The Rake Magazine

What a difference a chef makes!

Patrick Atanalian is now in charge of the kitchen at Sanctuary, and the cuisine at the Washington Ave. hideaway is dramatically improved. It's a reunion for the talented Marseilles-born chef and Sanctuary's managing partner Michael Kutscheid, who first worked together back in the mid-90s, when Kutscheid owned Kapoochi's, one of the most innovative restaurants of its time. After a dishonest employee bankrupted the restaurant, Kutscheid went on to become a familiar face as a manager at Oceanaire, Martini Blu and Babalu, and Atanalian went on to work at the Loring Café, Vintage, A Rebours and Le Cordon Bleu's culinary school.

Atanalian became notorious for such cutting edge culinary pranks as beef tenderloin with plantains, pepperoncici, sweet mango rum sauce and a Coca-Cola crème fraiche, and halibut with a gummi bear crayfish broth. He plays it a bit straighter this time around, but there is no lack of invention in the current Sanctuary menu. Among the highlights of my most recent visit: starters of carpaccio enlivened with white anchovies, a candied lemon fennel salad ($8), and a Napoleon of crisp taro root, roast mushrooms, sundried tomato tapenade and a mascarpone mousse ($6). The lamb shank braised in coconut curry ($19) and the glazed salmon with sweet and sour potato wontons ($23) were both delightful, but there is a lot more on the menu that I would like to try - including the duck confit risotto croquettes, the salad of baby frisee, salmon gravlax and goat cheese, and a chateau of sirloin with lobster reduction and potato cakes ($25).

Kutscheid says he plans to start offering a prix-fixe $35 five course tasting menu Mondays through Thursdays, starting next week, with an optional flight of four selected wines for $12.

One little annoyance to mention: to park on either side of the building, you have to pre-pay an automat, which reportedly is fussy about accepting credit cards or paper money - so bring along $3 in quarters.

Sanctuary, 903 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis 612-203-5058.

It's a slippery, messy business, kissing. Two tongues meetings in one person's mouth, touching and rolling and wrestling like snakes. The transfer of saliva. The hot, warm breath vaporous with what the kisser has most recently consumed.

Not only that, even strangers do it. People who've only just met in bars; partygoers on New Year's Eve; returning soldiers and can-can girls.

The fact is, even those of us who are married, living and trading body fluids with the loves of our lives are rather irrational. I mean, would you use your spouse's toothbrush? Soiled strand of dental floss? Already chewed gum?

Of course not! And yet, we invade the oral — and other — cavities of our partners quite whimsically. No matter how we think it through, the strangeness of kissing as a modern-day practice, we keep on doing it. Why? Well, it turns out scientists have an answer. It's because we're hard-wired to taste our mate's body chemicals -- essentially, through their spit.

I'm sorry. You'd like me to put a nice veneer on this. But the fact is, according to an article called Why We Love in the January 28 issue of TIME, we're actually "sampling" the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of a person when we kiss. This is a gene family involved in tissue rejection, and it's important that we mate with people whose MHC is different from our own.

"Conceive a child with a person whose MHC is too similar to your own, and the risk increases that the womb will expel the fetus," writes Jeffrey Kluger in TIME. "Find a partner with sufficiently difference MHC, and you're likelier to carry a baby to term."

So you see? Kissing is a biological process, intended to help us propogate the species. Now it all makes sense. . . .

Well actually, it does. It makes far more sense than Valentine's Day, which is an incredibly manipulative and commercial annual event (second only to Mother's Day in this respect). Cupid would have us kissing and doing all the wonderfully irrational natural things that come next. Nevertheless, we persist in celebrating this stupid holiday [myself included] with overpriced flowers and cards and shiny red things ranging from candy boxes to cars.

My colleague, Jeremy Iggers, recently wrote about Valentine's Day dinners, and I'd like to add a few suggestions of my own.

Chef Jon Radle at Grand Cafe is offering a prix fixe dinner featuring gnocchi with braised leek cream; pickled beet and watercress salad; a choice of roasted prime rib, butter poached lobster, or pan-fried polenta; and a malted chocolate tartlet or coconut-cardamom trifle. The price is $55 per person, $85 per person with a flight of suggested wines.

With its French-bistro-by-the-Seine sort of feel, Barbette is a romantic place to kiss in a dark corner any night of the year. But on V-Day, you can get a four-course meal for $42. Beet and walnut soup; stuffed quail on Swiss chard or pistachio-crusted goat cheese; cream cheese stuffed beef tenderloin or seared scallops or wild mushroom risotto; and petit fours with hot chocolate.

Now, I have to admit, I'm throwing this last one in simply for the name: Give the treat of meat on Valentine's Day. It's a dinner going on at Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steakhouse, which promises to "shower" guests with "15 savory cuts of delicious meat." Personally, I've never been to Fogo de Chao and I'm not a big meat-eater. But with messaging like that, even I'm tempted to give it a try.

