But the economic aftermath of the bubble’s burst and the psychological effect of September 11th still affect the hearts and stomachs of local diners. “Everyone took a step down after 9/11,” says Tom Day, vice president of government affairs for Hospitality Minnesota, the trade organization of the Minnesota Restaurant Association. “The people who ate at fine dining restaurants stepped down to family restaurants; the people who ate at family restaurants stepped down to quick service. We still haven’t fully recovered.” Day says that fine dining was hit the hardest, while chain restaurants have continued to thrive, thanks to economies of scale and the corresponding efficiencies in everything from training to menu development. At the same time, all restaurants are suffering from erratic dining patterns. “You may have a dead Saturday but Monday is busy,” says Day, explaining that restaurants suffer because they’re over-staffed and over-stocked on traditionally hot days, and caught off guard on traditionally cold days. “The consumer is very fickle,” he says. For Russo, who changes his menu daily, this means living life on constantly shifting ground. On any given day, he’s not sure what he’s going to cook for a crowd he’s not sure he’s going to have.
Andrew Smith one of Heartland’s chefs, is filling in for garde-manger Stephanie Kochlin tonight, and he’s concerned about the sauce that accompanies the grilled white sturgeon. Down the line, Russo is de-glazing veal bones in two enormous roasting pans with metal handles the size of door knockers, while fish-station chef Matt Nester is pulling ingredients out of the banks of refrigerators located under the counter.
“I think the sauce needs another dimension,” says Smith.
“Which dimension?” says Nester. “The Fifth Dimension?” He starts singing “Up, Up and Away.” Russo doesn’t even notice. He’s concentrating on the sauce conversation. Unlike most restaurants, even those that are ingredient-driven, Heartland features an evolving menu, which means dishes debut, change, and disappear depending on what’s fresh that day. “Fifty percent of what comes in is a surprise,” says Russo, who gets most of his supplies from local farmers, many of whom grow small batches of ingredients to order. (“Some of the food comes in by car,” he says.) At a typical restaurant with a fixed menu, a chef can develop a routine in a matter of weeks, but at Heartland the chefs have to stay sharp. In addition to the usual prep and line work, they are expected to help Russo write and rewrite the menu, which means keeping up with everything going on in the restaurant. While Smith and Russo are talking sauce, Nester keeps pulling out containers from the refrigerator. He’s been off for three days, and in that time he’s lost touch with what the kitchen is doing; he can’t participate in this conversation because on some level he doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Eventually Russo and Smith agree that the caramelized crabapple sauce needs some kind of herb, and that the herb should be dill, and then they’re on to the next discussion, this time with Nester joining in. By the end of the prep session the three men have made a dozen small decisions that ripple through the menu. They’re out of antelope rib eye, so that dish becomes a pork porterhouse, while the squab loses the heirloom tomato catsup and picks up a piquant raspberry sauce that Russo has been fooling around with all day. Using the crayfish for the amuse-bouche gets nixed because crayfish is already in the consommé, but the solution is found in a Niman Ranch jambon royale, a kind of dry-cured ham. A bunch of peppercress isn’t pretty enough for the heirloom tomato salad, so Smith is going to make a pasta out of it for later in the week. “You’re always doing things to set yourself up for the next couple of days,” says Smith. “If you had nothing ready in advance you’d be screwed.”
Of course, Heartland is not the only place in town dedicated to fresh, local ingredients or regional cuisine—Auriga, Alma, the Dakota, and Lucia’s all come to mind—but Russo has decided to put himself more intimately in tune with local suppliers, consequences
be damned. Dealing with the vagaries of the season is part of the fun for Heartland’s chef, but it also plays havoc with diners’ expectations. Generally, there are two types of return restaurant patrons—people who are loyal to a restaurant and people who are loyal to a specific dish. Someone might scoff at the general idea of Sidney’s, for example, but pop in now and again for their coconut curry chicken. That loyalty is why most menus don’t change, or change only seasonally, and why for most chefs the special is their only creative outlet. Russo, however, seems bent on never doing the same dish twice. Whether or not people want to follow his lead is a question that even Russo can’t answer. “Is there an audience?” he says. “Yes, there is an audience. Is there a large enough audience?” He pauses. “I think people are still discovering us.”
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