Dakota’s New Direction

Ken Goff,  who’s been chef at the Dakota for more than twenty years, announced earlier this spring that he was leaving the venerable restaurant and jazz club. (Taking over is Jack Riebel, formerly of La Belle Vie.) Goff departs with no plans for his next professional chapter. What’s behind the surprising end of a relationship that at one time was one of most innovative in town? Ironically, the Dakota’s big coup, its 2003 move to downtown Minneapolis, sowed the seeds of Goff’s demise.

The Dakota opened in 1985 in St. Paul’s then-hot Bandana Square—and became a world-class jazz club with innovative and locally inspired menu. Lowell Pickett and Ken Goff put it on the map over the next decade, winning several Wine Spectator awards for their impressive cellar, and national acclaim for a regional cuisine that was then largely ignored by local chefs. But during the most recent decade, as Bandana Square hemorrhaged tenants and buzz, the restaurant began to fade from public consciousness. It thrived in a a world of loyalists and jazz partisans, largely out of the local food spotlight.

The 2003 move to Nicollet Mall was a rebirth of sorts. The room is state of the art, the restaurant space dramatically improved, the location second to none. Yet, according to Goff, last autumn he began to contemplate whether it was time to turn the page, professionally. Goff turned fifty recently and says he told himself, “If I am going to do anything different with my career, it has to be now.” He has a ten-year-old daughter, commutes forty miles each way to work, and, by his own admission, believes he brought the Dakota “as far as he could.”

For an establishment of the Dakota’s prominence to be anything less than one of the best restaurants in town was simply financially untenable and not acceptable to its clientele. The Dakota’s move was a blessing and a curse, because the renewed notoriety focused attention on a kitchen that was not executing at the level of its downtown peers Solera, Vincent, or Goodfellow’s. The sad truth these days is that in the restaurant biz you innovate or perish.

Shortly after the Dakota moved to new digs, customers (and some critics, myself included) publicly articulated our disappointment. We were no longer impressed with the mere presence of wild rice, local trout, artisan cheeses, farm-raised meats, and farmers’ market vegetables on the menu—it was old hat. But unlike heritage restaurants such as Nye’s Polonaise, Murray’s, or The Lexington, the Dakota hadn’t been around long enough to earn nostalgia points. Kitchen output was inconsistent, and while Goff’s classics held their own, his new stuff wasn’t winning raves.

After Goff delineated his plans to move on, Pickett began looking for Mr. Right. He saw the opportunity to reevaluate Dakota’s food program. “We couldn’t think [about whether] what we were doing was good enough,” Pickett says. “Ken’s decision to leave gave us that opportunity.” According to Dakota’s consultant, Tanya Spaulding of Shea, Inc., Dakota’s cuisine had taken a back seat to the jazz. She told Pickett his venue needed a new culinary vision to return it to prominence.

Enter Riebel, who has always described himself as a downtown restaurant guy. With his high energy level, enormous personality, keen understanding of local products, and national-caliber skills, he is the ideal chef to return the Dakota’s fare to prominence. He will give the restaurant the product and attitude it needed when it moved downtown in 2003.

Ken Goff had to leave so the restaurant he created could continue to thrive. The Dakota needed a new chef the same way the Timberwolves needed a new coach. Sometimes a change in vision and energy at the top is inevitable. Pickett and Goff, two of the classiest hospitality guys in town—with as little ego as you will find in our brassy business—were able to finesse a difficult, and in many ways, sad situation.

The Dakota by now has its second wind, and hopefully Ken Goff, in a business that’s built on youthful energy and preoccupied with the guy with the hot hand, will find, or be allowed, his second act as well. Speaking for his fans: We eagerly await it.

Reach restaurant columnist Andrew Zimmern at azimmern@mspmag.com.