One Great Plate: Spoon Dips at Spoonriver

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Spoon Dips at Spoonriver

Is it insane to be totally overcome by the crudité plate? Obviously, yes. But reader, it happened to me. 

The truth is, I was having a bad week—a very, very bad week. Bad restaurant food had made me sick, and once I was sick, clowns seemed to dive bomb me from every direction. I was sickish, cross, scowly, and doubly miserable for feeling bad about being scowly. All I really wanted was to be restored to the functioning human I dimly recalled I once was. I wanted to go to where grown-ups go, and eat the way grown-ups do, and thus be healthy in mind and body again. I made a friend meet me at Spoonriver. We would pretend we were vegetarians, I told my date, so that we would be given the health miracles of vegetables. Because the lack of vitamin D of winter wears on a #Northerner, even though we love the snow. 

Of course, chef and owner Brenda Langton has the best vegetables. She started the Mill City Farmers' Market, and the farmers just give vegetables straight to her in thanks. As a diamond dealer has diamonds, Brenda has carrots. Spoon Dips is really just a simple crudité plate, with roasty fresh and sweet hummus (not sweet from sugar, but sweet from being freshly made and not sitting around and growing bitter). There's also a robust and chunky Romesco sauce, perky with peppers and silky with almonds, plus soft and delicate slices of focaccia toast. But reader, it was the green beans that broke me. Perfectly trimmed haricots verts, perfectly blanched, just al dente and golf course green, perfectly chilled, just so. No one does this anymore. No one takes the time to blanch green beans, when there are only a scant dozen on the plate. Someone, I thought, someone cares. And it was then that I began to feel less totally fried and on my last nerve. I loved everything about this humble, simple, healthy dish.

Tofu Okisuki, Spoonriver

Tofu Okisuki

I loved the blanched bias-cut planks of carrot, I loved the delicate slices of radish, I love that Brenda Langton has been feeding Minnesotans some version of this healthy, simple, real food since halfway through the Carter administration. 

Beyond this plate, the exquisitely charred Brussels sprouts and deeply concentrated roast yams delighted me, as did the vegetarian okisuki with a warming broth. I had a killer toffee pudding because I was feeling so right with the world. The next day I woke up feeling as I had hoped to: Restored. On the road to healthy. I felt very grateful and a little nutty-cuckoo for being so grateful for dip—but reader, those are some dips. 

Suddenly, even though the snow was flying, all these vegetables made me recall some important facts about feeling beleaguered in winter. Mill City has two indoor markets in March, two in April, and then kicks off for the outdoor spring fun on May 5th. And the Minneapolis Farmers' Market is open year round, though flips to earlier spring hours on April 21. We're now closer to both of those than we are to Christmas. Isn't it amazing how a few good dips can change everything?