Valentine's Menus

We went to Sea Change at the Guthrie last night and it was wonderful. We shared a dozen oysters, had langostines with chile oil and each got a fish entree; me haddock and Walt salmon. What we ate was absolutely delicious but it seemed like everyone else at the restaurant was creeped out by seafood. The valentine's menu had scrambled eggs with lox as the app and some sort of stuffed fried fish roll as the entree that seemed too 'down home' for a dish at Tim McKee's restaurant. I do understand that Upper-Midwesterners are more conservative with their approach to seafood-and for good reason when you think about how far away the ocean is. And I do believe that the entree had snails in it. I was surprised by how accesible that meal seemed. By 'accesible' I felt like it was safe and uninspired. I didn't eat it so I am basing this review on what I saw...and also on the faces of our neighboring valentines couple when our oysters came out. They looked like they were going to toss their cookies.
What does this all amount to? As an aspiring chef who hopes to work in the Twin Cities my immediate assumption is that I am going to have to cater to the masses. In my ideal scenario I would be able to be as daring and uncontrained as possible. When I think about it, though, my role is to create amazing, memorable food. I would rather my food be remembered by how great it tasted than by how strange its ingredients were. So I have realized a) no matter where in the States you have a restaurant the ceasar salad is always going to be the number one seller and b) maybe raw oysters are a stretch here. Why not game, an ingredient that is amply available in Minnesota and part of the culture? Cooking locally is wonderful and we do have worldclass ingredients from within the 100-mile range that are exciting and innovative. Moral of my blog:
one stellar seafood restaurant is enough for Minneapolis and I think Sea Change is it!