Illustration by Jeremy Booth/Artistique International
Second act illustration
There’s a clear risk when you build your business model around the talent of one person, the star of the show. Yet restaurants do it all the time. The rise of the chef-centered food culture comes with a pretty big assumption: Namely, a restaurant is what it is because of one person. What happens if that person leaves? Or can’t live up to promises? Or just takes a better starring role in a kitchen across town? Do you close? Re-brand? Cry?
For years, Phil Roberts, the kingpin at Parasole, resisted celebrating the chefs at his restaurants as a high-stakes bet on an unstable prospect. At Parasole, if the opening chef left, there could and would be another to step up and grab the mic. It’s like the theater, maybe. Hamilton remains an amazing show, even when Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t standing center stage.
Call it the long game—but is it even possible to play it anymore? Practically every new restaurant concept seems to come with a high-profile chef attached (preferably with a few awards in an apron pocket). And fast-tracked opening schedules mean that reviews start posting day one. In these conditions, it’s hard to imagine how any new restaurant could last for a decade.
Many don’t make it. Brewer’s Table closed and cut loose its well-regarded chef, Jorge Guzman, jettisoning a beer-pairing menu with him. (Next up: pizza.) HauteDish quietly separated from chef Landon Schoenefeld, though it largely kept his menu until closing night. Lucia’s tried to maintain its concept without Lucia herself at the helm. Instead, it burned through two replacement chefs before closing this year. So much for second acts.
Tullibee
That’s the dilemma I sought to examine at a troika of high-profile Minneapolis dining spots, where personnel change hasn’t spelled disaster. I found myself first at the Hewing Hotel in the North Loop, whose restaurant, Tullibee, opened under the leadership of Grae Nonas, a James Beard Award nominee imported from Texas. He promised artful “lakes and woods” cuisine, and, alas, we here at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine didn’t like it. (Neither did plenty of others.)
The bar area would fill with revelers, and the swamped kitchen would fall ridiculously behind on ticket times. Nonas, after being touted by the hotel, left the restaurant and eventually left town. The Hewing’s lobby bar remained packed with drinkers, but the restaurant seemed lost until it brought in an Aussie named Bradley Day.
It’s not just management (or dining critics) that recognized the need for a new approach. “What chef Nonas was trying to do was art,” a server told me, tableside, during a recent visit. “I don’t think that really worked with the volume of people who come here. We’d have to leave tables un-sat so that the kitchen could catch up to orders, and people who were waiting to eat would get really mad.”
For now, Day’s menu stays within the “lakes and woods” conceit. But in this new iteration, the menu doesn’t force you to sit through an edible aesthetics lecture on what Minnesota eats. I inhaled a sturdy roll of buttermilk lefse wrapped around an earthy mix of leeks and mushrooms. That’s the “woods.” A wild-rice sausage, plump to bursting, proved a worthy representation of our lakes.
These dishes came across as ingredient-focused, with simple nods to our local heritage. More important, they were on time, well-seasoned, and perfectly cooked. A sliced Peterson Farms rib-eye could have used a bit more seasoning. But the accompanying potatoes, lolling under 18-year Marieke gouda, popped right onto my new-habits list.
Seven Steakhouse and Sushi
Now plenty of diners will likely be visiting Tullibee for the first time. They’ll never even know there was a first act. It’s a different situation for a place like Seven Steakhouse and Sushi. For years, it’s maintained a spot on the downtown nightlife roster. And yet few guests have thought of Seven as a serious food destination. Sparkly jeans, fat fruity drinks, a see-and-be-seen rooftop (where actual Kardashians have been seen)—that’s been the franchise. But when the ownership changed, the new proprietors decided to recast Seven’s reputation with a more ambitious food program.
The smart move: bringing in Sameh Wadi. As the brilliant young chef behind World Street Kitchen, and the booming Milkjam Creamery, Wadi carries cred that could grant Seven a second look from the food set.
“My original kitchen job was in a steakhouse,” Wadi says. “I think it’s fun to take all the flavors I’m used to playing with and apply them to something classic like steakhouse food.”
Instead of chasing food props by turning the concept upside-down, Wadi has focused on delivering better versions of familiar steakhouse menu items. That effort has involved upgrading the quality of the beef, sourcing better ingredients, and tweaking flavors without alienating the core eater. The giant crab cake, a steakhouse staple often wrecked by over-mixing, comes to the table with sweet hunks of lump crab left intact. King crab and avocado toast—trendy?—proved satisfying to your belly and gorgeous for your Instagram.
I almost can’t talk about the beef-fat hash browns, which left me feeling vaguely naughty. So crisp were the edges, so buttery and fluffy the interior, that I ate them almost without stopping.
These dishes are happy-makers, whether or not you’re wearing sparkly jeans. Because that’s who still comes here; they’re just eating way better now.
Corner Table
What of the place that is both long-established and brimming with food cred? Can you trade out that chef? For a third time? Corner Table first gained notice as Scott Pampuch’s iconic farm-to-table restaurant. When restaurateur Nick Rancone and chef Thomas Boemer bought it, name intact, they turned it into a foodist pearl. In its second life, Corner Table introduced a more elegant atmosphere and wine program to go with new French and Asian influences. Boemer’s longtime chef de cuisine, Kyle Bultinck, took a turn. But he, too, has taken his final bow at Corner Table. We love Streisand’s Hello, Dolly, and Bette Midler’s, too. But who can possibly fill those spangled dance flats?
Karyn Tomlinson is next. “I can’t wait to see what she does with each menu,” Rancone told me as we leaned on the kitchen bar one night. Tomlinson had been the pastry chef at Borough when I first met her, before she scooted off to Sweden to cook in a few places, including Magnus Nilsson’s Swedish food temple, Fäviken. At CT, she’s running the whole kitchen.
With Scandinavian notes alighting like snowflakes, her menu feels lighter. Bison carpaccio as soft and pink as a flower nestles next to horseradish crema topped with razor-thin white beets. It’s earth and sky meeting on your plate. Local duck arrives with a rustic rye berry porridge rather than usual risotto. Wide pappardelle pasta comes coated in a heady sauce, anchored with brown gjetost goat cheese instead of cheddar.
Tomlinson’s menu, as much as Boemer’s, revels in the small details. The show is the same, but she wears the costume a bit differently. Hard to say how long Tomlinson’s star turn will last. But I, for one, plan to stick around through the intermission. Tullibee, 300 Washington Ave. N., Mpls., 651-468-0600, hewinghotel.com/tullibee-restaurant; Seven Steakhouse, 700 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., 612-238-7770, 7mpls.com; Corner Table, 4537 Nicollet Ave. S., Mpls., 612-823-0011, cornertablerestaurant.com
