Farm-to-table restaurants don’t often equal low-salt, low-fat options

Farm-to-table restaurants, or local food restaurants, are gaining popularity across the country these days, especially among millennials looking for alternatives to the highly processed foods they grew up with.

My son, who lives in St. Paul, Minn., is a big believer in the local food movement and so while visiting him recently, we tried a place called Heartland that fits into this new school of fresh, local specialties.

But looking over its menu, I was reminded of our visit to Boltwood in our hometown of Evanston, Ill., another local food restaurant — while this movement promotes local and regional specialties, it isn’t doing any more to cut salt from menu items than are more traditional restaurants.

Heartland has several prix fixe three-course offerings but I couldn’t order any of those because of concerns about salt and fat in the offerings. So I turned to a fish alternative, walleye which I’ve enjoyed elsewhere.

I asked the waitress if the light crust on it could be prepared without salt and she said yes. I didn’t taste lt while eating so think it actually was, which was very nice.

The waitress did advise me against a cabbage side dish I wanted because of salt content in that, so I instead ordered some simply done roasted potatoes.

My wife did get one of the three-course offerings but said her main course, a cheese-filled cannelloni, was cold.

So I’d give Heartland a B- overall for our first visit.
John