The French figured out a long time ago that it isn’t just what you eat, it’s how you eat it: Slowly. In small courses. One course at a time. That might sound smart, but in the Minnesota marketplace, it can be a tough sell. The logic of the local restaurant economy is that if you’ve got to raise prices—as restaurants often do—the best way to make diners feel like they’re getting value for money is to dish out big portions. Enormous portions. The result? Diners eat too much, pay too much, and still take half of their meals home in a doggy bag.

The French solution to enhancing perceived value is to give the customer several smaller courses for a fixed price that is less than what they would pay if they ordered the same courses à la carte (off the menu). Voilà! The prix fixe. (That’s “pree feeks,” not “pree fee.”) There are lots of variations on the basic idea, ranging from two or three courses to gastronomic extravaganzas of nine courses or more; many restaurants offer several.

The more affordable prix-fixe menus aren’t always well publicized, and typically they come with some restrictions. The $40 prix-fixe bistro menu at Vincent – A Restaurant is served Monday through Thursday, while Cosmos’s $35 three-course pre-theater menu is only available from 5 to 7 p.m. nightly. North Coast’s five-course tasting menu is only available during the Wayzata dockside restaurant’s off-season, when business slows from up to seven hundred diners a night to two hundred or fewer; it’s a great value at $35 ($29 on Sundays). But the prix-fixe menu isn’t just a way to bring in customers. “It also is just a chance for me to play with food,” says chef Ryan Aberle. On the tasting menu, Aberle can serve courses that won’t sell well on the dinner menu, such as locally produced foie gras, or a confit of pheasant. The prix-fixe menu also lets Aberle experiment with the trendy hybrid practice of chemistry and cooking known as molecular gastronomy. Inspired by avant-garde chefs like Ferran Adrià (of El Bulli in Spain’s Catalonia province), and Grant Achatz (of Chicago’s Alinea), Aberle has surprised diners with such concoctions as foie gras-flavored Pop Rocks and fruit caviars.

One recent prix-fixe menu at North Coast started with a salad of mâche with sesame dressing and duck prosciutto, accompanied by a tempura-fried poached egg and a wedge of Cabrales cheese with honey; following that was a vanilla-scented squash and lobster bisque. Next came a lamb chop with spiced figs, then braised boneless beef short rib with horseradish spaetzle, and a sweet-and-sour finale of mango poached in black vinegar with coconut ice cream and a butterscotch pudding. Not every course was as memorable as the first, but the batting average was pretty high.

The cuisine may be haute, but the setting and service at North Coast are more casual. A long bar in the center of the dining room is ringed with at least ten large flat-screen TVs, most of which are tuned to sports channels, which creates an atmosphere a bit less refined than, say, the dining room at Cosmos or D’Amico Cucina.

Vincent Francoual, the chef at Vincent in downtown Minneapolis, says he offers his weekly $40 prix-fixe bistro menu to make the Twin Cities premier French restaurant seem “a little more affordable … people can come even if it is not an anniversary, without having to dress up. We are perceived as more upscale than we are because of the white tablecloths.” If you do the math, though, the prix-fixe menu doesn’t offer much of a savings over the à la carte prices for comparable dishes; although I enjoyed my recent visit, I’ll probably just order à la carte next time.

A typical prix-fixe bistro menu at Vincent might start with a choice of celery root soup or duck pâté, followed by roast chicken with crayfish sauce; or skate wing with cardoons, followed by St. Nectaire cheese or nut cake à la mode for dessert. The $68 five-course tasting menu, which must be ordered for the entire table, may include more refined dishes: pan-seared scallops with fingerling potatoes and orange sauce; porcini roasted monkfish with baby turnips, cipollini onions, and tamarind-braised short ribs; a pan-seared beef tenderloin.
If your taste runs towards Scandinavian minimalism, Cosmos at the Graves 601 Hotel in downtown Minneapolis must rank as the most elegant dining room in the Twin Cities, with its exotic wood veneers, polished cut glass, and gleaming marble. Chef Stephen Trojahn offers the priciest prix-fixe dinners in the Twin Cities: seven courses for $150 per person, or nine courses for $200 (including wines), served at the chef’s table in the kitchen. A weekly five-course tasting menu is also available at $60 per person ($98 with wine pairings).

My companion and I opted for the most modest option, a $35 three-course pre-theater menu. Nothing about our dining experience felt scaled-down, however: Service was polished and attentive, and our dinners included such unlisted amenities as an amuse-bouche and intermezzo. By sharing our selections, we turned the meal into a six-course tasting dinner. Highlights included sublime seared diver-harvested scallops over truffle-scented linguini; halibut with cauliflower risotto, flavored with basil, capers and olives, and crème brulée with fresh berries. Ordered à la carte, our $35 menus would have cost closer to $50, but dining at Cosmos is still not cheap: Our tab for two, with tax, tip, and a couple of glasses of wine each, still came to nearly $160.

There’s no wall between the lounge and the dining room at 20.21, but there’s a clear divide between the clientele in the two spaces. The bar crowd is half the age of the boomers further back in the dining room, and more casually dressed. To draw in those younger customers and boost his bar business, chef Scott Irestone offers three courses (half-portions, actually) for $20.21, which is considerably less than the price of an entrée on the regular menu. In addition, glasses of wine are as little as $5. If you don’t mind eating in the bar, and possibly standing up when the place is crowded, this is the best deal in town. Choices vary nightly, but recent offerings from the Asian-fusion menu have included starters of crispy spring rolls or Korean-style beef ribs with kim chee, and entrées of Hong Kong-style striped bass with bok choy and shiitakes, or pan-roasted organic chicken with garlic-braised spinach. For those with fatter wallets, 20.21 offers four-course tasting menus in the dining room, priced from $61 to $79.

That’s just a taste of the local prix-fixe dining scene, but there are a lot more to try: Bayport Cookery offers one seasonal menu at a time , but with three options: the “Grand Tasting” experience for $85; the five-course “Chef’s Recommended” menu for $55, or any three courses of your choosing for $35. At Fugaise, chef Don Saunders’s “Tour of the Menu” offers similar options: nine courses at $95, seven courses for $80, and five for $65. La Belle Vie offers eight courses for $80 or five for $65, in addition to a four-course lounge menu for $40. Cue offers a five-course “Experience” for $45, and a seven-course “Grand Experience” for $65. And the stalwart D’Amico Cucina sticks with just one choice: six courses for $65. Muffuletta offers a three-course Sunday Night Supper for $25.95.

20.21 Restaurant and Bar [9], 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-253-3410

Bayport Cookery [10], 328 Fifth Ave. N., Bayport; 651-430-1066

Cosmos [11], Graves 601 Hotel, 601 First Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-312-1123

Cue at the Guthrie [12], 806 S. Second St., Minneapolis; 612-225-6499

D’Amico Cucina [13], 100 N. Sixth St., Minneapolis; 612-338-2401

La Belle Vie [16], 510 Groveland, Minneapolis; 612-874-6440

Muffuletta [17], 2260 Como Ave., St. Paul; 651-644-9116

North Coast [18], 294 E. Grove Lane, Wayzata; 952-475-4960

Vincent – A Restaurant [19], 1100 Nicollet Mall; 612-630-1189