Eldr + Rime in Tosa plans a menu built on live fire
Openings of restaurants — especially large, finer-dining places — have slowed to a trickle during the coronavirus pandemic, but Eldr + Rime is forging ahead in Wauwatosa's new Renaissance hotel, due in August.
The wood-fired oven and grill will be key to the menu, and they'll be the visual centerpiece of the restaurant's open kitchen, said the restaurant's chef, Gary Baca. Baca previously led the kitchen at Michael Jordan's Steak House and was chef and a partner at Lettuce Entertain You restaurant group in Chicago.
The Tosa restaurant is named in part for flames; in Old Norse and Icelandic,
means fire. The restaurant's menu will be contemporary American but looks toward Scandinavian and Nordic cooking for broad inspiration. The decor will follow something of a rustic Scandinavian design aesthetic in the dining room.
The other element is ice, as in chilled seafood, like oysters on the half shell, hot-smoked salmon, salmon cured with beets and herbs, and king crab legs. Diners also can expect hot seafood items such as grilled whole fish for the table. (Rime is based on an Old Norse word for ice.)
Rye, whole grain and seeded breads will be found throughout the menu — a rye flatbread here (baked in the wood oven) with local goat's milk butter, a crisp seeded bread there, with dishes like roasted carrot dip.
The restaurant will make use of Wisconsin cured meats and cheeses, and it will make its own skyr, the Icelandic style of yogurt. (Attached as it is to a hotel, the restaurant will have breakfast.)
Desserts would tend toward the rustic, something like slices of cardamomspiced crumb cake that are brûléed and served with compote or seasonal fruit, the chef said.
He said appetizers and desserts will be designed to be shareable — although they don't have to be, in this coronavirus age.
"We're still far enough out, and things are evolving and changing daily in our industry," Baca said. "We have some contingency plans for how we open. We might see more carryout than we would have" under normal circumstances.
Eldr + Rime takes up a two-story addition to the hotel at 2300 N. Mayfair Road. The hotel itself is in a converted office building outside Mayfair mMall to which a four-seasons rooftop event space has been added.
The restaurant, which will have fireplaces, large windows and a garden of herbs and flowers, is big — 6,800 square feet. That translates to seating for about 260 at full capacity, but obviously with room enough for social distancing during the pandemic. A patio for outdoor dining also is part of the plan.
Besides the main dining room, the restaurant has two private dining rooms (one for about 20, the other about 30) and seating in a bar with lounge that will serve food in addition to drinks (maybe something like Swedish meatball sliders, the chef said). The hotel will have large spaces for events that can hold hundreds down the line, such as weddings and meetings.
HKS Holdings is the hotel's developer; it also developed the Kimpton Journeyman Hotel in the Third Ward, home to Tre Rivali restaurant and the Outsider rooftop bar. Eldr + Rime is part of Chicago's Fifty/50 Restaurant Group; Concord Hospitality Enterprises of Raleigh, N.C., will manage the hotel.
Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 2242841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.