Fork The Fire!

On February 18th, a fire decimated two local restaurants: Heidi's, and Blackbird.  Today, 80 restaurants banned together and are giving proceed to help these chef-owned gems.  There is more information here.

I went to two of these restaurants in the last 24 hours. 

Last night we met our awesome friends and dogsitters at the amazing Cafe Maude.  They have a super fun cocktail list that changes seasonally.  While I miss the "This Charming Man" (served with an English cigarette on the side), last night I had a "Bloody on the Rocks".  It was a whiskey sour with a red wine float.  Ok, I had two.  It was great.  The other cocktails our dinner companions let us taste were the "Scenic Route" - a sidecar with ginger-infused applejack and a sweet cayenne rim, served up, and the "Pank Drank" - sparking pear, cassis and lemon in a champagne glass and a pink glow stick.  Both excellent.

To eat, I had my old standby, the Egg and Spinach.  It's sauteed spinach served with a fried egg, basmati rice, feta and harissa.  The harissa is super hot.  I dip just the tines of my fork in it and then load up with everything else.  I get this every time I'm at Maude.  If I didn't, I'd miss it.  I got the Duck and Frisée Flatbread for my entrée.  The crust is super flat and it has duck confit, frisee, giant chunks of blue cheese and aged balsamic.  I love having a salad on my pizza.  Last night's crust was not as crispy as I like, but it was in no way soggy.  I could have used a little more balsamic (I could drink balsamic, really).  The blue cheese was defiantly the prominent flavor.  Which is just fine with me.

For Fork the Fire today, I took the kids to Salut for brunch.  My kids call this the "Frog with the Hat" restaurant.  They spilt the kids' menu pancakes (two medium pancakes), and chose Lemonaid and Orange/Cranberry juice.  I had a Blood Mary with a beer chaser (is that a Midwest/MN thing?) and the Special Pancakes: Bacon and Brie in the batter, topped with a chiffonade of basil.  Excellent with maple syrup.  We split the "Four bite Chocolate Mousse".  It's a tiny little turine of dark chocolate mousse served with little shortbread cookies (three - perfect for our party), and a cut strawberry.  Perfect.