March 8, 2010 by Chad.

Ledge Rock Grille

596 Larsmont Way

Two Harbors, MN 55616

This last weekend we spent a day up in the Duluth area scouting out wedding reception locations and dress shopping for my sister-in-law. After leaving Gooseberry Falls, we stopped at a place called  Larsmont Cottages on Lake Superior because their Ledge Rock Grille was a potential reception spot. We of course had to eat there to make sure it was a good fit.

Food: 4

There was an expectation, maybe even an elevated one, that I placed on dining at Ledge Rock. The menu had a more limited selection of choices but it had some really impressive high quality options like Ledge Rock Risotto and Huli Huli Chicken that made my mouth water looking at the menu. They also incorporated a wood fired oven to make fresh flatbreads and local flair like walleye cakes. Was it fair of me to raise the bar for Ledge Rock Grille? It certainly was. If you expect to sell high quality, expect to produce it as well.

When it came to ordering the flatbreads caught my eye. That, and a day of foraging on too many other treats, made it a simple valid option for dinner so I chose the Spicy Chicken Flatbread. When it finally arrived on the table, it looked wonderful. What a presentation! The flatbread was irregular shaped, denoting that it had been rolled out fresh for the meal. Chunks of chicken sat evenly mixed among half sliced cherry tomatoes and were held together with a thin layer of mozzarella and cheddar cheese.

Unfortunately, looks are only the first impression of a good meal because upon tasting it things went downhill.  Firstly, the grilled chicken was nowhere near spicy. In fact, I had someone else sample the chicken just to make sure my taste buds were still working but they reached the same conclusion I did. The flatbread was like eating hardtack, especially as you reached the last inch plus around the edge of the flatbread. My jaw was actually sore after finishing off the meal which is never a good sign. On the upside the cherry tomatoes brought a sweetness to the toppings. Maybe if there was some thin layer of sauce the crust would not have been so hard. It is something definitely needing immediate attention.

Luckily, I was sandwiched between my two kids and was able to partake in one thing I did like, a cheeseburger. What? A cheeseburger? That’s correct. The burger was huge, tender, juicy, and had a great grilled flavor to it. Not bad for the kids menu. If there is a next time I will pose as a child and get that.

Service: 4

A great server can make you overlook a relatively bad plate of food. They are the ones that have the relationship with you, the customer, so their empathy and care can smooth things out if things are not perfect. Our server smiled every once and a while for very short periods but for the most part I had the distinct feeling that she had other things on her mind that were spilling over into her work. When it is game time, you need your game face. She did not appear to be in the game that night.

Another negative to the experience was the time it took to prepare the food. For fine dining it is safe to assume that there will be a 45 minute wait for your meal. Good meals take time to prepare. We arrived after what is normally considered the rush time in dinner service and were seated right away. With about half the restaurant full of patrons at different stages of eating, I kind of expected the meal to arrive a little sooner. It took nearly an hour to get our meals. Of course, unhappiness is precipitated by sitting between a three and a five year old who already finished coloring the entire menu and were nearly two hours removed from their normal dinnertime. It would have been a better meal experience if it were served a little quicker.

Atmosphere: 7

Clean restaurants are important. It says a lot to a patron when you take the time and investment to make your place fresh and inviting. A warm color pallet on the walls, exposed stained wood beams, and a crackling fireplace are very nice to see. Everything looks recently remodeled or built simply because of the architectural  nuances throughout the room. Wine racks line the walls open spaces and are full and ready for customers to pick from.

The only atmospheric downsides are the lack of intimacy and lack of sound dampening that the big open room design naturally suffers from. I thought that if they had some kind of flags or sheer tapestries handing from the overhead beams they might just get over the sound issues. The only problem is that it would not seem to fit the higher class cottage motif throughout the whole complex.

Overall: 5

Overall, I was not impressed with the food or service, and no amount of dolling up the walls is going to replace the quintessential need to produce quality from the kitchen. Their menu looks stellar but the end product was flat, literally and figuratively.

Would I go there again? Not of my own choosing. There are better places to experience on the north shore of Superior.

If you are in the area of the Ledge Rock Grille and want to experience it for yourself, their website posts their menu.

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March 5, 2010 by Chad.

Cooking for a family is definitely different than for just a couple. Where my spouse is at least game enough to try anything I choose to make, the kids on the other hand are never all that willing to try new things. I remember what it was like as a child. If we only ate what the kids liked then all of us would subsist on pizza, mac’n'cheese, and hot dogs for most meals. Make this your mantra when trying new things because they will love you more as they get older because you tried to expose them to the myriad of tastes that are possible in a world of eating. On to the crux of this post…

Earlier this week my son was lamenting that the chicken he was eating was a little firm and chewy for his tastes. It was cooked on the George Foreman  so it was pseudo grilled. That was understandable. Since there was a good special on chicken at the local grocery store, I had a fair amount of building material to make some more chicken meals. With my cookin’ mojo surging, I dived into some new recipes.

The Crock-Pot is a much maligned object in our house. Some old standards use it but nothing new. There was the focus of my search. It had to be cooked in the Crock-Pot. Slow cooker recipe books are a lot like most other recipe books. They are cluttered with items in the recipe, though intriguing, often do no appear in our kitchen. Who keeps dry tapioca around anyway?…err…wait, I have that. Anyway…on a whim, after paging through a couple books, I opened an old Crock-Pot owners manual from my last slow cooker(Rest it’s foodie soul, as it took a lethal header from the top cabinet down to the wood floor a few years ago). There in it’s nine poultry recipes was my target, Sweet’n'Spicy Glazed Chicken.

(Below is the recipe word for word from the Rival Crock-Pot Stoneware Slow Cooker manual)

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6 – 4oz skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1 Tbsp Oil

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

4 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth

2 Tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp cayenne pepper

¼ cornstarch

½ cup water

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken and brown on both sides. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Put in Crock-Pot. In a small bowl, combine remaining ingredients, except cornstarch and water. Pour over chicken. Cover; cook on Low 7 to 9 hours(High: 3 to 4 hours).

When done, remove chicken breasts and turn Crock-Pot to High; cover. Combine cornstarch and water. Stir into liquid in Crock-Pot. Place cover slightly ajar on Crock-Pot. Cook until thickened (15 to 30 minutes). 6 servings.

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Now, as anyone who enjoys cooking knows, a recipe is a guideline for culinary endeavors not a cardinal rule. Here is what I changed from it….

1. Cut the soy sauce down to 1/2 cup and substituted water with the other 1/2 cup. That was A LOT of soy sauce for taste. In fact, the recipe reports a sodium count of a staggering 1879mg as it is written. OUCH!

2. With no chicken broth in the house I took a can of chicken noodle soup and used the chicken broth from it with added water to account for 1 cup.

3. Substituted lime juice for lemon juice. Once again, this was out of necessity since I had one and not the other.

4. Rather than pre-cook the chicken I simply put it in the slow cooker raw. In four hours it was going to cook completely and I was aiming for moistness.

5. After cooking I cut the chicken up into small pieces, poured it into the thickened sauce, and served on a bed of white rice.

When I do this one again… and I will because it was yummy… I will consider adding pineapple and water chestnuts because with the soy sauce it has such an Asian feel and really needs something crunchy and tactile in it. Otherwise I would not change anything else. Very good and easy to make. Thank you, Rival Crock-Pot. I knew I kept that care manual for some reason.

Oh, and yes, I still had a little child insurrection but it was worth it.

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