Kay’s

The Scene
Sponged yellow walls, wooden wainscoting, white tablecloths, and twinkling votives can almost make you feel like you’re not in a space that by day is a soup-and-sandwich bar on the edge of a suburban development that looks like a Department 56 display on steroids. In the evening, the track lights are extinguished, the candles are lit, and the banquettes fill up with Maple Grove diners, most of whom seem relieved not to be waiting in line at Sizzler for onion rings and artichoke ramekins. But even a few bottles of viognier can’t hide the incongruous leviathan of a sandwich counter that dominates Kay’s Wine Bar and Bistro, even when hibernating.

Our Take
Five nights a week, the Maple Grove outpost of the family-owned-and-operated C.G. Ham’s Gourmet Sandwich Deli bags up the rolls, drains the soup kettles, and serves a small and capably turned-out menu of creative offerings. Kevin Nordeen, an Arts Institutes International culinary grad (his family owns C.G. Ham’s) is, like many young, talented local cooks, learning as he goes, serving up enough winners to impress, but just enough puzzlers to confound.

Meats, cheese plates, and crostini offerings are supermarket quality and scream for more original choices than sliced Gouda triangles or tomato-onion canapés. But the food gets better as you move through the bimonthly changing menu. A pan-seared scallop with guacamole was perfectly executed and seasoned. A chilled asparagus salad with pecorino zabaglione was delicious, though it is one of Mario Batali’s true signatures and a nod to his elevation of the dish to cult status might be the polite thing to do. The jumbo lump crab cake was overworked and so heavily seasoned that the high-end stuff was mooted. A cornflake-crusted grouper was insanely good, swimming in a corn and tomatillo sauce spiked with hot chilies. The raspberry-balsamic–glazed Cornish hen seemed a laughable cliché when I spied it on the menu, but in reality was as good a chicken dish as I have eaten in years.

The Edge of Greatness
Gratitude is the attitude of most local diners leaving Kay’s. Finally, there is a dining alternative in the fastest-growing part of the metro, which is dominated by chain eateries. The care and attention that it takes to create the majority of successful dishes at Kay’s made me wonder how the most obvious flaws could occur, but the chef is young, energetic, and clearly capable of fixing the clunkers. If Kay’s smooths out the rough edges, it could be a restaurant worth the drive from the rest of the metro. If not, it will be one more excuse for independent restaurateurs to ignore the mother lode that is suburban Twin Cities.