Developed palettes

Ruminations on the rapid change in the Twin Cities dining landscape
There’s no denying that the essence, and perhaps the very soul, of the Twin Cities food scene has evolved considerably within the last 10 years—and that most of it has been for the better. Think about it. If Chicago, oft referred to as the second city, barely scraped their way onto critics’ lists a decade ago, we didn’t even rank in the top 10. To many, food only happened on the East and West coasts. It wasn’t because the caliber of food at many restaurants didn’t merit inclusion. It was that there was very little buzz around our fair cities, but that has changed.

Take as an example, the arrival of celebrity chef restaurants, like Wolfgang Puck’s 20.21 at the Walker Art Museum or Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Chambers Kitchen, opening in early September at the Chambers Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. A decade ago, big name chefs like that would never have dreamed of opening restaurants in flyover country.

While chatting about the growth and change of the cities with chefs, local purveyors or diners, several dominant themes keep coming up. Most of the group agrees that some of the best changes include the wash of new talent and new restaurants that have come about in the past decade. Matt Hinman, executive chef at the Happy Gnome in St. Paul—previously a chef at the Craftsman and W. A. Frost and other notable restaurants around town—said that he’s excited about the influx of talent to the Twin Cities. “We’ve had a lot of notable chefs come to town, and they’ve brought a new attitude into restaurants all around town and that raises the bar for all of us,” he says. In addition to the new talent, a lot of today’s kitchens are run by young up and comers who’ve also come of age, or hit a new stride, in this exciting new environment.

Two other items oft mentioned include the accessibility of a broad variety of ingredients, including things like the availability of ethnic foods and the interest displayed by diners in a much broader selection of items. Hinman credits both of those things with a great deal of the invention that happens in kitchens. Plus, he says, this expansion of availability isn’t just in restaurants. “A perfect example is the whole aisle of ethnic foods at big grocery stores like Cub Foods. There’s ghee in a jar and you never would have seen that 10 years ago,” he says. “Or look at the amount of sushi that you see for sale in grocery stores. It was exotic a long time ago, and now it’s reached the point where it’s almost a little overdone.”

Hinman claims that this influx of ingredients lets customers try new things that get them out of their previous “M.O. of meat and potatoes.”

Not to say everything that’s happened is good. Many chefs cite the rise of chain restaurants and the difficulty of battling their bulk buying power as one not-so-hot change in the landscape. Another area that could be improved, according to Café Barbette Chef Pete Botcher, who also did stints at both Levain and Vincent: A Restaurant, is front-of-the-house knowledge. “I’m happy that there’s been an increase in the quality of the restaurants locally,” says Botcher. “I’d like to see an increase in the quality of service as well. In many ways, service in restaurants is still poor. When I go to restaurants, it seems as though the servers are still lacking in the proper knowledge that would help them to better explain things on the menu.”

To help combat that, at Barbette, Botcher says he provides them with as much information as possible prior to the evening, preparing specials for sampling and discussion and continuing to educate staff as much as possible. (One other improvement that Botcher hankers for is the arrival of a French-style bakery in town.)

Although this local evolution is part of a larger movement in the American palette itself, it seems as though it’s happened by leaps and bounds in the metro area. Perhaps it’s our Midwestern modesty that had us lagging behind other, more braggadocios cities or maybe, just maybe, we had a little more catching up to do in the first place. Whatever the case may be, I’m waiting with bated breath to see what the next decade will bring.