First Taste: Nick and Eddie

Do great restaurants ever really die? Do we eat Delmonico steaks as a tribute to the iconic New York restaurant (big from 1827 to 1923) or for some less cosmic reason? These are good questions to ask yourself when at Nick and Eddie, Minneapolis’s newest big-buzz restaurant, which happens to be a reincarnation of Nick and Eddie, a terrifically popular restaurant that once lived on Spring Street in New York City.

New Yorkers who remember Nick and Eddie probably recall it as a place that helped jump-start the comfort food revolution and, eventually, begat the Blue Ribbon restaurant empire (through former Nick and Eddie partner Eric Bromberg.) But those who have been pining the past 20 years for the restaurant’s signature dishes can now hop on a plane to Minnesota, to see the restaurant as revived by a former Nick and Eddie server, Doug Anderson, now married to Minnesota Nick and Eddie co-owner Jessica Anderson, who worked in consultation with another former Nick and Eddie principal, Philip Hoffman. And the chef is Steve Vranian, once a principal chef for Jeremiah Tower’s Stars. How much significant American culinary history can one restaurant stand?

History notwithstanding, the best thing about this place is the food. My favorites? A delicate smoked whitefish salad served beside a trio of gorgeous little golden latkes, earthy chicken liver spread on planks of grilled bread and served with a salad of watercress garnished with lots of chopped bacon, and beef cheeks stewed till they’re like a concentrated taste of winter pot-roast comfort.

Of course there’s also a Delmonico steak on the menu, in case you want your New York restaurant memories wrapped around each other like some sort of deeply philosophical and very tasty restaurant-history turducken.