Get Sexy at Butcher and the Boar

For weeks, I’ve been seeing and hearing about Butcher and the Boar. The Star Tribune named it their 2012 Restaurant of the Year. It’s in the one-spot at Urbanspoon’s Talk of the Town list. I’ve had two people at the office tell me how excited they are to try it, that they’ve heard it’s amazing, that they can’t get there quickly enough.

You see one picture of the lobster grilled cheese sandwich and you’re pulled in immediately. If you don’t have your next man-date on the calendar, look at this and it basically schedules itself. I called up Ducky, locked in President’s Date, and spent a week being what my wife called “meta-excited:” I was excited to be excited to eat that sandwich.

The basics: Butcher and the Boar sits in the Loring Park area of Minneapolis. A good food reviewer describes their menu in scintillating detail, but it’s a boring read and the menu is posted online. Here, look. Also impressive is their tap list. We are approaching the one-year anniversary of their opening. The head chef, Jack Riebel, looks studly when he's not wearing an orange headband.

Monday: Ducky and I maneuvered through Monday's battering winds and blowing snow into Minneapolis for our 8:30 p.m. reservation (They're not required, but you'll want to make one). We found a parking spot, and my first win of the night came when Ducky pointed at the parking meter and yelled "You're up, Frank!"

Parking meters had turned off two hours ago.

I sauntered into the restaurant in my wool coat and scarf with my man-date hugging himself in a windbreaker fleece behind me while his feet pitter-pattered across the asphalt (The Weather Channel has a website, people, look at it once in a while). Our table was waiting for us.


Beers were first. Ducky ordered a Left Hand Milk Stout and I talked myself into Surly's new Pentagram beer. As the waiter described it to me, it sounded worse, and worse ... and worse ... and worse ... until he called it "almost the opposite of an IPA." That's it, I'm in! And then it came.

I should have stayed out.

Want a good service practice, check this out: The bartender heard my opinion of the beer ("It tastes like a bad decision") and insisted he bring me another beer for free. I traded up for a Left Hand of my own.

The decor isn't that unique. One wall reminded me of Fogo de Chao, another reminded me of Vincent A, and another reminded me of an elegant version of the Roseville Five Guys. I'm a sucker for a dim, mafia-movie lighting and Butcher has this. I'm also a fan of leaving the ceiling beams and tubing exposed, and Butcher does that. The environs don't add much, but they don't take anything away. There's an isolated room with giant mustaches on plaques adorning the walls, but it was full so I didn't get a good look.

You already know what I ordered. For Ducky, Butcher's first impression rode on the crab spaghetti. The wait was short; and I was still snapping pictures of my sandwich when I heard the first "O-ho, duuuuude." I looked up and saw Ducky pointing at his dish with his fork. "Phenomenal."

I squished down a corner of my sandwich and took my first bite. It was a home run - no, it was 40 home runs. Every mouthful landed in the upper deck. It was cheesy, it was gooey, it got on my face everywhere and it was basic but marvelous. And they're doing this with a grilled cheese sandwich. When words fail, I tend to just nod. I'm surprised my neck didn't break.

During the course of our meal, Ducky only said two things: "Duuuude," and "Whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho." Every bite sounded like he was being shot out of a circus cannon. He would slump into his chair, his head would tilt back, and he would regain his composure for another bite. Put this sequence in a different setting and you've got another Exorcist movie.


Near the end of our meals, we traded bites. His spaghetti was minty, spicy, and noodly in all the right ways. It was everything you'd want spaghetti to be if you wanted spaghetti to be everything. The best tastes are the unexpected ones; and that dish had a handful of them. Back on our own plates, I cleaned the walls of my skillet with my finger while Ducky used his spoon to scoot every last molecule of spaghetti onto his fork. It's that real, people. 

Of course we had dessert. Gingersnap Banana Pudding for Ducky, Grasshopper Semifreddo for me. The semifreddo was, at its heart, dressed-up mint chocolate chip ice cream - which I much enjoyed. We switched bites at the end, and we were both happy we had ordered what we ordered (I'm just not that into pudding).

Expect a two-bro tab to jump over $60 if you both dive into drinks and desserts. The portions sizes don't make you jump through the ceiling, but it's worth every penny. It left me the perfect amount of full, and left Ducky wanting to sit in his car overnight and bask in bloated glory. Today on Facebook, Ducky wrote: “I woke up this morning thinking about that spaghetti.”

I can’t say the same. Maybe I feel this way because I do too many burger joints, but restaurant experiences tend to be revelations. You ate there; now you know. That’s not the case at Butcher and the Boar. This first meal only fueled my curiosity: If they can do this with a grilled cheese sandwich, what can they do with a steak? If they can do that with spaghetti, what can they do with quail? Just imagine!

Think of the Butcher and the Boar menu as a treasure map, and think of the grilled cheese sandwich as the first few dots toward the X. I don't know exactly what the X is, but if that sandwich was only the first few dots ...

All I can think about now is getting back on that trail.