It has been a long time coming, but Aubergine, the French restaurant from husband-and-wife team Megan and Bjorn Jacobse, is set to open later this month.
If you’re quick, you might even be able to score a reservation.
The restaurant, in the former Revival space on St. Paul’s Selby Avenue, will serve its first meal to the public on April 24.
The very French menu will change frequently, following seasonally available ingredients, but will always include a version of pate en croute. The opening menu includes just 15 savory dishes, ranging in size and meant for sharing.
“The dishes range from very small to a 2-pound steak to feed two hungry people or four people that are also hungry but not overly so,” chef Bjorn Jacobse said. “We hope to sway people to order food to share amongst the table and have a fun time working through the menu.”
The Jacobses, who locally worked for chef Gavin Kaysen at Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis, have an impressive combined résumé, with Bjorn, who was born in Lyon, France, cooking at several high-end restaurants in Portland, Ore., and at Joe Beef in Montreal, and Megan involved in front-of-house operations in New Orleans, Portland and Minnesota.
Aubergine’s space, which has been completely transformed, seats 45, with a 16-seat flexible private dining room at the front of the restaurant.
“Every time I look at (the space), I am struck by how it is aesthetically what we are and who we are,” Megan Jacobse, who is the front-of-the-house part of the duo, said. “It’s a calm, welcoming space, nothing too bright or stark. We are using cream colors, and we do have purple (Aubergine means eggplant in French), but it’s definitely not a purple restaurant. Nice, dark wood. We want it to be cozy in the wintertime, but bright and clean-looking in the summer, without it being too intense.”
There’s an eight-seat bar, and if you’re lucky enough to get a seat at it when the restaurant opens at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, you could score a burger. Bjorn Jacobse said the plan is to make just eight of them (house-ground beef, house-made bun, thrice-fried French Fries) per night.
If there is a more ingenious way of getting Minnesotans out of their 6:30 p.m. dinner reservation rut, this food writer hasn’t heard of it.
Speaking of the bar, the beverage program at Aubergine is mainly focused on wines from Europe and the Pacific Northwest, where the couple used to live. There will be a small spirits program, with a short cocktail list, for those who like to start their meal that way.
Megan Jacobse said the only two cocktails that will be mainstays are a Sazerac, paying homage to the time she spent working in New Orleans (she graduated from Loyola University), and a gin martini, using Freeland gin, a classic London dry from Portland.
“We are partnering with those who really care about the industry and its sustainability long-term,” she said. “We are highlighting female makers, people of color, just people who are underrepresented in the industry.”
The team also plans to use the space’s pretty patio, but not until mid-June when Megan Jacobse returns from what she hopes is a very short maternity leave. She’s due with the couple’s second child at the end of May.
“We are very intentionally building a family and a restaurant in St. Paul,” she said. “We bought a house here. We intend to be a part of this community.”
Reservations for the last week of April and all of May are live now, and will be released one month at a time. So on May 1, June reservations will be available.
Aubergine: 525 Selby Ave., St. Paul; restaurantaubergine.com
Dining and Cooking