Restaurants: Splurging at the chef's table

When we hit our 11th course of the evening, my seemingly bottomless stomach suddenly cried "Uncle."

"I've just got to sneak in one more," said chef Scott Pampuch, explaining how venison had landed on his doorstep earlier in the week and he was itching to showcase it. A few minutes later, followed by talk of sage-accented brown butter and caramelized Brussels sprouts, my appetite was back. Well, sort of.

We were seated at a four-top just a few feet from the stove at Corner Table, and the sensory overload was acute. My ears were filled with the blues track on the kitchen's laptop, and while my dead-in-its-tracks metabolism was cautioning restraint, I savored each fragrant North-Woods bite of that venison while my mind ticked off a greatest-hits replay of the locavorian evening: a bright celery salad with dry cured ham made by Mike Phillips, the Craftsman chef and charcuterie wiz; charred heirloom carrots, curled like chiles, drizzled with honey and dabbed with pieces of pungent, locally made blue cheese; a fancified twist on bacon and eggs, finished in a rich red-eye gravy; a fabulous, street food-inspired sweet potato cake topped with tangy pickled vegetables and a black bean puree; a pre-Thanksgiving turkey tenderloin dressed in a pert juniper-cardamom sauce.

When he and chef de cuisine Jorge Guzman weren't cooking -- and offering glimpses of their cool forearm tattoos (in my mind, Guzman's simple, declarative "Don't Burn the Day Away" message slightly beats out Pampuch's images of knives and kitchen tools, but then again, I'm a word guy), the outgoing Pampuch was keeping our wine glasses filled (the pairings couldn't have been matched better by eHarmony) and talking food, but also left us to our own conversation.

He later told me that they sometimes get couples celebrating special occasions by reserving the kitchen table, and the free-flowing wine -- and, let's face it, the workaday setting's oddly romantic aura -- often leads to some serious liplocking. "It's like we have to clear our throats and say, 'Ahem, guys, we're standing right here, we can see you,'" said Pampuch with a laugh.

After an abbreviated but imaginative dessert platter -- we were stuffed senseless, remember? -- Pampuch ended the night by dropping Expo Bright Sticks markers in the center of the table, a signal to add our two cents to the running fluorescent commentary posted on a blackboard by previous kitchen tablers.

But how to top "It was deliciously evil," "When you can't finish the chocolate, you know it's been good," "Thanks for not calling the cops" and "At Corner Table, no pig is safe"?

I skipped the words and went with "★★★★."

Lap of luxury

I became hooked on the kitchen table premise when food-obsessed friends generously invited my partner and me to join them for an evening at Cosmos, that house of hedonism inside the Graves 601 hotel in downtown Minneapolis. The dining room was going full-tilt that night, but inside the kitchen, the crew quietly hummed along like a well disciplined military unit.

At Cosmos, the kitchen table is called the "chef's table," and it's not an exaggeration: Chef Hâkan Lundberg, his lanky frame bent over a constant parade of plates, platters and bowls, brow furrowed in concentration and knives flashing, assembled nearly every one of our nine courses at a long stainless-steel workstation placed perpendicular to our table. Then, with the assistance of server extraordinaire Daniel Cros, Lundberg presented and talked up each dish.

As seats go, we were definitely front-row-center. Watching Lundberg go through his paces reminded me of a recent visit to potter Warren Mackenzie's Stillwater studio, where I had the privilege to observe, up close and personal, a master artist put his hands and imagination to work to create beauty from an ordinary ingredient.

Sure, Lundberg was manipulating foie gras and Wagyu beef, not wet clay, but the resulting theater was no less riveting, and we had the added benefit of eating the results. "It's the ultimate in food voyeurism," said my friend. I know. I just wish I'd snuck in a camera.

Each ingenious, high-wire course seemed to try and top its predecessor. Six weeks have passed and I'm still obsessing over Lundberg's deconstructed lox and bagels ("I love my gravlax," he said with a laugh, his Swedish accent caressing the "v" and the "x" in gravlax), a brilliant combination of delicate dill-cured salmon finished with a lively horseradish panna cotta, a barely-holding-together egg yolk and smoky anchovy-scented salt.

Ditto a stunning, decadent riff on bouillabaisse built around sea bass fried in duck fat and finished with beautifully modulated hints of saffron, as well as succulent seared duck breast paired with duck liver mousse, a playful Pop Rocks-inspired pomegranate-kiwi fruit shooter and a gorgeous, vividly flavored citrus semifreddo-sorbet dessert. I felt as pampered as one of Queen Elizabeth's corgis, and that was before the elegant petits fours arrived.

"Ten years ago, we could not have had a meal like this in Minneapolis," observed my host, and you know what? He was absolutely right.

Meanwhile, at 11th and Nicollet

The scene at Vincent differs in several respects. The menu -- five courses plus an amuse bouche -- is the dining room's standard tasting menu, not the spontaneous flights of fancy at Corner Table and Cosmos. But if that edgy, on-the-fly feeling is missing, it's more than compensated by the impression that each dish is a well-rehearsed iteration of the kitchen's high skill level. It's also less expensive -- particularly if skipping the wine pairings -- by a pretty wide margin.

Another contrast: The table is a room away from the action at the stoves. Instead, it's closer to the clang and hiss of the dishwashing station and tucked back among the root vegetables. Chef/owner Vincent Francoual may hail from southwestern France, but he's clearly transforming himself into a Minnesotan, because there's something very modest and Midwestern about his kitchen table's complete lack of show-off-iness.

Francoual wasn't in the house that night (in all fairness to the restaurant, we were told, far in advance, that he would be away the night of our reservation) and while we missed his charming presence, all was OK; his absence actually made for a more private experience.

Besides, chef de cuisine Joseph Dario Rolle stepped up to the plate and delivered an unannounced course: soy-glazed pork belly, tapped with mellow chile heat and served with an apple-parsnip puree. "Fall flavors," he proudly called it, and that evocative name was right on the money. Then pastry chef Pierre Martel -- visiting from Paris -- delivered a hefty dose of Gallic enchantment as he presented an exquisite hazelnut-chocolate cake and a sculpted pear poached in red wine and cinnamon, a well-calibrated balancing act between complex and simple.

In between there were teasingly sweet scallops, tuna with a zesty lamb sausage, mouth-meltingly tender beef tenderloin and a butternut squash soup as supple as a length of silk. Yes, we could have enjoyed the same meal in the restaurant's serene dining room.

"But it was fun to sit back here among the onions," said my friend, as she furtively swiped the last bit of that divine chocolate cake off her husband's plate.

It was indeed.

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757