Roast chicken for everyone

Restaurateur Michael Morse, about to open his latest venture, Landmarc Grill, reflects on what makes a good restaurant, and the unique magic they can create.

On a recent fine spring day, Michael Morse schooled me about magic, mashed potatoes and the fickle child he’s dedicated his life to. Our conversation came about because I wanted to get his take on the number of casual restaurants in the Twin Cities where you can get great food without dumping a ton of cash, and I wanted to hear about his new casual dining endeavor. Like many things in life, the conversation took turns I hadn’t expected, most of them wonderful and all of them the kind of honest you just don’t get every day.

Lately, I’ve had so many great meals on impromptu Wednesday nights after work that I’ve had to ask myself, is casual king? Morse has been wondering along those same lines for many years and his take on it has always been to respond, “Yes.”

“I’ve always felt like that,” he said. “I think that for the masses these are the kinds of restaurants that people enjoy.”

Un deux trois was that way, and his newest venture, Landmarc Grill in Minneapolis, will be that way as well. “The catchphrase that we’re using is comfortable, classic and timeless, both in décor and in food,” he said. “For me, there are certain things that never go out of style. It’s a pair of gray flannel pants, a white oxford shirt and a blue blazer. Your grandfather wore it, your father wears it, your husband wears it, your children and grandchildren will wear it and it will never, ever go out of style.”

Morse and company are in the homestretch of planning the restaurant, and it may open in the first week of May (or the third week of May) with a full menu, or a partial menu. But chances are it will be in May (though Morse said with wry humor that he can absolutely guarantee it will be open by New Year’s Eve). It will be casual, the kind of place that you can stop in once a week rather than once a year. It will be reliable, with the kind of food that you crave and know and have definite opinions about, like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.

“It’s the simplest things that are the hardest things to make,” he said. “If I told you to close your eyes and I said to think about roast chicken and fries, even though I don’t know you and have never met you, we’d both be thinking about the same thing. And when it comes to your table, the chicken had better be golden and crisp and the fries had better be hot. My feeling is too, if you can’t do those things, and you don’t have a foundation and you don’t know how to make the simple things, you really have no right going to the next level.”

And that is where the conversation began to take a turn down the road less traveled. Morse’s pace quickened when he began to talk about the food, the atmosphere, an evening that a customer experiences and how diners make the choices they make. “There are times when you want to put on a Versace gown, but how often are you going to wear it?” he asked. “You have to think long and hard before you do that with a restaurant. I want a restaurant, and I like a restaurant that I can go in more than once or twice a year and that whether or not I’m in flip-flops, I’ll be welcomed into. I want to know that there’s a chef in the kitchen, that things are made from scratch. That there’s love, that there’s passion and that people care.”

He is what I’d heard that he is: opinionated, just the right amount of outrageous and completely, totally engaging. At times, I caught myself just listening rather than taking down a single word. His next to last rant was about the business that he said is full of luck, timing and good leases, and that even in spite of themselves some restaurateurs succeed at it.

But he ended on an introspective note, his voice full of the past and the pleasant, tormenting obsession that keeps restaurant people in the business, despite failure, debt, high rent, constant turnover and the fact that, as Morse said, it’s the only business in the world where you buy raw product, make something of it, sell it and get paid for it all in the same day. “A restaurant is like a child—it’s your baby, not a business,” he said.

His speech quickened and it was easy to hear over the phone line that this is a man who knows full well how to adjust to any situation, handle a rush, seat with flourish, work a crowd, tell a joke, enchant an audience. “Sometimes, I used to sit at the bar at un deux trois when things were running well, and I’d sit back and look around and I was just like a proud father on those days and it would all be working,” he said. “The tables were all full, and the food was coming out just right, and the people were happy and the dishes were clanging—and it was magic. It was just magic.”