Okay, so we like Piccolo a lot. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that we can only manage one restaurant dinner in the cities each month (living an hour south, with small kids, and a limited fine dining budget) we’ve now eaten at Piccolo three times this year, passing up the opportunity to eat at other local luminaries that we have not yet visited (Corner Table, Meritage), visited in a while (Heartland, 112 Eatery), or which we used to revisit regularly in the past (Alma). What can I say, Doug Flicker’s modernist soul food (though the restaurant might not describe it this way) is in our sweet spot. We haven’t always loved everything we’ve eaten at every meal there but it’s always a stimulating experience. Continue reading
Tag Archives: New American Cuisine
Heyday
Heyday, which opened a few months ago, has been getting a fair bit of buzz. I am generally ambivalent about buzz but when Doug Flicker of Piccolo tweeted about an excellent meal he’d eaten there that was all the recommendation we needed. And sure enough we had a very good dinner there last week.
I’m not too clued into the who’s who of the Twin Cities fine dining scene but it appears there’s a dream team of sorts behind the restaurant. The chef, Jim Christiansen, has worked at La Belle Vie and Sea Change among other area stalwarts and relatively recently staged at Noma in Copenhagen. If, like us, you’re in the minority that is not crazy about La Belle Vie then you’ll be glad to know that the Noma influence seems more pronounced. That is not to say that they serve avant-garde food but that a modernist influence (complete with the molecular gastronomy toolkit) is brought to bear on a strong foundation of classical techniques and flavour combinations. Continue reading
Sea Change
Sea Change is the restaurant at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. It opened a few years ago to rave reviews and continues to be rather popular and well-received. I had one middling to poor dinner there with friends a couple of years ago and was not terribly motivated to go back. However, this year there was some noise around an omakase dinner program they had in January, and I believe there’s a different chef now than when I ate there last; and so as we tried to figure out where to go after our excellent meal at Piccolo last month it seemed like a decent bet. And as we were dining with a bunch of friends it seemed like a good opportunity to get a lot of what’s on the current menu and see if my prior experience might have been due only to bad luck in ordering. Continue reading
Piccolo
Here, with only a day or two to spare, is your Twin Cities fine dining report for March. This time we dined at Piccolo and did not have to endure terrible road conditions on the way there or back. And it was a very good dinner, always interesting, sometimes great.
A few quick notes on the restaurant for those who haven’t been there. It opened a few years ago and is housed in a very small/intimate space. There are two small dining rooms–one larger and brighter (and warmer) as you enter, and a smaller one with just three tables on the other side of the kitchen, which you pass through on the way there. The space in a sense prepares you for the food: small rooms, small plates; close quarters, fussy attention to detail; unusual layout, highly creative cooking. The menu, which changes every eight weeks or so, comprises five courses with only three selections in each, and while you can order a la carte, the smart thing to do is to order all five courses for the set price of $55. As we are smart that is what we did. More on what we ate in just a bit. Continue reading
Borough
Here is your Twin Cities fine dining report for February. Borough, which opened last year, has received a lot of good press, locally and nationally, and after a good grounding dinner at Alma last month we were ready to once again try somewhere new. We had reservations at Borough for late dinner last Saturday with a group of friends and then a major storm hit southern Minnesota and snarled up the highways. It seemed at first that we would have to cancel–we have a 50-60 minute drive up to the cities, and there were reports all through Thursday and Friday of cars and semis crashed/spun out on the highway, and Saturday morning didn’t look promising either. Reports looked up in the afternoon, however, and we decided to chance it anyway (our friends live in the city). It probably wasn’t the smartest decision–the roads weren’t terrible the whole way but there were a few white-knuckle icy stretches. We arrived at the restaurant ready for some wine and hoping like hell that the meal would be worth it. Well, on the whole, it was. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma I, January 2014
I know I’m terribly hard to please when it comes to eating out at the high end in the Twin Cities, but there are two places of which I rarely have complaints. One is 112 Eatery and the other is Restaurant Alma. We’ve eaten at Alma about 5-6 times in the last few years–which, given how little we can go out now and how rarely we ever return anywhere for a second meal, let alone a third, is really saying something. While many trendier places have opened in the seven years that we’ve been in Minnesota, and received a lot more enthusiastic press, local and national, Alma just keeps on keeping on with excellent, seasonally-focused food that seems more classicist than it really is. Continue reading
Tilia
This is the second in what I’d hoped would be monthly fine dining reports from the Twin Cities. Of course, we didn’t make it up to the cities for dinner in November on account of a crowded schedule and we’re off to India in January. So the next report won’t be till February, after which point hopefully we’ll be able to make time for a nice dinner out every month.
We’ve been hoping to eat at Tilia for some time now; however, we were somewhat underwhelmed by our meal at The Bachelor Farmer in October and so considered returning to the arms of the always reliable Alma for our next meal (when you have small kids and limited opportunities it is harder to stomach disappointments). But in the end we decided to chance the new. Continue reading
The Bachelor Farmer
The Bachelor Farmer opened in Minneapolis a couple of years ago to great fanfare. This partly because the restaurant’s owners are the sons of Minnesota Governor, Mark Dayton; and partly, I suspect, because the restaurant’s commitment to the New Nordic ethos made the Twin Cities’ dining scene seem more current. National recognition soon followed with headliner status in a New York Times article on a broader Scandinavian food revival in the region; and Bon Appetit listed it as one of the best new restaurants of 2012. And, of course, it’s been endlessly feted in the local publications. Continue reading