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Thursday, January 13, 2011
Victory 44: Restaurant Review
11:10 AM | 
Posted by
The I.I. |
This blog thread posted by the Irving Inquisition uses some explicit language, as well as depicting some aspects of life in North Minneapolis that some readers may find objectionable. Reader discretion is advised.
Victory 44: Restaurant Review
I had a meeting in the general area looming on the horizon. I had just returned to NoMi after having spent the morning on the other side of the metro; I hadn’t eaten yet and I was famished. Since my meeting was in NoMi, and I had about an hour, I decided to drop in for late lunch at Victory 44.
Time wasn’t plentiful, and I knew of this restaurant’s less than impressive turn-around history, so I decided to sit in the bar area. I walked to the end tables… crumbs on the first table; I ain’t sitting there; the 2nd table seemed okay so I sat over there.
After about five minutes, one of the chefs came by and greeted me. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and gave me the introduction to the restaurant. I told him I was pretty hungry—skipped breakfast—so I wanted something filling. After going through the menu I settled on the roasted beet salad and short rib. The short rib dish comes with bleu cheese tator-tots; I can’t eat bleu cheese. The chef was kind enough to suggest the sweet potato croquettes as an alternative.
My iced tea arrived about ten minutes later… Another ten minutes elapsed before my salad arrived. During that time, I was thinking to myself how it would have been nice if there was some bread or munch on or something like that. The salad was quite impressive to look at! Ok, so we’ve got beets, and pistachio dust, aioli, caviar, pistachio wafers, and a water cress topping. Very posh. Actually, the salad was very nice; over priced and pretentious as hell, but quite tasty and reasonably well balanced with sweet, savory, and salty.
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| Roasted beets; like four pieces covered in fancy condiments. |
Once my salad was finished, it seemed like another fifteen minutes had gone by before the short rib came out. The dish finally arrived forty minutes after I had ordered it. The plating of the dish was awesome. The square block of meat was in the middle, it was escorted by the croquettes on either side, and they were flanked by the pickled vegetables on the outside.
I started with the vegetables. They were salty, crunchy, and flavorful; quite nice. Next was the sweet potato croquette; that was horrible. Virtually inedible, this thing had so much salt that it was impossible to taste anything else. Next was the meat component. Obviously it had been well braised; my fork cut into it from the side and it collapsed as if it were cake. I thought that was kind of cool, but when I tasted it…. Oh my goodness, this was terrible. The consistency of the meat was like canned tuna fish. The flavor of the meat also resembled something like tuna fish. In addition to that, this thing had been salted past the point of no return.
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| This is a menagerie of saltiness; fried, marinated, sauteed, and braised in salt. |
While I’m sure it’s cool to braise meat for hours upon hours, you would think that somebody was checking to see if the braise was any good? Finally, I am aware that Victory 44 likes to sousvide just about everything. This is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t do that. In order for red meat to be good, having texture is important. The short rib I had may as well have been Alpo dog food.
Once it was time to leave, I spent another ten minutes waiting without a follow up from the server. I just sat there patiently… Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer because I was out of time and was going to be late to my meeting. I handed my credit card to the chef / server / bartender behind the bar and told him I was in a hurry. He proceeded to pick up a phone and walk off. He came back several minutes later and said something about having computer problems. Minutes went by with me just standing there… Finally, I got to leave… Get me outta here!
Let’s sum up here…
Service: Friendly, yet slow, they don’t follow up fast enough, and it takes way too long to close out the tab.
Food: While presented well, it doesn’t taste good. Highly complex dishes made to appease customers that are accustomed to eating off a salt lick.
Pricing: Moderate; the dishes aren’t that expensive, but the value comes into question after you’ve spent $20 and you walk away with a salty tuna fish taste in your mouth.
I left the place and was unhappy with my dining experience. Irving Inquisition does not recommend this restaurant.
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11 comments:
I think the plating of the short rib is sloppy!
I agree that the food there is often too salty for my taste.
The dishes are hit or miss.
The service is often a miss. I think the concept of Chefs as servers could be cool but is often not executed smoothly at V44.
I am disappointed that they have stopped buying coffee beans from their neighboring business, Steamworks. They are now buying coffee from a business in SoMi. I'm sure coffee is not a big seller for V44, but the fact that they wouldn't support a neighboring business, especially in North, is very bothersome.
I think Victory 44 is going downhill. The ONLY chef that can cook there is owner chef Erick since chef Karly is now gone. Good luck V44. I wish you could make NoMi more proud.
I liked the place when it used to be called Sauced. They had some really good stuff. They had this one burger, and I forget what was on it, but it was amazing.
about the sloppy plate, it looks like I.I. started eating it before he took the picture, so we can't really blame V44 for that
Thanks for sharing your experience, I.I. Sadly, it's the same tune sung by many a former patron. Pretentious and over priced snooty food served by arrogant chefs simply gets more customers over to Papa's and Tootie's.
@ Anon 10:51,
I don't know about that... I've never been to Papa's, it's a pizza place from what I hear. As for Tootie's... Ummm, yeah, the food there is gross. They fucked up an order of onion rings last time I was there.
Papa's is actually more than pizza with a wide variety of pasta options and a take-out deli. Sorry to hear about your fucked up onion rings at Tootie's. I'm a happy patron there :)
Thank you for showing me that plate of crap. I was going to visit north minneapolis but your blog is slowly shooing me away. I hope this blog is not meant to promote your area because you are failing miserably. You guys do not seem to like each other too much and it seems that you lead the way in a terribly negative manner.
Yo! If your hungry as heck ... get the perfect burger. It really is perfect ... and, the french fries and home made ketchup ... nummy. I've added up the calories on this meal and it is about 1000 - so, I invite someone to share it with me; and, sharing it is plenty.
OH, I always sit at the bar and they could bring my diet coke sooner ... but, I like the chefs there - all of them.
And, I'm not snooty - I talk to them and they are rather nice normal folks that really love food.
@ Anon 9:39,
You should read the mission statement on the first post. If you want warm and sunny, go read Home and Garden magazine. Besides, you were never planning to "visit" North Minneapolis anyways... Piss off.
The unfortunate truth is that you are a poor and misinformed person who probably has issues with weight and cannot even find a similar somebody to find any real interest in you. I believe you are an insecure obese individual whos friends thinks he is, to say the least, weird. I graduated from Henry High school a few years ago and was wondering if i should recommend the area to relatives who would like to re-locate but your description of the adjacent areas and restaurants and general attitude will tell me to tell them to not even consider it.Great job...Eric was that? Wont be blogging you again. I know,i know...whatever.
@ Anon 9:53,
Obviously, you are a blog troll. I can tell by your bad grammar that you are one of my troll followers that frequently comments here. Thank you for your patronage!
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