La Belle Vie

Bowl of Goodness
Josh had this great idea that we create a “bowl of goodness”. In other words, we write down the names of all the restaurants we want to try out on slips of paper and put them in a bowl, and whenever we are stuck for a date night idea we can just draw from the bowl. We decided earlier in the week that we wanted to go out Friday night, so we got to draw from the bowl for the first time. The winner? La Belle Vie.

La Belle Vie
La Belle Vie is just outside of downtown Minneapolis, across from the Walker and edging Loring Park. It used to be in Stillwater, but came to Minneapolis in 2005. The location used to house another high-end restaurant, Groveland 510, which we also had never been to.

I had heard the food was outstanding at La Belle Vie, but that it was better to go to the Lounge instead of the formal dining room because the food/drinks was just as good but better prices. Josh had heard the mixologist, Johnny Michaels, was known throughout the Cities for his cocktails, so we were pretty excited to go.

La Belle Vie, I have decided, is my new favorite restaurant in the Twin Cities!! Love it, love it, love it. How have I never been here before?!

The lounge is cool. Total old school décor, but a really laid back vibe. Very diverse crowd, too, people of all ages and from casual to more formal dress.

I hardly looked at the wine menu because the cocktail menu looked so darn tasty (plus we figured we had to check out Johnny’s prowess). Let’s just say his reputation is well deserved! Sadly, I can’t remember what the first drink I had is called. It was a pomegranate ginger martini of some kind. Fruity up top, ginger-y on the bottom. Great layering of flavors. Josh had a Black Pearl, aka a “sparkling blackberry cosmo” – it was delicious, and I liked his better than mine. However, my next beverage was a Parlez Vous (raspberry vodka, pineapple juice and cava topped with orange-passionfruit foam). In a word – YUM. I could have had a glass of just the orange-passionfruit foam and been just as happy. Johnny = two thumbs up!!

The service is pretty good. Our waitress was pretty busy, but there are all sorts of other people popping by your table to bring you bread, refill your water, bring your food, etc., so we didn’t feel neglected. They had three kinds of bread – white, maybe a 7-grain, and something that tasted like it had raisins in it. That was my favorite!

Tim McKee is the chef. He is renowned throughout the Midwest and is always winning some award or another, most recently the 2009 James Beard Award. He and business partner Josh Thoma also own Solera (yummy), Barrio and Smalley’s Caribbean Bar-B-Q in Stillwater (both also in our bowl). He has recently taken over the kitchen at Cue, the floundering Guthrie restaurant. I’m sure he’ll manage an amazing turnaround.

The nice thing about eating in the lounge is you can still order off of the dining room menu. So I ordered my salad off the dinner menu and my entrée off the lounge menu.

My salad was a warm goat cheese tart with tomato confit and tapenade vinaigrette. I guess it’s a pretty simple dish, but it was wonderful, which I guess is the point. If you do everything perfectly, it doesn’t matter if it is simple. For dinner I had a truffled crêpe with jambon royal, brie d’eaux and slow-cooked egg yolk (okay, I wasn’t that excited about the egg yolk, but the ham and brie crepe was pretty darn good!).

Josh had the Lounge tasting menu with the accompanying wine selection. First course was a pan-roasted langoustine with ramps, Meyer lemon, langoustine brandade and trout roe. I believe it was accompanied by a dry champagne, though I don’t know what kind. The only think I tried was the trout roe, which was a burst of fishyness. Blech.

His second course was braised rabbit and fava bean risotto with black truffle and slow-cooked quail egg. The risotto was creamy and delicious. I believe he was served a pinot gris with this, which was pretty good.

His next course was an herb-crusted lamb ribeye with black olive gnocchi and roasted artichoke. I tried the gnocchi, which was good. I don’t know what wine came with this; I didn’t try it.

Before dessert we ordered the cheese plate, which included five cheeses. All were very good, and a couple were pretty strong (pungent).

Josh’s dessert was a dark chocolate cake with milk chocolate panna cotta and cava sherbet. I don’t remember this one bit! I was pretty full at that point, though, so maybe I didn’t have any? Their pastry chef is well renowned as well, but I was too stuffed so just ordered a glass of icewein. It was good, but not as good as Josh’s moscato.

As a random anecdote, the guy who brought our food (and described each dish with flair and expertise) had a total Telemundo voice. Very funny!