you remember)  Basically, Britney is calling K-Fed a toy soldier, and she don’t want one of those no mo’. “This time I need a soldier, a really bad ass soldier / That know how to take, take care of me / I’m so damn glad that’s over /
This time I need a soldier, I’m sick of toy soldiers” I’m a fan of the cadence-y drumbeat they used in the background, and would totally listen to it over and over if they took all the voice tracks out.

Hot as Ice: “If you’ve ever been to heaven, this is twice as nice”. Um. Also: “To see your foolishness and fuckery” – but I think I must have downloaded Britney must have given me the edited version. At least I hope so, because I love Britney’s dirty mouth. The whole cold as fire and hot as ice thing is not as cute as I thinks he wanted it to be.

Ooh Ooh Baby: She starts giggling in the first 10 seconds of this song, but it sounds more like the Pillsbury doughboy’s giggle instead of something that I want to listen to before I hear a trashy song sang by a trashy pop artist. “I can feel you on my lips/ I can feel you deep inside” – this song’s totally about filming a porn.

Perfect Lover: Another porn song. See, I know she just wants to make a song that’s all HOT and stuff, but she can’t because she’s Britney Spears. She’s trashy and crazy and stupid and that automatically makes anything she sings NOT HOT. There’s some lines about a bumper and a chump, but I’m not sure what they say. I’m sure they’re dirty, though, and I don’t want that visual in my head.

Why Should I Be Sad: Oh man. It’s a sad song about how she got married and didn’t realize what she was getting herself into. “Why should I be sad, heaven knows / From the stupid freakin’ things that you do” – dirty mouth, I tell you. She should be sad because her career is pretty much going to go to shit, and I’m not sure how the hell she’s going to make a comeback of any kind. I’M JUST SAYIN’.

There. You’re welcome. Don’t buy the CD. There’s maybe one good song in the whole thing if you combine all 12 songs together.