RESTAURANTS >>

• BEST BARISTA
  Sean's command of ground beans, water, froth, and heat is thorough enough to satisfy even the most fastidious 1/3-decaf latte fiend. He's fleet of foot and finger, too, thank goodness. Otherwise, the MCTC students who sometimes storm Espresso Royale's Hennepin store would have torn the... More >>
• BEST BREAKFAST
  Breakfast is the new lunch. Just ask the downtown Minneapolis business types, already stuffed into suits at 7:30 in the morning. They've got their planners spread out not on some polished wood conference table in a high-rise, but on a café table at Hell's Kitchen. Are they actually... More >>
• BEST BREAKFAST WITH A HANGOVER
  Face it, unless you had a night so bad that dry toast is an adventure in gastronomy, the best tonic for excessive partying is a quiet, hearty breakfast in a soothing setting. Like Roseville's Pippin's with its tiny, warm caramel rolls. Or the Local with its two-for-one Irish coffees, British... More >>
• BEST CHEAP EATS
  It's hard to see past : Cafe Latté's glistening Italian fruit tarts and the shiny chocolate tortes, the lingonberry and lemon scones or the Dakota bread, but this bustling, urbane cafeteria has been serving up some of the Cities' best salads, soups, stews, curries and sandwiches pretty... More >>
• BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT
  You've driven past it a thousand times; you'd be forgiven if you thought it was a flower shop. This unadorned restaurant, in a basement on Nicollet below the flower shop, is simply the best Chinese in the Twin Cities. The owners are a Taiwanese Buddhist couple (she cooks, he serves) who dish up... More >>
• BEST COFFEEHOUSE
  The Riverview is the heart of the Longfellow neighborhood. That's not your neighborhood? That's okay. Pull up a chair. Weekend mornings at the Riverview belong to babies and toddlers and their sleepy parents, nursing lattes. (The Riverview's clean, carpeted kiddie area is unparalleled and kept... More >>
• BEST COMMUNITY-BUILDING CAFE
  Strange times have befallen downtown St. Paul, specifically in the area around Mears Park. It was just months ago that one could wander in a post-apocalyptic haze amongst the skyscrapers and empty parking ramps on the weekends and evenings and see nary a single life form. Nowadays, thanks to... More >>
• BEST DIM SUM
  There are many ways to judge the excellence of a dim sum palace, but for us, the decisive factor has always been dumplings. Mandarin Kitchen has the most: chive flower dumplings, with their dark greens peeking through the translucent wrappers; cilantro dumplings, fragrant with herbs; pork... More >>
• BEST DINER
  A good diner should have breakfast all day long, and all night long for that matter because when the party is over and the bars close, god knows you don't want to be scrambling eggs all alone. The Uptown, through all its recent re-locations and despite the dancing Lucy, Snoopy and Linus... More >>
• BEST FRENCH RESTAURANT
  If you're looking for serenity, succulence, or a side of pomme frites, va to Vincent. Your bread will arrive in a little clay flowerpot, your salade Chinoise will arrive drizzled with an electric-green soy-peanut dressing, and your waiter may have just arrived from Provence last Sunday. (Ours... More >>
• BEST GREEK RESTAURANT
  Who knew one kitchen could do so much with so little? Just as an orchestra takes seven notes and produces an infinitely varied stream of poetry, in the narrow kitchen at the back of Christos's Agean blue-and-white Minneapolis dining room, a bevy of cooks tease olive oil, lemon, oregano,... More >>
• BEST HARD-CORE VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT
  When dining out as a vegetarian, sometimes we're thankful just to see a veggie burger on the menu, or something plain loaded with an impossible amount of cheese. Sometimes we're not even given a straight answer when asking about whether or not the "veggie" soup is vegetarian. At... More >>
• BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT
  Once upon a time, under a general misapprehension of sophistication and worldliness, we thought we knew Indian cuisine. We thought we tasted alchemy. All of those spices! All of that toasting and grinding! Then we learned a thing or two about cooking and realized that when we thought we were... More >>
• BEST ITALIAN (NOT CHEAP)
  We spent way too much time and money researching this item this year, visiting well known, super-spendy Italian restaurants throughout the metro. At one, we got absolutely sick on the abundance of oil, butter, and egg yolk—the thinking seemed to be: If you can't cook, why not just feed... More >>
• BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT (CHEAP)
  A neighborhood trattoria that speaks the international language of pasta—fresh stuff handmade every day. (The menu warns against taking anything home to reheat; hand-cut egg fettuccini just doesn't revive nicely in the microwave.) Try any of chef Michael Rostance's traditional or original... More >>
• BEST JAPANESE RESTAURANT
  Sakura is a sweet restaurant in downtown St. Paul for people with Minnesota lifestyles but Tokyo tendencies. The hospitality swells at your entry: As soon as you're seated, a reed basket full of piping hot towels arrives at your table like Wet Wipes from heaven. Sushi appears on a simple wooden... More >>
• BEST KOREAN RESTAURANT
  King's Fine Korean Cuisine is two great restaurants in one. It's your hometown joint where everybody knows your name—if your name happens to be "Park" or "Kim." Alternatively, for those of us with names more like Olsen, it's the place where you can order by number, or throw yourself under... More >>
• BEST LOCAL CHEF
  Being a great chef is many things—and it's much more than being a great cook. It's leadership and charisma. It's the ability to work with other, usually younger chefs, to convey to them your particular vision, and inspire them to sweat and scramble to achieve it—because only then can... More >>
• BEST MEXICAN RESTAURANT
