The people of Burnsville should be showering the owners of Porter Creek Hardwood Grill with muffin baskets, fruit bouquets or whatever is the current socially acceptable means of expressing gratitude. For this new and eminently clone-able venture, Lynn Reimer and John Sheehan have nailed down a great many of the critical but tough-to-master details that go into creating a warm-and-fuzzy dining-out experience. That they managed to accomplish this feat in restaurant-starved suburbia is the proverbial icing on the cake.
Starting with the menu, one of those a-taste-for-every-demographic billboards. Urban food freaks might typify the selection as predictable, but out in the 55337, dishes such as lamb shanks and roast duck are borderline revolutionary. Even better, they're terrific: The lamb, served on a tennis racquet-sized bone, is carefully braised to fork-tenderness, and the duck is served two ways: roasted to crisp-skinned perfection in the kitchen's wood-burning oven and prepared confit-style to succulent, fall-apart deliciousness.
That wood-burning oven gets a workout. Chef James Foley (Tejas, Via Cafe & Bar, Enjoy!) and his crew use it to burnish a series of nicely chewy, oval-shaped flatbreads, topping them with a flurry of well-matched ingredients, ranging from a barbecue-style shrimp-bacon combo to sweetly caramelized onions finished with a decent prosciutto and a blanket of fresh arugula. They put the rest of the menu's predictable but pleasant appetizers to shame, and if the kitchen prepared nothing else it would still have a hit on its hands.
Fortunately, firewood isn't restricted to the oven. A showy, self-basting rotisserie turns out a remarkably delicious wood-roasted chicken. The meat is juicy and tender and teasingly smoky, and it improves every dish it touches, whether it's served straight-up as a crispy skinned half-bird paired with creamy mashed potatoes, or after it has been cooled, forked and folded into a handful of enormous salads, most notably a feisty Southwestern-style chopped salad and an imaginatively plated and seasoned Israeli couscous salad.
This is a restaurant that knows how to cater to its audience while gently nudging it in new directions. Good-old walleye is nicely done, with a crisp Asiago crust that yields to steaming, clean-tasting fish. Steak is served four ways (best is a cold-smoked hanger steak, sliced and finished with a rich red wine demi-glace and roasted mushrooms). Then Foley tosses in halibut (with light lemon and tomato accents) and sea bass (dressed with mussels and polenta) and does it well; not too out there, but still unique for a place next door to a Red Lobster.
Yeah, there are the requisite pastas, and in a way it's a shame, because they bring down the menu's cumulative GPA, always a bit overcooked and overwrought. (But are they an improvement over anything at the nearby Olive Garden? Uh, yeah.) It was startling to reread the menu and discover that the bland white gravy in an oven-baked clay pan filled with pieces of Seafood 101 basics (salmon, shrimp, cod) was supposed to be a ginger sauce. Every soup I sampled tasted formulaic and reheated. It's peak tomato season, yet the kitchen, like so many in Minnesota, seems content to air reruns of "The Cottony and the Flavorless."
Desserts are sanely scaled and modestly priced, two admirable qualities. Some have been done to death, but two that make a favorable impression are a sweet-tart orange marmalade-glazed cake and an insanely luscious panna cotta. Value is another key Porter Creek element. The trappings may suggest Nordstrom, but the prices are squarely Kohl's.
