Moto-I Sake Brew Pub

Last night we went to the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show at the Convention Center and checked out some gardening, decorating and outdoor living ideas for the new house. We got a couple of good contacts for patios/decks, outdoor furniture, a future wine cellar and some closet organizing ideas as well. I had won the tickets on a radio station I listen to and I am glad I had won them since they were $12 a ticket. We were there for two hours and pretty much walked the whole show, hunger was present by the time we were done. I pulled out a Groupon for Moto-I, the first Sake Brew Pub outside of Japan! The groupon I had purchased was $50 dollars of food for $20 dollars. A pretty good deal! We had heard great things about Moto-I but it didn’t live up to the hype. I opted for the Namatini which had almond, vanilla and honey flavors with the Sake. I didn’t love it, it almost reminded me of couch syrup.

 

     

 

Since they are a Sake Brew pub they didn’t have a large selection of non sake beverages but they did support local Minnesota breweries. Mike tried a Farm Girl which was a cloudy, wheat beer.

 

 

There were a few positives about the meal, we ordered a Pork Belly and Pulled Chicken Steamed Bun. I had the pulled chicken which was VERY spicy but pretty good. Mike enjoyed the pork belly, which had good flavor. 

 

 

We tried the Ginger Pork Dumplings which were my favorite part of the meal, you could tell everything had been handmade and the dipping sauce was amazing.

 

 

On to the low points… the main dish we ordered was The Drunken Noodle, which was chicken, red pepper, Thai Chili, Kaffir Lime, Onion, Thai Basil and Rice Noodles. There wasn’t much flavor to this dish which is surprising given the ingredients. The most disappointing aspect of our meal was the service, point blank it was horrible. We were there for 2 hours and only had 3 plates of food that we shared. Ouch!