What We’re Into

I’m not typically drawn to the words “all you can eat” because I like my food to have a finish line, but I was willing to overlook that with Wasabi, the new-ish Japanese restaurant at 3333 Tower Ave., uperior. ere, for a flat rate, you can sample a roll here, hibachi chicken there and find personal favorites. ou re given a menu-slash-order form, you mark your meal picks, sip a Sapporo while you wait, then eat — or slurp if the warm, big-flavored miso soup with tofu is on the list. Then you do it again.

(Be careful with those orders. There is a financial penalty for unfinished meals.)

tuna

Our family faves include the miso soup, shumai — steamed shrimp dumplings at a temperature found in comfort food — spicy tuna roll where the word “spicy” is not hyperbole and the tempura flakes made it feel like gluttony, and its slightly more sophisticated kin the wasabi roll, which is like the spicy tuna roll, but adds tobiko and wasabi cream. Wasabi has a cool, unassuming vibe. It’s in the spot of a former fast food restaurant — there’s the telltale sign of the drive thru window that is no longer in

The Rustic Diner in Barnum is a staple stop on weekends in fall. It’s where Dad and I meet for breakfast before we head into the Mahtowa woods and our family hunting cabin. There, we sight in our rifles, check our array of wild game cameras and work on one cabin project after another in the lead-up to firearms deer season. It s father-son time, meaning it s filled with atta-boys and a few get-outta-my-faces. The bonding almost always starts with a meal at the Rustic on Front Street.

Sitting down, you feel like you’re sidling up to the knickknacks on your grandmother’s curio shelf. But for hearty country fare, look on the blackboard and hope the biscuits and gravy are the day’s special. At $4.25, the price for two eggs, two biscuits and a heaping of sausage gravy is unbeatable. That the dish is a standout of its kind is all the better. Covered in goo, the biscuits are always flaky and soft, never saturated and soggy. The gravy is ladled from a big cooking pot in yonder kitchen and use. The single room is wide open — you can see the chefs at work — and the interior is a mix of apanese flair and fast food function. It feels like that super-Los Angeles thing of eating your best meals at a strip mall.

— CHRISTA LAWLER

served quickly. It’s hot enough, and the gravy brings a nice black and red pepper heat itself.

It s different every time,” said the server, “because he makes it fresh.” The gravy comes off with the right consistency — not watery and hardly pasty — and the attendant sausage is there in the right measure, too, in that these aren’t meatballs, just good crumbles of meat to satisfy the protein fix the eggs can t reach.

It’s always a no-brainer on Sunday mornings at the Rustic, the sort of decision that doesn’t require a menu at all. “Biscuits and gravy?” the server will say — as if she had to ask.

— BRADY SLATER

Iwas an old man by the time I finally got around to appreciating chicken wings.

It was the summer of my 24th year, and to celebrate my future wife’s birthday, we descended on a sports bar known for inexpensive, flavorful chicken appendages. (It’s the Desperado in Missoula, Montana, if you’re ever out there.)

Once I got the hang of the carnal act, I was hooked, and we have been searching for a comparable experience since.

Enter Clyde Iron Works, one of our many-andgrowing neighborhood eateries. It’s a comfortable place for comfort food, and for the meat-eaters among us, what else does the trick but a hearty plate of wings?

We split 12 recently, a perfectly steaming batch of well-coated and partly charred beauties that kept a good balance between smoke and spice. All the sauces — honey chipotle, buffalo, barbecue, reaper and Asian — are worth trying, depending on your mood, but as a purist (outside of my affection for spicy-peanut-sauce wings) buffalo is the way to go. Don’t try to get 12 down on your own, though at $10.95, you might as well try, then take home what’s left — it’s $6.95 for six.

By no means am I declaring these the best wings in town — who am I to say, when I have yet to even try them all? But in this moment, they are my favorite, and they could be yours, too.

— BROOKS JOHNSON

We had never needed breakfastwith-acapital-b more than on a drive home from a reunion weekend on Gull Lake. We hadn’t ruled out gas station delicacies — it was that kind of day — when we found the opposite.

McGregor’s School House Cafe looks like a drawing of a schoolhouse: all straight edges with squares and triangles, red wood with white trim, a schoolhouse bell. Inside, it’s decorated with vintage and kitsch, old musical instruments, books, cowboy boots, retro gas station and street signage, maps, a wagon, a desk, memorabilia plateware.

We both got variations of the breakfast sandwich — egg, cheese and meat on a square of croissant bread served with hashbrowns. Me: bacon; Him: sausage. We didn’t even talk. We just scooped hashbrowns and chewed.

This was the perfect warm, gooey, salty, buttery, crispy roadside find. To think we had almost microwaved something maybe even made by robots. If not full-on love, this meal tasted like it was made with a whole lot of like.

The menu — thick slabs of French toast, things with gravy, an honest-to-goodness casserole — is a mix of ways to warm your innards. Our meals came with a sample of bread pudding. And, in a case at eye-level, a mound of sugar, cinnamon and frosting. This must be one of Grammy’s homemade rolls.

— CHRISTA LAWLER

Sure, they’re deep-fried and greasy, but they’re still vegetables, right?

I enjoyed the Flash-fried Green Beans on a recent visit to Tavern on the Hill so much that I didn’t have a lot of appetite left for my meal, so be warned. A restaurant employee offered the advice that it’s a serving size for one to two people, but I’d argue it’s sized for two to four, especially if you’re ordering other food. The employee also consulted with the kitchen for me because I asked how many calories the dish has. Based on its ingredients, they estimated

550-650. Again, I’d disagree because it seemed like more. A similar dish from TGI Friday’s is listed online as having 900 calories; a Ruby Tuesday dish is said to have 790.

But should I be worrying about this while ordering a basket of battered, fried beans and red peppers? Yes and no. Maybe “worrying” isn’t the word; being “mindful” is better. Despite the grease and calories, you can’t take the vegetable out of a vegetable, and the veggies in this dish maintained their freshness, just a little crisp, hot and juicy. The spicy Thai Chili Sauce that comes with the basket is worth diving deep into.

The appetizer menu also includes cauliflower, onion rings, Brussels sprouts and avocados, so there are plenty of ways to get your fried veg.

— BEVERLY GODFREY