Restaurant Review - Heartland

Last Tuesday Greg picked Heartland Restaurant for our evening out. Chef Lenny Russo creates a small and ever changing menu based on local ingredients that are available that day. The interior of the restaurant had an arts and crafts style feel with an open view of the chef's work area. Greg and I always enjoy seating that allows us to watch the chef at work so that was a bonus in our book. We had reservations for 6pm but were seated immediately despite arriving early. The menu was a combination of fixed price three course meals and a la carte choices. While we were making our decisions, we were served a lovely white fish amuse-bouche followed by a very creative whole wheat cumin bread that I am strongly going to encourage Greg to try to replicate!

For our meals, Greg decided on a fixed price option and chose the Fauna option. His courses included:

• Marinated rabbit liver with pan-fried cornbread, roasted torpedo onions and ginger-molasses glaze (he enjoyed this but told me I probably would not like it so I didn't try any of this course)
• Minnesota grass-fed veal roast with baby zucchini, mustard blossom salad and spicy zucchini-sultana sauce (the veal was perfection)
• Cinnamon basil-infused yogurt panna cotta with fresh raspberries, watermelon syrup and an oat Florentine cookie (he was not very willing to share this course with me - hmmmm)

I selected from the a la carte menu and couldn't resist trying the fingerling potatoes roasted in lamb fat with fresh summer savory. I loved them but took most of them home to share with Andrea. For my main course I decided to try something new for me and went with the Singerhouse Farm rabbit with lavender, baby carrots, pumpkinseeds, carrot sprouts and rabbit fond blanc. I have to just say YUM!!!! There was a generous mound of perfectly cooked and seasoned baby carrots under the equally perfect rabbit and the sauce was incredible. I would highly recommend this dish if you ever see it on the menu. For dessert I went with the toasted nut tart with star anise-scented goat cheese-cherry ice cream with Marsala sabayon and espresso caramel. For the second week in a row I was in awe of the creative use of goat cheese in dessert and how it made perfect sense as soon as I tasted the dish! The Chef at Cru once worked at Heartland so maybe his goat cheese inspired dessert started here. I'll have to ask him someday.

We had coffee with our desserts and since I limit myself to decaffeinated coffee in the evenings I normally feel a bit cheated with the quality of my coffee compared to Greg's. However, at Heartland we each were brought our own French Press of Organic Bolivian coffee so my decaf was right up there with Greg's coffee!!! I loved that touch.

On a non food note, the bathroom was luxurious as well with a basket of cloth hand towels instead of paper and the most lovely hand soap. I encouraged Greg to check it out too but he's just not in to that kind of thing - lol!!!