What sets the Loring Kitchen & Bar apart are its good looks and its front-and-center address. Located in a slick new apartment house on the eastern edge of Loring Park, the restaurant's urbane surroundings are several cuts above the cheap window dressings that are often associated with meat-and-potatoes, all-American dining.
It's a long, shallow, window-lined rectangle of a space, and each comfortable seat seems oriented to maximize its park views. In warmer weather, a four-season portico embraces the outdoors better than any other dining establishment in the city. At night the soft lighting is more flattering than the "evening" setting in the changing rooms at J.Crew.
Yeah, it's a looker, and for a while that attribute manages to compensate for the fact that I could rattle off a list of dozens of Twin Cities restaurants cooking similar food. Sliders? Check. Pizzas? Check. Iceberg wedge salad? Check. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Despite the familiarity, chef Eric Strathy is cooking with integrity. He's putting out an awesome fried chicken: four big pieces sporting crispy, well-seasoned skin and juicy meat. More fried chicken finds its way atop an offbeat but delicious pizza. The switched-up Caesar salad utilizes grilled romaine, and its dressing replaces anchovies with crowd-pleasing smoked salmon. There's a perfectly satisfying grilled beef tenderloin that's priced right ($20) and that same cut livens up a pair of sliders.
For those on the lookout for he-man portions, what feels like an entire walleye is rolled in crackers and baked. A stuffed double-bone pork chop is the size of a brick. The burger is a half-pound monster, and side dishes, including fries three ways -- potato, sweet potato and zucchini -- are mountainous.
My attention automatically turned to the "Temptations" menu, a winning but too-brief roster of seven small, affordably priced noshes that nudge the kitchen past its comfort-food comfort zone. When they're good, they're terrific: a nicely seared scallop, prettily perched on round slices of gold and red beets, or meaty, melt-in-your-mouth baby back ribs glazed with a captivating sweet-hot sauce.
Others would profit by following Coco Chanel's sage advice about removing one accessory before leaving the house. Succulent, smoky trout is sandwiched between tasty little corn pancakes and topped with a dollop of sour cream. It's an ideal snack, until it's clumsily blanketed under a buzz-killing layer of melted Cheddar. Robustly spicy meatloaf, sliced and stacked like kindling, is smothered by an unnecessary avalanche of fried onions.
The weekend's breakfast-lunch service is just what the neighborhood ordered. The emphasis is on tried-and-true favorites served in hangover-numbing portions, but the kitchen earns points for incorporating a few original touches. One of the handful of gigantic scrambles makes use of that fabulous smoked trout, mixing it with brie and tons of green onions, a swell combination, and a decent maple-kissed house-made pork sausage is incorporated into several dishes, including a breakfast pizza finished with two fried eggs.
Still, with each bite of a big, bland, beige Belgian waffle, I began hoping for a little in-house a.m. baking. You know, muffins, coffeecakes, cinnamon rolls, anything that might distinguish it from the competitive brunch trade. It's kill-or-be-killed out there, and a pretty face only goes so far.
