The zucchini fritti on the menu at Gia has more to it than meets the eye. Cut into satisfyingly thick wedges the length of French fries, these are fried just until pockets of crisp, golden welts emerge. But it is by no means an aggressive fry — the thin drape of batter makes it clear that these zucchini were fried skin-on. They are exquisite.
Purists will say that deep-frying vegetables ruins their integrity. This clearly isn’t the case at Gia, a seasonally driven restaurant that opened in February in the quiet southwest Minneapolis Armatage neighborhood, where the French restaurant Café Vin once stood.
The nefarious secret here is that the zucchini aren’t plucked from, say, a boutique farm up north. They come from a bigger supplier. But that doesn’t mean that Gia doesn’t pay attention to sourcing, nor does it mean that the redeeming qualities of any produce cannot be coaxed into fruition — provided they are in the right hands.
These hands belong to Gia’s chef/owners, Jo Seddon and Lisa Wengler, who met while working at Gavin Kaysen’s now-shuttered Wayzata restaurant, Bellecour. Wengler is the Minnesota native, while Seddon, a doctor-turned-chef, hails from London, where she cooked at the iconic River Café. The British-Italian restaurant’s influences are obvious: seasonally driven, airy, unpretentious.
At the River Café, years ago, I remember savoring whole, sweet calamari, grilled until tenaciously smoky yet tender; a pile of arugula, compellingly dressed; fat, al dente cannellini beans that upstaged whatever proteins it accompanied — all in the company of diners dressed like they had front-row seats at London’s West End but weren’t clamoring to show up on time.
There is no show nor flashes of breezy extravagance at Gia. The clientele is probably all well-heeled, yet the humbler environs suggest that a meal here is more languid. During my recent visits, I did find grilled calamari, arugula and beans, nearly as compellingly prepared as I remember them from the River Café. They are less breathtakingly priced, too: I mean well when I say that Gia isn’t really a place for special occasions.
This, happily, encourages more grazing, more frequent dining at Gia, where the menu changes each week in accordance with the seasons. In early July, I had bright, ruby-colored grape tomatoes on bruschetta; the next week, tomatoes were roasted instead, and featured in a panzanella salad. Juices from the grilled scallop and halibut seeped into the salad, and the Salmoriglio sauce — oregano, lemon, olive oil — tied it all together very appealingly.
Later that month, the tomatoes were swapped out for yellow zucchini, slivered into paper-thin, crunchy ribbons. During another visit, I had a commendably prepared duo of zucchini blossoms, which were stuffed with goat cheese, fried and brushed with sweet chili honey.
