Weekend Recap - Jan. 24-25

My weekend was one that I was looking forward to a great deal.  I had plans for a wonderful Saturday night and my Sunday was going to be a girls day... how could you not look forward to a thing like that?!

Saturday was a day I was wicked excited about.  I have a strong desire to learn more about St. Paul and see what it has to offer; one day at work we were talking about places in St. Paul to eat and I ended up planning a night of firsts in St. Paul.  I had been researching a place called The Strip Club, which is not what you might think, but a steakhouse in St. Paul.  Here is how it went:
We started the evening at The St. Paul Grill for cocktails, which is a pretty amazing looking place and their bar is fully stocked.  I ordered a dirty Ciroc  [which is a French vodka made from grapes] martini.  It was delicious.  My friend ordered some kind of Whiskey, neat ... it made my entire face and body burn... not in a good way [to each their own].  After cocktails and conversation [with each other and with a stranger named Dave] we headed over to The Strip Club for our 7:30 reservation.  We arrived a bit early and cozied up to the bar while we waited; The Strip Club is a quaint little restaurant just outside of downtown St. Paul.  I kind of fell in love with the place as soon as we walked in... from reading reviews and editorials about the place I knew what I expected  and it lived up to the hype just walking in the door.  I have a thing for small, cute, personal restaurants and The Strip Club was just that; not a ton of tables, a beautiful spiral staircase taking you up to a few more tables on the small second level, and extremely personal staff.  I was hoping we'd get a table upstairs and I like when I get what I hope for... we were seated upstairs after being warned that they would be seating a large party next to us shortly after and they'd try not to disturb us.... no big deal anyhow, they have to do what they have to do.
We ordered a beautiful bottle of Ridge wine and get the ball rolling with a few small plates.  We ordered the Shrimp Scampi and the Duck Confit, to be brought out one after another.  The shrimp was to die for; cooked to perfection and extremely flavorful, yum!  The Duck Confit was one of my main purposes for wanting to go to this restaurant; I had Duck Confit only one other time in Chicago and it immediately became my favorite dish, I was anxious to try it again.  The plate was brought to our table and my mouth started to water, literally.  You put your fork in this piece of meat and it just falls apart.  It was everything I remembered it to be; bliss.  We then decided to order our steak, hence The Strip Club, their specialty is the NY Strip, medium rare.  It was absolutely delicious.  Cut into smaller sections and perfect for sharing, each bite was just as good as the first.  It came with poached carrots on the side and even those were mouthwatering!  All in all I give The Strip Club two thumbs up and a big fat A+, I would definitely go back for more!
From there we made our way to Grand Ole Creamery for, what I hear is, the best ice cream ever!  On an already cold night, ice cream is not what you envision to top off the evening, but we did and it was really good.  I don't know that I'd agree with the best ice cream ever, but everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm not a huge fan of ice cream overall...so I'm probably not the best person to judge.
It was a great evening and I am so proud to say that I've begun to explore St. Paul and all it has to offer.  I didn't take my camera out once this evening and, for that, I am extremely pissed off at myself.


Sunday snuck up on me... I was to be at Jenny's house at noon so we could make our way to St. Paul for winter carnival events.  Normally my girls days and nights consist of 6-7 of us... Sunday was to be 3 of us; myself, Pamela, and Jen.  I had never seen any of the ice sculptures or done anything surrounding the events of the winter carnival and even though the high for the day was 4° we still ventured out [I have a picture to prove it, but it's sitting on my camera still].  We walked through Rice Park and looked at everything, very pretty stuff people can do with a block of ice!  The need to get inside and warm up was there, so we walked into Landmark Center, used the potty and let our bodies thaw.  All of the sudden we realize that the Medallion hadn't been found, so we spend way too much time trying to find all the clues and discover that we know absolutely NOTHING about St. Paul and these clues made absolutely NO sense to us!  For several thousand dollars though, we wanted to try and figure it out... we decided we would head back NE, grab a bite and do more research.  We ended up at The Bulldog NE [I've been wanting to eat there since Kristi wrote a review of the place].  To start, Pam and I took advantage of the beer special which was $2 big cans [pint size] of PBR, so damn funny that we had to get a picture:

I ordered the Green Marvel burger, which is a Kobe beef burger with melted swiss cheese and topped with fried onions and guacamole.  Absolutely delicious!  Burgers now-a-days are hard to make original and still be delicious... this one accomplishes both :)
We forgot to do any more research on the Medallion and ended up at Mayslacks to meet Amanda for a quick drink.

Last night I watched the last installment of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of The Sith.  I actually followed this one and I am now anxious to watch Episodes 4, 5, and 6 again.  Oh no... I'm a Star Wars freak now!  It just tied everything together so well and I think a lot more will make sense to me now.  I'm proud to say after 27 years of life on this planet I have finally watched all the Star Wars movies!  I'm bomb.