Review: Parker’s Bistro

12 May 2017

One of the things I really wanted to accomplish since I began this travel barrage is to see my country as thoroughlly as I can, and one of those things mean visiting all 50 states. I flew into South Dakota, which is #48, for a short stay last week.

Immediately after landing I drove west, enjoying the beautiful views of this beautiful part of the country. I arrived at the state capital Pierre, which boasts one of the most beautiful Capitol complexes I’ve seen. Such a beautiful place, if it wasn’t so isolated I’d visit far more…

I stayed at an excellent B&B, Hitching Horse Inn, which had a very congenial host — a perfect way to end the long day enjoying a few drinks chatting. A good prime rib at the Mad Mary’s and a long walk around town I needed a good night sleep since I’ve had about 2 hours of sleep in the last 2 days…

But since my trip was so short I had to wake up early again, and was on the road by 6.30am. I headed south-east towards Yankton, the capital of the Dakota Territory. The views were different as I used more small roads, but were as interesting. I love the solitary long drive through new roads… I explored Yankton, Vermillion and then jut down to Iowa for a quick stop in Sioux City before cutting north into Minnesota, before arriving back at Sioux Falls just for dinner.

Dinner tonight was at Parker’s Bistro, which drew my attention as I was doing research for having the most interesting menu in town. I walked there from my hotel on a sunny warm day, and as I anticipated, everyone was sitting outside. I happily stayed inside, though it was still very warm.

I looked over the menu as I was served a nice cocktail. They have a good list here. Then I ordered and chilled out. The place seems to be very busy, as outside was packed. But as I was near the entry area, I was starting to hear of folks grumbling about not getting seats outside. Then the starter appeared…

Of course I couldn’t come to South Dakota and not eat chislic — the localised version of what started out as shashlik, brought over supposedly by immigrants from Crimea. These were pretty tasty, though the fries weren’t really needed. The chimichurri added a little interesting kick. Not bad, a good food start…

But that’s saying more than everything else. It looks like the bar got hit with a lot of orders from outside and are totally backed up, and my section has 1 overworked server. It is a sunny, warm, Friday night, so I was watching a shitshow getting worse as the night went along…

It took quite awhile to get that second cocktail, as well as my main course.

This was supposed to be cooked medium-rare, but was closer to well-done by the time it arrived at my table. Friday night shitshow strikes again… It tasted interesting as it was bourbon and vanilla brined, but again it being overcooked kinda ruined the dish. And the horrible black rice and pistachio salad was just disgusting…yech…what were they thinking?

At this point I finished the pork and called it a night. I could have stayed for dessert and/or drinks, but with things looking as chaotic as ever, I decided to head back to the hotel. I can imagine this place being good, but really, avoid these places for weekends — especially after the college school year is over and the place is lacking servers.

Parker’s Bistro
210 South Main Avenue
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

PS: I ended up going back out later and seeing a really cool little place, so decided to park myself at Prairie Berry East Bank, and enjoyed quite a few surprisingly nice local wines. Yes, local wines in South Dakota. Mostly grape, but at the end I had a pear wine — notoriously hard to make without it being way acidic. Excellent.