Have It All, Eat It Too

La Belle Vie is back: Momentous, stately, and the best restaurant in the history of Minneapolis

A A A Comments By Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl Wednesday, Mar 22 2006

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Bill Kelley

A field of gilded lilies: La Belle Vie's sauteéd skate with warm lobster on a potato salad

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La Belle Vie

510 Groveland Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55403

Category: Restaurant > French

Region: Minneapolis (Downtown)

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Pastry chef Adrienne Odom, long at La Belle Vie, but also in charge of desserts at Spanish sister restaurant Solera, simply works more elegantly and more creatively every single year: Her espresso semifreddo with a warm orange cake and cardamom foam ($10) is one of the best desserts I've ever had. A rectangular tower of half-frozen chocolate coffee fluff is topped with a curlicue wig of candied orange zest curls: Beside the tower rest two unique flavor elements, a pile of ethereal cardamom foam and a warm, buttery orange cake topped with orange segments. The various textures each emphasized the other, the various elements of chocolate and orange each emphasized the floral and fleeting notes of the other. My notes on the night I tried it conclude: "I would eat this any day, any time, and possibly all day any time."

Which is sort of how I feel about La Belle Vie: I kind of wish I could go there every night and always, in the same childish way you might have once wished you could have a big birthday cake every day. Of course, birthdays notoriously lose their luster after a certain age. Or they did, until now. With the momentous, stately grandeur of La Belle Vie, birthdays as an elegant grandparent suddenly seem like a wonderful thing to strive for.

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