I’ve been to N E Thyme often enough to know that dining there can be a hit-or-miss event. It’s a small place, run by people who are food lovers first and businesspeople second. The menu changes frequently and often features boldly experimental offerings.

Boldly experimental applies to the décor, in particular the color scheme, as much as to the food. Tabletops are painted in vibrant solid hues, upholstery is a rainbow of colors, the walls are sponged and ragged, the ceiling is painted an orange-red—virtually every exposed surface is a canvas. Somehow the whole effect comes within a hair’s breadth of being garish but doesn’t cross the line and you have to admire both the audacity and the sensibility of the design team. This time of year there’s also a sidewalk seating area, delineated with tall, shaped shrubs in clay pots.

Moving on to the food and drink, the wine list includes about a half-dozen each of reds and whites; all are reasonably priced and provenances range from New Zealand to Italy. This day I ordered a Borsao Campo de Borja, a Spanish blend of grenache and tempranillo (grenache in particular is fast becoming one of my favorite wine grapes). It was the cheapest wine on the list at $4.50 a glass, and it was wonderful. Dry with citrus notes and a perfect libation for a hot summer day.

N E Thyme deserves mention also for the chilled filtered water it serves. A complimentary large bottle, one of those old-style jobs with the flip-top stoppers, is placed on your table when you’re seated. None of the implicit pressure to order a beverage that you sometimes get at bottom-line-oriented eateries.

The menu choices include a few each of soups of the day, side and meal-sized salads, entrées, and sandwiches. The entrées were a stir-fry with shitake mushrooms and udon noodles, a sockeye salmon salad burrito, a citrus chicken breast with Israeli couscous, and oven-roasted fries with bearnaise sauce. The sandwiches include a BLT with serano aioli on focaccia and, also on focaccia and recommended by our server, roasted asparagus with cambazola (a cross between camembert and gorgonzola). The sandwiches come in half or whole sizes with a green salad, and you can also configure your desired combination of half-sandwich and soup. Cheese plates are also available for the leisurely diner in addition to homemade desserts. The coffee is strong but there’s no espresso machine, although that’s not really a problem since my favorite coffee-house in the Twin Cities, Anodyne, is right across the street.

The soups this day were a pork with vegetable and a spicy carrot and pineapple. B had the latter as part of his soup-and-half-sandwich order. This was one of those experiments that went awry, as he’ll tell you, with too much habanero even for our overexposed palates. I ordered the pork and vegetable soup, and found it very good. The vegetable ingredients included what appeared to be patty pan squash. The addition of black-eyed and chick peas made this a robust soup; a bowl would make for a satisfying lunch by itself.

My main dish was the burrito, which came resting on a bed of mesclun greens and with a generous helping of a fresh salsa. This is a dish that could be quite good but I had three problems with it. First and most egregiously, the salmon had a slight fishy taste to it. Second, the burrito also included avocado, which was tasty and ripe but entire quarters of the fruit were stuffed inside the burrito—a sliced or chopped preparation would have resulted in better melding of flavors. Finally, the burrito came with the salsa liberally poured on it, and the otherwise fresh tortilla ended up as a bit of a soggy mess.

The overall impression readers may be getting from this review may not be a positive one, but I recommend a visit—I fully expect my next experience will be more positive! (I’ll also willingly admit to a bias for a neighborhood place that’s not afraid to take chances.)

The Lunch this week goes to a restaurant with the unfortunate name of N E Thyme, located in what A considers his "neighborhood", although 4257 Nicollet Avenue is a far cry (socio-economically if not geographically) from the arcadian and leafy lane where A’s largish house sits. This restaurant definitely has a neighborhood feel, surrounded by small storefront businesses and homes on parallel streets. On walking in there is a small bar, where a meal can be had if no other seating is available. The rest of the restaurant is setout in a rough L shape. The tables have chairs on one side and a bench-like seating apparatus on the other that has no back, this makes for a somewhat uncomfortable seating arrangement. Curbside dining is also available for the alfresco minded. N E Thyme has a bright and cheerful feel, in no small part due to the care taken with the general color scheme and furnishing (seat benches excepted!).

The lunch crowd also reflects the neighborhood character of the place. A lot of housewives (if you’ll pardon the expression) out for a bite with their friends. There must be an old folk’s home in the vicinity as well because a wheel chair bound person was bought in to eat, helped by a very nice nurse. I hope my nurse will be nice enough to take me out to lunch when my time comes! I would recommend getting here by 11:30AM because by the time we left the restaurant was quite busy.

The menu offers six reds and seven whites by glass. I chose the Yalumba Barossa Shiraz, reminiscent of eucalypti and wild berries – a robust Australian. The lunch menu is fairly sparse. It offers two soups: a pork vegetable and a spicy carrot and pineapple. I thought the spicy carrot and pineapple soup sounded interesting and ordered it. Big mistake, the soup was way too spicy – even for palette, probably more immune to spicy food than most – with a liberal dosing of habaneros sauce, that made the soup inedible. A had the pork vegetable, which I tasted but it felt pretty uninteresting possibly due to my taste buds being swamped by the habaneros! There are three salads, a plain green, caesar and a spinach one, on the menu. We weren’t spoiled for choice when it came to the entrees either. Our choices were: Sockeye salmon burrito, citrus chicken breast, stir-fries with shitake mushrooms (with noodles), and (interestingly) a plate of oven roasted fries. I chose the half-sandwich/soup option. I have already described the soup. The sandwich choices included a barbecued chicken and asparagus. On the waiters recommendation I went with the asparagus sandwich. This was an unusually interesting choice, if awkward to eat. It came covered in some cheese/butter based sauce and was quite good after adding some fresh ground pepper.

On the whole it was a disappointing lunch for me. From my two prior (dinner) experiences here it would appear that it’s a hit or miss sort of place. One dinner was good the other indifferent. I think A enjoyed himself more, although I thought the salmon in his burrito had seen better days. The place has a nice atmosphere – no smoking! – and one can always stroll (as we did) to Anodyne coffeehouse for a post meal cup of coffee. Our bill came to $35.00.

B