Good Earth Café: Your Hook-up at Lunchtime

When a co-worker and I left the office for lunch last Thursday, we did so with different agendas: Mittens (that’s her code name) was in the home stretch of a clean-eating initiative. Meanwhile, the only thing clean about my eating lately was the silverware: I had just ended a streak of Juicy Lucy burgers at all three 5-8 restaurants on consecutive nights. My arteries needed a rest, and we landed at the Good Earth Café in Roseville.

In big, fat letters on the side of the building are the words All natural. All Day. Labels crept into my head right away: Vegan, hippie, I hope they have something on the menu for under $100. But I pushed forth, and walked out satisfied with my decision.

The Basics: They’ve got two locations, the other in Edina. You can make a reservation, and I recommend doing so. Here’s the menu, but beware: The website’s gaudy holistic theme makes the rest of the site almost unreadable. Also, lay off the ellipses.

We were seated in a long-tabled corner nook. The first woman to sit down at the table nearest ours told the hostess, “We’re a family of singers” as she sat down. At the next table down was a man sitting by himself listening to headphones and playing on an iPad. Otherwise, the clientele looked like us: On our lunch breaks.

As far as décor, they pull off the “kitchen at home except bigger” look without shoving the naturalistic theme in your face like they do online. 

Good Earth features monthly specials, and it was from here I ordered the “Just Right for You” meal. I played it safe with spinach and fennel soup, grilled chicken, and a chocolate brownie. A skinny version of Big Poppa Pump took our order and we went about our business.

"Big Poppa Pump" Scott
Steiner: NOT Organic

The meal was prefaced by a basket of bread and hummus. It wasn’t the uniform slices of French bread I was used to, but a deck of wacky-looking flatbreads and a slice of wheat. I took the least-intimidating piece of flatbread and, while it felt like I was eating the back cover of a notebook, it didn’t taste bad.

I’m no soup connoisseur, so I’ve nothing to say about the soup other than, “It was good.” 

Despite the capacity crowd, the entrees arrived in good time. The chicken rested upon the spinach-filled plate the way that girl rested on those rose petals on the movie poster for American Beauty. Blood orange slices occupied the corners like boxers.

The plate had a general presentation of “Holy crap, this really looks organic.” You'd see it for yourself had I remembered to take a picture.

The char marks, puddle of marinade, and glaze exoskeleton I was accustomed to were absent. Aside from a few bits of blood orange, this chick was totally naked. It looked good. Rather, it looked clean.

Chicken isn’t sneaky – it usually tastes how it looks, and the chicken tasted clean. It was like a salad without all the crap I pick out, and the portion really was just right for me – I left with a comfortably full stomach and a little surprise for my wife (I took the brownie to go).

Mittens enjoyed her dish, but I don’t remember what it was. And this just in from the wife: “Thank you for getting me that brownie, it was suuuper good.”

The Good Earth Café is a nice rotation from the perpetual steak-knife-and-buns bender of my life, and the prices are reasonable (The Just Right was $11), but I wouldn't drag my friends there. They serve beer, but I wouldn’t drink one there. They serve dinner, but I wouldn’t eat one there. This is a great mid-day refuge from your inboxes and meetings, and it looks like a lot of people know that. I may not see where else Good Earth could fit into my life, but they’ll be seeing me again at lunchtime before long.

Editor's Note: A bit of relief if you're worried about coming here and sitting among the flower kids: Good Earth is owned by the Parasole Restaurant Group, which holds Minneapolis mainstays like Chino Latino, Manny's Steakhouse, and Burger Jones. We can assume then that Good Earth is too corporate for the snooty vegan types, causing the rarely-typed sentence "I'm glad this place is corporate." Thanks, the man!