date: 1/12/11
location: minneapolis
grade: b

everyone agrees (including servers) that before tim mckee stepped in, this place defined 'hot mess.' but how is it a while after he's left the building? you can look at sea change, and solera (well, not anymore that jp's left and it was taken over by others but before that and after he redid the menu) as the same thing only different.

the man can do wonders with the menu and plating and such, especially when he's there, but he takes some of the magic with him when he leaves. pretty plating makes a dish like the endive salad ($9) with caesar citronette, pinenuts, and pecorino look very nice, but it feels overpriced for what you get- when you're working with a minimal ingredient dish, your food lives and dies on the quality of the ingredients, and the person who ordered it said they weren't great ingredients. (and hey, with the pine nut prices soaring i bet it'd be a few bucks cheaper.) wasn't worth it.

112 eatery charges $9 for what's known as the best in town steak tartare (per their online menu right now). il gatto charges $12 ($10 on their online menu- they should update that) for a solid, though slightly salty rendition with horseradish capers and a quail egg. is it worth $3 more than the 112 one?

of the appetizers served in the first round, the unqualified worth it one was the 'pesce spada sott'olio' ($11.00), or for those of us who don't know italian, an oil-cured preserved swordfish served with with not so many heirloom tomatoes, a few slices of radish and tonatto (it's a sauce made with tuna). the texture of the fish was perfect and the tuna in the sauce plus the slight acid from the tomato bits and crispy radish made it a thoughtful, well-plated, mc kee-worthy dish.

i think i got the best of dinner, also. i was in the mood for uber-comfort food and the uovo fonduta ($9.00)- a poached farm egg with fonduta (a fontina cheese and truffle fondue), wood roasted asparagus and grilled bread with a side of the fries ($5.00) served with a grated pecorino, and rosemary-sage aioli fit the bill precisely.

they certainly have sourced their eggs well, because that yolk was huge and creamy and bright yellow. it's less gooey than you think, but makes a warm, tasty, filling and very very rich dip for things. it is way messy to eat for sure. i would've liked even more grilled bread to scrape the stuff out as the regular bread at the table, other than the first basket, was served very cold indeed, which made it less than optimal (plus it had some weird offputting grit in places- if it was cornmeal, it was misused).

kind of like the fries- they were passably warm when served on their wooden plank, the ones in the basket were slightly warmer. i liked them better when i reheated them optimally the next day. you get enough for 2-4 people with the basket. they were probably too salty for most people, so fine by me.

the special served on wednesdays right now, porchetta ($16.00) with a creamy celery root polenta and rapini was again a solid dish, and one of the items that seemed most correctly priced here. perhaps even a bargain for an entree. the radish salad that was ordered with it ($5.00) was a bit of a surprise- the anchovy vinaigrette was very light and it tasted not really like radish, but orange zest was the flavor carrying the dish, the radish just gave it crunch. i'm doing to assume there was too much zest there.

the person who ordered the endive salad also got the least-winning main course, and a bit too much of it- they were talked into a large linguini with crab, fennel and chervil ($18 vs. $11) by an otherwise quite good server. it was an underwhelming dish in all respects from flavor to plating.

never was at figlio, so i am not sure about how it looks different. now it's all very dark lighting, very dark wood. noisy in the bar area, which you can hear a bit through the divider of wine storage, but not enough to ruin the conversation. i do like the bread wall and other food display storage in the dining area though. but they called their restroom the 'litter box.' that's trying too hard. at least most of the other not-clever puns have been eliminated.

if you're at the guthrie and want seafood, sea change isn't a bad choice. if you happen to be in the uptown area and want italian-esque food, il gatto isn't a bad choice. are these places i would make a specific trip to? not really.