Blue Door Pub – The Blucy

My apologies for the complete lack of pictures from the actual experience.  My camera batteries are dead and the ones I took on my iPhone did not work out so well.  The actual pictures are from the restaurant’s website.* Bad blogger, I know.

The bar/restaurant: The Blue Door Pub, St. Paul

1811 Selby Ave
St. Paul, MN 55104

The first thing of note was that the place is WAY smaller than I’d expected. See those back walls in the photo?  That’s the extent of the space.  I guess I didn’t know what to expect, but my roommate had shared her experience of going there and had mentioned arcade games like Buck Hunter, so I had pictured a spacious area with lots of seating.

Not so. There were 6 seats at the small bar by the front window, and (hang on while I count ‘em)… something like 8-10 tables, 4ish booths, and a bar/barstools by a front window for perching and side-by-side chowing.

With no room for a podium for a host, let alone room for a host to really stand in one place, I asked a bartender if we needed to get on a list of any kind. He said, “find the cute redhead and give her your name.”  The cute redhead was easy to spot, so I glanced around and quickly found her. We put our names on the list and headed towards the bar. I got a seat, Paul didn’t, but that’s ok since he bought my beers (thanks, Paul!). We probably waited 20 minutes or so from the time we walked in until the time we got seated.

Beers: Paul got a Surly Furious (cliche. Just kidding, they’re delicious, I know), and I tried the Liftbridge Biscotti. I’d recently skimmed a note on MNBeer about it, so when I saw it on the menu it piqued my interest. It’s awesome. I’m no beer connoisseur, so I’m not going to pretend to discuss hops and spices and finishes and such, but MNBeer describes it here as:

“…utilizing an array of malts, oats, wheat, pure local honey, light European hops and delicately spicing with Grains of Paradise, Madagascar vanilla beans, whole star anise, all brought together with traditional Belgian yeast, the result is a cloudy, deep copper colored, complex experience.”

After we were seated, we immediately started off with an order of beer-battered green beans (major nom).  That counts as a veggie serving, right?  Right.

Here’s an image from the BDP’s website of their Luau Blucy and the beans.

Onto the burgers…

While I was more than tempted by such Juicy offerings as a Pizza Blucy or a Bacon Blucy, I decided to keep it real and opted for their signature burger – The Blucy:

The Blucy – 6.50
Our flagship burger! We stuff bleu cheese and finely chopped garlic into a half pound of Angus beef.

It was amazingly delicious. As, I mentioned on Metblogs, it was perfectly cooked (just a teeeeeny bit pink, right in the middle), flavorfully bleu-cheesy and garlicky and the bun was perfect. When you get to the gooey center you’ve got to REALLY love bleu cheese as that is some intense smelly cheese action, but all in all? Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Overall:

• Service: beyond friendly, and they were not a bit flustered by the packed house (though, as the bartender mentioned, that crowd was totally normal for dinnertime).
• Food: The burgers were impressive.  For Jucy Lucy purists (Hi, Matt’s Bar), their signature is not your “classic” meat+cheese+fried onions offering, but they do make one appropriately titled “The Classic” for those of you that scoff at the idea of anything other than the basics.  For putting their own spin on the original, it’s a much better version than than Bar Abilene attempted with their Southwest Lucy (not enough cheese, too many toppings).  I want to try all of them, and their other Blucy offerings include Luau, Pizza, Bacon, Breakfast and Cajun.
• Price: My one complaint about the pricing is that the burgers don’t come with fries or any kind of side.  You can get fries, tots or the beer-battered green beans for an upcharge ($1.75 for the first two; $2.75 for the beans), but in my mind, burgers should come with fries. However, the burger itself was only $6.50 and according to the beer list, there’s nothing on tap more than $4.  Score.

Overall – I will be back. Emily, I can’t wait to hear your take, and am half-tempted to come crash your lunch party!

Tagged as: Blue Door Pub, Jucy Lucy, Liftbridge Biscotti, The Blucy