Someone asked me recently “What advice would you give someone wanting to open a restaurant?”

My response?

“Have your head examined.”

I believe running any business is hard, but operating a restaurant, well, all the odds are stacked against you from the get-go.

Blue Plate Restaurants seems to have a good formula down as their restaurants made it through the recession mostly unscathed. One of their strengths is opening restaurants in areas that don’t rely on “destination diners”, but rather rely on being a friendly neighborhood joint.  I know neighbors of some of their other restaurants who visit at least two or three times a week.

I went to a preview dinner last night at their newest venture, The Lowry.  Please do not view this as a Restaurant Review.  If I have any constructive criticism, I tend to bring it up to the restaurant directly to allow them to correct it, rather than give a full review.  Hence, the disclaimer that this isn’t a Restaurant Review.

The building stands out on Hennepin Avenue, as it is a bright color and signed well.

One thing my dinner companion and I noticed is that there wasn’t the typical frenetic pace that is usually the norm for test meal dinners.  There may have been chaos and confusion, but our server did a good job of being cool, calm and collected.

I’m really into notepads, so it was fun to have a stack of pads and pencils to scribble notes or to exchange telephone numbers.

Since it was a preview dinner, we did not see the entire menu.  If you’ve not been to a preview dinner, most restaurants will give you one of three or four different menus.  It is to ensure that the staff gets trained on the whole menu for product knowledge, as well as the kitchen producing all of the menu items.

We started out our dinner with oysters, grilled Caesar salad and jalapeno cheese curds.  I loved the grilled bread on the salad and I recommend eating the cheese curds as they are better when they are still hot.

And then on to entrees, The Lowry burger and Pesto Pappardelle.  The burger is usually served with fries, but he wanted to try the mashed potatoes.  The burger had lots of flavor with fried shallots, barbeque sauce, bacon and Tillamook cheddar.  The pasta was perfectly cooked, along with vegetables being cooked just right (not crispy and not mushy).

The restaurant offers 36 varieties of beer on tap and has an interesting array of mixed cocktails.  Neither of us had a cocktail, but it would appear that people all-around us were enjoying their colorful drinks.

I like what they did with the floors.

And those with a germ phobia, look at the foot door opener in the bathroom.  Look ma!  No hands!

The Lowry opens Monday morning and will be operating from 6:30 am to 2:00 am seven days a week.  Located on Hennepin Avenue at West 21st Street, the convenient location is great for people driving cars or scooters, riding bicycles or riding the bus (lines 6, 4 and 12).