Cafe Lurcat and Bar Lurcat still impress (despite sticker shock)

"Dinner was how much?"

When I repeated the semi-astronomical figure to my friend, he shot me his patented I'm-glad-you're-paying look. Me? My gut was curdling as I envisioned the inevitable expense-account showdown with my boss' boss' boss.

We were dining at Cafe Lurçat, where entrees can easily slip into the $40s (and higher), and the kitchen thinks nothing of charging $12 for a side of roasted cauliflower. Lovingly roasted cauliflower, sure, nurtured in the oven to a caramel-tinted brown and a just-right texture.

But still. Last time I checked, an entire head of cauliflower retailed for around $3.50. You do the math.

Chef Adam King has been on the premises since opening day in 2001, working his way through line cook and sous chef.

When chef Isaac Becker left in 2004 to open his 112 Eatery, he recommended King as his replacement. Owners Larry and Richard D'Amico must have listened, because King has been at the helm ever since. That's an impressive run for this fairly itinerant business.

Pinning a one-size-fits-all description on Lurçat (pronounced Lur-kot) isn't easy. Even King acknowledges as much.

They do indeed. King is a gifted cook, and his instincts serve him well.

Taking aim at winter appetites, he skillfully stacks a seasonal mushroom medley on a slice of toasted brioche, teasing each earthy bite with pops of garlic, sage and thyme. Fragrant traces of truffle oil complement rather than overwhelm, and a creamy, Camembert-style flourish from Mankato's Alemar Cheese Co. is a just-right finishing touch. (Of course, the $17 price tag is a bit of an ouch.)

My carb-seeking appetite was all over the house-made egg noodles — it's actually King's spaetzle recipe, piped into long, irregular noodles — that's tossed with sauteed rabbit, roasted parsnips, garden-fresh summer savory and scads of butter. So good.

Oh, and nothing smoothed the edges off a late winter's night chill than fork-tender pork tenderloin, the meat's notable juiciness accentuated by the rich flavors that come out of slow-cooked figs.

By keeping the folderol to a minimum, King is one of those rare cooks who don't require the services of an editor. Yet he's full of ideas. My favorite? A decadent plate of sweet, succulent crab, dressed with two kinds of creamy accents: luscious avocado, and a similarly opulent panna cotta, with a twist: It's infused with a horseradish kick.

He has a way with tuna, too, serving it raw — and enlisting lime as a refreshing palate cleanser — or barely searing it, preserving that vibrant ruby color but treating it like sashimi by serving it with bright ponzu sauce. Where it doesn't work is in a dull, misguided spring roll.

The crabcake is not in the genre that normally captures my attention. I prefer them to be mostly crab meat, barely held together with egg and gingerly seared in a hot pan to fall-apart brilliance.

King takes the opposite approach, and it works, beautifully. The crab is supplemented by a veritable grocery list of ingredients: red bell peppers, onions, capers, parsley, hard cooked egg, Tabasco and Dijon mustard. After he forms each medium-thickness cake, he dredges them in his secret weapon — fresh breadcrumbs — and fries them until the exterior achieves a pronounced crispness.

For those who want to step off the steakhouse treadmill but still crave beef, Lurçat is your kind of refuge. King treats a handful of cuts — hanger, ribeye, New York strip — with obvious finesse, and gives them the chef-driven embellishments that rarely rise up to the steakhouse circuit. And for passport-carrying citizens of Gold-Card Nation, the prices won't elicit an anxiety attack.

Nearly 12 years after leaving to become his own boss, Becker still maintains a somewhat ghostly presence on the Lurçat menu, which makes perfect sense. After all, at his own restaurants, Becker boasts all kinds of dishes that are so popular that he'll never be able to ease them into retirement (yeah, bruschetta with scrambled eggs and lobster at Bar La Grassa, and lamb scottadito with goat's milk yogurt at 112 Eatery, I'm talking to you).

It is brazenly delicious. Ditto the potato purée, which is surely (and insanely) equal if not greater parts butter, cream and tuber. They're Idaho russets, and here's the secret: Rather than boiling them, King bakes them.

"That dries them out even more," he said. "So you can get in even more butter and cream."

Another Here-From-Day-One dish? The sea bass. Its beauty is in its simplicity. The lean, dense fish is marinated overnight in sweetened miso, then roasted in the oven, the top glazed with more of that sweet/sour sugar-miso mix to imbue it with a gently crisp, caramelized finish.

It arrives with a lively Napa cabbage slaw — a wisely crunchy foil for the fish's supple, melt-in-your-mouth texture, and it's darned near perfect. The whole shebang rings in at $39, a figure which, on paper, made me gasp. Two bites in, and I was convinced that I'd happily pay more.

Still, because it's populated by so many holdovers, the menu can't help but feel a little static. It's a tough balancing act. Do I want to eat that crazy-good salad of apples and buttery manchego cheese? Of course I do, just as I did a decade ago. But that doesn't also mean that I'm not hungry for something new.

The one-of-a-kind setting is as enchanting as ever, but after years of hard use, the dining room and bar are looking a little beat up around the edges; both grow infinitely more charming as the sun sets, when their spellbinding infrastructure — holdovers from the former Loring Cafe and Bar — become accentuated.

Like King, Leah Henderson, longtime D'Amico pastry chef, steers clear of innovation for innovation's sake, choosing instead to favor a handful of dessert classics.

She solves the I'm-bored-with profiteroles problem by making the airy pastries chocolate, then filling them with salted caramel ice cream, a surefire combination if there ever was one.

Or she piles on the bourbon — and the butterscotch — with an ultra-moist date cake. Equally memorable is her elegant Pavlova, with colorful pistachio and blackberry notes.

And she nostalgically invokes the Minnesota State Fair with a plate of mini-doughnuts. You'll order them thinking that you'll want to share, but when they arrive, so warm and puffed up and twinkling with fragrant cinnamon-blended sugar, that generosity will be your last thought. Trust me.

On a recent visit, most of the dishes seemed slapdash at best, careless at worst. A half-size portion of the sea bass was a disaster, undercooked and bland, not the nuanced thriller that had enthralled me at dinner.

Under-embellished, over-seasoned mahi mahi tacos would have embarrassed any self-respecting food truck. The fabled Lurçat fries arrived limp and greasy. Only a cracker-crust pizza, topped with cool, velvety raw tuna, impressed, but it too was diminished by its clunky soy and ginger touches.

A disappointment, to be sure, with two major exceptions: those marvelous doughnuts, and sliders, another Becker-now-King staple.

Oh, those burgers. Enriched with butter — so much butter — and tons of thyme and onions, and served on sturdy potato buns, they're the burgers that launched a local slider revolution, and their appeal hasn't dimmed during the intervening years.

They're served two to an order, and at $8.50, they're a bargain, a semi-foreign Lurçat concept.

In this regard, I'm beginning to think that it's the natural successor to Charlie's Cafe Exceptionale.

This diner barely recalls Charlie's — it closed when I was in college — but everything I've learned about it tells me that it was a crossroads, simultaneously appealing to special occasion celebrants, business gatherings, casual meet-and-greets and spontaneous drop-ins, all the while maintaining quality standards.

To me, that's Lurçat. Long may it wave.

With warm weather on its way, Lurçat's patios deserved to be programmed into any and all al fresco dining plans. Both are first-rate: the bar's outdoor space fronts Loring Park, and the dining room's open-air getaway is tucked into a back alley, a captivating little slice of Montemarte on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. Yeah, I can't wait for summer.

Rick Nelson • @RickNelsonStrib