Summer's bounty meets joy of cooking

This is how I imagine a typical day at Heartland. Every hour or so, a farmer shows up at the restaurant's back door, unannounced, pulls out a few boxes of glorious, freshly harvested something-or-others and makes a sale to chef/co-owner Lenny Russo. The newfound treasure is treated as a challenge by the cooking staff, who compete to find delicious ways to incorporate it into that night's menu.

I ran my theory past Russo last week, and he laughed. "To be perfectly honest," he said, "that's not that far off."

Sure, the process also involves planning and budgeting, phone calls and e-mails, blah, blah, blah, but one of the most intriguing and admirable qualities of this five-year-old St. Paul restaurant -- beyond its zealous commitment to Midwestern ingredients -- is that improvisational nature. Which leads me to wonder, which came first: a fluid menu based upon availability, or a supply chain forged to suit Russo's culinary attention-deficit disorder?

"I can't cook the same food every day; it would bore me out of my skull," Russo told me. "I mean, why be in a creative profession only to end up cooking the same thing over and over, day after day?"

Why, indeed? The kitchen doesn't start with a blank slate every morning; some dishes can hang on for a week or two, depending upon inventory. Still, frequent diners -- and if you're not one, you really should be -- benefit from this yoga-like flexibility. Particularly now, when the peak of the summer harvest season becomes a joy ride, and Russo handily proves that flyover country farmers and producers (seriously, this is an olive oil-free zone) can solely support a restaurant of serious ambitions.

One night a few weeks back, it felt as if Russo's local-local-local mindset was being exemplified in a single fantastic salad. It tossed orach -- spinach's eye-catching cousin that's green on one side, eggplant-purple on the other -- with fat slices of sweet roasted onion, a salty sheep's milk blue cheese, crunchy toasted pumpkin seeds and a splash of basil-cherry vinaigrette; each forkful held a vibrant feast for all senses and a playful celebration of summer.

Leave salmon, shrimp, beef and other been-there, done-that basics to other restaurants. Russo casts a far wider net while plunging into the local larder's splendid abundance. Whether it's a deeply flavorful pan-roasted rabbit, served in a black walnut-enhanced glaze and topped with a sweet grilled peach, or a surprisingly tender elk chop with beautifully browned fennel, or horseradish-enhanced smoked goat chops, or mouth-wateringly delicious frog legs with walnut oil-poached tomatoes, the results are almost guaranteed to surprise and delight.

Familiar with a twist

That glossy treatment isn't lost on more familiar foods. A succulent pork chop, singing with that perfect barnyard-ey flavor and finished with a snappy mustard aoili, was clean-your-plate perfection. Pan-fried trout, with a crispy skin that revealed a firm, moist flesh, was paired with a cool cucumber-red onion relish.

A zesty carrot purée became an elegant robe for a juicy chicken breast, and a black currant sauce added another welcome dimension to an already intensely flavored lamb roast. One highly memorable appetizer was the kitchen's own salt-cured Lake Superior smelt, sharing a plate with marvelous pickled beets and a rich remoulade kissed with a garlic scape pang.

Russo and his gifted cooking staff -- Robert Moore, Stephanie Kochlin and Matt Morgan -- have a particularly admirable talent for putting delicious new perspectives on taken-for-granted ingredients. Celery, for example, forever lost its afterthought status in my mind after becoming a foundation for a brilliant vichyssoise.

The kitchen, which never forgets its vegetarian demographic, is also blessed with a painter's eye for color and composition, a gift that goes far beyond the head start gained by working with all those pristine ingredients. Russo & Co. shrewdly keep their manipulations to a minimum; nothing in their work feels overly handled or mannered or precious. No shortcuts, either. Russo cures his own lamb and pork bacons, produces his own memorably delicious duck prosciutto, even makes his own mozzarella. The list goes on and on.

Sure, I have quibbles. The menu's long list of a la carte items can be challenging to navigate; why not break them out into easier-to-digest categories? A slight hitch in the menu's daily format is that the restaurant never really develops a signature dish or two, a touchstone for some but certainly not all diners. And that daily creative grind occasionally produces an idea that can feel a few iterations short of greatness.

An unadorned brick storefront on a forgettable intersection, Heartland doesn't have a lot of curb appeal. There isn't even the now-requisite stretch of sidewalk tables. A dry cleaner, a shoe repair shop, a hideous 1960s-era apartment block and a gas station lit up like a prison yard are the restaurant's neighbors, and at first encounter you just might second-guess those Mapquest directions sitting on your dashboard.

But affirmations lie just inside the door: a cozy, honey-dipped 50-seater wrapped in vaguely Arts and Crafts-inspired decorative touches and dominated by a wide-open kitchen, a voyeurism-inducing platform that was designed, at least in my imagination, to capitalize on the intrinsic appeal of watching craftspeople producing something of value before your eyes.

Next door, the similarly Frank-Lloyd-Wright-like wine bar can either feel like a charming hideaway or nudge the claustrophobic toward a minor panic attack. Count me a member of the former category, especially when seated at my favorite end-of-the-bar perch and placed in the highly capable hands of bar manager Christa Robinson and her generous hospitality.

Ribs aren't always featured on the wine bar menu, but when they are, get them. One night a fellow diner two seats down ordered the ribs, and the moment I smelled them I knew that was what I'd be having for dinner: long-boned and meaty porkers, cured in brown sugar and sea salt, slow-roasted until the meat's crust was deeply caramelized, then glazed with a naughty tomatillo-poblano sauce. Three small disks of a cool, dense chicken mousse dressed with a pale green pea-cucumber emulsion and a sweet pepper relish made for a perfect meal on a sweltering late-July night, as did a snappy bison bratwurst served with a simple heirloom potato salad, picnic-minded comfort food minus the Weber.

A collaborative effort

Like all restaurants of accomplishment, the diligent contributions of Heartland's surprisingly small staff are apparent at every turn. Jack Fulton -- whose bread selection changes daily, of course -- ranks among the area's top breadbakers, and his inventive, can't-find-these-anywhere desserts taste as if they're attached at the hip to the seasons; the man can also put out a fantastic, lovingly embellished cheese plate. Mega Hoehn -- co-owner, general manager, wine guru and also Russo's spouse -- watches over one of the Twin Cities' most accomplished service staffs.

And of course there is Russo, his long résumé peppered with names that include the Loring Cafe, Faegre's, New French Cafe, W.A. Frost & Co. and, most recently, Cue. When he opened Heartland in 2002, Russo told me that his goal was to make it one of the area's best restaurants. Mission accomplished.

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757

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Rick Nelson • rdnelson@startribune.com