7 restaurants worth the drive

THE GREEN ROOM

Waconia, Minn.

"These beets came from a farm just down the road," said our server as he presented an eye-catching plate of purple-red beets, chèvre and spinach. Turns out the server was co-owner Tom Peterson. Chef Keven Kvalsten picked up the menu's potatoes, herbs, lettuces and other enticing produce from that same organic farm.

If those names -- or perhaps faces -- are familiar, it's because the two both worked at a pair of south Minneapolis eateries (Peterson at the former Bakery on Grand, Kvalsten at Corner Table) before leaving the city's crowded restaurant field for the greener pastures of the far western suburbs.

When a storefront in sweet downtown Waconia became available this year, Kvalsten, Peterson and Peterson's cousin Matty O'Reilly teamed up, rolled up their sleeves, stretched a shoestring budget and launched the Green Room.

Kvalsten's cooking stresses comfort, quality and value. A hearty bacon-wrapped meatloaf is just $11, and a mouthwatering Minnesota-raised pork loin, paired with apples and cabbage, is a bargain at $15. Kvalsten livens things up with daily specials (halibut with haricort verts and a roasted beet sauce was a recent dish) and at lunch he does both standards (BLTs, angus beef burger) and surprises (an open-faced spread of asparagus, walnut pesto, grilled onions and roasted red peppers on focaccia). Dessert means lavender crème brûlée and a hot-from-the-oven molten chocolate cake.

The cheery room (yes, the walls are the color of a freshly mowed May lawn) matches the mood of the friendly staffers, and the brief wine list is priced to move. In short, it's the cafe every town should be so lucky to have on its Main Street.

CHEZ JUDE

Grand Marais, Minn.

From my perch at the enchanting Chez Jude, my eyes bounced among countless postcard-worthy images: the town's snug New England-like harbor, the delphiniums bursting like rockets from the restaurant's well-tended gardens and the lovely piece of smoked lake trout dressed with capers and herbs that chef/owner Judi Barsness was sending out as a salutation to her guests that evening.

The menu changes weekly at this year-old gem, housed in a lovely yellow cottage, with Barsness and her crew buffing a polish on local treasures: Lake Superior fish, breads from a skilled neighboring baker, produce raised by a nearby subscription farm. "We have such abundance here," said Barsness, a vet of the Coho Cafe & Bakery just down the road in Tofte, Minn. "It's fun to play with that. It's like a new adventure every day."

A smoker in the back yard and a wood-burning oven in the kitchen add tantalizing flavor layers, from meaty pork ribs slathered with a slow-burn maple barbecue sauce and flavorful duck with wild rice risotto to wild-caught salmon and a brioche sandwich piled with prosciutto, apples, cheddar and a sweet fig jam. (Chez Jude's barbecue sauce is sold across the street at the Dockside Fish Market.)

Careful touches abound: crisp white linen and gleaming blond floors in the cozy dining room, a front porch that catches cooling lake breezes, a well-chosen wine selection, small-town friendly service and marvelous desserts (especially a divine rhubarb tart) by pastry chef Misha Martin.

I can see it in the travel brochures now: Don't visit the North Shore's most charming town without stopping at its most charming new restaurant.

FISHER'S CLUB

Avon, Minn.

Nothing embodies up-to-the-lake goodness better than Fisher's Club. The 74-year-old glory was recently sold by its second-generation owners, and the transaction could have been a cause for concern. But not to worry. This veritable chapel of knotty pine was purchased by a group of investors that includes Mr. Lake Wobegon himself, Garrison Keillor, and these new keepers of the Fisher's Club flame appear to be exceptional stewards of its irreplaceable legacy.

The kitchen follows standard operating supper-club procedure, which means lots of walleye, broasted chicken, steaks and burger baskets at reasonable prices. But many dishes go back, in Minnesota-speak, to "olden times" (translation: recipes resurrected from the club's archives), including battered and deep-fried sunfish (with a chunky, packed-full-of-chopped-pickles tartar sauce), a lusciously creamy coleslaw, a potato salad fit for a king (or at least radio royalty) and a boffo relish tray loaded with liverwurst, meatballs, pickled herring and garlic toast.

There are plenty of local ties, too. Nuns from the nearby College of St. Benedict provide greens for a taste-of-summer salad, meats come from the top-notch St. Joseph Meat Market and a Clearwater bakery stocks the excellent bread basket. Even Fisher's investors get in the act, contributing an extraordinary apple pie (seriously, I'd make the drive just for another bite of Myra Schrup's dazzlingly flaky lard-laced crust). There also are succulent berries (grown by Jim Degiovanni) and perfectly crumbly baking-powder/powdered-milk biscuits (baked by Fisher's manager Shirley Miller) for the towering strawberry shortcake. Yep, delicious nostalgia. Just what you'd hope to find on the shores of Middle Spunk Lake.

SIGNATURES

Winona, Minn.

Winona has long been a draw for its spectacular bluff-ringed setting and impressive architecture. But since the demise of the Hot Fish Shop -- and if you ignore the Lakeview Drive Inn -- this Mississippi River town hasn't had a destination restaurant. Signatures, now in its second summer, just might fill that bill.

If the dining room is a bit bland, the surroundings are anything but, a beautifully groomed 1920 golf course tucked into the craggy hills on the city's southwestern edge. Wide windows on the 18th hole open out to verdant, steep, mist-filled valleys. It's a stunner. Chef Matt Schoeller, a veteran of the Vintage, the Local and other Twin Cities restaurants, headed to Winona three years ago.

