Northland Inn, or: The Suit Buffet
My company is putting the majority of its employees through an intensive training program to get us all working together better to reach some seriously aggressive goals for where we want to be in five years. The training is held at the Northland Inn. The Northland claims to be located in Minneapolis on their home page, but they really are located in Brooklyn Park.
I just got back from two full-day conferences (followups to the original week-long overnight-stay training course) at the Northland. The hotel styles itself a conference center and favored destination of business travellers. All the rooms are suites, complete with jacuzzi tubs in the rooms. Most notably, however, it has a killer buffet.
Usually these joints have a sad food assortment, with limited options, uninspired entrees and no flavor to any of the unidentifiable food. Not this buffet! There’s a breakfast of mini pancakes, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, bisquits and gravy, and a short order cook on hand to make eggs to order. There’s also fresh fruit, juice, milk, ice tea and coffee. Lunch was 4 varieties of meat (pork, beef, chicken and salmon), several veggie options, a full salad bar and a dessert bar to die for. The short order cook was again on hand to serve up grilled burgers and french fries for the timid. However, no matter what you select, the food is actually pretty good. You’d think it would be gross, since it’s a buffet, but it was never disappointing. We all laid waste to the buffet, throwing caution to the wind and having extra bacon at breakfast and chocolate-coffee tortes at lunch.
Never before was the workplace meeting maxim true: if you feed them, they will come.
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I went there once for a day-long group team building something or other. I don’t remember too much about it, though.
My last company did (and probably still does) a lot of offsites at the Plymouth Radisson. They have a pretty good buffet, too.
On Lex’s recommendation, my wife and I booked a romantic getaway package there this weekend, and it was truly great. Saturday’s dinner was $30/person, but you got prime rib, chops, chicken and all the fixins. Breakfast was good, too. The staff for the entire hotel (front desk, restaurant, room service) are all a bit “slow,” but if you take it for what it is you actually can relax and slow down a bit yourself! Check out the specials online for basically free breakfast.