Toast Wine Bar & Cafe

Rating:

If I were one of the characters on "Heroes," I'd try to focus my fledgling superpowers on Toast Wine Bar & Cafe and Spill the Wine. I'd merge their best attributes, weed out the troublesome ones and forge a perfect downtown Minneapolis wine bar.

Toast owner Erin Tomczyk really nails the wine-bar food thing, keeping her nibble-friendly menu short and uncomplicated while emphasizing fresh, generous flavors, at affordable prices. At its center is an inventive crostini assortment, each a thin, crispy baguette slice topped with something colorful and tasty: parchment-thin dry cured ham with avocado and tomato slices, a generous swipe of garlicky pesto crowned with shrimp, rich ricotta and sumptuous smoked salmon, spicy barbecue beef with crunchy slaw, sweet roasted peppers over tangy goat cheese, each just $1.50 a pop.

A superb plate of sausages and cured meats (finished with excellent mustard and amusingly refreshing cubes of sparkling apple cider gelatin), a brief but exceptional cheese selection (love that raw cow's milk blue from St. Paul cheesemaker Joe Sherman) and a bowl of what the menu rightly describes as "some good olives" round out the grazing options.

Larger appetites can swerve toward a half-dozen marvelous pizzas, their perfect cracker crusts laden with a sophisticated array of ingredients; best are the precisely balanced marriage of aromatic tallegio against slow-roasted onions, the sweetness of beets two-stepping with salty blue cheese and a fetching red-onion/pine-nut/goat-cheese combo finished with a handful of sprightly arugula. There are several abundantly portioned, brightly textured salads and a few hearty sandwiches.

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