Photos by Caitlin Abrams
Octopus
An octopus’s garden on the plate
The arrival of a new cooking talent in town is always cause for celebration. So, world of the Twin Cities: Meet Erik Skaar!
Born in 1983, this occasionally rebellious child of Plymouth and Minneapolis grew up ditching school to watch Julia Child and The Galloping Gourmet, scored his first job as a 16-year-old dishwasher, took a detour into music production, and thereafter scrambled the cooking hierarchies all around this great nation. Skaar’s most impactful stays, he told me, came in Denver, at the Mediterranean-focused Olivéa, and in Seattle, at the wine-forward, modernist-oriented Crush. Then the Minnesota homing device kicked in and he returned with wife and baby to work for a few years at The Bachelor Farmer while putting together his own thing.
“I actually conceived this thing to be in Seattle,” Skaar told me. “I lived two blocks from Amazon headquarters, but we just couldn’t afford to live out there much longer.”
Vann opened this summer overlooking the coursing ribbon of Highway 15 that hugs Lake Minnetonka. It replaces a former barbecue spot, now unrecognizably transformed with navy blue wainscoting, blue-and-white wallpaper, luxurious round tables set far from one another, and exquisite glassware. Skaar pronounces the name von, in the Norwegian style, after the word “water” and in tribute to his Norwegian heritage. It makes sense that the restaurant has joined the local chapter of the Norwegian American Chamber of Commerce.
“My grandfather ate lutefisk and lefse every Christmas and on his birthday,” Skaar said, “and pickled herring at every occasion. Pickled herring lives in my refrigerator.”
I tried the fresh Lake Superior herring at Vann, and friends, it was perfect. The thin fillets arrive with the silvery skin seared crisp and blistered, and the flesh clean and almost clear. The fish came with a great abundance of accompaniments: grilled cipollini onions, chunks of roast zucchini, squash, eggplant, all of it resting in a little lake of sauce cardinale, which is a thing you can make out of béchamel if you have all day. Tiny flowers in different shades of royal blue and lavender added a certain dance-around-the-Maypole festivity. It was good!
But not as good as the octopus, which was, as one might say in Norwegian, a seriøs triumf. I tried it twice, and each time received a coal-black plate containing an emerald-green pool of diaphanous sauce made of lemongrass, aromatics, blanched spinach, and shiro dashi. On top sits a perfectly curled brick-red–and–ivory-gold tentacle, set about with various jewels of decoration. On one visit these included bright white circles of hearts of palm and leaves of lemon balm. The second version brought see-through-thin slices of radish and leaves of orange mint. The octopus itself is as good as octopus gets, the thick bits meaty and tender, the thin bits crisp and light.
I quizzed Skaar about how he makes it and became slightly exhausted just hearing all the steps. First it’s blanched, then cleaned, cooked sous vide for hours, cleaned again, then slow-glazed and roasted. This dish has been investigated and maximized down to the millimeter. I can’t recall a better octopus I’ve had in Minnesota. The same exactitude goes into the scallop entrée. Here, little bits of butter from the sea come with a perfectly crisp sear, as they would in any Michelin three-star restaurant. Skaar sends them out in a dashi cream with fermented turnip.
If all this talk of lake herring and scallops and octopus has you in a nautical mood, you may like to know that Vann has a boat dock across the street, and you may motor in for dinner. If for some reason Vann’s dock is full, there’s the public dock a few yards down.
However you arrive, you’ll find many grace notes at Vann. Warm gougères and good butter arrive in transparent, low-rimmed cylinders. The wine list, by Skaar and Vann’s general manager, Genevieve Globus, is terrific: real French Sancerre and funky California natural reds. Of course, you can also order one of big-name trophies you might want to show off if, say, you boated over with clients.
When the server pours your wine into the fine tall glasses, it feels like you are somewhere rare and far away. Which is odd when you look out the window and see the pickup trucks racing past.
Hamachi
This hamachi comes with a lot of stuff.
I did not love everything at Vann. I thought the different raw fish appetizers—a hamachi and a salmon—seemed overwhelmed by their accompaniments. The hamachi dish presents a bowl of thinly sliced fish, overcome by a (very tasty) combination of chili, ginger, and sudachi juice. What’s sudachi? A small green citrus fruit—I looked it up.
“I don’t think anyone else in the Twin Cities is using it,” Skaar said. “I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing.”
I asked Skaar if novel ingredients or spices held a particular interest. Absolutely, he told me, and then he delivered a long and interesting answer. “When I was talking to one of my farmers, I asked, ‘Is there any way to get exclusivity with some of your stuff?’ I go home and I read cookbooks. This is what I do. But I don’t like spices. Our spice shelf is pretty much nonexistent in this restaurant.”
Skaar continued, “I like really clean and simple. So when you say novel, they’re novel to some, but it’s just the way I eat. I’m very open minded: for some novel, for me normal. I want to make novel normal.”
However much I liked the sound of novel-as-normal, I did not like the cold cuttlefish salad, which appeared in a high heap, garnished with flowers. Next to it? A brick of sweet, lacquered pork belly. I did not enjoy the very sparsely seasoned cuttlefish and could not figure out why it was on the plate.
“That’s my version of surf and turf,” Skaar explained to me later. “The fatty hot mixed with the briny cold. Not everything here is going to be for everybody. I like things juxtaposed. My harmony is different from your harmony or someone else’s harmony. It’s meant to be provocative and intriguing and to please different spectrums. I’m not handing out flyers and asking people what they want me to cook for them. This is me, this is my personality, this is what I want to do—or what’s the point?”
Fair enough!
The arrival, or return, of a new talent in town is always cause for celebration—and a new perspective for a community that heretofore may have been humming along in our well-worn thought patterns. That said, there were times I wondered if Vann might fit more easily in Seattle, among the tech billionaires. A $15 octopus app here, a $32 scallop entrée there, plus a $17 glass of wine, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. My fine friends of the western suburbs are famous for spending big on big things like land, cars, boats, coats—but cuttlefish with flowers on top?
Please, though, don’t save money by skipping dessert. Skaar also does the pastries, and there are delights and insights among the sweets. Novel flavors, like a tangy sea-buckthorn sorbet, require no prior experience: Think of it as a bit brisker than passionfruit, a bit more tannic in its bottom notes than tangerine. A sorbet of sea-buckthorn berries is basically citrus sorbet that spent a few terms studying in Copenhagen—and came back home again.
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Erik Skaar of Vann in Spring Park
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Carrots at Vann in Spring Park
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Dining area at Vann in Spring Park
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Hamachi dish at Vann in Spring Park
4016 Shoreline Drive, Spring Park, 952-381-9042, vannrestaurant.com.
