“Dad, can I have the beef?”
“Sammy, you had the beef last time. You don’t even like steak.”
“I don’t care about the steak, I want the sweetbreads!”
This is apparently the new normal conversation I’m going to have with my 6-year-old, thanks to Heyday in Minneapolis. Soon, you’ll be reading all the real reviewers write-ups of this month-old restaurant, and I’ll be shocked if the critics aren’t losing their minds praising the place. It’s excellent. Warm, comfortable surroundings, well-trained, very polished service team (headed by Loren Zinter), and perfectly imagined and executed food (thanks to chef Jim Christiansen)!
We’ve been twice with our sons, and we’ve eaten our way through the entire menu. The serving sizes are bigger than what you expect with fine-dining, and slightly smaller than you’d expect from a typical Minnesota restaurant. For me, it’s perfect. We can share- and everyone gets a couple tastes. And the prices are reasonable.
WHAT TO ORDER:
Lamb tartare ($12)
Sweet Beetroot and Hazelnut salad ($8)
Smoked Brook Trout ($14)
Crispy Lamb Belly ($12)
Roasted Chicken Thigh ($11)
Roasted Squab ($18)
Beef Filet ($22)
All the desserts
Start with the lamb tartare. It’s a shocking bright red in color because of a rich chili flavor on top; the crispy artichokes give an awesome texture.
Then get the beetroot salad: and look closely at the beet. It’s covered with a gelatin, that looks like beet but isn’t. It’s preserved raspberry with beet coloring, so it looks similar to the beet. The two flavors match perfectly with the goat cheese.
The beef with sunchokes, morels(Sammy doesn’t like mushrooms but now loves morels), sweetbreads, and perfectly cooked steak is the most expensive thing at $22. It’s one of the best steak dishes I’ve ever had in the Twin Cities.
There’s lots of fish for good reason: Chef Jim Christiansen is brilliant at it. The kids loved the smoked trout and the roasted monkfish. The fish dishes sound simple, but the sauces and accompaniments are complex and delicious.
The squab is a real achievement: perfectly cooked so the squab has a crispy skin and moist inside. Then it’s placed on a bed of beet tapioca and smoked marrow. We told our kids the beet tapioca was like bubble tea – and they loved it! Holy moly.
DESSERT
Diane Yang has helped Jim craft a really cool dessert list. We had the Rogue River Blue cheese – a savory cheese course with shallot jam and little onion rings on it. It’s beautiful, and delicious ($5) – I would think about ordering it as a starter.
The vanilla creme fraiche ice cream ($6) is a real achievement: the ice cream is rich and creamy, the frozen licorice is black and ashy in appearance, and adds a subtle anise flavor to the ice cream, and the whole dish is brightened up with rhubarb granita. Just lovely.
DRINKS
Bartender Britt Tracy is doing a great job with really approachable $9 cocktails. I like the Beetnick quite a bit, a tequila, Cynar, beet shrub combination. The Garter Belt is another great one. And last night they made my kids a kiddie cocktail that put the ones I make at home to shame!
My children love this place, my wife and I love this place, it sets a new standard for casual/high-end dining. By that I mean: a casual vibe, an affordable price, with quality that you’d expect at a high-end restaurant.
Heyday – dinner only, opens at 5pm
2700 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55408
http://heydayeats.com
