NorthCoast

When NorthCoast opened a couple years ago, with Nick & Eddie’s Steve Vranian in the kitchen, it felt like a hotel restaurant with great views and inconsistent fare. Vranian left for sunnier climes; a modest remodel has better separated the dining room and bar; and Ryan Aberle, opening chef at Tonic (which specialized in kobe beef and gimmicky hot-stone cooking), which became Stella’s Fish Cafe, joined NorthCoast. Aberle has been doing some very ambitious cooking in Wayzata, offering elaborate tasting menus and dabbling in molecular gastronomy outside the busy summer season on Lake Minnetonka, when the waterfront crowds demand big platters of finger foods and strong drinks.

We visited on a busy summer Saturday when the kitchen was cranking, pumping out copious quantities of sliders and walleye. Aberle’s menu is vast, prices are quite high (this is Wayzata, gang), and the dining room still feels like something you’d find inside a Hilton. The big change is much of what we ate was very good. Aberle’s potato poppers off the appetizer menu are my vote for finger food of the year: Yukon potato croquettes stuffed with cheddar and bacon and served with chive sour cream. If you’ve suffered through leaden and bland twice-baked potatoes, this is what they become when they go to heaven.

NorthCoast was featuring an special menu of diverse dishes made from Cook Inlet king salmon during July, and Aberle’s salmon cake was a winner—crispy outside, creamy inside, in a winning soy cream sauce. I was not as excited with the sous vide salmon filet with Spanish olive oil, marscarpone whipped potatoes, and lemon-caper beurre blanc. The olive oil was not in evidence while the beurre blanc was too acidic for the mild fish. I was hoping the slow, low-temperature sous vide cooking would render an extremely moist salmon, but the method did nothing for the fish, which, though not dry, was rather thin and bland.

Another food trend Aberle is enamored with is Kobe beef, the expensive American or Australian variant of the meltingly tender, highly marbled Japanese cattle. Why Aberle is braising this cut in Guinness, I can’t figure out. Kobe is suited to quick grilling, but grinding it into burgers or slow-cooking it destroys what makes the beef so unique. More amazingly, NorthCoast’s Kobe- braised short rib arrived at our table dried out, something hard to do braising a meat with this much intramuscular fat. A gorgonzola potato gratin on the side was also dried-out and not worth the calories.

NorthCoast has an interesting wine list, which offers a lot of choice and price points. Service was friendly but mechanical, our server reciting the identical spiel and expressions of gratitude to the neighboring table.

Ultimately, my take is that NorthCoast is a more interesting and ambitious restaurant than when it opened. The pleasant lakeside setting and innocuous decor won’t put anyone off, nor will the massive menu. But my take is that chef Aberle is spread too thin, trying too many things at once and too enamored with food trends and gimmickry (hot stone cooking remains on his menu). You can have an excellent meal here, but it’s still too easy to have a poor one and leave with a very large bill.

294 E. Grove St., Wayzata, 952-475-4960