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Following twenty years of farmer's markets selling locally grown vegetables, native fruits, and local honey Linda created Marianne's Kitchen in Shoreview, MN, an oasis of good food, conversation and laughter in a suburban food desert. Operating from 2011-2017 the cafe offered home made soups, fresh bread baked daily, great sandwiches and treats and a complete line of gluten-free soups, pickled products, jams, jellies, salsas and locally sourced soups, honey and grains.

The Marianne's Kitchen of sharing, conversation, and learning continues with ongoing commentary, food reviews and food finds as we grow, cook and eat our food and sample local restaurants.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

un magnifique dejeuner...lunch at L'Etoile du Nord

Vous rappelez-vous le gout de la nourriture? 

Do you remember the taste of food?   We rediscovered it today at L'Etoile du Nord.

Endive & pear gratin with stoemp (root veggie mash) and beets with caraway for me, a French-style omelet with beets and onions for John.

Perfect, wonderful, exquisite.......


As a teenager, my friend and I would take the train to Minneapolis on Tuesdays (our day off from work) and dine at a wonderful restaurant for lunch.  Charlie's Cafe Exceptionale, Murray's (home of the silver butter knife steak), various white tablecloth hotel restaurants---where they served your boeuf bourguignon tableside, ladling it onto your plate with a bit of a flourish.

Yeah, those days are long gone...except maybe right here in Bayport at this moment in time.

Perhaps one of the most exquisite meals I've enjoyed in a long, long time.   One bite of the pear...with its wine-kissed  get-your-attention flavor....slightly cooked but still crisp...paired with beautiful endive, a bit of ham and wonderful cheese that had its edges slightly crisped under the broiler...incroyable.

The sophisticated texture of John's omelet...filled with beets and onions....was a trip to Europe on a substantial white 'plate' paired with perfectly prepared heirloom fingerlings.  Not the greasy American rolled up sheet of 'scrambled' eggs...instead, in the French tradition---puffy, no trace of the intersection of the egg white and yolk----a singular-hued, enticing pillow of egg and veggie...tender and light.  Julia Child & Jacques Pepin would approve.

So, yes, apparently there is still a bit of food in Minnesota.   This ephemeral memory will stay with me as I travel to Europe this week...in search of food, as I remember it, and as it can be.










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