Calling Haute Dish the most hotly anticipated restaurant of the year hardly begins to do it justice—heck, the long-awaited project by chef Landon Schoenfeld was so very hotly anticipated that Metro magazine named it one of the “Most Influential Restaurants of the Year” in their March issue, and the restaurant didn’t open till this week. (Meow! But still. Anyone with the paper magazine is enjoined to consult page 58 of the March issue, which names the restaurant one of “Four new eateries that are already changing the dining landscape”; the online edition drops the ‘already’ and loses the date. Drop on by my office to see the paper copy that proves I’m not making this up; when you do, I’ll also show you the April issue of Metro, which has a recipe from Haute Dish but fails to mention that the restaurant still had yet to open. Okay, my hissy fit is over.)
But now, Haute Dish really is open! It is it is it is! Check out the amazing-looking menu by Landon Schoenfeld (the originator of the exquisite opening Bulldog NE menu, and the chef’s chef of the young set who has garnered good reviews and lots of chef love as he blazed a trail through Café Barbette, Restaurant Levain, Brasa, and so on).
Plus, a nice, usable drink list. That it’s open till 1 a.m. almost every night might forever upset the local after-show dining scene. Food and drink aside, I’m especially looking forward to: Oh, just everything. The energy. The hope. Officially the restaurant is Landon Schoenfeld’s, but truly it seems to be a collaboration of a whole generation of the most ambitious young chefs in Minneapolis, including Adam Vickerman (the most excellent chef who made his name at last summer’s best restaurant, Trattoria Tosca), Erik Andersen (chef de cuisine of Sea Change, former French Laundry worker, on the opening team of Porter & Frye, doing charcuterie and assorted cold meats here at Haute Dish), and Remle Colestock (who was doing amazing work at Café Levain before he left, especially on the prix-fixe Sunday nights when he organized his band of cooks to improvise and delight). All these young chefs are longtime friends; if their kitchen gels the way they’ve said they hoped it would, into a happy game of creative one-upsmanship and support, it should be so, so good.
Personally, I’m planning on staying away for a few weeks to give them the chance to get on their feet, and I’d recommend you do the same—but I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to keep those plans. Will you?
Haute Dish
119 Washington Avenue N., Mpls.
612-338-8484
haute-dish.com
