Restaurant news: Tim McKee plans for Libertine

McKee bringing changes to Calhoun Square

Big news: Tim McKee has another restaurant on the horizon. The very near horizon. Minnesota's first James Beard award-winning chef is converting the former Uptown Cafeteria into Libertine.

Four-year-old Cafeteria — officially titled Uptown Cafeteria and Support Group — served its last meal on Monday. Well, the street-level portion of the Calhoun Square property, anyway; its crazy-popular rooftop Sky Bar (3001 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls.) is remaining open (afternoons to late-night daily, with a 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekend brunch).

It's a fast conversion: McKee has set July 16 as the reopening date. McKee is directing the project in his capacity as a partner and vice president of culinary direction for Parasole Restaurant Holdings, Cafeteria's parent company.

"It's 100 percent my idea, as if I'm opening a restaurant, but with someone else's money," he said.

The concept? "I wanted a place that could function similar to a steakhouse," said McKee. "Where people in their 20s and 30s can get a modern steakhouse experience for a reasonable price. This is not going to be Manny's," a reference to Parasole's upscale beef palace in downtown Minneapolis.

The menu's nucleus is a return to classic butcher cuts.

In other words, forget about the filet. "I have no interest in the filet," he said. "There's no fat, there's no flavor."

Instead, the beef roster will feature such little-known cuts as the feather blade (from the cow's shoulder blade), the onglet (a center-cut strip, resembling a filet), the point (a triangular cut from the rump) and the kitchen's signature, a short rib that's grilled at a super-high heat. McKee encountered it during a recent scouting trip to Argentina, where he discovered that it's that beef-crazed country's favorite cut.

"It has more chew, but it delivers on flavor," he said. "It's primal, it's less refined. Let's face it, you're not going to go to a steakhouse and get a $17-to-$19 cut. This is easy on the budget."

On the pork side of the equation, there will be ham steaks and a lightly smoked Berkshire pork chop, its generous fat cap still intact, and when it comes to lamb there will be sausages, ribs and a deeply flavorful saddle chop (two side-by-side porterhouses, with the belly in between), which at $24 will be the menu's most expensive item.

McKee said he had to turn to three separate sources to supply the menu's various cuts. "Where do you find a great pork chop?" he said. "I'd say that you go to a butcher shop, but they're aren't any, and that's the problem."

"It's our version of A.1., which is what any good steak sauce should be," said McKee.

There will be burgers, too (in beef, lamb or pork), along with a small seafood roster (grilled prawns, cedar-planked salmon) and fried chicken. Oysters will be imported from both coasts and served four ways: raw, in shots (the watermelon margarita sounds particularly intriguing), charbroiled and fried.

The rest of the menu will include a half-dozen salads and a handful of starters, including crispy pig's ears with a fried egg, steak tartare with a quail egg and tuna poke tacos.

The street-level portion of the restaurant is undergoing a quick cosmetic renovation. The kitschy homage to Howard Johnson's color palette is history.

"It's going to be modern and comfortable," said McKee.

Cocktails are being devised by longtime McKee collaborator Johnny Michaels.

The kitchen will be supervised on a daily basis by chef Steve Hesse, a veteran at Masu Sushi & Robata (another McKee project) and its parent company, Sushi Avenue.

As for pulling the plug on Cafeteria, McKee takes a glass-half-full approach.

"I wouldn't say that the restaurant didn't work," he said. "Cafeteria did $3.5 million in sales last year, and that's winning by all kinds of measures. But this is an expensive location, and maybe $3.5 million isn't enough. We're viewing this as an opportunity, to do something meaningful and special."

Why the Libertine name?