Ann About Town: Squash Envy at The State Room

When my lunch companion suggested that we eat at The State Room, I admit that I was not vibrating with anticipation.

My earliest recollections of eating at the restaurant housed in MSU’s Kellogg Center involve wearing a Polly Flinders dress and being encouraged to try either the famous chicken salad or the corn fritters. The chicken salad was always nice, and met my mother’s high standards (all white meat, good mayonnaise, no gristle, no onions or pickles). The fritters disturbed me because putting maple syrup on something containing corn offended my childhood sense of culinary rectitude.

The State Room was not exactly a family “go-to”; we were adventurous eaters and my mother was a great cook. The State Room was a place to take visiting professors when my mother was too exhausted to whip up a dinner party in the middle of her own work week.

Going back last week was a revelation. I found The State Room reinvented as a viable destination restaurant, from the décor to the menu. The room is a mix of cinnabar and earth tones, with large circular sculptures on the wall, huge pieces of driftwood in various places, dark wood furniture, large windows, and tasteful planters. The overall vibe is kind of Tasteful Asian Beach Resort Restaurant. It’s the kind of place where you’d be embarrassed to wear hole-y jeans, but not feel required to put on a jacket and tie.

The menu options were extensive, including clearly identified vegan and gluten-free options. My companion can eat neither gluten nor dairy, and the waitress was knowledgeable about what was in each dish, and quick to consult with the kitchen when she wasn’t absolutely sure.

The menu was calculated to please everyone from the least adventurous diner to the flat-out foodie. All of the standard business lunch items were available including Cesar Salad, Cobb Salad, Tomato Bisque, a Crispy Whitefish sandwich, and an Angus Burger. For a walk on the wilder side, one could order a Freekah & Bean Burger with Harissa spiked onions and smoky garlic aioli, a Lobster Tostada or a half-roasted, maple-glazed squash ”filled with succotash of edamame, red pepper, sweet corn, chick peas, saffron veloute and aged balsamic cream.” It’s definitely a place where one could safely feed a small child, a big-city sophisticate, an international visitor or the in-laws who don’t like “fancy” food.

The venerable chicken salad was still on the menu, and I was tempted to find out if it was as good as I remembered, but it was one of those days when the mercury hovered around 2 degrees and I craved something to thaw my frozen core. We split a salad, and I ordered a bowl of the soup du jour, a broccoli cheddar beer soup. My companion ordered the half-roasted squash.

The soup was indeed warming, but when my companion’s squash arrived I experienced severe and protracted plate-envy. The little acorn squash was sort of plump and cute, with vegetables and sauce literally busting out like a cornucopia. Selfishly, she proceeded to eat her own lunch in front of me. This merely strengthened my resolve to return for my own squash, along with maybe some chicken salad, a lobster tostada and some dessert.

And about that ─ after eating the squash that should have been mine, my lunch partner ordered a house-made Chocolate Tofu Mousse. It’s the kind of thing that would make Captain Carnivore weep, but it looked (and apparently tasted) pretty much like a chocolate mousse should taste. As an added bonus, it allowed someone unable to eat many traditional dessert ingredients to enjoy a creamy chocolate something.

I was content to watch on that occasion, but if I’d been eating dessert I might have had the cinnamon ice cream. Or the Coconut Lemon Cream Cake. Or maybe the brown butter coffee cake with Godiva white chocolate sauce.

But no corn fritters with maple syrup.

Editor’s Note: a tip of the hat to City Pulse writers Gabrielle Johnson and Mark Nixon for rediscovering The State Room first.