Alma only recently opened its doors for lunch, and B and I went there with great anticipation this week. Alma is on University Avenue, midway between Dinkytown and the commercial area on Hennepin and Central, across the river from downtown. The area is largely residential with a large student population. The building is not particularly impressive from the outside, but the owners have devoted some thought and energy to the restaurant space itself. It’s a hybrid Scandinavian/warehouse look and décor, with lots of blond and light wood plus exposed brickwork and ductwork. A large bar with high chairs is the centerpiece, and beside it diners can see the kitchen and kitchen staff. The layout of the place creates several distinct seating areas and there’s a mezzanine floor with a few tables as well.

The menu was even shorter than I had anticipated—three starters and four main dishes. The starters were a celery root soup; an organic lettuce salad with pecorino cheese, toasted hazelnuts, and lemon-honey dressing; and seared sashimi quality ahi tuna, cooked medium on the outside and rare inside and served with shaved fennel, spicy mustard, and aromatic ginger dressing.

The entrées include the soup or the salad. We both opted for the soup. It came with small puddles of truffle oil and browned brussels sprout leaves. How often are garnishes like these there for looks or effect? Not here; the truffle oil imparted a wonderful smoky mellowness to the soup and the browned leaves an equally wonderful green-brown taste intensity. The soup itself was a light-consistency purée and quite delicious on its own. The serving was fairly substantial as an appetizer but neither of us had any difficulty polishing it away.

The entrée choices were a pasta (perciatelli [thick spaghetti] with shrimp, basil, caramelized garlic, broccoli, pepper flakes and white wine), a masa corn crepe (ricotta, chard, poblano peppers, green lentils, and guajillo [Mexican pepper] sauce), a grilled pizza (roasted red and green peppers, ricotta and chevre, and portabello mushrooms and capers), and an open faced focaccia sandwich (braised lamb, lemon aioli, grilled onions, arugula, and horseradish crème fraiche).

You’ve now been apprised of the entire menu we saw, five wines by the glass and three dessert selections excepted. But the menu changes frequently—every few days according to our waitress—so the itemization of it is not to help you decide what you might want to order on your visit but to indicate the creative combinations and unusual ingredients you can expect to see listed. Besides just reading or relating the menu descriptions at Alma is a sensual act.

For my main dish, I went with the open-faced sandwich. The lamb was tender and moist, although it was the secondary ingredients that provided the flavor to the dish. The grilled onions were especially tasty and the arugula leaves added a crisp note to the combination.

One constant of the service is the toasted almonds and black olives that come to your table gratis. This day the olives had a citrus-orange note to them. It was a little too easy to munch on these with a glass of wine, with the result that I ended up indulging doubly. The first glass was a Spanish tempranillo, a 1995 Oristan Reserva; the second was a 1996 Italian zin from Apulia, Primitivo. These were both off the lunch menu, which featured five wines by the glass. The full wine list and the by-the-glass selections indicated on it are also available for lunch.

The service was friendly and helpful. The restaurant almost seemed to have a family atmosphere, with our waitress, when not occupied with catering to us or the handful of other diners, preparing a bucket of green beans on the bar counter for the evening meal.

For some reason making a go of lunch for restaurants like Alma appears to be difficult. Auriga used to be open for lunch but became a dinner-only place perhaps a year ago. By the paucity of the lunch crowd, one fears Alma may be fated that way too. But it hasn’t been open for lunch too long, and the word needs to get out. I’m happy to do my part.

Restaurant Alma is one of the new breed of restaurants that have sprung up in the Twin Cities that feature a super star owner/chef. Alexander Roberts is the chef-extraordinaire behind the amazing fare found on this menu, his only potential competition being Zander Café in St. Paul or Vincent in Minneapolis. So it was with great pleasure that we learnt that Alma had recently thrown its doors open for lunch.

The restaurant is located in what could be described as off-campus student housing for the University of Minnesota. It sits on a distinctly unfashionable stretch of University Avenue, in a nondescript warehouse building. The inside décor is cross between a warehouse and a Swedish chalet with nice blonde, wooden tones. The centerpiece is a bar that surrounds and separates the kitchen from the dining area. In the back there is a raised alcove accessible by stairs – an area, I think, reserved for people that arrive without a reservation!

On this day there were very few diners abroad and we had our pick of the tables. The menu for lunch is painfully sparse and for people who want to be spoiled for choice this isn’t the place; however, I think a small menu well done would work for most people. The menu consists of three a la carte items: celery root soup; seared sashimi ahi tuna; and an organic lettuce. There are four entrées: Perciatelli di Caserta (spaghetti with shrimp, basil, garlic, broccoli and pepper flakes); Masa Corn Crepe (ricotta, chard, poblano peppers, green lentils); grilled pizza; and an open faced focaccia sandwich (lemon aioli, braised lamb, grilled onions). Out of the five wines by the glass I chose the Chateau Fouquet Cabernet Franc, a dark garnet colored wine with grapey, herbaceous aromas. I started with the celery root soup, which was delicious. It came sprinkled with golden truffle sauce and garnished with vegetable leafs (brussels sprouts, I think). This is a robust creamy soup with an amazing, piquant flavor greatly enhanced by the truffle sauce; a meal (with bread) in its own right. Our waitperson was extremely friendly and knowledgeable about the menu -- I was debating between the crepe and the spaghetti – and suggested the spaghetti. The spaghetti dish was not spectacular; indeed, I’d go as far as to say it was below par and shouldn’t be found on a menu in a restaurant as good as Alma. The spaghetti was overdone to the point of mushiness. The broccoli was without flavor and the shrimp had nothing to recommend it. Still the meal was salvaged by the soup and the glass of wine, complimented with a plate of olives and almonds. Still have no fear, the menu for lunch is changed everyday and I can’t believe there can be two dishes this bad in the entire Alma repertoire. I finished my meal with a latte. The bill came to $50.00, a deal considering that this included three glasses of wine.