Destination dining: St. Cloud
By Mike Mitchelson

The Twin Cities grabs the most attention when it comes to dining in Minnesota. But while the Twin Cities certainly has quantity when it comes to excellent dining options, the rest of the state’s larger cities are gaining restaurants to match in quality. FSN spent time in the St. Cloud area this issue to look at three restaurants (see Chef’s Dish for one of them), each offering a dining experience in three particular segments.

Cork’s Grill & Wine Bar opened about three and a half years ago to near immediate acclaim—it’s a destination pick by Minnesota Monthly magazine. Its owner, Shawn Peterson, opened the restaurant with a clear focus: upscale, artistically prepared food paired with excellent wine. The restaurant’s space holds 12 tables, it’s open only five days per week, dinner only. The menu on this particular day featured European and American-style plates, such as lamb de Provence, a bone-in ribeye for two and bison prime rib. But the restaurant doesn’t limit itself.

“We try to bring different recipes and remain as authentic as we can with ingredients from all over the world—we try to take the best of all areas,” Peterson said. “We have a Tibetan yak from Cold Spring. We have from time to time Kobe beef. I still have to figure out what our chef ordered—we just got a box of fish in from Honolulu for a featured item. Each night we have a featured item, and we try some more exotic things. We had some alligator, we’ve had ostrich, We just try to give people an experience they aren’t going to get somewhere else.”

People appreciate that experience—about 90 percent of the restaurant’s clientele make a point of reserving time to have it. Walk-ins might get lucky, but it’s best to call ahead. “The reason I thought this would go is it was a niche for special occasions,” Peterson said, explaining the restaurant’s success. “A lot of people, including my wife and I, were driving down to Oceanaire and other places in the cities we really liked because there wasn’t anything really close. So we did this.”

Before “this,” Peterson worked a corporate job in account services for Fingerhut. When an accident burned his hand somewhat severely, he began thinking about pursuing a career that he truly enjoyed.

He worked in restaurants as a bartender and manager for years through college, and always enjoyed the experience. He worked for a variety of independent restaurants and the fine-dining Michael’s restaurant within the St. Cloud Radisson. When he returned to the industry, he decided to work for a corporate operation, and joined T.G.I.Fridays for about a year before opening Cork’s.

“(Fine dining) is what I always loved,” Peterson said. “When I was a kid, my parents used to give me money to go to McDonald’s, and I would go to the grocery store and get crab instead. I was young, but I always had an appreciation for seafood and any different kinds of food.”

When he and his wife, Meg, opened the restaurant, Peterson said he found all his wine books—one he purchased when he was 15. He and his wife also travel frequently overseas and to California and tour vineyards. “All (those areas) seem to have the same thing in common, where people want the whole experience—the great service and the food and wine being together,” he said.

Peterson works the front of the house each night and helps diners with their wine selections, but he stays out of the kitchen. “I love it, but I know enough to hire someone else for it,” he said. “We have a great chef, Douglas Anderson-Jordet. I worked with him at the Radisson.”

The combination has cultivated much word of mouth, as far away as the Twin Cities—a satisfying twist. “I grew up in Bloomington, and still have a lot of friends in the Cities, and people seem more familiar with us down there than they are around here,” Peterson said. “I went down to Byerly’s—about a block from the restaurant—to use my credit card and they asked where (Cork’s) was at. Sometimes people aren’t as familiar with it, but with our size, it’s all right.”

Bravo for the burrito

About a block away from Cork’s is Bravo Burritos Mexicatessen. Pulling into the parking lot at 11 a.m. sharp last month, owner Bill Ellenbecker unlocked the front door for the lunch rush. In the short time it took me to step from my car, I wasn’t the first to enter the restaurant. A steady stream of customers flowed in and out during my lunch visit.

Ellenbecker, a St. Cloud native, lived with his wife in San Francisco for 13 years in the Hispanic-populated Mission District. “We ate at literally hundreds of Mexican restaurants, thousands of times,” he said.

He was there when the fajita was developed by Mexican migrant workers, using the then-dirt cheap flank steak. He was there to absorb all the authentic recipes from family-owned Mexican restaurants, and transport them back to Minnesota in 1985, where he and his wife opened the first Bravo Burritos in downtown St. Cloud. “We realized there was a pretty big void of actual Mexican food here,” Ellenbecker said. “My wife’s kind of a gourmet cook, and we decided to open a Mexican restaurant, and thought burritos were the way to go.”

Bravo’s menu isn’t just burritos, however. There’s a full lineup of entrees, from standards like enchiladas and hard and soft shell tacos, to specialties like poblano pork and tinga de pollo—a roast chicken in sauce of chipotle peppers, jalapenos, onions and garlic. Separating Bravo from other “fast casual” Mexican restaurants is its from-scratch cooking—for everything, including tortilla chips. “We use authentic recipes, do all our own cooking—rice, beans, hot sauces—cut up all our own meats,” he said. “The way we do things, the meats we get in, we trim them real well, and make our own chorizo sausage. …We basically use 100 percent of the meat.”

They also roast up to 24 chickens per day, and with the bones, pan drippings and trimmings of all their meats, they make their own stocks. This careful preparation earned them a devoted following, and the Ellenbeckers added two locations—the current location off Division Street in St Cloud in 1992 and a third in Minneapolis on 11th Street and Hennepin Avenue in 1995. The plan was “to establish basically what Chipotle is doing,” Ellenbecker said. But the Minneapolis location did not have a kitchen—all the food had to be prepped in St. Cloud and trucked down. The grind of driving supplies several times per week grew tiresome. They closed the Minneapolis location in 1999.

Their original location in downtown St. Cloud was narrow—110 feet long and 19 feet wide, with a 12 foot by 12 foot kitchen. The prep area and coolers were in the basement, resulting in multiple trips up and down the stairs each day. “After about 15 years of that, we decided to concentrate on this current location. Everything is set up the way we want.”

Ellenbecker closed that original location in 2000.

There are still customers from the Twin Cities that stop in for Bravo’s from-scratch Mexican fare, Ellenbecker said, and ask if Bravo might return—an idea he’s not opposed to, if the situation were right. But there’s no hurry.

Five different meat selections were on the burrito assembly line that day, more pots simmered on the stove in the kitchen behind the line. Customers rolled in, some to sit in the dining room, many taking out. “We gave this a lot of thought,” Ellenbecker said. “We’ve been doing it for 22 years. So we’ve kind of got the groove going.”