During my trip to Dickinson, ND earlier this summer, I took my dealer and some of his guys out to dinner. He told me that he had just helped put in an audio video system into a new steakhouse just up the road from his shop and he suggested that we eat at the place. We ended up going up to The Crossing.
Seth Murphy grew up in Kildeer, ND and went to Dickinson State for college. During college, he was a regular on the Northern Plains rodeo circuit as a steer wrestler. He thought he'd end up as a full-time professional rodeo cowboy, but his entrepreneurial spirit got the best of him while he was still attending college. He started SM Fencing in 2006 with the primary business consisting of fencing the fast growing oil fields in Western North Dakota. His only employee at first was his cousin, but as time went on his business began to expand. Murphy soon got into welding services, landscaping, erosion control, and maintenance work. By the time he was 29 years old, Murphy employed 100 people and had 75 clients - most of whom were oil companies.
When OPEC decided not to cut, but increase oil production during a meeting in late 2014, oil prices began to plunge in North Dakota. The oil boom that the state had enjoyed for the previous five-plus years was suddenly over. Oil companies pulled out of the state, oil rigs stopped pumping, and workers who had come to North Dakota to get rich working in the oil fields suddenly vanished.
Pictured right - Seth Murphy. Photo courtesy Grand Forks Herald.
While Seth Murphy acknowledged a slow down in his business, he looked for other ways to grow. He viewed the bust in oil prices as a opportunity to grow in different directions. He offered his problem solving services to government, military and private business entities and began to diversify his company. He was able to weather the storm and actually grew his business in the meantime.
Murphy is also known as somewhat of a philanthropist in the Dickinson community giving back to organizations and donating time, money and services to local youth groups, rodeos, and hospitals. But it was an idea for adding a community amenity that he and his wife, Chantel, came up with that triggered the plan for what would be a new restaurant/community building.
A lot of Seth Murphy's meetings were held at various restaurants around the Dickinson area. He envisioned a place where businessmen in three-piece suits and ranchers with dirt on their pants could come together for a top-notch meal. Murphy knew absolutely nothing about the restaurant business, other than he liked to eat in them. He was much more comfortable out in the field than he was in an office. Along with his wife, he started a new company - Endeavor West - that would oversee not only the restaurant, but all aspects of event hospitality that the restaurant could host.
The Murphy's bought a plot of land at the corner of State Ave. and 19th St. W. in northwest Dickinson and started on the construction of their restaurant. Seth Murphy's mother was an interior designer and she used a handful of local artists to come up with the contemporary western motif for the restaurant. None of the people planning the restaurant had any experience of running a place, but they all knew what they liked and didn't like about places they had eaten at. The end result was The Crossing, a two-level 11,000 square foot space that opened just right at a year ago this week.
I pulled into the large parking lot of The Crossing around 7 p.m. (see map) The first thing I saw regarding the large brick building the that houses the restaurant was that it was void of windows. I thought it to be somewhat odd that there were no windows in the restaurant.
Just inside the restaurant was the bar area. It was heavy on stonework, but the colors were mild and muted. The sound and audio system my dealer put in the restaurant was top-notch. He explained to me that the Murphy's wanted the best of everything in the restaurant.
We were seated in the dining room off to the side of the bar area. It was was better lit than the bar and featured the same soft red walls as what was in the bar. We were given menus and our server Alysee (pronounced A-lee-see) came over to greet us. They had a nice wine and beer selection at The Crossing and I got a Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA to start out.
Steaks were the main focus of the menu at The Crossing. The menu featured two different sizes of beef tenderloin filets, a T-bone steak, a New York strip and a bone-in Cowboy ribeye steak. The menu featured seafood such as shrimp scampi, scallops, seared halibut and a lobster mac-n-cheese. But the appetizers were what I thought the most interesting things on the menu. They had a charcuterie board with sliced meats and cheeses, they had a very intriguing beef carpaccio appetizer with a sliced red onion, fried capers, a lemon garlic aioli, and served with a peppercorn crostini, a braised pork belly, and a smoked bacon prawns appetizer that came with a housemade horseradish marmalade. My dealer and his guys are pretty basic eaters and no one wanted to share any of the appetizers, so I passed on getting something for the table.
We went on to ordering dinner. Since the guys didn't want any of the appetizers, I ended up getting the wedge salad instead of the dinner salad that normally comes with the meal. It was an interesting cut of romaine lettuce with a light dressing on the greens. But it wasn't a wedge, it was more like a lettuce spear. The salad came with some roasted crostini and grape tomatoes. Although I was hopeful for the salad, I was pretty underwhelmed by it.
As I said, my dealer and his guys are pretty simple eaters. Most of the guys got the 1/2 pound Black Angus burger with Applewood-smoked bacon and a roasted tomato aioli. My dealer went with the double patty burger topped with Swiss cheese and deep-fried onions. Instead of fries, he got the grilled asparagus.
However, one of the guys and I ended up getting the 8 ounce beef tenderloin filet. I got mine topped with sautéed mushrooms and some of the peppercorn cognac butter on the side. None of the sides - which included a loaded baked potato, broccolini, herbed baby carrots, and seared-pistachio and parmesan Brussels sprouts - really appealed to me. I ended up getting a bowl of the steak soup.
I ordered my steak rare, but unfortunately it came out more medium. I wasn't going to send it back, but I was disappointed in the temperature. Still, the piece of steak was tender and had a good beef flavor to it. The sautéed mushrooms were a nice addition to the steak. But I would have rather had it cooked less than what it was.
The steak soup was, well, it was all right. It was actually kind of bland in taste and seemed a little too salty to my palate. The steak soup was also pretty underwhelming.
I would say that while I enjoyed my visit to The Crossing, the food - to me - was just a little disappointing. I'd never had a wedge salad quite like what they served me before, the steak was overcooked - but still tender enough, and the steak soup was more salty in taste than anything. The restaurant, itself, was top-notch in its decor and ambience, and our server was efficient, energetic and fun. They've only been open a year and I'm sure The Crossing has had some growing pains. I'm sure I'll be back there at some point and I can only hope it's somewhat better than my first visit.