Thanksgiving at Forepaugh's

Trust everyone had a great Thanksgiving? Since we were stuck in Minneapolis by ourselves, we decided to dine out last Thursday night instead of cooking a big meal for two. Forepaugh's restaurant is located in a three-story Victorian mansion, in the Irvine Park Historic District in St. Paul. The quaint building even comes with its own ghosts, as all authentic 19th century mansions ought to have.

We arrived a few minutes early for our 4:30pm reservation. The dapper, old school host, with a slightly exaggerated demeanor, greeted and led us to the cozy parlor with [faux?] leather paneled walls, where we waited for our table in comfy upholstered chairs by the wood-burning fireplace. When our table was ready, we were led to the second floor to one of the seven intimate dining rooms; I think there were no more than six tables in our room, and we were the youngest people there by far.

The Thanksgiving menu was a six-course prix fixe affair:

First course was a glass of bubbly, with 3 different types of cheese [a goat, a cheddar, and... something else], a small bunch of grapes and a fig. There was also this spiced cracker/wafer circle that was delicious.
The butternut squash soup came topped with crème fraîche and a sprinkling of black salt. The soup was a little watered down, but I'm not usually a fan of thick squash soups, so I actually preferred it that way. The soup spoon was squared off at the tip, a design feature that we both liked, Jamie suggested a combination of spoon + scoop = spoop, which sounds terrible, or the better sounding scoon.
Service was a little slow, and there was a lull between courses, so before our third course came, we had a discussion on what a Waldorf Salad was, because neither of us could really remember. I think the last time I heard the term "Waldorf Salad" was on an episode of Fawlty Towers, where Basil had no clue either. I guessed romaine lettuce, apples, some kind of berry. When the "salad" showed up, we almost laughed out loud. a) the presentation was horrible, and b) there was not a green leaf in sight. Which, after doing some research, I discovered Waldorf Salad originally had only three ingredients, apples, celery and mayonnaise. Gross. Our Waldorf Salad consisted of small pieces of apple, grapes, toasted walnuts, with a healthy drizzle of a thick sweet mixture on top [yogurt? mayo? who knows]. There might have been celery, but I don't remember it.
Fourth course was a small piece of salmon and one truffled potato tortellini in a parmesan broth. The fish was a tad overcooked, but this was my favorite plate. All the courses we'd had so far were fairly small portions, so we were a little concerned that we were still going to be hungry afterwards, until they brought out the big guns...
We each got a large dinner plate with a huge slab of turkey breast with gravy and cranberry sauce, a huge chunk of ham, a beautifully latticed beef wellington. Another large family style plate had all the fixings, mashed potatoes, broccolini, stuffing, and then a separate large bowl of creamed spinach. Jamie and I looked at each other, wide-eyed and maybe a little horrified at the amount of food we had in front of us. Needless to say, we doggie bagged half the meal and enjoyed the leftovers the next day.
Dessert was an individual cute little pumpkin pie with meringue on top and candied pecans. I'm not a fan of pie, let alone pumpkin pie, so it was just as well that I was too full to eat any.

All in all, we enjoyed celebrating our Thanksgiving at Forepaugh's. Great ambience, decent enough food [nothing outstanding, and their presentation needs a little work, but it was Thanksgiving fare after all], slow but friendly service. Might be worth going back during regular dinner service to see if the food and service are improved.


p.s.  Please excuse the "Minneapolis" label, even though this restaurant is in St. Paul. When I added labels, "Minneapolis" to me was a catch-all that included all the surrounding Minnesotan cities, and I'm loath to make more labels... [labels updated]