Tour de Force

Bob and Sue Macdonald may be the most famous and well-connected local foodies you’ve never heard of. They dine the world over in the best restaurants, collect wines of the highest order, and are on a first-name basis with more top toques than Pearson’s has Nut Rolls. The consensus around town is that they do more to keep our restaurant community vibrant than any other local luminaries. In a year when the Twin Cities may have finally cracked the glass ceiling and become a real restaurant town, it’s time to out the humble, self-effacing couple who live the food life we wish we could.

The Macdonalds are almost professional eaters. What else can you call a couple who has eaten with every three-star Michelin chef from France and Spain, many of them twice. The Macdonalds collect restaurant experiences, wines, and chef friendships like some people collect art.

Clutching three bottles of wine and strolling into Krua Thailand, a small no-frills eatery on University, Bob and Sue Macdonald look like many other affluent Minnesota couples: a tad conservative, maybe even prep school chic. Carrying a simple white and an easy red for dinner—and a more precious bottle of dessert wine as a Christmas gift for Krua’s owners—is typical.

The scene is sweet, like the wine itself, but not half as much as the tears that well up in the couple’s eyes when given an antique set of tea cups by Krua’s staff. “This is the best Thai restaurant between San Francisco and New York. The only truly authentic Thai place in town,” Bob says, pulling out a chair for his wife as she begins to give me the short list of the local food world they introduced to Krua. Goodfellow’s Jason Robinson, Levain’s Steven Brown, Five’s Stewart and Heidi Woodman, Star Tribune critic Rick Nelson, and this magazine’s reviewer Peter Lilienthal have all dined with the Macdonalds at Krua.

“When we find a place and like it, we like to take our chef friends and writers because we love chefs and we feel we have a responsibility to advocate for all local chefs and restaurants,” Sue explains. The Macdonalds are insistent that most local diners underappreciate how good we have it here. As Lilienthal, their friend and frequent dining companion, told me one day, “Bob and Sue will be the first to tell you they love the relationships with chefs, but as far as championing great food in this town, they genuinely feel that if they don’t, then who will?”

The couple grew up in Chicago, in families who loved food. Bob first visited Paris at fifteen and remains in love with the city; Sue’s epiphany came when she married Bob thirty-eight years ago and moved to New York City. “That’s when we got into wine,” Bob says, neatly dipping spring rolls into chili paste. Château Lafitte was available in shops for $15, and they ate out almost every night. In 1971 they moved to Singapore and fell in love with Asian foods. Bob published a dining guide to Singapore’s best restaurants and, using the name Roland Girth, penned wine articles. After a stop in Seattle, they transferred here in 1975 with two sons in tow. (Macdonald is now area manager for corporate recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates). For their anniversary dinner, Bob and Sue went to what had been recommended to them as the best restaurant in town—the late Blue Horse. Shocked at how bad the food was, Sue remembers Bob remarking, “Honey, it’s gonna be a long winter.”

With that perspective came a mission—what if they created an atmosphere for restaurants and chefs to bloom? What could the chefs create in their own restaurants if they could visit great restaurants around the country, perhaps working for a day or two in a famous New York City restaurant? What if the chefs could accelerate their culinary vocabulary by dining in great restaurants around town or around the world? And so the Macdonalds set out to make it so.
The couple almost never eats at home, so as they dined out, night after night, year after year, they introduced themselves to chefs, shared wine and a few stories, and exchanged numbers. After long business and eating trips abroad, Bob would transcribe his meticulous tasting notes, with plenty of detail about wines and dishes, and then make photostatic copies of his work, creating the most sought-after private food ’zine in town. The tasting notes have been an inspiration for many local restaurateurs, and why not? Very few Minnesotans have ever dined at Pierre Gagnaire on Rue Balzac in Paris. Bob and Sue have done so eight times.

The Macdonalds also have shared their wine collection with chefs the world over. Bob is a Burgundy nut, a member of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, and one of the few people in the country who can tell you what a ’28 Latour and a ’59 La Tache taste like. His wine cellar has no conventional light sources, which can be harmful to wines as they age.

“I own 1,400 bottles,” Macdonald smirks. “Anything over 2,000 is bull. Wine is all about sharing. I’ve brought the best Oregon wines to three-star restaurants in France, was one of the first to share Oregon pinot noir there, and brought the best small French producers to the best restaurants in this country. Do you know who my hero is? Andre Simone, who died with only three bottles left in his cellar. It frustrates my kids, but, oh, well.”

Bob and Sue bring great wines on almost all their restaurant visits. Chefs from La Belle Vie’s Tim McKee to Five’s Woodman (whose wine list Bob helped create) to Restaurant Alma’s Alex Roberts have experienced their largesse.

“They are extremely generous and kind with their wines, offering tastes to the kitchen and purchasing plenty of wines off our lists,” says Levain’s Brown. “And they are the least pompous people I know. One day they asked me who in the local food scene I wanted to meet. I told them Jason Robinson, and they arranged dinner for us with our wives at Krua Thailand. I was in Chicago once, and they took me to Blackbird and introduced me to [chef/owner] Paul Kahan. It was amazing. They just make it happen.”

Sunday dinners at the Minikahda Club—with cuisine provided by the club’s estimable chef, Ferris Shiffer—have become the stuff of local legend. Tim McKee and Jack Reibel met at one of these dinners, Reibel going on to cook at McKee’s La Belle Vie in Stillwater (he now cooks at the Dakota). Kevin Cullen, Marcus Samuelsson, Lenny Russo, Vincent Francoual, and dozens of other chefs have met, hung out, and dined like rock stars at the Sunday suppers.

“Those dinners have made my food life complete,” Shiffer says, “allowing me to cook for great chefs, and for all of us to meet in an informal way and share ideas. I use those dinners to try out new things I have seen but never get a chance to cook.” Not only do Bob and Sue arrange the suppers, but they took Shiffer to Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago when French legend Marc Veyrat cooked there. They’ve made eating trips with Shiffer and Francoual to Barcelona and shared Bob’s sixtieth birthdaydinner with Shiffer at Michel Bras in Laguiole, where a magnum of Mouton Rothschild 1945 was downed. 

The conversation becomes sentimental when it turns to the Macdonalds’ son Todd. After graduating from New England Culinary Institute, he worked his way through the ranks of some great kitchens—Clio in Boston, Bouley in New York City—and then opened Cru in NYC with Shea Gallante, to rave reviews. Todd is a real rising star.“One day we would love to be involved in a restaurant with him,” Bob says. “We’ll see how that goes.”

Spend time with the Macdonalds and you come away certain that their endeavors are as much motivated by personal relationships as by food and wine. “We love chefs, and we love food, but most importantly,” Bob insists, “we love sharing experiences about food that has integrity. Sure, we’ve eaten at some cool places [El Bulli, Fat Duck, and Cambal.O in 2005], but we are happiest in a place like Krua Thailand or the Swan Oyster Bar in San Francisco, sharing simple food with like-minded friends. The best meals we eat are the picnics we share in France.”

Lucky ants.