It was a typical busy summer weekend for me.
But less typical, especially lately, was that I attended soft openings for two east metro restaurants! Dare I say things are looking up in the restaurant world?
Dark Horse Bar & Eatery
The Dark Horse Burger at Dark Horse Bar & Eatery in St. Paul. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)
I really loved this West Seventh bar and was so sad to lose its adorable, urban patio and comfortable atmosphere when it closed this winter.
Happily, the owners of Can Can Wonderland and St. Paul Brewing have teamed with chef Shane Oporto and his fiancée Sarah McDonough to bring Dark Horse back from the dead.
Oporto, who was the chef de cuisine when La Belle Vie closed and helmed the kitchen at Octo Fish Bar in Lowertown, also developed the excellent burger at DeGidio’s on West Seventh.
The new menu is full of great bar food — lots of bar snacks, pizza and sandwiches — including a burger and the excellent lobster roll that was on the Octo menu. McDonough is a front-of-the-house maven whose most recent position was general manager at Can Can Wonderland. The pair met while Oporto was working at La Belle Vie.
The space has been brightened a bit, and some funky gold booths and a gorgeous mural added. But it has kept its vibe (and many of the previous tall wooden booths).
We started our meal with some elote shishito peppers, which are your basic fried shishitos, tossed with Tajin spice, crumbly cotija cheese and cilantro. In a brilliant move, the elote sauce, which tends to make things messy, is offered as a dipping sauce so that you can still comfortably pick up the peppers by the stem and eat them as God intended — no fork required.
We ate a lot of pizza at the previous iteration of Dark Horse, so it only felt right to get one here.
The crust is an airy Neapolitan style, and it’s excellent. We ordered the Paisano, which is topped with a generous amount of house-made sausage, pepperoni and spicy Calabrian peppers.
Wondrous Punch at Dark Horse Bar & Eatery in St. Paul’s Lowertown. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)
And yes, we did order the burger. It is a Very. Serious. Burger. Oporto and his crew are grinding brisket, sirloin and chuck fresh every day. It’s a smash burger so it has those crispy edges, but it’s still incredibly juicy. And the cheese! It’s a slow-melted combo of Taleggio and two-year Vermont cheddar that envelops the patty in the very best way. There are caramelized onions for a little sweetness and tasty burger sauce all on a pillowy brioche bun. It was worth every calorie.
The cocktails here are excellent, too. If you were ever a patron of the Red Dragon, you should order the Wondrous Punch, which comes with a surprise mini order of cream-cheese wontons. The punch tastes very close to the Red Dragon version, but in an upscale way.
I also adored my Spanish G&T, made with Skaalven yuzu gin and house-made tonic.
As I told Oporto, I’ll be back. Often. You should go, too. It’s open to the public now, for dinner Tuesday-Sunday and lunch and dinner on the weekends.
Dark Horse Bar & Eatery: 250 E. Seventh St., St. Paul; 651-313-7960; darkhorsestp.com
Liliana
You could argue that the Twin Cities does not need another Italian restaurant.
But in the case of Liliana, the new Woodbury restaurant from the people behind St. Paul’s Estelle, you would be wrong.
I attended a soft open for this crisp, clean, yet cozy restaurant this weekend, and I brought along some picky eaters (my adult children) to put it to a true test.
Liliana’s chef, Kenzie Edinger, previously worked as the chef de cuisine at Mucci’s in St. Paul (and at Saint Dinette before its closure), so she knows her way around pasta, all of which is being made in-house. There’s a window into the kitchen so you can see chefs extruding the dough while you’re dining.
My kids weren’t leaving without garlic bread, which in the hands of pastry chef Nok Piyamaporn is far beyond the usual Italian bread slathered in garlic butter. This airy milk bread is sliced into triangles, kissed with garlic butter and tangy cream cheese, then showered in salty grana padano cheese. I got exactly one small wedge before the kids devoured the rest — it was a good sign of things to come.
The crew should apply for a State Fair booth and serve nothing but the sausage-stuffed deep-fried olives here, which make for a lovely beginning snack. The kids didn’t want any but hey, more for us. And the pickiest eater of the bunch didn’t know that the tonnato sauce on the broccolini had tuna in it and ate several stalks anyway. Who could blame her? It was delicious.
We all ordered pastas for our main course. After watching them come out of the kitchen, there really was no other choice.
Mafaldine at Liliana in Woodbury. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)
I ordered the mafaldine pasta, which is long and thin like papardelle, but has fancy curly edges to soak up the bright pomodoro sauce. Those noodles are topped with three giant spicy meatballs, given their kick and slight smokiness by guajillo peppers. I ended up taking more than half of it home, so if you’re not a fan of leftovers, you might want to split it with a friend.
My daughter went with the rotolo, which are pasta roll-ups stuffed with spinach and mozzarella floating in a puddle of slightly spicy arrabiata sauce. She was a fan, and I have a new idea for family dinners.
My husband’s occhi, ricotta-stuffed pasta, was super flavorful. The jalapeno pesto it’s bathed in transports the dish from ho-hum to oh, yum! And a fresh corn salsa makes it feel like summer.
My son, a picky, yet adventurous eater (yes, you can be both), went for the farfalle, which we didn’t realize would be stuffed. He was a fan, though, of the lobster and pork filling, and the creamy fonduta, given a touch of sweetness by calvados (French brandy).
I would have called it a day after all the pasta, but the offspring have sweet tooths, so we ordered the tiramisu and the carrot cake, and both were out-of-this-world delicious. The house-made ladyfingers in the tiramisu were doused with just the right amount of coffee, and the feuilletine (crispy crepe flakes) added the perfect crunch to the light, whipped mascarpone.
Carrot cake is my husband’s favorite dessert, and it’s a minefield of possible mistakes — cake too dry, frosting too sweet, underbaking, too much spice … the list goes on. Thankfully, Piyamaporn’s version, which employs brown butter and miso to add a savory touch, suffers from none of the above. My husband said it was the best he’s had, and that is a true compliment.
Liliana: 10060 City Walk Drive, Woodbury; 651-493-9089; lilianamn.com
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