The first (very serious and hard-hitting) question I asked chef Gavin Kaysen about his new North Loop bistro Bellecour was: On a scale of one to 10, how Frenchy-French is it? What was a 10? he asked. A 10, I said, means you’re draining a glass of red at 11 a.m.; your stoic, black-vested waiter is gliding across the floor to serve you a little plate of thin-sliced andouillette. (You must understand, andouillette sausage is made only with the funkiest parts of a pig; it is eaten by the Frenchiest of the French.) First of all, that sounds fabulous, Kaysen said. And in that case, Bellecour is probably an eight.
An eight! So, pretty damn French. Having eaten there this week, it’s true. The space is snug—a bistro, not a sprawling brasserie, and notably smaller than the original Wayzata Bellecour, which Kaysen opened in 2017 and closed in the early days of the pandemic. The open kitchen, tucked behind a marble bar, is accented with gleaming copper pots; in the dining room there’s a small U-shaped bar, back-lit with an orange glow; the heavy wood mirrors and brass fixtures on the walls already have a subtle patina. (Kaysen worked with Shea on the interiors, though his wife, Linda Kaysen, shaped the design closely.) For as big of an opening as Bellecour is, the restaurant itself feels understated, with a little dose of French reserve—but also remarkably warm.
That warmth is matched on the menu. Here’s a recipe for a dreamy winter’s evening meal (and I have to credit my dinner date and co-editor Steph March for the idea): Slip onto a stool at the bar and order the roast chicken for two, served in a creamy vin jaune sauce (a.k.a. “yellow wine” sauce, a staple of the Jura region of eastern France) with crème fraîche and carrots. Then dessert: a profiterole or crème brûlée. Strategic and simple, you have maxed on French deliciousness. Or do as we did, and wind your way through the menu: a beautifully salted butter lettuce salad; escargot (topped with puff pastry, no shells); fried duck wings à l’orange as big as chicken drummies; steak frites; cod with tender lentils in—I swear—a witchcraft-good sauce of vadouvan curry and parsley oil. Bellecour’s entrees start at $19 and top out at $32; more modest than you might have expected.
Kaysen says that it took him the full five years since Bellecour Wayzata’s closure to grieve the original restaurant and to understand, fully, what Bellecour 3.0 was meant to be. (Bellecour 2.0, of course, was the five-year bakery collaboration with Cooks of Crocus Hill, which sunsetted earlier this year.) It boils down, in many ways, to a story from 2008, when Kaysen was cooking under chef Daniel Boulud on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Boulud had sent him on an errand to Lyon, France, to prepare for the Bocuse d’Or. Kaysen ended up at Boulud’s parents’ farmhouse, which also happened to be the site of the original 1901 Café Boulud.
“His father, Julian, comes out and says,You must be thirsty, you should have a coffee,” Kaysen says. “So we sat down and had a coffee, and then his mom said, You must be hungry by now. We’ve prepared a roasted leg of lamb. We had a four-hour lunch. We had a bottle of white, we had a bottle of red, we finished with even more coffee. I went back to my hotel in the center of Lyon and I was like, That is French cuisine. It was one of the most impactful moments of my life—French cuisine is all about the warmth of hospitality.”
Bellecour opens as a daytime cafe and bakery daily at 7 a.m.; at 5 p.m. it transitions to the full-service bistro menu. And don’t forget, its second location (which does not serve dinner) is also open in Edina.
Dining and Cooking