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Wednesday was the last session of my class at the U (Liberal Studies 5100: The Future of News) , so instead of meeting in the classroom, I invited my students to be my guests for dinner at Pagoda in Dinkytown. I had remembered that Pagoda had some special banquet menus for groups of eight or more, but when I stopped by to check them out, I discovered that they were all written only in Chinese.

Justin Lin, one of the owners, obligingly translated the cheapest of the menus into English for me, the eight-course family set menu for $99.99. :

 
Crab Meat Fish Maw Soup
Korean Style Beef Short Rib
SzeChuan Style Spicy Chicken
Pork Strip w/ Garlic Sauce
Honey Walnut Jumbo Shrimp
Steamed Whole Sole Fish
Beef Chow Fun, and
Pea Tip Stir Fried w/ Garlic

I am not sure what you get for $188 or $288, but I suspect it includes a lot more seafood: live lobsters and/or Dungeness crab, and maybe even some sharks fin soup. Justin said this menu was intended for 8-10 diners, but since we were going to be a group of 11, I added a couple more dishes - crispy fried tofu, and a bowl of shrimp and tofu soup (since I figured that some of the diners might be squeamish about fish maw.) And to give our one vegetarian diner a bigger variety, we replaced the beef chow fun with a stir-fried vegetable version of the same dish.

The platters came out in quick succession, and were placed on the lazy susan in the middle of the table. I love this kind of cuisine, and unless my students were just being polite (I haven't turned in their grades yet), they seemed to enjoy it as well. The menu manages to combine a very wide assortment of flavors and textures, from the silky smoothness and delicacy of the soups to the spiciness of the Szechuan chicken, and the intense sweet and salty taste of the chewy beef ribs. There seemed to be enough of everything to go around, but by the end of the evening, all the platters except the steamed sole and the pork strips were pretty well picked clean.

Wednesdays and Thursdays, Pagoda offers an all-day happy hour, with beer and selected wines two-for-one. That cuts the price of a Tsing Tao or Sapporo, or a glass of decent Tunnel of Elms Merlot or Chardonnay to $2.50.

Service was friendly and attentive. The only drawback to the venue was that it the dining room was a bit too loud to have a real conversation, so after we finished eating, I arranged to move everybody into one of the private karaoke rooms. Ordinarily these rent for $30 an hour, but since we weren't actually going to sing, Justin gave me a discount. Pagoda's menu is enormous, with lots of noodle soups, congees, and Thai, Korean and Japanese dishes at very reasonable prices, but Cantonese cuisine is really their strong suit.

Pagoda, 1417 4th St. S.E., Minneapolis, 612-378-4710.