California-Inspired Restaurant Now Open in St. Louis Park

Editor's Note: This article first appeared on Mill Valley Patch. The California town is the inspiration for the restaurant's name and menu.

A restaurant focused on farm-to-table cuisine with locally sourced ingredients—and inspired by a quaint area outside of San Francisco—opened earlier this week in St. Louis Park.

Craig Bentdahl, the former CEO of Minneapolis-based Excel Bank, opened the 5,000-square-foot Mill Valley Kitchen Tuesday, drawing inspiration “from the great farm-to-table restaurants of the San Francisco Bay Area and the wine country of Napa and Sonoma.”

Bentdahl hired executive chef Mike Rakun, who has held executive kitchen positions with the St. Paul Hotel, Mission American Kitchen and Truluck’s Restaurant Group in Florida, to develop the menu and manage daily operations.

“Mill Valley Kitchen is a comfortable place to enjoy unique dishes that are straightforward, delicious and good for you,” Rakun said. “More than ever, consumers are paying attention to where their food comes from and how it is prepared, and they are looking for more honesty and transparency from the sources that provide it.” 

The farm-to-table movement has a variety of origins and pioneers, namely Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.

So why did Bentdahl choose Mill Valley for the name?

In an email, he acknowledged the Bay Area’s connection to the farm-to-table movement and healthy cuisine in general, and that he liked that Mill Valley is a “beautiful, quaint and prosperous town. “

“I also liked the sound of ‘Mill Valley’—it sounds a bit like ‘Organic Valley’—and the history of milling in Minneapolis gives Mill Valley a familiar ring here,” he said, noting that Minneapolis is often referred to as Mill City.

Mill Valley Kitchen seats 165 people inside and another 25 on an outdoor patio. It serves breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. Dinner entrees include Duroc pork tenderloin with coconut sweet potato and apple jam or Chilean seabass with gingered-shitake quinoa and a sweet and sour cucumber salad.

Lunch and dinner items include a long list of interesting salads, unique flatbreads and burgers (Minnesota bison, grass-fed beef or gluten-free vegan). The restaurant also features wines by the glass and bottle with an emphasis on the vineyards of Northern California.