"I wanted to get closer to the farmers I was working with," he said. "And that's so much easier when you're in the country."

It sure is; Schoeller now has days when a half-dozen farmers visit his kitchen, delivering pork from Hidden Stream Farm in Elgin, Minn., or produce from Featherstone Farm in Rushford, Minn.

Schoeller's work often lives up to the setting. A New York strip bison steak, grilled to juicy, full-flavored perfection, was paired with creamy potatoes loaded with a pungent blue cheese made in Faribault, Minn. A beer demiglace put a welcome gloss on beautifully braised lamb shanks.

Crisp-skinned pan-roasted chicken shared the plate with just-right polenta. Crostini topped with pears and Stilton and a mellow port wine reduction and rich crème brûlée proved to be fine dinnertime openers and closers. Lunch includes chicken pot pies, fish tacos, roasted beef-chèvre sandwiches and other easygoing fare.

Can't make it to the restaurant? Schoeller also runs the Galley, the cafe inside Winona's brand-new riverfront attraction, the Minnesota Marine Art Museum.

AT SARA'S TABLE/CHESTER CREEK CAFE

Duluth, Minn.

The sign on the building reads Taran's Market Place, lifted from the former Taran's grocery that once occupied the corner of 19th Av. and 8th St. on Duluth's East Side. The titles on the door -- At Sara's Table/Chester Creek Cafe -- are nods to the former Park Point coffeehouse that relocated up the hill and a nearby stream, respectively. All three names reflect the same business, an informal and impressive breakfast-lunch-dinner magnet for nearby University of Minnesota staffers and students.

Morning hours are all about platters heaped with omelets and scrambles, big steaming bowls of oatmeal and thick, smoky strips of bacon, but the real stars are the crisp waffles, marvelous wild rice-cranberry French toast and sturdy buttermilk pancakes, all finished with either a dizzyingly good maple syrup by Duluthian Dave Rogotsky or a quirky apple-beer syrup that's an old family recipe of co-owner Barbara Neubert.

Lunch means burgers, sandwiches and a few nods to Middle Eastern flavors. Dinner is far more ambitious, with a changes-daily menu that could include lime- and peanut-braised salmon, a free-range grass-fed ribeye beefsteak with oven-roasted sweet potatoes or olive oil-poached shrimp with rhubarb chutney.

Neubert and partner Carla Blumberg put a premium on organic, locally raised ingredients. Two-thirds of the very drinkable wines are priced at $25 or less per bottle. Best of all are the gorgeous apple, blueberry and strawberry-rhubarb pies; a slice of baker Diane Bailey's handiwork is truly the perfect cap to a whatever-this-place-is-called visit.

NOKOMIS RESTAURANT & BAR

Duluth, Minn.

Ten miles northeast, on the old shoreline highway to Two Harbors, lies Nokomis Restaurant & Bar. Chef/owner Sean Lewis has dropped the building's former supper club roots -- how many North Shore establishments send a petit four out with the check? -- and created a destination restaurant that's genuinely worth the detour.

Lewis, who trained in several Chicago restaurants before opening Nokomis last year, concentrates on fish and flavorful accents: Lake Superior whitefish with a yellow tomato gazpacho; striped bass with fennel, English peas and pickled red pearl onions; and cakes made with herring (also from the lake) and Thai chiles layered into red pepper aioli-slathered rosemary focaccia.

Other crowd-pleasing choices (entrees $9 to $18 at lunch, $17 to $29 at dinner) include a designer burger, praline- and pistachio-crusted chicken with a lovely lingering thyme hint, a beaut of a cheese plate and a fine pizza covered in pesto, asparagus and prosciutto. The wide-open dining room's vast picture windows frame dazzling lake views, and a patio and fire pit with equally exceptional vistas is on its way, fast.

During a recent meal, the couple seated to my left were conversing in French (turns out their car, parked next to mine, bore Quebec license plates), and while my grasp of their language is shaky at best, I'm fairly certain one of them said, "Let's come back." I nodded in agreement.

BOATHOUSE

Superior, Wisc.

Back in the car, I think that I can't be the only Twin Citian who thinks of Superior as little more than a blur out the window en route to the Apostle Islands. But I've revised my mindset now that Kirk Bratrud has rolled into town. Three years ago, the former owner of the Bayport Cookery teamed up with his brother Grant (Kirk does the cooking; Grant manages the house) and they opened the Boathouse, a Barkers Island bastion of passionate, original dining.

Bratrud has a yen for rooting out top-drawer ingredients -- whether it's elk from Siren, Wis., chanterelles from nearby woods, crayfish from pristine northern lakes or north- and south-shore trout -- and liberally sprinkles his seasonally influenced menus with veal sweetbreads, foie gras, hemp seed-crusted tofu and other this-ain't-Culver's taste treats.

A marvelous burger substitutes lamb for beef (and corn salsa for ketchup), and tacos are stuffed with juicy duck, artichokes and a mango-green peppercorn salsa. Dessert (prepared by the mother of the Bratrud boys, Nancy, former proprietor of Mrs. B's in Lanesboro, Minn.) sticks to the homespun, with tried-and-true goodies such as devil's food cake or honey panna cotta with raspberry sauce.

By keeping most entree prices below $20, Bratrud thumbs his nose at citified prices, and the well-chosen wine list is similarly affordable. Service is affable and the waters-edge patio is deeply alluring.

"So this is Superior," was my thought as we took a seat and took in the view. Next time I head to Bayfield, I'll be sure to put on the brakes.

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757