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Muffuletta
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Nouvelle Comfort Food Do you yearn for the good old days? The days before suburban sprawl, cookie-cutter shopping centers, and, yes, globalization? If so, a visit to the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul might be in order. You can take a walk down residential streets lined with gracious old homes, admiring the homeowners’ gardening talents. You can check out the wonderful Carnegie library building, in which the computer stations may, if you’re still waxing nostalgic, seem jarringly anachronistic. And then there’s the commercial hub of the neighborhood, Milton Square, featuring a number of Eurocentric homegrown establishments including a coffee shop, a bookstore, and a diner. (The nearest Starbucks, Borders, and McDonalds are miles and decades away.) The anchor of Milton Square is Muffuletta. It’s a comfortable restaurant, elegant in a traditional Minnesota way, oak paneling and booths complemented by tables with white tablecloths and paper sheets (no crayons—bring your own pen for a working lunch!). The lunch menu is one large glossy page, printed new every day. A regular lineup of salads, sandwiches, and pastas is supplemented by a few daily specials. I initially considered a couple of the sandwiches, one with grilled eggplant slices with fontina cheese, layered with roasted red peppers, tomatoes and fresh basil on Kalamata olive bread; the other a basic Italian hoagie with capocolla ham, Genoa salami, provolone and topped with a cold marinated olive salad. I ended up ordering the daily chicken special, christened "chicken a la Cordon Bleu’" not because of any ham and cheese ingredients but because it’s an invention of the sous chef, a graduate of the eponymous cooking school. The dish consisted of a lightly breaded chicken breast, sautéed in a sauce the dominant component of which was diced apples. This was served with nicely done vegetables and mashed potatoes, livened up with horseradish. I did have a few quibbles—the sweetness of the chicken sauce and the vegetables could have been balanced with some more savory or spicy flavors, for instance—but overall it was a satisfying meal. I had a glass of an Australian shiraz, not the best representative of the genre but one shouldn’t complain about lack of structure in a wine that probably retails for about $10 per bottle! An espresso order brought forth a double, with good crema but poor acidity. The menu contains non-European culinary influences: there’s an Asian burger, the tamarind sauce on the fish special (a hit with "B"—see the companion review), and several other fusion touches. But Muffuletta and St. Anthony Park aren’t the places you go to for a global village experience. Muffuletta’s stock in trade is its neighborhood fit; inveterate urbanites may find it a little too quaint and comfortable. Think of it as a trip back in time with selected concessions to modernity. A
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Mr. Micawber might not approve Our restaurant this week might be a case of not judging a book by its cover (or at least its title!). When I hear the word: Muffuletta – visions of that savory New Orleans style sandwich invariably come floating to mind. Besides this is February – the month of Fat Tuesday – and one is naturally drawn to excesses. Muffuletta, the restaurant, on the other hand is sobering like Lent; as far removed from Bourbon Street as its geographic location might suggest. Not that you could quarrel with the location, which is in the heart of St. Anthony Village, a picture-perfect community nestled between the two cities. Behind the restaurant is a little square of Anglo-Norman co-existence, where you can have English style tea and buy French knickknacks while listening to a news broadcast from the BBC world service. All this put me into good humor that suffered some perturbation when the host inquired if we had lunch reservations. This is one of my pet peeves: if I had a reservation that is the first thing I would tell the host! We were led (icily) to a tiny table near a storage area in the back half of the restaurant. This table was so tiny that my legs, which are long but not excessively, were sticking out into the walkway between the tables. The restaurant was quite busy. "A" thought it might have to do with it being the President’s day holiday. The clientele was solid, middle-class and somewhat boring, the sort I expect to find at Jax or the now defunct Lincoln Del. The menu is printed everyday and is quite extensive. It’s divided into three sections: the top lists the specials of the day, the (small) middle portion lists the salads and the bottom portion has the entrees. This day the specials were: a Seafood Gumbo soup; a "Spaghet Di Italia" pasta dish; "Grilled Star Prairie Rainbow Trout-Asian Style" fish; a Chicken a la ‘Cordon Bleu’. The Chicken dish had such interesting ingredients as diced Granny Smith apples! But more about that in the companion review. I ordered the fish special, which came beautifully prepared. It was drizzled with some Asian sauce that smelt distinctly of tamarind, served with mashed potatoes and nice crisp vegetables. I had a glass of ’98 Gary Farrell Cabernet, which was deliciously full-bodied. I may not care for the atmosphere of this place but I have no reservations about the food. It is very good! Looking at the entrees list there is wide variety: from an Asian burger (ground pork, peanuts) to a coconut curry chicken with jade rice. There is something here for every palate and the wine list is good. The bill for our meal was about $40.00 and I was reminded of Mr. Micawber (there being a Micawber bookseller next doors): "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." If not actual misery this was a little higher than we had bargained for. B
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