A closer look at flyover land

Friday food

So often when I've driven through Nisswa, there's one little place I've wanted to try, but I'm always going through at the wrong time. Like December.

This little free-standing donut shop has been in Nisswa since 1984, open seasonally (and weatherally). Finally, last weekend, I lucked out.

If there's a line, it can be a little bit of a wait, but that's OK; you get to watch the hypnotic (and not very big) donut maker flip and fry the mini donuts, finally popping them into the pan for a short drain before they're bagged and sugared and sold, still hot.

Hot and sugary and melty and light as a feather.

So glad I finally got to Nisswa at the right time.

Friday food

Earlier this week, I wrote about visiting the Clemens Munsinger Gardens in St. Cloud. While I was in town, I stopped for a bit of lunch.

Val's Hamburgers. I'd heard of this place; apparently it's a local institution, been there for years, and not much has changed, except for the addition of several touch-screen ordering system. No tables, no place to rest, just a bunch of touch screens where you tell the cook what you want, and a few minutes later, you get it.

I was alone, so this is sort of a burger quest, although I had no Teen input. Look at that bag! It's huge! And greasy! And only $5!

People! Seriously! This was a small order of fries! There's enough in here for my entire family! I couldn't finish them! And they were good fries, simultaneously crispy and greasy, and nice and hot.

Sorry for the craptastic picture. I drive a VW Beetle, and when I have no choice but to eat in the car, there's not a lot of room for photography. The burger was also nice and hot, the cheese all melty and gooey, the bun soft.

Best burger I've ever had? No; but darn good and a great bargain, and a burger I'd go back for? Absolutely.

Friday food

In my previous post about Nisswa, I mentioned that I didn't list every single store. But one absence may have stood out.

The Chocolate Ox. You might guess from the name that it's not a healthy food store.

Maybe good for mental health, though.

Look at those buckets of vintage candies, mix and match per pound! And candy necklaces! And baby bottle pops and sour things!

The licorice gallery, full of gourmet licorices, sweet and salty.

Salt water taffy....mmmmmmmmmm........

Oh--and the truffle selection. They also carry B.T. McElrath.

I'd like to show you pictures of the luscious salted chocolate caramels I brought home. But, um...they no longer exist. Except in my dream world.

Friday food

--or:

Burger Quest!!

This week's installment comes courtesy of an MEA weekend trip to visit my parents in northern Minnesota. I grew up in a tiny (really) town called Tenstrike. Here's the main street:

Population just under 200, Tenstrike has a lumber processing plant, a church, and this street, with two bars. For years--decades, really--the bars had very different clientele. The one on the left, Pour Willie's, generally has been the more "respectable" of the two and has served bar food on and off for years. (Quick trivia: when Pour Willie's was known as the Tenstrike Bar, my dad used to bartend there on weekends, and my mother would wait at the end of the bar for him to finish his shift, so they could go across the street to the lamentably lost Bess's Steakhouse for dinner while dating.)

The one on the right had the dubious distinction of the less respectable of the two and was occasionally the site of dustups and fights. The previous owner lost her liquor license by selling off-sale liquor on a Sunday (for those of you not in MN, liquor sales on Sundays can only be done for those planning to drink at the bar--no taking it home, and liquor stores are closed).

Enter long-time resident Renee Dunn, who picked up the property, rehabbed it, and named it Got R Dunn.

Not without some effort. Shortly before the planned opening, the bar was broken into and much of her inventory was stolen. Sad.

But she persevered.

And now it's a respectable, friendly, casual place that certainly gives Pour Willie's a run for its money. Especially in the burger department.

Hard to tell, but these hand-formed burgers are about an inch thick, very flavorful, served on toasted bakery buns with piping hot fries. Dee-lish. Even the Teens agreed they were quite good, although--predictably--not quite as good to them as Lions Tap. (I'd say the Dunn burgers are better.)

Let's hear it for revival!

Friday food

Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry at some of the food I see. Now, understand, I put the State Fair in an entirely different category--it only comes once a year, and all those calorie-counting naysayers will not deter me from my quota of fried foods on a stick.

But then there are the other places, the places open year-round, that have no concept of portion size.

Case in point: on a recent family getaway (to lovely, gorgeous, beautiful Otter Tail County--seriously, people, you want a scenic getaway and you've already done the North Shore? Go the other direction), the resort owner told us about a nearby cafe that served "pancakes as big as a plate." Not that we needed pancakes that big, but we did want to eat out one day, and decided to give the Rockin' Horse Cafe (in Richville) a try.

It's a cute little place.

Full of locals and regulars, people who all knew each other and friendly, fast servers. We checked out the menu and placed our orders. DH decided that while he wanted a pancake, he didn't necessarily need the plate-sized one, so he ordered the junior pancake. I went with a Western omelette, Teen 1 ordered the reuben, and Teen 2 went with a double bacon cheeseburger.

The pancake arrived.

Why, yes, that pancake is falling off the plate. The dinner-sized plate. We asked the waitress to explain, if that was the junior, just how big was the regular? "Oh," she said, gesturing to show something the size of two dinner plates, "it has its own special plate."

Oh.

My omelette wasn't any more junior in size.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say there were at least 4-5 eggs in that omelette. It was huge and densely eggy.

Teen 2 was amazed at his double bacon cheeseburger.

I was so struck by the size of the pancake that I didn't get a photo of the reuben. I'm sure you can picture it.

The food was quite good, as it often is in these small-town diners. But seriously? Did we need that much? Not really--I left behind at least half of the omelette and most of the toast; DH ate about half the junior pancake; Teen 1, who didn't like his reuben, finished the pancake (don't know why he didn't like it--it looked quite good to me), and Teen 2, he of the voracious appetite and miraculous teen metabolism, finished the burger and nibbled on the reuben. In other words, four very hearty eaters could not finish this food.

On the positive side, the food was good, as I said, and pretty cheap. Would have been cheaper still if we'd all just split things to begin with.

So--go visit this beautiful part of the state, stop at the Rockin' Horse Cafe, and choose with care, because whatever you get, you're gonna get a lot of it.

Friday food

Most of our vacation food was prepared by us, at our cabin. However, upon exploring the area around our resort, we found this:

 

A full-fledged A&W restaurant! Sadly, not exactly like the one I grew up with, which had the whole drive-in deal going on. Nevertheless, the kids were like "ROOT BEER!" and DH and I were all like "WOW NOSTALGIA TIME," so we returned for lunch.

It's a very cheery A&W on the inside.

 

Bright colors, fun pictures. And a jukebox. Because you're not really a fun restaurant without a jukebox.

And for more fun, an older-model children's ride.

 

10 cents! And it still worked!

I guess I could call this a burger quest, because that's what we had.

 

Not bad. Not the best ever, but quite decent. The fries were nice and crispy.

Not that any of that mattered anyway.

 

Because it's really all about the frosted mugs, straight out of the freezer, filled with root beer and a huge dollop of ice cream.

And that, my friends, is what makes a good summer vacation a great one.