Food Write: Delicata Last Weekend...Visit #2

Greeting Text

Following twenty years of farmer's markets selling locally grown vegetables, native fruits, and local honey Linda created Marianne's Kitchen in Shoreview, MN, an oasis of good food, conversation and laughter in a suburban food desert. Operating from 2011-2017 the cafe offered home made soups, fresh bread baked daily, great sandwiches and treats and a complete line of gluten-free soups, pickled products, jams, jellies, salsas and locally sourced soups, honey and grains.

The Marianne's Kitchen of sharing, conversation, and learning continues with ongoing commentary, food reviews and food finds as we grow, cook and eat our food and sample local restaurants.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Delicata Last Weekend...Visit #2

We always try to visit a place more than once to get an idea if they are consistent, offering new things, etcetera.  This is especially true if we weren't thrilled with our 1st visit--because every place has a bad day sometimes.

As you saw with Agra Culture, the 2nd visit was just as disappointing as our first.

With Delicata, I'd say there's been some improvement.  First, you'll notice that they're now putting the silverware in the jar on the table correctly---NOT tines up, which is a food safety violation (because everyone's hand can touch your fork).  So, a point for that.  Since this is a different menu than our last visit, we can't compare--it would be a 'pizza to strata' comparison.  So let's just talk about the food this time.

We had the strata--baked eggs, sausage, mushrooms, and a spicy greens layer.  We also had a roasted veggie sandwich (we compared to Agra Culture---Delicata wins this one easily).  The strata dish had a couple of weaknesses.  The spicy layer was on top---the bottom layers were bland.  It would have been more balanced if they had made 2 of the spicy layers so that the contrast wasn't so severe.  The yucky part was that it was served on a base of pizza sauce  -- that was just incoherent as a combination.  It was served with a choice of potatoes or salad....the cubed red potatoes were well prepared and tasty.

The pesto veggie sandwich was full of ingredients (like artichokes and cheese) and was served nice & warm.  We chose the 'arugula salad' as the side--which turned out to be just dressed arugula--one or two other ingredients would have constituted what I would actually call a 'salad'.  This should have been accurately described as dressed arugula.  But the sandwich---it was FAR SUPERIOR to the thing we were served at Agra Culture.  There was only 1 negative.  The bread at Delicata was awful.  So it was an okay sandwich that would have been a pretty good sandwich if they hadn't cheaped out on the bread  (I thought of a grocery store hoagie roll in a bag--the kind that falls apart because it's made out of nothing but air).  Too bad.  (The roll at Agra Culture was much closer to acceptable).   A nearly perfect sandwich would be a bread like Agra Culture's (or slightly better) filled with the ingredients from Delicata.  Ah, we can dream.