Erte

Greetings! Yes friends, it has been an age since I blogged here. But, we had an amazing meal on Valentine's Day that was so good I just had to share about it.

Flashback to Valentine's Day 2010 - we chose to try Axel's, not Axel's Bonfire, the plain Axel's, because we heard they had good steak and it was close to home. We were SO disappointed. It was not good quality steak. They have awesome popovers and the mussels we had as appetizer were awesome, but everything else was sub par.

So this year we said, ok, kind of want to go out for a nice steak dinner again, but where do we go? We've done the Jax thing a number of times. My parents recently tried Erte, also in Northeast Minneapolis, just down the road from Jax actually and they said it was some of the best steak they'd had out in a very long time. We decided, that sounds good, we'll give it a try.

We got a reservation for 5:30 which worked out to be a perfect time - the place wasn't too full when we arrived, but definitely filled up after we'd been there awhile. The dining room isn't huge, but they do have a fair number of tables. The lighting was low and each table had a candle at it - not sure if this was just for Valentine's Day or if this is always how the mood is set, but it was really lovely.

Our waitress was out with water right away and gave us some time to look over both the wine list and the food menu. Since we both figured we'd be ordering steak, we decided to split a bottle of red wine. Nate let me pick, so I chose Saint Vincent Baron Bordeaux, it said it was 70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet - I like Cab, Nate likes Merlot, so it seemed to be a fair choice.

The waitress came back to take our drink order and listed the specials for the night - some of which sounded tempting like Lobster Ravioli - but we stuck to our guns and chose steaks that appealed to each of us. Nate chose the ribeye and I chose fillet Mignon. You also order your sides separately, but I think it works well, as we were able to pick a couple of small sides to share, allowing us to try more. We also picked an appetizer - crab cakes.

She brought us our wine so we could enjoy that with the bread plate that I think was complimentary for Valentine's Day - it is listed on the appetizer menu, but every table was receiving this so I think it was something special. It was yummy, little baguette bread, garlic butter and some olives. And let me tell you the wine - some of the best red wine I've had in ages, nice and warm, not too dry, very smooth. Just a tiny hint of sweetness. The longer it was open the nicer it got too. I highly recommend it.

The crab cakes were perfect - we each had one and while decadent - they weren't too much. There were some spices we couldn't quite place, but overall they were a nice starter.

The salads were ok, probably my least favorite part of the meal. I chose french dressing and also something they have called greek goddess because they do not have ranch - the waitress described it as if caesar and ranch dressing had a baby. We decided it actually tastes like Tzatziki that you have with gyros. It was good. The french dressing was almost too much like tomato paste though. And the salad had a lot of onions which I'm not a huge fan of and it was hard to eat around them.

I'll forgive that one little thing though because we got our meat and Oh.My.God. Cooked to perfection just the way I wanted it. It was a wonderful cut of meat - it seriously melted in my mouth. I had a bite of Nate's too and his was also excellent, but I prefer fillet meat, so I am so happy I ordered what I did. I haven't enjoyed a steak out in a restaurant this much in years. We selected le smush (garlic mashed potatoes), hunny bunny carrots (they had ginger too) and creamed spinach for our sides. All three were great, nice light accompaniments to the meat. I think my favorite was the carrots. The ginger they're cooked with is a nice touch.

Because it was Valentine's Day we also splurged and brought home dessert to enjoy with our traditional Valentine's Day scotch (Lagavulin). We chose the chocolate raspberry cheesecake as it seemed like it would travel the best and also accompany our scotch nicely. It was awesome - not super heavy which I appreciated since I was quite full from our meal! It was very creamy and had a nice chocolate cookie crust. I would eat that again!

Overall we really enjoyed our experience at Erte - I credit our waitress a great deal for that as well, she was attentive, but also knew when to let us alone. She really helped make it a wonderful evening.

I highly recommend Erte if you're looking for someplace nice for a special occasion!

Details:
Erte
323 13th Avenue N.E
Minneapolis, MN 55413
612-623-4211
www.ertedining.com