La Belle Vie
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Phone: (612) 874-6440
- Price:
- $$$$
- Hours:
- Sun-Thu 5pm-9pm, Fri-Sat 5pm-10pm
Editorial Review for La Belle Vie – by Donna Tabbert Long
In Short
High ceilings, crystal chandeliers, museum-quality sculpture and artwork give this nationally ranked top restaurant quietly understated grandeur. Here, twosomes celebrate special occasions and intimate groups of well dressed (and well established) friends meet for dinner. The elegant scene sets the appropriate tone for appreciating such menu items as sea bass in a puddle of luxurious saffron-orange sauce, or roasted lamb rib eye enhanced with a richly sweet carrot fondant. Architectural pastry creations have ranged from chocolate custard cake to chestnut semifreddo.
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Insider Tips
Know Before You GoGo with the five-course prix fixe (versus the eight-course) tasting menu. This way you'll be able to savor the three types of artisan breads, a couple amuse-buche (think warm delicate cheese puff) and two of pastry chef Adrienne Odom's desserts.
What to DrinkThe supplemental wine flights chosen to accompany the tasting menus take all the guesswork out, and offer value and taste. But wine connoisseurs can still peruse the 300-plus wine list.
User Reviews for La Belle Vie
05/11/2008 Posted by AlawaysDream
I do not know how to start review for La Belle Vie to be useful for other, but I will just write down what I saw and how I feel about. We went there in our second anniversary, When arrive the building really looks old (like the one I spent my childhood in) but clean, I would borrow a statement from another posting that it feels like you're eating in your Aunt Betsy's living room, dining area is surprisingly quite small, I did not feel that I’m in expensive place,. I was expecting relaxing expensive chairs/tables, new carpet, music in background, high end decoration The attendances do their best to look like proficient but I do not think they are, they said he will make us comfortable but they failed. Now we come to the food, I know that fine dine is all about the taste & presentation not to feel full, so I was expecting large plate with small portion in the middle, We go with the five course menu as many suggest to, there were two dishes caught or attention Sweet Pea Panna Cotta with King Crab and brown Butter Vinaigrette, Grilled Beef Tenderloin with Morel Mushrooms, Jerusalem Artichokes and Forme D’Ambert. The other are still good and have a unique taste but not that special. So now how much I give that, I honestly do not know, we are frozen food eater-machine, no one spend more than 15min cooking in kitchen, so how to tell they are really good cookers, or we are the lazy cooker. I would say my grandmother with very simple kitchen would have cook better. The other thing should cooking justify the $65/person you pay for dinner only (no wine). End the night with $185 with no-wine make me said, do not blame them, blame yourself who make the junkies your daily food so you need to pay little fortune to eat as it supposed to be!! I wouldn’t back again, but for you think how you feel about what I wrote.
05/10/2008 Posted by Reggie44
We saved experiencing the much celebrated Le Belle Vie experience for a special occasion. We celebrated our 3rd anniversary there this week by ordering the "tasting menu" in the lounge. This was touted in the local press as an affordable way to experience Le Belle Vie's award winning cuisine at a "spectacular value". The four course $40 Tasting Menu was accompanied by a $25 wine flight. We found the wine to be a solid, but unremarkable collection that was a solid value for the money. The food was quite another matter. Our four course "tasting menu" was literally that....a taste of each course and nothing more. Each course was literally one or two bites and I would estimate that we each received maybe six ounces of food in total. Now we are reasonably experienced and savvy diners and have enjoyed a number of excellent tasting menus in the Twin Cities (Solera's Valentine's and North Coast's Tasting Menus were both far superior) and found Le Belle Vie's serving sizes to be a small fraction of their competitions and the quality of food (with the exception of the beef tenderloin which was excellent) to be throughly unexceptional. In fact, immediately after finishing our $175 snack at Le Belle Vie's, we decided to go slumming and went to the Town Talk Diner to get some real food in a much more enjoyable setting at a small fraction of the cost. So either my lady and I lack the requisite sophistication (and miniscule appetites) to enjoy such haute cuisine...or the emperor has no clothes at Le Belle Vie.
Pros: Good service, delicious beef tenderloin
Cons: Grossly over priced, microscopic portions, unexceptional food (with the exception of the tenderloin)
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