Two women built a restaurant around whatever the local farms happen to be growing that week, and now Fiddlehead Kitchen is poised to put down roots of its own in downtown St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, just across the border from Minnesota. Co-chefs Sarah Mittelstadt and Marlee Crave have spent recent seasons running the kitchen out of an unused space inside The Barred Owl in nearby Balsam Lake, turning pop-ups, catering gigs and weekend events into a steady following before taking the leap into their own storefront.
Fiddlehead Kitchen serves dishes made with locally sourced ingredients, and Crave runs a small vegetable farm. That farm-to-table backbone has defined the business since it first started cooking, and it is the same thread that's carried the kitchen from a borrowed space in Balsam Lake to its planned new home.
Fiddlehead Kitchen, owned by co-chefs Sarah Mittelstadt and Marlee Crave, opened inside The Barred Owl in Balsam Lake, where they have been operating ever since, per osceolasun.com. The outlet reports the restaurant will move from that location to its own space in St. Croix Falls, with the chefs targeting a July or August opening. Renovations for the new spot included construction work partly funded by a CDI grant, along with painting and buying equipment, the report notes.
From a Borrowed Kitchen to Pop-Ups and Catering
Before any of that construction began, Fiddlehead Kitchen's story started with a kitchen nobody else was using. The chefs moved into the unused space at The Barred Owl and started doing pop-ups, catering and events, according to a Voyage Minnesota interview with the pair. That gradual build-up gave them room to test a concept rooted in scratch cooking before committing to a full build-out downtown.
The interview traces how each chef's background shaped the eventual menu. Mittelstadt brings 10 years of experience from serving, to food trucking with Chef Shack in Minneapolis and Bay City, to running the kitchen at Farm Table in Amery, per the same account. Crave brings nine years of experience, from cooking at Rainbow Chinese, baking with Heritage breads, catering at Quince hospitality in Minneapolis, and baking and running the front of house at Farm Table in Amery. The outlet describes Fiddlehead Kitchen as the culmination of the pair's combined experiences and skills.
A Menu That Follows the Harvest
That shared history shows up most clearly in how the menu gets written. Our menus are completely guided by the local farmer's availability, the chefs told Voyage Minnesota, describing a bare-bones counter service model built to keep the focus on the food rather than frills. Osceola Sun's reporting echoes that philosophy, noting the restaurant serves globally inspired dishes using locally sourced ingredients that often rotate based on seasonal availability, with Crave sourcing much of the produce from nearby farms.
St. Croix Valley Magazine has described the result as a kitchen in constant motion: each weekend brings a new menu with delightful fusions and flavors inspired by the season, according to the publication's feature on the restaurant. That rotating approach ties Fiddlehead Kitchen into a broader regional push toward direct farm sourcing; the St. Croix Valley Food Alliance has said its member farmers grow food using sustainable farming practices and sell directly from the farm to consumers, per stcroix360.com.
Why Downtown St. Croix Falls
The planned move isn't just about square footage. Osceola Sun reports the new location could bring the chefs closer to the summer farmer's market and enable them to launch their own bar program, a feature the Balsam Lake space didn't allow. Separately, Town of St. Croix Falls Resolution 26-11 shows the Town Board approved and granted alcohol beverage licenses for the year ending June 30, 2027, to named licensees including BP #7842, Peer’s Bar, Not Justa Bar-N-Cafe, Big Rock Creek, Sunflower Hill Wedding and Event Venue, and Poco Loco Mexican Grill, according to the Town of St. Croix Falls. Fiddlehead Kitchen is not among the listed licensees.
For now, Fiddlehead Kitchen's story remains one of steady growth from a shared kitchen to a storefront of its own, built on the same idea that got it there in the first place: let the farms decide what's for dinner.
