At a soft open event for Aubergine earlier this week, I surveyed the room and wondered: Am I the only one furtively googling French terms on my phone under the table?
Aubergine is the new Cathedral Hill bistro from Megan and Bjorn Jacobse, who met years ago while working at Zelo in downtown Minneapolis, according to MSP Mag.
After some time away, including a stint in Portland, Oregon, where the couple launched Aubergine as a pop-up, they returned to the Twin Cities. The Jacobses’ pop-ups continued locally at restaurants like Bûcheron, Mucci’s, and Hyacinth, as they got to work on this permanent space on Selby Avenue (located right across the street from Racket faves The French Hen Cafe/Moonflower Pizza).
Aubergine is quite French—the word is French for “eggplant”—and reading the menu, I kept having the experience of being… 94% sure I knew what something was. “Jambon…” (got it, ham) “...Persillé” (FUCK). I mean, I’ve heard the term “côte de boeuf” (no relation to Shia) before, but do I actually know what côte de boeuf is? There’s a reason Racket reviews so many sandwiches; not one of us has a fine-dining background.
But most of these unknowns are quickly answered with a sneaky phone search—or, you could pepper your pleasant server with questions, as I did. (Persillé simply means “parsleyed,” and jambon persillé is ham in a parsley aspic.) The menu is slight, with just 14 savory dishes on the one we perused this week, arranged with the smaller and more snacky options toward the top and mains like Sabodet de Lyon and wild lake trout near the bottom.
For a party of two, our server suggested two or three of the smaller dishes and one or two of the mains. (At Wednesday’s soft opening, our food was complimentary; we paid for our cocktails and NA drinks.) The menu is intended to be shared—plates passed around the table,
It’s not just the jambon persillé. At Aubergine, aspics abound, as in the oeuf en gelée or egg in aspic that accompanies the Appetizer Sampler à l’Aubergine ($21). On a menu made up of visually impressive dishes, this one still stands out; at its center, a marrow bone rises up like the gnomon of a sundial, surrounded by tartare, slices of house-made brioche, and that oeuf en gelée, with a jammy yellow center and tarragon leaves laid out on top with parallel precision.
For its striking presentation, we found the flavors on the appetizer platter were subtle almost to a fault, something we did not encounter with any other Aubergine dish. (I will say that my typically raw beef-averse dining companion quietly spooned most of the tartare into his slice of bread while I wasn’t looking, so do with that information what you will.)
Another gorgeous little number is Aubergine’s Pâté en Croûte ($18), with pork pate, pistachio, and boudin noir (blood sausage) encased in a golden-brown crust. It’s rustic but elegant, and hearty but not overly dense—and there’s gelée here, too, used to help fill the gaps between the pate and pastry as it expands and sets. I had a distinct vision of how perfect it would be to tear into this dish after a long bike ride through the French countryside, pairing it with a cold, crisp pilsner.
The $28 Beet Tarte Tatin (I actually knew what this was and how to pronounce it, thank you very much) was my favorite bite of the evening. Slivers of sweet golden beets topped the tarte, and on top of that? A hearty wedge of a nutty, rich sheep’s milk cheese, one I’m pretty sure would have cost $14 alone at a local cheese shop. The cheese was so good I had to ask what it was; right now, it’s the Sogn, a cave-aged cheese from Shepherd's Way Farms in Nerstrand, Minnesota, but it will likely rotate.
As our duck entrée ($39) arrived, I was enjoying a second house martini ($18) and my partner sipped a Helzenegroni ($11), a fruity and herbal spirit-free drink with strawberry, gentian, and rooibos. Here, coins of tender duck, skin beautifully crisped, swim in a rich gravy alongside leaves of endive and small, quartered radishes.
Like the dishes that preceded it, it felt refined but not fussy. As Bjorn told MSP Mag, the food in French bistros isn’t “finicky” or “dolled-up.”
“The food of Lyon was historically more for the peasants,” he says.
And while peasants might not shell out the 19th-century equivalent of $39 for a duck dish, spiritually, I get what he’s saying: If you need to use Google to get through the menu, you’re still welcome here.
Restaurant Aubergine
Address: 525 Selby Ave., St. Paul
Make a reservation: Here
