Mostly Minnesotan: Sea Salt Eatery, Minneapolis

The Minneapolis parks are awesome. The bike trails extend for miles throughout the city, there are public areas for picnics and swimming near lakes and trails and the dog parks are fabulous.

We're especially lucky because we live in the Longfellow neighborhood, so we can take advantage of the trails along the River Road and we're very close to Minnehaha Park. Minnehaha Park is one of those places I remember coming to as a kid and it's really fun to live so close to the park now. We're able to take Sogn to the Minnehaha dog park almost every week day and ride through the park on most of our rides.

One of the greatest features of Minnehaha Park is Sea Salt Eatery. I don't really know how the deal works out, because it's a privately owned restaurant on park property, but I do know that I love it. It's in a beautiful building in the middle of the park and offers fresh seafood, great tacos and even raw oysters. They also serve beer and ice cream! The one thing some people seem to dislike about Sea Salt Eatery is the epic wait. But I think it's great, what's better than taking someone you love and hanging out with them for hours! There's a wait in line, then a wait for food, which just means that it's a great time to grab a pitcher of beer and enjoy the people watching in the park.

On this latest visit we were going to celebrate a friend's birthday. Sadly, we were the late arrivals, but that just meant that we had about two hours of chatting with friends before our dinner came. While we were standing in line we also ended up chatting with a woman who was in town from Ohio and had heard about Sea Salt. She didn't know the line would be so long but we loved her loving the Minneapolis vibe of the restaurant. Apparently she was in town for meetings at the University and had taken the light rail to the park, grabbed a beer out of the beer line and settled in to the food line. She said she was enjoying the park and her favorite part of Minneapolis was that people take their bikes with them everywhere, including the food line. It was fun chatting with her and really fun to hear that she was enjoying the Minneapolis experience!

It was a great dinner once it arrived. I had calamari tacos and Calhoun took a risk on fried oysters. It was great and we got to watch some cutes kids with their new puppies and talk about how beautiful the park was all lit up at night.