Restaurants: Taste of the good life at La Belle Vie

To say that the eight-course tasting menu at La Belle Vie is a peak dining experience doesn't really begin to cover it.

"If I thought I could get away with it, I would have a tasting-menu-only restaurant," said chef/co-owner Tim McKee. "It's our place to really show off, and it's always my favorite part of the menu."

No wonder the extravagance accounts for 60 percent of the dining room's sales. I can't imagine booking a table and not ordering it.

Here's why: McKee, the Twin Cities' first James Beard award-winning chef, is a craftsman at the peak of his considerable powers, and his tasting menu is the ultimate expression of his prodigious culinary gifts. This supremely confident cooking is technical prowess mediated by intelligence, creativity and curiosity. Lesser chefs stumble on their compulsion to embellish -- an urge that frequently trips them up. Not here.

McKee's skill set also includes some serious talent. Start with chef de cuisine Mike DeCamp, who has been cooking alongside McKee since the mid-1990s, and pastry chef Diane Yang, another singular talent. Managing director and sommelier Bill Summerville also lends his expertise.

Although the menu changes monthly, it adheres to a loose format, starting with fish and ending with beef. In between there's almost always a dish devoted to poussin (a young chicken), raised specifically for the restaurant by Pat Ebnet of Wild Acres in Pequot Lakes, Minn.

Last week's young-chicken course was all about the ultra-tender breast, a burst of intensely chicken-ey flavor that was caramelized to perfection. It was served in a delicate porcini broth alongside a bite-size slice of pork belly, which exuded a seductive smoky scent but didn't taste that way, a marvelous sleight of hand.

The menu is also so seasonally reflective that it could double as a calendar; right now, peak-season citrus fruits, including blood orange and yuzu, nudge their acidic flavor profiles into several courses. McKee, wisely catering to all segments of his audience, makes room for the familiar, too. I don't know that I've ever tasted a more supple, flavorful rib-eye. Each tender slice was topped, steakhouse style, with a world-class Roquefort, and served opposite a kind of braised beef cheek terrine.

Yang's nuanced desserts ably reflect her boss' mind-set, whether it's a sunny excursion through pineapple or a sculptural nod to caramel and orange. Oh, and the service staff could profitably moonlight in community education, headlining a course dubbed "This Is How It's Done 101."

Befitting the Gold Card prices, McKee and his crew shower the evening with showy extras, including a mouth-melting Gruyère gourgère that is surely eliciting a heaven-sent smile from Julia Child, and a tray of parting-shot sweets that lessens the check's sting. Oh, and the $85 price tag? When disposing of disposable income, it's all relative. The kitchen also offers two less expensive options: a five-course version for $70, and four courses, served in the adjacent lounge, for $45.

The dining room, a well preserved throwback to the building's 1927 roots, strikes me as a little off. Fortunately, the vastly more comfortable lounge makes for what is easily one of the state's most appealing dining-and-drinking environments. It doesn't hurt that it's also the native habitat of mixology master Johnny Michaels. The playful and not-expensive bar-snacks fare (don't miss the tuna tartare crostini, the lamb burgers or the decadent ham-truffle crêpe) is equally impressive.