Icehouse

My friend Stephanie and I made it out again for another fun girls night. This time we decided to check out Icehouse in Minneapolis. It is another one of those places we had both read a lot of press about and neither one of us had visited before. I think we need to keep up this trend to trying new places, because there are plenty of new restaurants to choose from lately.

I had made a reservation a week before, so we were greeted and seated as soon as we arrived. It was very busy on a Friday night, so I think reservations are required, especially at peak times. I liked the atmosphere as well, lots of exposed brick and metal beams for an industrial look and feel, in an old fashioned kind of way.

I started with a Little Richard drink, which the menu described as a "zesty jazzberry phosphate punch with vanilla cream foam." It was very tart. The picture of Little Richard on top was pretty funny. I think Stephanie had a Fulton beer. Forgot to take a photo of that.

I recalled reading about the buffalo wings, so we decided to start with those.  They came with bleu cheese mousse, pickled vegetables and a spicy, smoky sauce on the side. The wings were perfect. Very crisp on the exterior. The bleu cheese mousse did not have much detectable flavor, but the hot sauce certainly did. The wings were not spicy until dipped in the sauce though, so these might be a good choice if you are a bit afraid of spice.

Stephanie ordered the beef short rib stroganoff  with red wine, mushrooms and creme fraiche. It was a deconstructed dish and Stephanie mentioned she preferred this to a traditional stroganoff. The short rib was very, very tender too.

I had the scallops with candied bacon, potato vichyssoise, king crab, mushroom sauce and sorrel. The scallops were perfectly seared and very tasty. The sauces on the plate did not add a lot of flavor to the dish for me. There was a small piece of crab on top and a small piece of bacon. The bacon was amazing. I tried to get a tony bit of bacon with each bite of scallop.

For dessert we tried the sticky toffee pudding with pieces of fruit, vanilla ice cream and blood orange carmel sorbet. I really liked the vanilla ice cream on the side of this dessert. The blood orange ice cram was a bit tart for me.  It was very tasty though, quite moist and flavorful. They had a rather large dessert menu. It was difficult to decide what to order.

There was a duo performing on the accordion and bongo drums for the duration of our visit. I think it added to the atmosphere, and the sound levels were OK most of the time, only occasionally did it get a tiny bit loud. We had a table on the second level overlooking the stage. 

Our server and the overall service was very good. The server checked on us as needed, did not rush us and offered menu suggestions when we were a bit indecisive. 

Icehouse

2528 Nicollet Ave Minneapolis, MN 55404 (612) 276-6523 http://www.icehousempls.com