The Unvegan

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Tastes of the Northwoods, Part V: Crave

Not exactly what I ordered...
Not exactly what I ordered…

Before leaving the Northwoods, I made a stop at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota to eat at Crave. Although the Mall of America can hardly be considered part of the Northwoods, it’s close enough to be included in my weekly special.

Crave was a nice and spacious restaurant that came highly recommended by my family that was taking me there. A whole lot of food on the menu looked great and we started by ordering appetizers. We got the Mini-Burgers, which the menu said came with bacon, cheddar and rosemary. We also ordered the Lemon Garlic Wings, which came with “Amablu cheese dressing” and cucumbers. Since the family likes cucumbers, I didn’t order the dish without them and just hoped they didn’t touch any of the wings I wanted to eat.

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While waiting for the apps, we made our main course orders. I ordered the Baked Truffle Macaroni and Cheese, and asked for grilled chicken in it for good measure. Shortly after, our appetizers arrived in a sort of disappointing fashion. The Mini-Burgers, which made no mention of vegetables in the menu, had tomatoes on them and pickles on the side. And also, the were even mini-er than I could have imagined. Maybe micro-burgers would have been a better name. Nonetheless, once I realized the pickles didn’t touch the burgers and the tomatoes had been evicted, they tasted really good. The chicken wings were still bleeding, so we sent them back to be cooked for a little longer. No one wants salmonella on a cross-country flight. Our re-cooked wings came back just before our main course arrived. They were definitely cooked enough now, and seemed to have lost half of their mass in the process. Luckily the cucumbers didn’t make any contact with the wings and they ended up being pretty good.

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When my main course came, it had some pretty funky looking chicken in it. After a quick taste test, I found that it was not chicken at all, but bacon. Good thing I don’t keep Kosher. I alerted the waitress, and about ten minutes later she returned with chicken for me to put in the mac and cheese. I wasn’t terribly disappointed to be getting two meats for the price of one, but it would have been nice if they had gotten the order right in the first place.

In the end, the food was really good, despite the number of mistakes and attempts it took to get everything right. I’m not a tough man to please and my food standards are low. All I really want is for the menu to warn me if there will be vegetables, for my food to be fully cooked and to actually get what I order. Crave didn’t deliver on any of these and although the food tasted good, it just wasn’t worth the seemingly endless hassle.