Whimsical Zanzibar borrows from many countries

Menomonie restaurant offers
plenty of entrees, tapas, salads

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Zanzibar Restaurant & Pub has set its menu free.

Really. It's unbound.

At first, this can be disconcerting. The server brings a sheaf of loose pages, printed neatly front and back but in no particular order.

You get to decide where to begin.

But that's the happy point. You can take the appetizer-salad-entrée route here — and many diners do. But you also can build a meal of tapas, begin with dessert, opt for a huge lahvosh — or mix and match.

Choosing at Zanzibar is difficult and exhilarating. The menu offers 18 entrées, 16 tapas, five salads, six kinds of lahvosh, 12 appetizers and 14 ways with chicken wings. And it includes flavors from Spain, the U.S., India, Morocco, Indonesia, Mexico, Italy, the Middle East, Japan, Thailand, Greece, Armenia, Jamaica, Turkey, Norway, Sweden and the Caribbean.

This amazing variety meant that, even with three visits, we had to ignore the appetizer menu — including the deep-fried Corn Dodgers, which we coveted, $7.99.

Lahvosh is an Armenian-style flatbread. Think of it as Zanzibar's improvement on Wisconsin thin-crust pizza.

We liked the Margarita lahvosh, which is covered with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, marinated Kalamata olives and artichoke hearts, quickly baked, then showered with fresh chopped basil, $15.50. No pizza sauce is used, thankfully, only good olive oil. And the lahvosh crust is just plain better than most thin pizza crusts: cracker-crisp, light and wheaty, with a tantalizing hint of sweetness, especially in the gently browned edges.

Tapas are the little dishes served in Spain. Zanzibar's menu calls them "small plate dinners" and announces "great meal for one or fun appetizers for more."

We disagree with the first half of that announcement. Though well-crafted of good ingredients, few of these tapas make truly great meals by themselves. They're not served with side dishes, just with decent bread for dunking; eating only one can become monotonous. We recommend splitting a tapa as a first course or — better — bringing friends along to share a meal of several. For a feast, count one tapa per person and one for the table.

A great tapas meal for four would be the spicy Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta, $9.99; Roasted Artichokes with lemon bread crumbs, $9.25; Sautéed Mushrooms in beef broth, $8.25; Cannellini Beans with roasted garlic, grilled sausage and rosemary, $9.25; and the Moroccan-style Chicken Tagine, $9.75.

Seek your server's help in choosing. We ordered Feta Shrimp and Spanish-style Chicken — $9.25 — but learned too late that both include a daunting profusion of canned tomatoes. Two such dishes together were too many.

Zanzibar's chicken wings include 12 dry versions rubbed with Mark Johnson's own spice blends and two others, including one with house-made jerk sauce, in the traditional wet style. All are deep-fried expertly — long enough to crisp skin and edges — and all come at hotness levels from two to 15. Our level-eight buffalo wings came lusciously enveloped in a thick, rust-colored, zingy-hot house-made sauce, $8.25.

But don't ignore the entrées.

An excellent pasta Carbonara, $14.50, featured ribbons of hot linguine and Canadian bacon tossed with beaten egg, Parmesan and crunchy scallions.

A filet of halibut dusted with light seasonings and roasted at high temperature had a succulent center and a mild, clean flavor, $17.50. Both fish and the accompanying house-mashed potatoes gained from their anointing with a delicate sour cream-lemon sauce.

A medium-rare duck breast, bland to start, was nearly rescued by mango-plum ketchup and fine side dishes of basil-lemon rice and broccoli, $17.99. A 16-ounce rib-eye, grilled to a moist medium-rare, was served in a good red-wine jus with our choice of flavored mashed potatoes, $23.99. We tried the mild horseradish mashed; others include red pepper, onion, goat cheese, jalapeño, garlic, tomato, Cheddar or Parmesan.

Entrées come with light white bread loaves — whose crisp crusts are heavy with palate-dulling garlic — and creatively plated side salads perky with onions and banana peppers. Get the house Thai dressing with its mellow, gingery smokiness.

Alas, a Shrimp Grapefruit Salad with a different Asian-inspired dressing cost twice as much as it should have — $9.99 — for fragments of bland shrimp, bottled grapefruit and okay greens. Fresh mint and cilantro hit the only grace notes.

Order the dense Four-Layer Chocolate Cake early, so it can reach room temperature by meal's end, $6.99. When thus tempered, its frosting has the gooey intensity of liquid fudge. The cooks playfully decorate the plate with a weaving of many syrups; ours had honey, chocolate, raspberry, kiwi. In a month or so, when Zanzibar's baker-in-training makes her professional début, all cakes will be house-made.

Zanzibar's décor is as eclectic and fanciful as its menu: papier-mâché palm trees, crimson walls, wooden tables inlaid with game boards, a bar cased in corrugated steel, wooden stools on lion legs, intriguing art, much whimsy.

Zanzibar is just a fine place to sit, sip, sup and chat.

Main Course, the Leader-Telegram's restaurant review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month. Diners' Notebook, a sampling of favorite restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday of the month.