McKee taking center stage at Guthrie

Tom Wallace, Star Tribune

Tim Mckee

By Rick Nelson, Star Tribune

Last update: January 22, 2009 - 7:25 AM

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McKee taking center stage at Guthrie

Big changes are on the horizon for the Guthrie Theater's dining venues. The theater's current food-and-drink operator, Bon Appetit, is bowing out and is being replaced by Culinaire, a Dallas-based food service and restaurant operator. Culinaire has recruited Tim McKee, chef/co-owner of La Belle Vie, Solera and Barrio in Minneapolis and Smalley's Caribbean Barbeque and Pirate Bar in Stillwater, to add the theater's glamorous ground-floor restaurant, currently known as Cue, to his stable.

"We thought that partnering with a local celebrity chef would appeal to the theatrical nature of the Guthrie and give us the chef-driven cuisine that we think is important," said David Wood, Culinaire's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "We started doing research and, if you Google 'chef' and 'Minneapolis,' you can see that Tim has definitely made a name for himself. We didn't even interview anyone else."

The partnership's plans are ambitious. "Tim is going to create a whole new destination restaurant inside that ground-floor space," said Wood. "[Bon Appetit has] done a great job capturing the pre-theater crowd. With Tim, the restaurant will continue to rock and roll after 8 p.m. and have a life of its own without the Guthrie."

The name Cue -- never a favorite of mine, I've got to say -- is disappearing, and McKee will announce the restaurant's new name -- and his culinary plans -- in a few weeks. The clean-sweep modifications aren't limited to the menu. Wood described the restaurant's planned physical changes as "cosmetic but significant," with a goal of making the vast room more inviting. "The bones are stunning, so it's a shame to trash it just for the sake of change," he said. "We want to subdivide it visually, so whether there are 50 or 150 or 250 people it will feel like a vibrant restaurant."

Culinaire, which has managed the dining operations at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas for 14 years, also plans to expand the restaurant's riverfront and sidewalk presence during warm-weather months. The company also intends to overhaul the theater's fifth-floor dining venues, possibly adding a buffet service. The changes will take place in April, with Cue shutting down for a few weeks to make the necessary alterations.

In the land of Dan Patch

The historic train depot in Savage seems to have nine lives. The 1880 wood-frame landmark spent several decades in a living history musuem before its 2006 conversion into a coffeehouse. That business closed in November, which gave entrepreneur Jim Lewis the opportunity to step in and revamp it as the Savage Depot (4800 W. 123rd St.). "We fought over what we should name this thing, but the reality is everyone knows it as 'the depot,' " he said with a laugh. "So that's what it is. Why fight it?"

When it opens in early February, the counter-service restaurant will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner ("light gourmet fare" is how Lewis describes the menu) and feature coffee, beer and wine.

RICK NELSON