"I feel as if we're eating at the airport," said my friend. We were dining at Peoples Organic, and the Galleria's latest restaurant tenant bears more than a passing resemblance to the French Meadow Bakery & Cafe at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Both are the work of French Meadow mastermind Lynn Gordon.
Gordon has forged a democratic and affordable format that caters to a huge demographic, including the breakfast-all-day crowd, the beleaguered shopper in need of an impromptu pick-me-up, the mall worker looking for a grab-and-go meal and the book club settling in over dessert and a glass of wine. Gordon is also injecting words -- and practices -- such as local and organic into the mix, a depressing rarity in Panera Bread-land.
Peoples boasts a decent quick-service breakfast, kicking off at 6 a.m. and serving it until the doors close at night. A pair of porridges -- garnish them with the flavorful house-made coconut marmalade -- are a welcome change from the usual oatmeal routine, although the oatmeal is pretty terrific, too. For something egg-ier and carb-ier, there's a daily strata, and they're a treat, a kind of crustless quiche but better. For dessert, I was all over the half-slice of brûléed pink grapefruit, the burned sugar adding a crunchy sweet note to the fruit's mouth-puckering tartness.
The kitchen wisely puts a deliriously delicious ham, from Fischer Farms in Waseca, Minn., front and center. It's shaved thin and layered between tender biscuits or English muffins, or cut into strips to beef up (sorry, pork up) those eggy-cheesy strata, or served with eggs, fresh guacamole and roasted tomatoes on a croissant. Whatever the dish, it was always roasted to perfection. Ditto the crisp, smoky, thick-cut and absurdly delicious bacon.
As the day progresses, soups become a major highlight. One of two daily standards is a steaming bowl of deeply flavorful chicken stock filled with a colorful blend of avocados, carrots and green onions, the other a bracing ginger-scented broth with carrots, pea pods and brown rice. Both act as meals in and of themselves.
A half-dozen salads are noteworthy more for their fresh ingredients and plentiful portions than for any category-changing recipes. A large sweets selection runs 50-50; so many of them fall in the good-for-you category of treats, and where is the fun in that? For every chewy peanut butter cookie or delicate vanilla-lavender cupcake, there's a dull apple crisp that's really little more than a glorified baked apple, or an overpriced, barely chocolatey panna cotta.
I'm also half-and-half on the grill items. Wedging that glorious Minnesota ham into one of the kitchen's buttery croissants is exactly the kind of overkill mentality that's missing from so many of the desserts. The grilled Rachel was a beaut; ditto the simple and satisfying grilled cheese, built with a chewy ciabatta, and the sweet-hot curried chicken salad sandwich. But the drab, underseasoned burgers were a disappointment, and I never encountered an omelet that wasn't greasy and overcooked.
Other quibbles? It took a few visits to figure out just exactly how the service line works, a process that should be instantly intuitive, but isn't. I wasn't impressed by the staff's latte-making skills. The service is nicer than nice, but is it too much to ask that someone working behind the cash register be familiar with its operation? Oh, and for an enterprise that trumpets its green cred, there's an awful lot of plastic packaging in that grab-and-go cooler.
