NORTH LONGFELLOW—You may have heard the introduction, “Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely and talented ….” Well, now you have it again.

Merilee Klemp is a professor of music at Augsburg College and one of America’s outstanding oboists. She lives in Southeast Minneapolis, and I had the delightful experience of accompanying her on a culinary adventure to the Japanese restaurant Midori’s Floating World Café.

The restaurant is quite small, and may be a bit hard to find on the small side street off Lake Street where it’s located, but the moment you enter, you are in an exquisite “floating world” of Japanese flavors and design. Actually, I think the name is meant to convey the restaurant’s excellent sushi and sashimi fare, but Dr. Klemp and I opted for a hot Japanese lunch instead.

She grew up in Excelsior, Minn. Her father was a Lutheran minister and her mother a teacher. She attended Augsburg College in the mid-1970s, then graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and finally got her doctorate at the famed Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.

Klemp tells me that she learned to play the oboe in grade school — and also the English horn, as most oboists do. Her music teacher played a large role in her early musical life, encouraging her constantly.

She returned to Augsburg as a teacher in 1986 and has been there ever since. From 1992 to 1998, she was chairperson of the music department.

Her musical career is filled with frequent guest performances and recordings. She has performed in the orchestra for many of the top touring Broadway shows which come to the Twin Cities, including Aida, Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast, Miss Saigon and Little Women.

Our friendly and helpful waitress came over to get our drink order. The tea selection at Midori’s is remarkably sophisticated, with unusual teas not usually available in Twin Cities restaurants. I ordered a rare oolong (perhaps the finest of the Chinese teas), and Klemp had a green peppermint tea. All the lunches here come with miso soup, salad and rice.

We decided to order right away. Klemp chose the vegetable tempura lunch. I decided to have the grilled salmon with Japanese vegetables, special pickle and fruit. I also asked for a side order of the oriental marinated ginger.

Our teas, when they arrived, were quite aromatic. My oolong was amazingly complex, with nuances of oriental flowers and flavors.

Klemp not only plays for the top traveling musicals in the Twin Cities, she performs with the area’s leading musical ensembles, such as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Schubert Club, and Vocal Essence, with whom she will play this coming spring.

In 2002, long-time Schubert Club chief, the late Bruce Carlson, commissioned Klemp and guitarist Chris Kachian to make a CD called Falls Flyer (which can be ordered for $15 at www.schubert. org). It includes several compositions by local composers, including her husband, Randall Davidson.

Together, Klemp and Davidson live a very musical life, filled with teaching, composing, performing, computers and good food. Their 15-year-old son, Ben, plays the electric guitar, the French horn and sings. He attends Great River Montessori school.

Our soup arrived; miso soup is a staple of Japanese restaurants, but Klemp said that she thought the Midori version was a stand out. We both liked the classic, slightly sweet dressing on the accompanying house salad.

Our entrees were dramatically presented with that special sense of introspection and simple design that permeates traditional Japanese styles. Klemp raved about her delicately fried tempura, piled appealingly on her square plate. My salmon had been perfectly broiled, and its accompaniments had the strong and distinctive flavors of Japanese pickled vegetables.

I usually notice something that could be done better in individual dishes in most restaurants, but found nothing to second-guess here. The room at Midori’s Floating Island is relatively tiny, and it was crowded at lunch, but it maintained a calm and surprisingly quiet atmosphere. Klemp found the pickled ginger, which she had apparently not tasted before, very intriguing.

During the summer, Klemp performs and teaches at some of America’s and Europe’s top festivals — either by herself or with her family. She has also been to the Aspen and Interlachan summer festivals, and the Bacharia in Stony Brook, N.Y. Klemp tells me that she would like to go sometime soon with her whole family to the Chautauqua Institution, the original American summer festival in New York. I grew up nearby that great festival, and visited it every summer of my childhood.

We decided that we could not finish our meal without some special Midori desserts. I almost picked the ginger ice cream but decided on a charming Japanese chocolate roulade with mint ice cream in its center. Klemp had the mint ice cream by itself. Many of our fellow diners, most of whom arrived after we did, were now gone.

Klemp told me about the history and culture of the oboe, a double-reeded woodwind and one of the most difficult instruments to play in the orchestra.

Although perhaps not as glamorous as the violin, the piano or the trumpet, the oboe is one of the most distinctive sounds in the orchestra, and top players are sought out by orchestras all over the world. With her national and international reputation, Klemp could lead another kind of musical life, but clearly prefers her home and family in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood.

“We’ve been here since 1987,” she said, “and it keeps getting better and better.”

Like Japanese art, design and cuisine, Klemp lives a life of delicate balances; in her case, between her teaching career, her family and her musical artistry.

As our waitress cleared our plates, and only our cups of tea remained, I thought of how cuisine can resemble our lives. Midori’s is a special place, lunch or dinner, where this is revealed every day.

last revised: July 25, 2007

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