The Kenwood

We did make it to The Kenwood for our anniversary dinner on Wednesday night, and I'm glad we did, because it's now on our top 5 restaurants in Minneapolis list, maybe even top 3. As previously mentioned, the restaurant doesn't take reservations, and the hours listed for Tuesday through Thursday are 8am to 9pm. That's right, not a typo, nine o'clock in the evening. Which seems awfully early for a restaurant to close for the night, but this is Minneapolis after all.

After an extremely scenic drive through the neighborhood of Kenwood / Calhoun Isles [we found where the rich people live - here apparently. There are huge houses with perfectly manicured lawns, and I'm sure houses that overlook Lake of the Isles are worth millions], we arrived at the restaurant around 6:30pm and it was packed [with rich, I'm assuming, old white people, and families with kids]. There is a cozy lounge area with club chairs [if this was in New York, they would have done away with the waiting area and added 4 more tables], and perused the drink and dinner menus while we waited for a table to open up. I don't know what the backstory is, but there is small type on the bottom of the drink menu that states, "If your name is Rob Bonelli, you drink for free."

We did not have to wait long for a table, 10 minutes at most, and were seated at the banquette in the middle of the restaurant. I like the decor at The Kenwood - mainly grey walls with accent walls covered in plaid wallpaper, oak wainscots, with wrought iron chandeliers and grey-green button tufted banquettes. Very woodsy and hunting cottage-like.

The butter that a restaurant serves with the bread is usually a pretty good indicator of what the rest of the meal is going to be like. At The Kenwood, the butter is at room temperature, salted and served in a small ramekin. It was very good butter; Jamie wanted to sneak some into my purse. For appetizers, we shared small plates of figs, proscuitto, ricotta & honey, and a King Crab Risotto, with sweet corn, red pepper, chervil. For entrées, Jamie ordered the Limousin Beef Striploin, with fondant potato, porcini mushroom, red wine, and I had the Chanterelle Mushroom "Cigar", with baby yam, creamed brussels sprouts, wild rice.

The small plates were really yummy, best risotto I've had in a while. My "cigar", mushrooms wrapped in some kind of dough [it wasn't crispy like phyllo, more like a thin crepe], was only okay, I didn't think the chanterelles had much flavor. The puffed wild rice that was sprinkled on top added some extra crunch, but again, didn't taste like much. Jamie's beef was mouthwateringly delicious though, so I was picking off his plate. For dessert, we had the Lemon Meringue Pie, which came deconstructed in a glass. So all in all, The Kenwood scores high marks food-wise. The pacing of the meal was a little off, we had to wait a little longer than we would have liked for the apps, and there was a noticeable gap between finishing our apps and when we got our mains.

Chef Don Saunders knows his food, unfortunately, he was also let down by subpar service. It was busy, but that doesn't excuse our waitress from checking in with us. Not once did she ask how our food was or how we were doing. At one point, when she was addressing the table next to us, she squeezed herself between the tables, hunched over, and almost knocked over our glasses with her rear end [she was oblivious to this, of course]. There was also no explanation, either on the menu or by our waitress, that the lemon meringue pie would come deconstructed. We knew because the table next to us had ordered it, but it was definitely an oversight that should have been corrected. Service and slowness aside, we still had a memorable meal, and will definitely be back to The Kenwood soon.