The deal is on!
Scientists speculate that eating meat helped humans evolve larger brains, leading to such inventions as the wheel, chocolate-chip pancakes, and sausage on a stick. Satisfy both your gray matter and your taste buds with today's Groupon: for $25, you get $60 worth of Italian cuisine, fine wine, chicken wings, and more at The Butcher Block in Northeast Minneapolis.
The Butcher Block's menu features toothsome appetizers such as the award-winning grilled octopus ($13) with lemon and olive oil and the carpaccio ($11), a raw beef tenderloin with arugula, parmesan, lemon, and olive oil. Butcher Filippo Caffari’s skill with meat and Italian preparation comes through strongly on the lamb scottadito ($20), chops served with cannellini beans and pancetta. Graze on a collection of juicy chicken wings available in 14 signature flavors ($11), including caramelized-onion balsamico, Thai peanut, coriander cumin lime, and volcano (on Friday and Saturday, wings are served only after 9 p.m.). Should your meat teeth be in the shop, The Butcher Block also whips up some seafood and veggie dishes, including gnocchi caprese (potato gnocchi, mozzarella, and tomato, $15) and capellini pasta with asparagus, smoked salmon, and a lemon-cream sauce ($16).
The Butcher Block takes its name from chef Filippo Caffari, a master butcher in Rome for nearly two decades before digging a hole straight through the earth and ending up in Minneapolis. Because The Butcher Block emphasizes organic, grass-fed, and sustainable sources, each succulent bite delivers the optimal, guilt-free nutrients that fuel curling champs and manic mail carriers.
Reviews
TwinCities.com lists The Butcher Block's grilled octopus as one of the best dishes of 2009:
- Good company, good wine and a plate of grilled octopus with mixed greens — that's my idea of a perfect light supper at the Butcher Block, chef Filippo Caffari's oh-so-Italian trattoria in Northeast Minneapolis. The octopus has an elusive smoky char on the outside yet is amazingly tender inside. – Kathie Jenkins
Minnesota Monthly, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, and City Pages have each reviewed or featured The Butcher Block.
- As the name promises, the menu is mainly meat. They serve a lovely beef Carpaccio that’s as rosy as berries and pleasantly rich and glossy. An entrée of braised-beef short ribs cacciatore was nothing short of exquisite, the meat tender as jelly, the flavors as intense and finely honed as I’ve ever experienced. – Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, Minnesota Monthly
- ...pastas are toothy and richly flavored, salads are generous, a burger with a fried egg is monstrous, and the wings are pleasing and a great value. – Stephanie March, Mpls.St.Paul
Groupon Says
How to Feel Manly
The graceful arc and delicate precision of a meat cleaver driven into a perfect cut of beef has been known to inspire feelings of manliness. If you're too squeamish to become a butcher yourself, here are other ways you can get in touch with your masculinity:
- Wear a cool motorcycle jacket on top of an even cooler motorcycle jacket on top of an apron that says, "Don't Bother the Grillmaster."
- Drive a Pontiac Firebird, the Batmobile, or a horse with machine guns attached to it.
- Grow enough facial hair to cut it off and make a cape out of it.
- Be a real man and vote Perot.
- Embrace your inner hunter by jumping into the lion enclosure at the zoo armed only with a pocketknife and a crazy glint in your eye.
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