Restaurant Review: Bachelor Farmer / Marvel Bar (North Loop, Minneapolis)

pork chop - actual size

One of the "perks" of winning this year's Marketer of the Year award is that the six people from our team who won awards were invited for drinks and dinner tonight to Marvel Bar and Bachelor Farmer in Minneapolis.

We started off the night at Marvel Bar for drinks. For those unfamiliar with Marvel Bar - they are a "speakeasy-type bar" in the basement of the Bachelor Farmer. With no sign or really any identifying markers on doors you pretty much have to know that you go around the corner and walk in the only grey nondescript door and then keep walking down a kind of creepy low-lit, unmarked hallway to a purple door - which is the entrance to a super dark bar. I half expected the person at the door to ask us for some kind of password. Inside there were small booths and couches and it all was quite lovely but I cannot imagine how the place would be when it would be crowed. As such, on a tuesday night around 5:30 pm it was really quite "swell".

Marvel Bar had a huge menu of mixed drinks with liquors and ingredients none of us had ever heard of and some things that their semi-famous mixologist came up with that make you think "hmmm wonder what that's like" or "hmmm never thought I'd put that together".

My coworkers each tried their famous drink called the Oliveto - a concoction of egg whites, olive oil, lemon, vanilla, gin, some other sort of spirit and simple syrup. They said it tasted like a lemon merigune pie...which makes sense since it essentially is almost all the ingredients and gin. I'm always just a tad leery of uncooked eggs and my unstable stomach so I just went with a ginger beer (which was deliciously spicy) Also, as a rule I tend to steer clear of drinking all that much when I drive ...knowing full well how my metabolism reacts to alcohol.

We went upstairs to Bachelor Farmer and the five of us were seated right away in a long booth and began what I'll say was a delicious culinary adventure. The only way that I could have had a better meal is if the other two winners from our team (Lola and Sherry) were there.

The wonderful, personable and knowledgeable waitress set a bowl of radishes with butter and salt and some flatbread on the table and greeted us. She said we were in luck as they had been closed the night before so they were also serving some "specials" from their Monday night menu.

I never have been a fan of radishes but these had a lovely snap and we were encouraged to eat them with a little butter and salt and they were delicious.

We ordered some appetizers to share:

Duck fat beets, Parmesan, radishes, pickled shallots, toasted almonds, aged cider vinegar - the beets were thinly sliced  and were good but I think I expected them to be a little thicker cut.

Toasts with Beef Tartare (delicious combination of Beef tartare, fermented sunchokes, cashew milk, capers, and horseradish) and another spread that combined Poached chicken, fermented daikon radishes, pickled mustard seeds, aioli, dill

Both of the toast spreads were very good. I rather enjoy beef tartare and I appreciated that the combination of the extra "stuff" didn't distract from the beef. The chicken kind of tasted like chicken salad...probably because essentially that's what it is. It was okay...mostly the char on the toasts also was just okay.

We were lucky that they were closed yesterday and so their special "chop" was on tonights menu. Three of us had that. They only serve these chops on Mondays. I went with it mostly on the advice from my friend Alaina who said to order "anything Pork" on the menu and she was correct. I have never had a finer pork chop. I had a small chop and it was almost the size of a small head.  (See the photo) It's brined for a few days and while it is fattier than most standard chops - the flavor is superb. Even the fat was melting-ly good. It came with a shaved cabbage slaw that also was delicious. I had a taste of my co-worker's duck breast confit and it was good too. It came with black lentils, roasted rutabaga, celery root, and pickled beets. They ask that you don't take photos or use your phone in their restaurant so I swiped the photo above from their facebook page. But yes this was the size of the chop

The only sort of "blah" part of the meal was dessert. We split the brown butter lemon cake and a pie of some sort. I can say the lemon cake was okay. A little dry and not that lemony. It came with a delicious fruity apricot-y chopped side and parsley ice cream. The parsley ice cream was interesting...I can now say I've eaten parsley ice cream. Yep, that's about all I can say about parsley ice cream. I feel the same way about green tea ice cream...a little bit goes a long way.

All in all it was a great evening and rare treat. It's an expensive restaurant so to be able to taste these foods was a delicious gift.