Please Leave Your Shotgun At the Door

Necce
311 Main Avenue, South
Park Rapids, Minnesota

Park Rapids is a small western-Minnesota town that seems to be trying to position itself as a sort of flatlands Aspen: a year-round resort town, with attractions for the rod-and-gun set in summer, and the snowmobile crowd in winter. (Skiing, other than the cross-country version, is pretty well out of the question.) In aid of that aura, the new Italian place in town is trying to go a little upscale. There are some kinks to work out, but it's promising none the less.

The dining room's look and feel illustrates the difficulties, with its uneasy blend of rusticity and elegance. There are, I know, ways to combine those two themes, often involving expensive furnishings modelled on rural European styles, but the up-country Nordic look doesn't quite manage it. The lighting is tricky in this space, because of large windows overlooking the street, only partially subdued by draperies. Christmas lights, white around the edge and coloured down the middle of the ceiling, lend some atmosphere if one doesn't look too closely; tea lights on the tables give a hint of romance, and wall sconces on a dimmer switch complete the arrangement, but require monitoring as the outside light changes. Some of the tables have unwieldy braces occupying the space normally meant for knees, which makes sitting at them a challenge for all but the smallest people: those who can sit comfortably in the back seat of a Karmann Ghia or Jaguar convertible. The chairs are stunningly heavy, and really too large for the tables; they make it impossible to get oneself positioned at table with any kind of grace; though, once you've managed to get yourself in, it might amuse you to watch others trying to accomplish the same jerky motions without upsetting the table. Just remember: you'll still have to back yourself out of your place before leaving, so you'll want to not laugh out loud.

The service is so-so. Most of the staff are as new as the restaurant, and have apparently been told that good waiters at upscale restaurants have to be supercilious enough to say things like "Monsieur has just ordered a broiled tractor" without any evident humour. They'll get over that, and by that time they will probably have learned enough about the restaurant's menu and style to be knowledgeable and helpful. For now, though, they're just obsequious, uneasy and pretentious, but competent enough in the actual chore of waiting at table.

What does that mean?

Both our meals started with house salads, fresh and interesting, with a single crouton large enough to use by hand, obviating the need for bread with the course. The house dressing, a slightly sweet oil and vinegar, was excellent. My main dish was lasagna, baked in an individual high-sided square dish. This made for an unusually large serving, and a pleasant crustiness to the cheese around the edges; but the height of the dish's sides made it a little difficult to get at the contents, and the small elegance of the method could not counter the innate dryness of the food itself. While the seasonings were good, even very good, the overarching characteristic of the meal was that dryness.

With my friend's meal, the opposite was the case. His sausage manicotti was surprisingly oily. It, too, came as a large serving in an individual baking dish, this one low-sided and oval, so it was much easier to eat than the lasagna. It was served extremely hot, and because of the thick layer of cheese (which I hesitate to criticize; it is, after all, cheese) it took a long time to cool enough to avoid burning. On that dish, too, the seasoning was excellent, particularly that contained in the Italian sausage; and once it had sat long enough to be edible, it proved to be the more enjoyable of the two dishes.

The prices at Necce were very good, even by my South-Texas standards. Given the ambitions of the restaurant, they were a pleasant surprise, and left me with a favourable opinion of the entire experience.



Definitely A Place To Go Back To

Shady Grove
N6240 State Highway 65
Ellsworth, Wisconsin

(fire up your navigation software; it's not close to anything)

What does that mean?

It would be untrue to say that I keep going back to western Wisconsin just to eat at Shady Grove. Why, there has been at least one visit to the area where I didn't eat there at all. (They were closed when I went.)

The prices at Shady Grove (or Chez d'Grove, as the francophones in the area like to call it) are about what you'd expect for haute cuisine. The difference between this place, and many other upscale places, is that, at Shady Grove, you actually get haute cuisine. Hell, even their cheese curds are the best you will ever have. (And yes, it is possible to have cheese curds be haute cuisine: anything done perfectly can be haute cuisine, possibly excepting liver and black-eyed peas.)

The service can be iffy. This place gets so very busy that it's hard for the staff to keep up. It's not a big place, and if a party of ten drops in unexpectedly (as happened on the occasion of my latest visit), it can throw everything off, especially since the atmosphere in the dining room is so welcoming that people tend not to leave when they finish eating. The man next to me while I waited at the bar was miffed because his 8.00 reservation had passed away into dust and, forty minutes later, there was still one other customer ahead of him. But I think he got over it by the time he left. I don't bother with reservations myself; I enjoy the time at the bar, however long it is; and they have those cheese curds.... But despite the crowd, the staff remain pleasingly upbeat, and they work hard to get everything done. I would not argue with anyone who said they deserve another chili pepper on that line.

I started with onion soup. Real onion soup, in a deep crock filled with rich broth, and topped with a thick layer of good cheese over French bread. An inspired creation, magnificently re-created. I followed this up with a duck breast that was easily better than any duck breast has a right to be. It was tender, with crispy skin, and, remarkably, not the least bit greasy. It's been several days now, so I don't recall what was in the dark, delicious sauce that topped the dish, but I do remember the exquisite flavour and texture of the dish, as well as of the sweet-potato purée that accompanied it. Now I guess I'll have to go back, and next time take notes. Well, it's worth the trip.



Worst Breakfast For A While

The Chocolate Moose
U.S. Highway 53 South
International Falls, Minnesota

(at County Road 7, near the airport)



When we came across this place while looking for a place to eat at seven in the morning in a town that apparently doesn't open until much later, we thought we had scored. The outside presents a nice, new, clean look, sort of like a rustic Perkins, or a sophisticated Cracker Barrel. Inside, though it's smaller than either of those chains' locations, we felt the same kind of welcome family-style warmth.

When we saw the menu, we felt reassured. The usual foods were offered, with a minimum of too-cute names, and with prices just as we expected. The service, too, was just as it should have been: polite, reasonably efficient, competent.

What does that mean?

The food was less satisfying.

I opted for the sausage and cheese omelet. No effort was made in the kitchen to get those eggs to do anything but lie there. What I was served was not an omelet, but bits of sausage wrapped in, effectively, a flimsy egg tortilla, formed into a rectangle just the right size for a couple of slices of pasteurized processed cheese food to adorn. The large plate was kept from appearing vacant by a bushel of potatoes denominated as "home fries." They were, in fact, frozen chunks of potato, the size and shape of large dice, cut by some distant machine before being bagged; then thrown into a mess of hot grease just long enough to melt the ice crystals inside. Only the pancakes I'd chosen as a bread were at all enjoyable: they would have earned an average rating.

My friend's "breakfast sandwich" was worse. The same kind of scrambled egg, reminiscent of the sort one gets at Subway these days, folded around a slice of ... well, let's call it cheese, and served with a sausage pattie on what the menu and the waitress called a croissant. Real croissants, it seems, have yet to make an appearance this far north. This was something that looked like two heels from a loaf of white bread, glued together by that stuff that was not cheese.

I think that if the need for breakfast in International Falls ever presents itself again, I may want to quickly learn some hunting and trapping skills.