An Amusing Night at Travail

As I’m sure we all know, Minnesota doesn’t have any Michelin-starred restaurants, and not because we don’t have a good food scene, but more likely because Michelin doesn’t come here. And to that we say they’re missing out! If the Twin Cities were to have any Michelin restaurants, Travail Kitchen and Amusements would be at the top of the list, alongside one of our other favorites, Demi.

We didn’t do the traditional tasting menu experience and instead sat in the Basement Bar for food and drinks, and that’s for a very specific reason. We want to give a huge shoutout to Graham, the lead bartender at Travail, for the invite to try out some drinks and food in the basement, along with all of the staff we met for giving us an amazing experience. Graham really took the name “Take Us to Dinner First” to heart with this one.

As always, let’s get started with the drinks. We started by sharing what ingredients we were interested in, and they took it from there. I wanted something with Chambord in it, and Amy wanted something with egg whites. Amy’s drink was a mix of a sour and a daquiri (perfect timing for national daquiri day!). He made her a pineapple daquiri sour, and it was beautifully decorated with some little hearts. My drink was coined the “cham-wow”, and it is now the first time I’ve successfully had a drink with Chambord in it.

The attention to detail by the team was *chefs kiss*. As my drink neared empty, an Elderflower French 75, aka my go-to drink, appeared before me without having to say a word. I will say that this one may have been a bit heavy on the champagne, but it still receives a stellar rating from me.

To round out our drinks experience, we had heard rumblings of a new cocktail coming to Travail, but it wouldn’t be dropping until the day after we left. One of the bartenders told us how they had been collecting oyster shells and were infusing Everclear with them for this new drink. If you know us and oysters, you know we had to get our hands on this, even if we were a day too early. We mentioned it to Graham, and he slyly slid us a book that had been sitting on the bar in front of us the whole night. We opened it up, and there was a bottle inside! This drink was called Zeno’s Shipwreck, and the whole presentation and idea behind it was so fun. At the end of the day, it tasted like if Fireball had a cousin, but it was worth the fun.

It’s finally time to get into the food. We were started off with some oysters, because who are we if we don’t get oysters everywhere we go? I forget exactly what type of oyster they were, but I believe they were from Prince Edward Island. We were brought a dozen of them, so of course we had to share with the bartenders. Amy and I walked Elliot, a bartender there, through the proper way to try an oyster. First, you have to try the oyster raw, no accoutrements at all to get a feel for the flavors. Second, you have to lemon it up. Lemon is always the best way to have an oyster, in our humble opinions. Third, you try it with the house mignonette, and for Travail they had some topping with shallots. After those three attempts, you can decide which way you like best.

Up next we were brought some tuna tacos. These were pretty good, but nothing to phone home about. If you like raw tuna tacos, and who doesn’t, you’ll like these. We would’ve liked to see them loaded up with more fish, it was kind of hard to tell the tuna was in there with all of the other ingredients.

We were pretty lucky on our journey this night at Travail. There was a dinner and wine pairing event going on in the basement, and the sous chef kept making stops to drop us off the food that everyone else was having to try. We were able to join in on a course that was a cheese and olive toast. I personally love both cheese and olives, but Amy isn’t really a fan of either, so this dish was not for her. I thought the bread was nice and there were some good funky flavors. This isn’t necessarily something I would ever order, but I will eat it and be happy when presented to me.

Next we were brought a risotto that was cooked in the wine that was paired with the dish. This was delicious, but I love risotto so don’t take my word for it, take Amy’s. She normally hates risotto but I couldn’t keep her away from eating it. There was a good combination of different textures that really brought intrigue to the dish. Usually I get bored from eating risotto because it starts to make me think of eating oatmeal, but not here. This was easily our favorite food we tried of the night.

Our meal was rounded out with some steak and what they called their “Olive Garden” salad and breadsticks. The steak was good, and they had extras that they kept bringing us which was fabulous. We thought the bit comparing this food to Olive Garden was funny, but they weren’t joking! I’m pretty sure they went straight to the OG’s, stole a bunch a breadsticks, and brought them right down to the basement.

VIBE CHECK

If you couldn’t tell above, we had so much fun during our time here. The vibes were absolutely phenomenal and it was so fun having banter with all of the employees. The lighting was also very nice, which is why all of our photos turned out purple. Great vibes all around.