Dinner and a cold

I am sick. I am hack-up-a-lung, low-grade fever sick. I look and sound like I’ve been run over by a truck and I want nothing more than to curl up in a ball and sleep.

If nothing else, I’m happy that it hit me on the weekend and not during the work-week as I faked sick this past week. I’m lucky, I guess? 

Last night Dave, Jackie, and her new guy Luke went out for a lovely dinner at Jax Cafe in northeast Minneapolis. I’d been wanting to try Jax for some time- I’ve been hearing about it for years and went there for my company’s employee party this past December but hadn’t ever eaten there.

Luke and I ordered the filet and crab-stuffed, broiled shrimp, Jackie ordered the filet and scallops, and Dave ate a filet only- he doesn’t like seafood. The food was good, but both mine and Jackie’s steaks were overdone. We both ordered med-rare and they were definitely way too close to medium for our liking. This was a disappointment to me as I actually usually prefer a rare steak, but always order medium rare with filets because they’re so soft anyway and are always so thick that the center often comes out totally cold if ordered rare.  I like a cool center, not a cold center.

Oh well, we still definitely enjoyed ourselves. They definitely would have taken our steaks back if we’d have asked, but as former servers, bartenders, and restaurant managers ourselves, we didn’t want to be a hassle and they were still good enough. We had a wonderful bottle of malbec, a round of after dinner drinks ranging from baileys on the rocks to a super peaty lowland scotch, and two awesome desserts (homemade chocolate lava cake with vanilla bean ice cream and an out-of-this-world banana and Baileys Irish Cream cake with the most AMAZING whipped cream and almond topping that I’ve ever had).

I especially liked the atmosphere at Jax. Jax has been around since 1933 and has tastefully hung on to a decor and service style very much like what I’d imagine it’d have been like to go out back when it opened. It’s kind of pretty and gritty and the same time, if that makes sense.

Anyway! Today my plan is to relax, rehydrate, drug myself up with ibuprofen, and drink lots of tea. Around 6 I’ll head to Dave’s and pick him up- we’re going to go to a viewing for a locally filmed documentary on the local Somali community (Minneapolis has the largest Somali community of anywhere in the United States). My very limited understanding of what the documentary focuses on is the Somali community as a whole and the younger generation of Somali-Americans who are being recruited to return to Somalia to fight in the wars going on there when many of them weren’t even alive in Somalia long enough to really remember Somalia.

I think it’ll be interesting. I’m a documentary dork and when I saw it mentioned in the newspaper a week or so ago I made up my mind to go. It’s free (though donations are suggested)!