Take Two- Eating in the Twin Cities

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Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Photo - Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Bloomington, Minnesota

Quote:

Traveling is something we love to do and we have a great time. One of my favorite parts of vacation and visiting a new place and trying new foods and new places to eat. I love food and get so excited to eat at places I cannot eat at when I am at home. When we go on vacation, we have one rule: No restaurants we can get back home. So with that said, we do whatever we can to get new experiences. Since food is my favorite part of the trip, we do lots to prepare. We search all kinds of places for information, discounts, and coupons. For this trip I actually used IgoUgo journals for my help and found a few places that sounded interesting. My favorite meal of the day is breakfas...Read More

Traveling is something we love to do and we have a great time. One of my favorite parts of vacation and visiting a new place and trying new foods and new places to eat. I love food and get so excited to eat at places I cannot eat at when I am at home. When we go on vacation, we have one rule: No restaurants we can get back home. So with that said, we do whatever we can to get new experiences.

Since food is my favorite part of the trip, we do lots to prepare. We search all kinds of places for information, discounts, and coupons. For this trip I actually used IgoUgo journals for my help and found a few places that sounded interesting.

My favorite meal of the day is breakfast, and for this particular trip, we only ate out once, and that was in the Mall of America. We mostly ate continental breakfasts. The other meals were our experiences. This trip we scored big on a lot of our choices. We had great seafood at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and great pizza in St.Paul at Classic Pizza and Ice Cream.

It is always great when you can have a fun time eating and find some great picks for food. Have a great time eating and Live to Eat not Eat to Live.

Quick Tips:

Every time we travel we look for coupons on www.restaurants.com, so one of my tips is always look for coupons, as you will find coupons for almost anywhere on this website.

You can also find coupons in visitor books and hotels or visitor centers for different places. Or check out a visitor’s guidebook, which always has tons of on buy-one-get-one coupons.

Also look for gift certificates. We were able to get several from our Citi card points. These helped being able to eat out cheap as well.

Here are a few other of my recommendations that I have not tried but would like to have tried: Ruby Tuesday’s, Famous Dave’s BBQ, and (this one I have tried in California) Old Spaghetti Factory. Old Spaghetti Factory is a great, cheap place to eat. We have eaten at the one in San Diego, but there is also one in downtown Minneapolis. I recommend trying it as well.

Best Way To Get Around:

I recommend driving. The Twin Cites are pretty big. Plus, some of the places are not close together. There are several great restaurants in the Mall of America and others all throughout. Most of the places we chose were because of our coupons or places we could not get at home.

Use the Internet and other people for finding restaurants and other places to eat. Check out other IgoUgo journals on dining in that area and read what other people have to say about the places in that area.

Look in newspapers, magazines, and TV, in your hotel, or around town. You will find ads and commercials for all kinds of places.
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Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

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Restaurant

Quote:

Forrest Gump always said, "Life is like a box of chocolates--you never know what you're going to get."Well, he was right, after much debate and decision-making and two cites (Miami and Minneapolis), my husband finally caved in and decided to let me try Bubba Gump Shrimp for dinner. He had kind of been against it since he thought it was a gimmick. It was a good thing, because it turned out to be the best place we have ever eaten in our lives. Yes, that is bold, but it was that good.We were promptly seated to a table and then a few servers came to wait on us. I guess you really do not have one particular person. The way it works here is there is a sign on the table; it reads "STOP, FORRES...Read More

Forrest Gump always said, "Life is like a box of chocolates--you never know what you're going to get."

Well, he was right, after much debate and decision-making and two cites (Miami and Minneapolis), my husband finally caved in and decided to let me try Bubba Gump Shrimp for dinner. He had kind of been against it since he thought it was a gimmick. It was a good thing, because it turned out to be the best place we have ever eaten in our lives. Yes, that is bold, but it was that good.

We were promptly seated to a table and then a few servers came to wait on us. I guess you really do not have one particular person. The way it works here is there is a sign on the table; it reads "STOP, FORREST, STOP" on one side and "RUN, FORREST, RUN" on the other. When you need a waiter for any reason, you turn your plate to the "STOP, FORREST, STOP" side and someone will be there immediately. This was so great and such a unique idea--you never had to wait for your waiter to come back or someone to find them.

