Ginger Hop - Minneapolis

Absolutely best happy hour in Minneapolis. Have a lot of food and drinks. One of the few places that contain amazing cocktails in the Happy Hour. Big burgers and kimchi spring rolls and Satay! Come here a lot! The white cosmos is to die. Not really, but it's a beautiful light, but not too sweet drink.

Cool place, with pretty good food. Mostly sir fry and southern Asian cuisine. Decor is like a colonial British idea of fancy dining in SE Asia. They had a DJ when I was there, which was weird considering the venue. Like I said, cool place just an interesting choice on what they're trying to do.

Sweet potato fries and calamari were extremely salty, with huge chunks of sea salt that we literally shook off before each bite. Weird assortment of food, so we got a variety. Fish and chips were okay, again fries were salty. Lo Mein was nothing spectacular, pho was okay, egg rolls were very bland and I do not recommend. We ordered Creme Brûlée to celebrate my parents 40th wedding anniversary, and that was the best part of the meal.

I visited on a saturday with two other people. The server was a little flustered, and as he under the drinking age he confessed he couldn 't make any cocktail recommendations from his own experience. The hostess provided some good recs, though. My companions each had the green curry in coconut milk with udon noodles, and they both loved it. I always try pad thai at every restaurant that has it, and I knew going in that this was not necessarily a 'classic ' PT, but something new, with a soy sauce base. Unfortunately it lacked the aspects of PT I appreciate the most namely, crisp bean sprouts, green onions, and peanuts (there were plenty of the latter at least). The sauce was too heavy and overpowered the delicate balance of the other ingredients, and the sauce puddled on the bottom as opposed to lightly coating the noodles. It didn 't taste bad, but the texture was just dull and boring without the crispness of fresh, less cooked bean sprouts and green onions, it just had an overall 'soft ' mouthfeel, with the thankful addition of good peanuts. The named, classic cocktails were all decidedly in the 'sweet ' category, with no 'dry, ' more savory cocktails to be found. I did enjoy the tequila mockingbird, with a hint of black pepper dusting the top. Overall, I 'd return and try other dishes, but I 'd probably pass on the cocktails entirely and stick with their large beer selection.

Great looking bar with decent choices for happy hour. I had a glass of white Bordeaux wine that was very tasty and reasonably priced at $4.50. And unlike many other places, happy hour isn't over until 6:00pm. The fresh spring rolls with tofu and peanut sauce were pretty good. My friend didn't finish her small happy-hour burger which makes me think it wasn't that good. Wait and bar staff were friendly. I'm no fan of square and rectangle shaped dishes. Maybe in the kitchen it looks better on a square plate, but it takes up too much space on the table, especially when there's 6 of us. I think the food is just so-so.