Here is the long-promised report on the dinner we ate at Tenant in the beginning of June before going away to California. I don’t know why I’ve been apologizing so much for the delay in posting this when I still have three reports to come from Seoul in March. Well, that’s not entirely true: as Tenant’s menu changes every six weeks or so, my already-low utility approach to reviewing restaurants may have reached the point of total irrelevance with this report. By which I mean that there’s a good chance that this menu has totally turned over in the intervening period. Well, while this may not give you a good sense of what exactly you might find if you ate at Tenant very soon, it should, hopefully, give you some sense of the kind of thing to expect.

If you’ve not been to Tenant, you might wonder why you can’t just look at their website to see what’s on the menu. That’s because Tenant does not proffer a formal menu, not even when you sit down for a meal. There are six courses and while each is described when a chef brings it out to you (there are no servers per se at Tenant), you don’t ever see a piece of paper with dishes listed on it. And unless you’re paying close attention it’s not always easy to track the details—especially since not every chef who brings out a dish may be equally comfortable with the presentation bit (this has not been a big problem for us in the past but there was quite a bit of it at this meal—more on this below). Thankfully, the restaurant sent me the menu after the fact, and so I don’t have to rely on my memory and post-meal notes to describe what we ate.

We had reservations at their counter (which is where we always sit) but our evening didn’t begin there. As always, we started next door at their bar, Next Door. We got a couple of cocktails there and brought them over to the restaurant once they were ready to seat us. The missus had the Collins (vodka, ginger, honey, chamomile and lemon) and I had the T&T (tequila, tonic, black lime, grapefruit). She liked hers, I sort of wished I’d got their Martini as usual.

And so to the meal:

Course 1: Apple-Endive Salad, Chèvre Vinaigrette, Goat Cheddar

I’ve said in the past that Tenant’s salads are always very good and this was no exception to the rule. The acidic dressing combined with the slight bitterness of the endive and the textural crispness of the apple made for a bracing start to the meal.

Course 2: Lobster and Shrimp capeletti, Carrot turnip fennel, Lobster Saffron Broth, Scallion

This was the course of the night for both of us. The capeletti were very good and the outstanding broth/bisque put them over the top; the pickled veg again provided good textural contrast.

Course 3: Potato Dumplings, Sauce meunière, Crispy potato skins

The gnocchi’esque dumplings were fine but the sauce (I believe it was described as a salsa verde by the person who served this course to us) was a touch too acidic. We also began to become aware at this point that we’d had three courses in a row with significant acidic components; in a supporting role in the second course, yes, but it was beginning to add up.

Course 4: Chicken Parm Sando

I’m sorry to say that we found this course to be a bit of a non-sequitur. In the past I’ve not found fault with Tenant’s occasional swerve into comfort food territory (see the Crab Cake Sando and Taco Salad at our last meal there and the Chicken Parmesan at the previous). But this sandwich just felt very basic, and it didn’t really follow from the previous dishes. On the plus side, it was not acidic; which was nice because…

Course 5: Lamb Polish, Sauerkraut, Pickled Mustard seeds, Asparagus, Mushroom

…the acid returned in a big way in this course. There was sauerkraut, there were pickled mushroom seeds and, most significantly, the beautifully browned hen of the woods mushroom was drowned in what just tasted like vinegar. And I have to say that the Polish sausage also did nothing for us.

Slushy: The usual palate cleanser/pre-dessert came out next: a tart citrus slushy. I usually enjoy these but with the acid overload in the previous courses my teeth were a little bit on edge and I couldn’t finish it.

Course 6: Caramel Custard, Streusel, Chocolate mousse

Thankfully, dessert did not feature any acid and was a solid return to usual form: this was another in a long series of excellent custards from Tenant.

Oh yes, I drank a glass of wine with dinner proper. They don’t have a wine list (by the bottle or the glass). Your only real option for wine is their pairing (very reasonable for three generous pours at $30). I just wanted one glass and so they gave me a glass of one of the wines on the pairing, a Lambrusco. I can’t give you more detail than that as I did not obtain it.

For a look at what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for thoughts on service, on the experience as a whole, to see how much it cost, and to see what’s coming next.

There were dishes we really liked at this meal: the soup above all, but also the salad and the dessert. The potato dumplings taken on their own were good too but at that point the acid was already becoming too prominent. As a whole, there was just too much acid/fermentation overload in this menu—and this is coming from people who eat kimchi every day. And the sandwich and the sausage really didn’t do it for us as the two big savoury courses; the meal as a whole felt somewhat disjointed. On the whole, then, not one of our favourite meals at Tenant and a bit of an outlier. Which is also how we felt about the overall experience of the meal.

As I’ve hinted at above, there were some service issues at this meal. Tenant’s model, in which the chefs who cook the food bring it out themselves, works really well when the chefs are able and interested. This has always been the case in the past, even when the affable Grisha Hammes—who runs the front of the house—is not present in the restaurant, as he was not on this occasion as well. At this outing, however, almost none of the chefs—none of whom other than exec chef, Cameron Cecchini we recognized from past visits—seemed particularly interested. Courses were set down mechanically, ingredients/components were rattled off either indistinctly or very fast, and there was no interaction between courses being set down and taken away. Now this is not an issue when you’re sitting at a table, but the charm of sitting at the counter is being able to chat a bit with the chefs and ask questions about how things are made and so on. In general, there was almost no one at the counter or in the dining room except to bring things out and then clear them—and the demeanour of most of the chefs in doing these things was such that we were not moved to try to converse (I didn’t even bother asking for more info on the wine).

Price? $80 per head for the dinner. With drinks, tax and tip the total came to $255 or $127.50/head (I note this in case you are innumerate). Which is generally in line with restaurants in Tenant’s genre in the Twin Cities, if not the deal they once used to represent. Well, disappointments notwithstanding, we will almost certainly be back before the end of the summer in the hope of a full return to form (and also, their tomato water course).

What’s next on the food front? I’ll have at least another Los Angeles report and another Seoul report this week. The next Twin Cities report will likely be from Oro, where we are scheduled to dine again this weekend (see here for my report on our first visit last winter). Let’s see how it goes.