The latest Parasole restaurant opened for dinner last night in Maple Grove. It’s called Pittsburgh Blue, named for the way he-men in the Rust Belt eat their steak: charred on the exterior, cold and bloody inside.
Why, you may ask, is a restaurant geared toward steelworkers located in the pink collar capital of the Midwest? Will the mega-cineplex and Olive Garden set suddenly grow incisors? All I know is, Phil Roberts (the man behind the curtain at Parasole) measures the market and gets things right. He brought Salut to Edina, Oceanaire to the downtown Hyatt, and Buca di Beppo to the world. If he says northwest metro residents are ready for viscera, I believe him.
Also, the menu is vast. Oysters Rockefeller, Spinach and Applewood Bacon Salad, Corn-Crusted Halibut, Spinach and Mushroom Gratin. That and lots and lots of beef. Prices are at the tipping point: $27.95 for that halibut, $17.95 for a dry-aged sirloin steak sandwich. Sides are shared, as at Oceanaire and Manny’s: monster portions of onion rings and asparagus with hollandaise. A root beer float goes for eight bucks.
But if in this era of sustain-the-earth speak the mighty Roberts predicts Twin Citians will get into their cars and drive miles on I-94 to a stylish supper club with a “very, very mean-looking bust of a bull” (according to the restaurant’s ad hoc press release) hanging over the hearth, in order to eat as carnivorously as the men who do back-breaking work in fiery foundries, 12 hours at a shift, pouring molten pig iron into ingots. . . .they will. Bank on it.
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