Chef Lance's on Phillips

Chef Lance's on Phillips is a restaurant that has been on my hit-list for a while now and my wife and I finally got the opportunity to try it the other night. It comes highly recommended and it continues to win all sorts of awards every year. Most recently, it just won the second annual Downtown Pork Showdown which means they have won it both years the competition has taken place. That is all you need to know when you are wanting to try a new restaurant out. To start, the location is great as it is downtown. So you have the ability to go shopping or get drinks somewhere else before or after you have dinner. I would recommend you book a reservation at minimum a week in advance if you are wanting a prime dinner time on a weekend, they are that booked up! We arrived for our reservation at 7:00 and walking into the restaurant you can just feel the authenticity of the place. It's that feeling you get when you walk in and just know, you are about to have a fantastic meal. After sitting down and ordering a local beer for myself and glass of wine for my wife, I began to look through the menue. Lots of different options but my eyes kept coming back to the dish that recently won them the Downtown Pork Showdown: Bourbon-braised baby back pork ribs with smoked cherry BBQ sauce on a bed of white cheddar and fresh herb grits. That sentence alone makes me want go back and eat it again. I put my order in and before long the food showed up. It looked as good as I hoped it would and I did not hesitate to dig in. The rib meat feel off the bone but still had a little bit of pull on it which is a sign of ribs being cooked perfectly. The sauce had a nice smokey flavor to them which was a very smart decision by the chef as the ribs were not cooked in a smoker. The cherry flavor came through in the sauce but was not overpowering in sweetness, it was just perfect. Having it sit on a better of white cheddar and herb grits is the knockout punch. Great salty pairing to go with the sweetness of the ribs. As full as we were, of course my wife still wanted to see a dessert menue which I am usually not interested in. But after having that good of a meal, I had to at least take a look at the dessert opitons. We went with a classic, Crème brûlée. Once again, a fantastic dessert that had the staple "crack" you are looking for when you dig into it. Not burnt on the top, torched to perfection! Overall, I give the experience and meal a 9.2/10. Hats off to the chef, Lance!

Charlie's Pizza House

Charlie's Pizza House has been a staple of Yankton, SD for over 60 years but I had yet to try it. It came to my home town of Sioux Falls, SD within the last year and on Friday I finally got to see what all the hype was about. I've had friends and co-workers rant and rave about this place saying it is the best pizza they have ever had. I pulled up to Charlie's around 11:30 AM on Friday and this place was buzzing.

After a short wait I was able to get a table with my wife and immediately ordered a tall Coors Light with olives, you know me, it's my go to. After perusing the menue and all of the different options (there was many!), I stuck with a class and ordered a large pepperoni. It was an expensive pie at over $30 but it was pretty massive. It came out pretty well done which is how I like my pie. The sauce had great taste, a little tangy and the pepperoni was delicious. I like the underside of my pie more well done so not sure if that was an oven issue or just how they make it. It was very greasy which I also did not like but the taste helped to make up for it. Overall, it was a pretty solid pie and a great dining experience. I give the pie a 7.6 and the overall experience a 7.9, highly recommend!

Benchmark

Benchmark Email has been in service since 2004 and has not been bought by another bigger company since. Their main headquarters is in St Louise, MO but they also have offices in Japan, Taiwan, Mainland China, Brazil, Italy, Germany, India and Mexico. Other than just email marketing, Benchmark offers additional services such as offering polls and surveys to your customers that increases engagement and loyalty. They also have a credit Ecommerce reserouce that integrates addititional services like Shopify with your email marketing which helps you sell your products. Benchmark does offer a free service to businesses who are small or just getting started. It will allow you to send 3,500 emails a month using this free service. Obviously as the business continues to grow beyond this, they start to charge based on your volume. I found it interesting and extremely helpful that they have all of these additional resources to help your business grow through email marketing. It takes you through step by step questions that the average person does not know the answer to right down to, "What is email marketing?"

 

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Welcome Video

 Hello and welcome to another blog post by me, Ethan Moxnes! I created a little introductory video to let you all in on who I am and what this blog will be about for the near future. I'm excited to have everyone here who is willing to learn a little bit about me. Stick around as I continue to get better at blog posting and social media! 

New Home Blog

 Good afternoon to anyone who finds this. 

I recently purchased a new build home and have since been moved into it for two weeks to the day. We are finally about 90% settled and I am ready to be done unpacking boxes. It is nice to simply have a place to call home that is mine and that my wife and I get to make our own. For years we lived in an apartment and no matter what we did it just never felt quite like home. Now here I am, sitting at my own dinning room table typing this blog while I contemplate what to cook us for dinner tonight. I am thinking homemade tomato soup from scratch and grilled cheese. It's only about 14 degrees outside right now so that seems fitting for the day. 

Until next time blog, I'm signing off.

EM