Do you have any favorites places that offer live entertainment — preferably cheap or free — along with food? I am starting to compile a list, and so far I have:

Bluegrass and old-time music at Dulono's Pizza
Occasional concerts at Kramarczuk's (like the Tamburitze Orchestra)

Karaoke at Pancho Villa

Jazz and more, weekends at Café Maude

Rhonda Laurie and her trio, Wednesdays at Cave Vin

Friday night jazz at Crave in Edina

Speaking of cheap dates, the Valentine's Day, here are a couple of options that won't break the bank:

From Valentine's Day through Sunday, February 17, Joe's Garage is offering "Valentine for the common man (and woman)" : platters for two that range from wild rice meatloaf or buttermilk fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy (both $20) to walleye or barbecued ribs for $25, or a grilled beef sirloin with sundried tomato butter, sauteed mushrooms and fries for $30. And you can add a bottle of Red Truck Red or White Truck White for $15.

Bryant Lake Bowl, famous for its Monday night Cheap Date Night dinners for two that includes two entrees, a bottle of wine or a couple of beers, and a game of bowling for $28, is going (slightly) upscale for Valentines Day with a Not so Cheap Date Night: they are adding soup or salad, and raising the price to $38. And if you want to make it a really memorable evening, you can enjoy your dinner in the adjacent BLB theater, where Joseph Scrimshaw will be performing an all-new version of his interactive romantic comedy, Adventures in Mating. Shows are at 7 and 10 p.m., and the doors open an hour earlier - tickets are $12, or $10 with a Fringe Festival button.

Italy is out, Texas is in.

A visit to the website of Brix Wine Bar & Bistro confirmed a tipster's report: Brix Bistro & Wine Bar in Saint Louis Park has closed, and will be replaced by Laredo's Tex-West Grill & Cantina, a "Tex-West" theme restaurant:

"Laredo’s will feature unique Tex-West entrees, authentic Mexican dishes & mesquite-grilled steaks in a fun, energetic atmosphere. Laredo’s Cantina will feature our soon-to-be famous Margaritas & ice-cold cerveza. We promise to be fun & affordable, but still provide great service with only the freshest ingredients on our menu.f you like the local food in Austin, TX, San Diego, CA and Cabo San Lucas as much as we do, then you’ll love Laredo’s! We are shooting for an early March opening."

The ownership remains the same: the Collins Restaurant Group, which also owns the adjacent McCoy's Public House.

I'll reserve judgment until I visit the new restaurant, but this seems like a real shame. When when I reviewed Brix, soon after it opened, I was impressed - and surprised. Brix offered authentic Italian cuisine, prepared with a level of skill and sophistication rarely found on the suburban dining scene.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I drove out to Giapponese, the new sushi bar / restaurant in Woodbury. Sushi is everywhere these days, including the refrigerator cases of local supermarkets, and since the sushi restaurants all tend to get the same ingredients from the same suppliers, it has become a pretty generic product. But the name – Italian for “Japanese” — was intriguing, and the online menu sounded pretty interesting: smoked salmon bruschetta and poki (the Hawaiian version of tuna tartare); and some varieties of fish and shellfish that seldom show up on local sushi menus, such as kawahagi (file fish, a member of the blowfish family) kinmeidai (golden eye snapper), kohada (gizzard shad) and walu (the Hawaiian name for a variety of escolar, sometimes sold as white tuna.

When I asked for omakase (chef’s choice), chef-owner Henry Chan immediately knew what I wanted, and proceeded to serve up a delightful series of courses: raw scallop, Tasmanian salmon, halibut rolled in a thin ribbon of cucumber, a whole small mackerel presented as sashimi, and a roll of tempura shrimp and avocado topped with tuna. Chan, who grew up in Wisconsin, recently moved here from Eau Claire, where he owns the town’s only sushi bar, the Shanghai Bistro.

Chan clearly has a passion for sushi, and listening to him, he sounds really committed to bringing in the best quality and most interesting varieties he can find. The selection is still pretty limited, but he says that as his sales volume grows, he will be adding more varieties. If you want to be notified when new and interesting varieties of sushi and seafood are available, send him an email at twinscroll@gmail.com. I just got an email yesterday, announcing the arrival of his live tanks (for holding lobster and shrimp), and a shipment of Hamma Hamma oysters from Washington state.

I'd like to go back sometime to try the Kobe beef steaks - a 16 ounce bone-in New York Strip and a 14 ounce ribeye, both $55. This isn't the original Kobe beef from Japan, where the cattle are massaged daily and fed rations of beer, but it's the same breed, Wagyu. Chan gets his beef from a friend who has a herd of Wagyu near Augusta, Wisconsin. $55 for a steak sounds pretty steep, compared to what other restaurants charge, it's a bargain. Locally, Cosmos has imported Japanese Kobe beef on its menu for $17 an ounce (which would work out to $272 for a 16-ounce steak), and even that is a bargain compared to Craftsteak in Las Vegas. Craftsteak charges $105 for a 14-ounce American Wagyu ribeye, $184 for an eight-ounce Australian Wagyu ribeye, and $240 for an eight-ounce Japanese Wagyu steak - which works out to $480 a pound.

Giapponese Sushi
10060 Citywalk Drive
Woodbury, MN 55129
Phone: 651-578-7777