Stella's

Address:
1400 W. Lake St., Mpls., 612-824-8862, stellasfishcafe.com

The Scene
Phil Roberts’s latest Uptown eatery is a seafood house inspired by the fish shacks of the Redneck Riviera (with an occasional appropriation from NYC’s current hot hands, BLT Fish and Schiller’s Liquor Bar). The old Tonic is now two floors of restaurant and rooftop patio—a fun and raucous environment for seafood lovers in search of soft prices and fewer rules. The first floor has an open kitchen and a sit-down oyster bar with dozens of high-top seats, many set against the Lake Street window, providing stellar people watching. A sweeping staircase leads to the second floor (which feels like Siberia). The house is packed with a mix of city-lakes culinistas and twentysomethings loading up on oysters before heading up to the roof deck/bar.

Our Take
Stella's is a great place to meet some friends for a platter of oysters, a piece of grilled fish, and a slice of Key lime pie. Simple is best here, as the 700-seat restaurant is contending with a fair number of early hiccups. Oceanaire this is not. If Stella’s cares to be more than a glorified bar-snacks joint, Roberts’s team must have the house in order by Christmas.

The oysters are plentiful, plump, and fresh, with a mignonette that’s puckeringly good. The peel-and-eat shrimp, fried calamari, and fried oysters are top-notch. Walleye fingers and Buffalo-style fish bites are guilty pleasures worth the calories. The puzzler is that most of the other cooked food—from chowder to side dishes, ’tater tots to oysters Rockefeller, seafood kebabs to fisherman’s stew—ranged from disappointing to downright bad. Hot food routinely came out of the kitchen lukewarm or cool; the fish kebabs arrived overcooked every time we tried them.

Drink orders seem to tax the cheerful servers, and refills proved a challenge, but the young staff is eager to please.

Eating Your Funny Bone
Dining at Stella’s is an experience—from the hand sink in the dining room to house wine selections available in bottles labeled “1,” “2,” or “3” (cheap, fine, and fancy). The table mats ape children’s place mats, but instead of Gloucester fishermen, sport graphic filleting tips for grownups. Dirty double-entendres and fabulously off-putting, Arbus-inspired, color photographs of modern-day rubes dot the walls. Roberts’s strength has always been his uncanny finger on the pulse of the local diner, and he never takes himself seriously. His only misstep, the retro-campy Girarrosto Toscano, was served to a suburban diner who didn’t understand the joke. This crowd knows velvet paintings aren’t “décor.”