Faith goes to Bryant -Lake Bowl [Minneapolis]

[faith]

I have always been impressed by the solid food I get at Bryant-Lake Bowl. I am not really a bowler...but I was in the area yesterday and decided to grab a bite. I like that they use a lot of local/sustainable foods. I had 2 things off the happy hour menu- $4 each for a 'small salad' and an order of bbq chicken wings. These items are more like $7-8 outside of happy hour. They make all their own dressings in house and I had their green goddess on the salad. Excellent- definitely fresh herbs in there...the dressing wasn't literally green but it was great. And the salad was quite a good portion compared to some of the side salads I have seen at other places. Too often I am seeing salads that are primarily the mesclun mix that is so lightweight, it doesn't really fill you up. And I am a salad person, often have a huge salad as my meal. They used some very good cucumber, possibly the hydroponic English ones that are quite good.

I noticed they had potato salad as a side for $2.50 on the regular menu so had that too, also excellent, with nicely firm yukon gold potato chunks, just the right amount of capers, a few string beans, and some pimento bits. Very nice and also a good portion, fresh parsley in there as well.

The chicken wings were quite good, quite messy- covered with a very nice fruity sauce, possibly with apricot jam in it. They didn't seem like they really had been on a grill but were very moist and tender, with a dipping sauce of their excellent housemade blue cheese dressing. They even give you a couple of wet-naps---which I didn't use after asking them if the wet-naps were 'organic' (haha) . I have bad memories of my mother breaking out the wash-n-dri's on car trips- I hate the smell. But I did appreciate the gesture.

And then I really was pretty full but had to look at the dessert options since everything had been so good- and was told the carrot cake was excellent, so I got a piece. It was indeed quite good, and I loved that instead of fake fluorescent orange icing-carrots, they had some skinny carrot strips on top. And a very nice cream cheese icing- the cake was unbelievably moist, not sure how they did that and still made it into a solid cake. A very purist carrot cake, no nuts or pineapple or raisins. I like the extra stuff so it is notable that I enjoyed this very simple version. This adds to my carrot cake list after Luce's version that I like a lot.

[MplsM ary]

Just a note, Bryant-Lake Bowl is in Minneapolis.

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Bryant Lake Bowl
810 W Lake St, Minneapolis, MN