Meritage, the award-winning French restaurant, was born in what owners Desta and Russell Klein call a “tumultuous year.”
Both had been working at W.A. Frost for several years. They had met there—Desta as serving captain, Russell as chef—when Russell was let go. They were in the midst of planning their wedding and had just sent invitations naming W.A. Frost as the reception site.
“We needed to find a reception spot, and on the fly,” Desta says. It was 90 days before the wedding, so they contacted Au Rebours, the restaurant formerly housed in Meritage’s location. It was one of their favorites, and where they had their second date, “so it was actually a natural choice for us,” she says. The wedding was saved.
When they came back from their honeymoon, the owner of Au Rebours asked the Kleins if they were interested in buying, which they were, but say the price wasn’t realistic. That restaurant ended up going out of business. “We ended up just kind of picking up the pieces, and it went from there,” Desta says.
The whole situation was a mess, but Russell says, “I look back on it fondly now,” because it got them to where they are today. Not that things were easy once they opened on November 1, 2007.
Not only had Au Rebours closed, but another French restaurant down the street had closed, “and everything in the media was how French was dead—nobody wanted to eat French food anymore,” Russell recalls. “And that was my background. I attended the French Culinary Institute, I spent almost a year working in France, I worked in a bunch of the great French restaurants in New York. So I was always going to do a French restaurant.”
Then the recession hit.
“We opened in November, and they announced the recession in December,” Russell says. And there was a lull in development in Saint Paul. “I remember our first summer downtown; this place was a ghost town. We didn’t think we’d make it.”
But Desta recalls an article where local restaurant critic Adam Platt wrote, “If ours is a just restaurant world, Meritage will be around for a very long time.” Nine years later, the restaurant has received numerous accolades and chef Russell Klein was a semi-finalist for the James Beard Award for 2015, his third nomination.
Not that awards were the goal. The goal was to run a professional restaurant from front to back. “Russell really was wanting to run a very professional kitchen, one very much of the ilk he was used to in New York,” says Desta.
Desta, who grew up in the restaurant industry with her parents, worked as an admissions counselor at her college alma mater, and was ultimately called back to hospitality. She had high ideals for the front of the house. “I had this perspective of wanting to create a haven for true service professionals,” she says. “It gets a bad rep [for employing] kids between semesters of college, people not really taking their job seriously.” The average age for waiters at most restaurants is 22, she says; last they checked, the average at Meritage was 28. “We’ve had zero turnover in the front of the house for years. We have a little bit more collective feel,” Desta adds.
When it comes to food, the menu changes every few weeks based on what’s in season. There are a few signature dishes that have been on the menu since day one. Those aren’t chosen by the chef though, Russell says. The customers decide what the signature dishes are, “because that’s what they come for.” The matzo ball soup, the steak frites, the moules frites, and the crispy half-chicken all make that list. “And in a lot of ways those are my favorite dishes. Simple, satisfying,” he says. “You can eat them two to three days a week, and some of our guests do. I’ve been working in restaurants on and off since I was 16, and this restaurant has more regular guests than any place I’ve ever worked. It’s incredible.”
The atmosphere likely contributes to the gathering of regular guests. The restaurant re-creates the style of a brasserie. “In Europe, brasseries are these larger, urban restaurants that offer really comforting cuisine, and it’s a gathering house—for the people who live there, and the people who travel,” Desta says. “So we’ve always really embraced that—suits to jerseys.”
“The restaurant is, in my opinion, at its best on nights when you walk into the dining room and literally see a guy in a Minnesota Wild jersey at one table and a guy in a tux going to the opera at the next table,” Russell says. Which happens regularly depending on the season, given their proximity to major event centers. “I love that. That’s what I want—I want people to feel comfortable either way.”
With that description of a Saturday night, it’s hard to imagine the restaurant’s struggle over the first few years. “When we opened Meritage, did we know it was going to be the institution it’s becoming? No.” Desta says.
“We were following up several failed restaurants in the same space,” Russell says. “I don’t think you can discount how important just our living and breathing this place was for the first five years or so.”
But they can’t take all the credit, according to Russell. “To watch Saint Paul’s development over the last eight years while we’ve been here, we feel we’re a part of that,” he says. “But we’re just a spoke in the wheel. The whole city is just heading in such a positive direction.”
