Forum Restaurant

Of this, there can be no dispute: Shea Architects, Forum proprietors Jim and Stefanie Ringo, and landlord Brookfield Properties allied to beautifully polish and enhance this iconic art deco dining room, which was home to Goodfellow’s for its final decade. The bar is now front and center, the acoustical panels and beige dividers are history, and new bits of color and ornament have emerged, revealing a treasure trove of museum-worthy detail and craftsmanship.

It’s a downer, in the presence of such exquisite detail and compelling ambition, to then encounter a dining experience so relentlessly amateurish. Forum is a strange restaurant, where the oft-overwrought food ends up an asterisk to the eccentricities of the service.

North America is a melting pot of spectacular regional cuisines. Forum’s primary menu consists of a mix of steak house–style classics and regional dishes, such as gumbo and Carolina barbecue, that are complex and don’t historically travel well. Add on a series of monthly regional menus (New Orleans, Santa Fe, Alaska, Georgia) and you have an even more ambitious peak for any kitchen to scale each month.

I can recommend a nicely cooked and flavorful steak burger with battered or sweet potato fries, a reasonably moist brined Duroc pork chop served with a variety of apple-themed condiments, and a tasty salmon Oscar that was nonetheless shy of the promised crabmeat. Other dishes were so-so, such as Carolina pork ribs (in the traditional mustard sauce) that had been in the oven too long.

In the main, chef Christian Ticarro (ex–Canyon Grille) is of the more-is-more school. His plates are over-adorned, glazed in too many sauces, buried in micro greens—a battle royal of tastes and textures that often ends in an unsatisfying draw. Take the lamb chop lollipops, rolled in pistachios, squirted with balsamic syrup, and sitting on basil pesto. Or the Puget Sound clams, in a winning garlic and white wine broth, but hit with a fusillade of blue cheese! The delicate bivalves were no match. A Kansas City strip steak arrived gristly to the point of inedibility.

The welcome here is awkward, either from tentative hosts with thousand-yard stares (one told me she needed my last name to seat me) or thinly trained servers pressed into double duty. Diners are often given poor, peripheral tables while good ones sit open. Service is sincere but inattentive, the staff unfamiliar with too much of the menu. The wine list is reasonably priced and we were given good advice from a manager.

It’s been said that the richly detailed room overwhelms any restaurant’s attempt to create a distinct identity. That’s probably true. It also sets an exacting standard that, for now, vastly outshines the efforts of the neophyte owners and a chef who may be in over his head.

Three Great Plates
+ Firecracker Shrimp. This addictive dish of shellfish, leeks, shallots, and a mélange of peppers sits atop cornbread in a creamy, slightly spicy cayenne butter sauce.
+ Wedge Salad. An iceberg wedge is dressed up with bacon and sun-dried
tomatoes, but it’s the amalgam of balsamic reduction and Amablu cheese that makes the plate sing.
+ Monterey County Shrimp. Fettuccine A clean, light, balanced array of flavors—shrimp, fresh basil, tomato, garlic, artichoke hearts, and olive oil over whole-grain pasta.

40 S. 7th St., Mpls., 612-354-2017, forumrestaurantmn.ringorestaurants.com