Guthrie's Cue is a hit, for its glamour and its cuisine

If Cue, the glamorous restaurant at the Guthrie Theater, were a play, it would be doing boffo box office.

From Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (and its top-flight eatery, Patina) to Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, Wis. (and Fresco, its rooftop café), cultural centers that merge the performing, visual and culinary arts are the gotta-have civic accessories of the moment.

The Walker Art Center and its 20.21 restaurant are another example, and comparisons between the museum and its former neighbor are inevitable. While the Walker went with Wolfgang Puck's tried-and-true Cal-Asian imprint, the Guthrie bet the store on a concept reflecting its locale, not unlike the manner in which architect Jean Nouvel's building so perfectly fits into its riverfront surroundings. As polished as it is, 20.21 could be anywhere. Cue feels distinctly Minnesotan.

The Guthrie wisely enlisted dining conglomerate Bon Appetit to oversee its ambitious food and drink program. The next smart move was entrusting the multimillion-dollar investment to chef Lenny Russo. Cue is the latest act in Russo's long-running career, which includes reviving high-volume W.A. Frost & Co. and launching Heartland, the St. Paul gem that practices a sophisticated prairie-to-plate philosophy.

That same emphasis on local, seasonal ingredients drives Cue's engine, no easy strategy for a kitchen feeding hundreds of theatergoers on tight deadlines. The surprisingly lengthy menu is not conventional -- there are no pizzas, Caesar salads, burgers or other clichés -- yet it has an inherent mass appeal. A dynamite pork prime rib, a ribeye with herb-crusted fingerlings, trout with sprightly green beans and a juicy chicken breast with delicious sweet corn-black barley cakes are all creative and elegant variations on the meat-and-potatoes template.

Russo doesn't shy away from dishes rarely available in large-audience formats. A memorably hearty wild boar pate is served with a marvelous selection of tangy pickled vegetables. Thin-sliced elk, rare and robust and complemented by woodsy wild rice and blackberry accents, was slow-roasted until it was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Braised rabbit was tender and flavorful, and a salad of grilled quail, carpaccio-thin slices of summer squash and poached tomatoes tasted as good as it looked.

To feed the Guthrie's voracious appetite, Russo has developed a network of nearly 40 Midwestern farmers and artisanal producers. Playing to his strengths, Russo assembles those premium ingredients, tweaks them slightly and then knows exactly when to step aside and let the food do the talking. The results can be extraordinary.

Aromatic heirloom tomato slices, wedges of a voluptuous Italian buffalo mozzarella and an intense basil pistou made for an unforgettable August calling card. "It tastes like the farmers market" was how our server accurately described a salad of meticulously diced zucchini and yellow squash, tiny fennel shavings and a drizzle of olive oil. Pristine fennel-cured halibut, finished with dill, was laid over a bed of diced tomatoes and brown-bread croutons. Bite-size Coyote tomatoes, as sweet as bonbons, added luster to a fantastic risotto in a pool of Parmesan-scented broth.

Steering away from the heavy and the obvious, the kitchen's emphasis on light, subtle cooking and human-size portions undoubtedly will prevent audiences from slipping into slumber before the gentleman caller finally appears in "The Glass Menagerie." The creative soups embody this mindset: a delicate, lemon-kissed fish consommé was dressed with a perfectly poached oyster, and a lime-infused crème fraiche coyly cooled the spicy heat of a chilled honeydew-tomatillo-jalapeno gazpacho.

Pastry chef Carrie Summer's high-concept desserts are a triumphant marriage of opposites: crunchy/creamy, salty/sweet, simple/complicated. A short stack of silver dollar-size crumpets, an amusing breakfast-anytime nod, ended with a boozy black cherry compote and a lovely lavender syrup. English sea salt put a fine flourish on a glossy bittersweet chocolate tart. Sake-marinated white figs and crisp candied hazelnuts added dash to a seductively silky milk-chocolate mousse. Minnesota's unofficial state dessert, the 9-by-13 pan bar, got a clever tribute in a springy pistachio-almond frangipane topped with a dreamy white peach sorbet. The real showstopper was a puff of coconut foam filled with pineapple next to an ingot-shaped sorbet singing with the flavors of sweet basil and tangy lime, an edible aria to the joys of summer.

In daylight, the restaurant's most noticeable attributes are its Cheesecake Factory proportions and blue-bluer-bluest color palate. But after sunset, Cue is utterly captivating. Its floor plan is essentially a giant half-circle, a twin to the auditorium above it. After enclosing the room with a stunning arc of 25-foot windows, Nouvel stage-managed the views (don't expect river thrillers, they're all upstairs) between an array of billboard-size panels ringing the restaurant's exterior. One, a slightly unnerving headshot of playwright Arthur Miller, dominates the dining room like a Chuck Close portrait on steroids.

Durrant, the Minneapolis design firm, has imbued Cue with a sense of occasion often lacking in Twin Cities restaurants. It's fancy, but not elitist. The vast volumes are broken up with eye-catching details, particularly an expo kitchen surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped counter topped with -- what else? -- blue granite. Like the rest of the building, Cue could win a Tony Award for best lighting, with glistening sapphire and amethyst jewel tones flirting against sparks of icy silver and cloudy white. The place literally twinkles, with light bouncing off aluminum columns, cobalt glass tiles, quartzite tabletops, even the curvaceous Mikasa flatware.

Complaints? Both a beautiful slab of hazelnut-crusted salmon and a crisp-skinned grilled young chicken were so salty that they bordered on inedible. On the flip side, a ricotta-filled ravioli and a beautiful timbale of artichokes, zucchini and grano farro were crying out for seasoning. Prices are definitely of the front row-center variety; some should fall in the second-balcony range. And when the pre-theater throngs head upstairs, the emptied room loses a bit of its luster. Still, it's easy to imagine that the kinks will work themselves out as Russo and his talented crew settle into a long run. Cue is one production that genuinely merits that greatest of all Minnesota theater traditions, the standing ovation.

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757 • rdnelson@startribune.com