Gallic Counterculture

CAVÉ VIN
5555 Xerxes Ave. S., Minneapolis
612.922.0100

Last year wasn't a great year for French restaurants, hereabouts. Restaurants Zinc and un deux trois closed, and the French chef with the best French technique in town, Patrick Atanalian, was forced out of the old Loring, along with everyone else, when the place lost its lease. (Atanalian is teaching cooking, and cooking lunch, now at Le Cordon Bleu in Mendota Heights.) After that, this year, this year wasn't a good year for French wine, with some estimates running that top French wine sales are down a full 15 percent as Americans work out their frustration with French antiwar sentiment in their local liquor stores. So why are customers packing into Cavé Vin, south Minneapolis's newest celebration of frites and flageolet?

Garlic butter. Remember the joy of garlic butter? I can't remember the last time I saw it doing anything interesting on a local menu. And there it is again, in the snails: escargots ($7.95) in a garlic cream sauce, snails as tender and plump as grapes, crowned with fried curls of parsley. Sorry, Vincent, these are the new best escargots in town. And to tell you the honest to Betsy truth, I've had escargots maybe a hundred times in my life, and they have never been even half as good as thes were--so tender, so lush.

And the Caesar salade! It's not just the extra e that makes it fancy, oh no. In fact, I'm not sure I have enough superlatives in my toolbox to do the thing justice: simply leaves of young romaine covered in an anchovy, garlic, and lemon vinaigrette made with great quality, rich, green olive oil, the whole of it bedecked with soft crumbles of hard-boiled egg white, covered with little tangy slices of pecorino cheese. In fact, perfect papers of pecorino placed precisely, pleasantly, prettily, in paramount preeminence! Whoops. I lose myself. Anyway, it was such a good salad, the bright and light of the salad greens amplified by the rich green qualities of the oil, the sour and tang of cheese, the soft and sweet of egg white, and all of it leading to the robust pop of garlic and anchovy. It was a Caesar salad deconstructed by a great food thinker and made new, which is quite a triumph.

Set some of these French classics beside a glass of vin from Cavé Vin's relievedly good wine list, and the restaurant seems simply brilliant. Overall, the place has the air of a romantic and modern barn. The room itself is high-ceilinged and relatively unadorned, but with the classic Provence color scheme of eggy yellow and cornflower blue toned down and lit dimly, the whole thing manages to pull off the neat trick of being sunny but also romantic. A squidlike art-glass lamp gives the scene an up-to-the-minute accent. The big, long tables that line the walls suggest an informal country barn, and while the place is very loud, it's a darn sight quieter than the Cape-Canaveral-launching-loud of sister Pane Vino Dolce.

The reason I say the wine list is relievedly good is because when I talked to David Hahne, who owns the restaurant with Carlos Macy, before he opened, he said that the plan for the restaurant was to serve inexpensive wines. And I have seen so many restaurants start out with that plan and come to grief once opening expenses piled up. And yet here it is! Five wines at $5 a glass, $20 a bottle; another five under $30; and most of the cheapies nice, solid French country wines like the crisp and acidic Macon, "Bouchard Aînés & Fils Macon-Villages," which has a lemony edge just strong enough to stand up to those rich garlic cream sauces. Belgian ales are served in the appropriate goblet-like glasses, so even if you're just having frites ($5) and aioli (textbook perfect) you will look the picture of dining sophistication.

Desserts are everything they should be. A chocolate pot de crème ($5) was a rich and beautiful rendering of chocolate pudding, bitter and deep and custardy, the pile of whipped cream on the plate a treat in and of itself, a luxurious mountain of ivory joy. The tarte Tatin ($5) was good, the caramelized apples tender and evocative, striking a lovely balance between the plain goodness of the fruit and the gilding of the cooking.

Hey, but why did I skip the entrées? Why? Because I want to pretend they don't exist, my silly little doves. Well, all right, if you insist.