What’s Up
Crasqui is the name of a white-sand island off Venezuela. It’s also the name of a restaurant that opened last fall off Wabasha Street, over the bridge from downtown St. Paul and near Harriet Island Regional Park.
In 2016, chef Soleil Ramirez moved to Minnesota, fleeing her home country after honing culinary expertise and presiding over a restaurant there. “The government took everything from me,” she says—“long story, very painful.” Since late 2020, she has run Arepa Bar in south Minneapolis’ Midtown Global Market. With Crasqui opening over the summer, she is now tapping into Venezuelan influences with an artist’s sense of purpose—conjured from her youth in Caracas, finessed with fine-dining cred, and injected here and there with a taste for molecular gastronomy, or the means by which food turns exploratory and scientific.
Her imprint, though, is expressionistic. Ramirez refracts her native cuisine through fond memories. Before Crasqui, she held private dinners for over a year to test her four-course concepts (“the ocean,” “the plains,” “the Mantuana era”) on Minnesotan palates. She says Venezuelan flavors may surprise Midwest eaters: This is Latin food that isn’t spicy, with cocktails that aren’t too sweet.
Side Dish
Courses encircle a map of Venezuela on a seasonal menu, with “tasteable” regions highlighted. Every dish is a feeling, Ramirez says. The ceviche, for example, combines her mom’s love for fish and her grandmother’s “addiction” to mandarin oranges. For the Burrata Trujillana, she couldn’t source a Venezuelan cheese, but Colombian burrata still conveys uncommon brightness, redolent of her childhood trips to the farm in Trujillo where her mom’s best friend owned cows.
“These are not dishes that are in our culture; these are my creations,” she clarifies. Still, her tweaked and elevated takes have stirred something in Venezuelan guests. “People come to the restaurant, taste this, and tell me, ‘This is bringing me back home,’ and sometimes they start to cry.”
Her approach is ambitious. She says her parents told her that, stubborn and easily bored, she could never do things the way everyone else does. But her results are not overwrought. She cooks proteins according to a stone-cold revelation: “Don’t touch it.” Don’t break down the precious fat. So, for the buttery-smooth sea bass, it’s the bare minimum: oil and bake.
Where It’s At
Crasqui is in the former digs of Catrina’s, a Mexican eatery: an airy, glass-walled, and sun-washed wedge underneath luxury apartments. One of her friends made all the ash-wood tables by hand.
Her food is high-end enough to demand white tablecloths, but there aren’t any. Rather, the mood is laid-back. This is Ramirez reacting against something she noticed post-pandemic as a restaurant guest: “I felt very rushed. The people are just trying to get you out … in an hour, because they need the rotation, to make the money, or they don’t have enough staff. I wanted to create a space where, if people want to stay three hours, they can stay three hours.”
With the atmosphere and the desserts—such as a cocotera, where Ramirez’s flare for molecular gastronomy yields an ultra-light foam, in balance with a delicious density of rum cake and flan-like quesillo—you’ll probably want to.
84 Wabasha St., St. Paul; crasquirestaurant.com