After we ordered our food, which was kind of a difficult task (everything looked so good), we were sufficed by an appetizer called hush puppies, only they were not your typical hush puppies. They were filled with shrimp, crab, and mahimahi. They were so good. Our food came out next, my husband had popcorn shrimp and Cajun shrimp, and I had stuffed shrimp. My husband's popcorn shrimp came served in a movie-popcorn box with popcorn; it was so cute and a very creative presentation. All of our shrimp was very good, very well prepared and presented, and delicious. The best shrimp I have ever had anywhere hands down.

After enjoying a great meal, we were stunned at how much we liked everything and how glad we were that we finally tried it. My husband actually could not quite talking about it and says it is now his favorite restaurant, and he realized there was no gimmick here.

So I guess Forrest Gump was right: "You never know what you're going to get."

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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on July 27, 2006

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
Mall of America
Bloomington, Minnesota 55425
(952) 853-6600

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Key's Cafe and Bakery

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Restaurant

Key's cafe and Bakery Photo - Key's Cafe and Bakery,

Quote:

Key’s Café, I was kind of disappointed with. I had read a few reviews here on IgoUgo that said this place was great and you had to go here. Maybe I had a bad experience or something, but I was not very impressed at all. It is a fresh bakery, and they serve some great-looking pies, but the food was really not that impressive and the place just looked like a little hole-in-the-wall, locally owned restaurant. The size of the restaurant was kind of small, and it was crowded. It had that locally owned diner feeling where you can be across the room from the little bar and yet you felt right next to it. There was not much room to walk in between the tables and through the restaurant. The s...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on July 28, 2006

Key's Cafe and Bakery
1682 Lexington Ave. N.
Roseville 55113
(651) 487-5397

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Axel's Bonfire

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Restaurant

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A different and unique approach to home cooking. A southwestern flare added to the already great dishes of a home-cooked meal: that is what makes Axle’s Bonfire a unique and great place to eat. During our trip we decided to check this place out because it sounded fun and interesting. That was found to be very true once we ate there. The place is kind of hidden in the back of this newly built shopping center and sits on the corner where you can enter from two different sides. We were promptly greeted and seated. The servers and staff were very helpful and very friendly. Our waitress in particular was very personable and found it fascinating that we were all from Texas.Our food w...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on July 28, 2006

Axel's Bonfire
4365 Pheasant Ridge Dr NE
Blaine, Minnesota 55449
(763) 398-2475

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Classic Pizza and Ice Cream

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Restaurant

Classic pizza and ice cream Photo - Classic Pizza and Ice Cream, St. Paul, Minnesota

Quote:

On our first night into town we decided to eat pizza since it had been a long day or driving and flying and we just wanted something relaxing. We decided to use one of our coupons for eating out and checked out this place in St. Paul called Classic Pizza and Ice cream. When we first found the place we got scared, we thought it was not going to be to great. It looked like a run down, slow, and small place, that had high school age kids working it and it was not very busy at all. Ordering our food also seemed kind of difficult. Once we got our large pizza ordered we found out that it would be about 30-45 minutes to cook. This place was not like a regular restaurant that you could or wo...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on July 28, 2006

Classic Pizza and Ice Cream
466 Hamline Ave. S
St. Paul, Minnesota 55105
(651) 699-7263

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Wolf Gang Puck Express

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Restaurant

Wolf Gang Puck Photo - Wolf Gang Puck Express, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Quote:

He is the chef to the stars and a well-known chef, Wolf Gang Puck. In the Mall of America is a Wolf Gang Express. Here you can enjoy some of the most popular recipes made famous by Wolf Gang in his restaurants. They are all prepared fresh to your order in minutes using the finest ingredients and serving them at prices that are affordable. One of the things that makes Wolf Gang Express so unique is the heath-style pizza oven. Its intense heat works together with their special dough and other ingredients to make a pizza with a crispy, smoky-tasting crust. Upon finding this place in the mall, we were so excited. Having been to Los Angeles and hoping to try Wolfgang Puck food, we were ex...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on July 29, 2006

Wolf Gang Puck Express
Mall of America
Minneapolis, Minnesota
(952) 854-9187

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