  What if your corner taqueria (and in the Twin Cities in 2006, surely every corner, even in Shakopee and Orono, now has one) had not just flavor, but high style? What if each plate were composed to look as if it were the many-colored, multi-textured creation of an upscale chef? What if the... More >>
• BEST MIDDLE EASTERN RESTAURANT
  When you enter Emily's the first thing you notice is the unassuming surroundings. Wood paneling, scenic photos, a display case filled with meat pies, baklava, and assorted olives. Place your order, however, and the whole universe shifts from unassuming to a dimension entirely fresh and... More >>
• BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAFÉ—MINNEAPOLIS
  Neighborhoods are filled with nothing so much as lots ofs neighbors, and in Kingfield, those neighbors can pretty much be divided into two camps: those who have significant caches of rare vinyl LPs, and those who remember how things used to be, back in the day. All of these neighbors find... More >>
• BEST NEIGHBORHOOD CAFÉ—ST. PAUL
  When chef Lenny Russo announced that he would be heading the new restaurants at the Guthrie Theater, you could almost hear the screams of anguish emanating from residents of Mac-Groveland: What about their beloved Heartland? Just when the renowned fine-dining restaurant opened its wonderful... More >>
• BEST NEW RESTAURANT
  When 112 Eatery opened, it brought not just another new restaurant to the Twin Cities —it brought a new type of restaurant altogether. While we have had chef-driven restaurants of high cooking talent open on shoestrings before (Auriga); while we have had D'Amico Cucina alumni bringing... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO EAT OUT WITH KIDS
  The thing you're looking for most when you trundle the kids off for a meal is solidarity. Oh yeah, you may want high chairs or some certainty that there will be mac and cheese on the menu. But, mostly, you want to know that when your Junior dumps his fries on the floor ("Uh-oh, Mama, uh-oh!")... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT FOR A FIRST DATE
  Ingredients for a great first date: an atmosphere both relaxing and romantic, delicious food at reasonable prices, and conversation that sparkles like just-Swiffered linoleum. If that's what you want, put your best foot forward and head to duplex. It's a tiny, red jewel box of a restaurant in... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT FOR APPETIZERS
  The coolest place in town, the prettiest snacks around—Café Lurcat raises the bar. With its wide-angle view of charming Loring Park and its spare, dramatic 21st-century Deco interior, Café Lurcat serves an eclectic selection of noshes, nibbles, snacks, and apps to match its... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT FOR DESSERT
  Adrienne Odom is nothing short of a genius, and, for years now, she has been dazzling diners with her pastry work at the La Belle Vie in Stillwater, and at the tapas bar Solera in downtown Minneapolis. The one glaring fault of her oeuvre, however, has been that you needed to eat dinner in order... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT FOR GLUTTONS
  New King's Buffet is conveniently located next to a tire shop; if your wheels collapse after your visit to the all-you-can-eat explosion of food, you'll have immediate, convenient recourse. Equally packed at noon on a weekday or at 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, New King's swarms with gluttons... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT FOR LATE-NIGHT DINING
  If you're burning the midnight oil, but you'd really prefer your late-night fires were used to sautée noodles or heat up a plate of pad Thai, head to Azia, where you can gorge yourself on Asian fusion until 1:45 a.m. Night owls will be treated to high ceilings, dark-stained wood, moody... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT FOR OUTDOOR DINING
  Okay, so the ambience isn't as romantic as W.A. Frost or the Black Forest Inn, and the views aren't as spectacular as a place like Café Lurcat, but Psycho Suzi's outdoor dining patio has other things going for it that some of the more obvious choices don't—like unpretentious... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT FOR ROMANCE
  When one thinks "romance," one does not usually think "beer garden," but if you can snag a spot on the Black Forest Inn's outdoor patio in the summer, you and your sun-dappled sweetie (or sweetie-to-be) will be basking in it. As shadows play fetchingly on your darling's face, try a beer sampler... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
  Singapore manages to offer not one but two restaurants in the middle of nowhere: Singapore Chinese Cuisine in Maplewood and the more elegant (and emphatic) Singapore! in residential south Minneapolis. At the northern restaurant, try all the curry-rich treats of that former British colony; at the... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT TREND
  The last five years have seen wine lists in the Twin Cities getting better and better. It's almost hard to remember the days when a restaurant's manager would just sit down with the biggest wine supplier in town and let them write the Ravenswood-and-Turning-Leaf-for-all list that used to be the... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT WHEN SOMEONE ELSE IS PAYING
  We think of this category as fantasy baseball for food-heads—what do you dream about when you're scrubbing up the lasagna pan on a Thursday night? How about the "Grand Menu Degustation," the 10-course everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink menu that showcases the upper limits of local wunderkind... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT— MINNEAPOLIS
  Like it or not, the status of a city's cuisine is judged by the restaurants at the top—never mind that native Minnesotans might get a meal from such a place once a year on their anniversary, the top white tablecloth restaurants are where business types flying through town dine, and when... More >>
• BEST RESTAURANT—ST. PAUL
  It's been almost four years since chef Russell Klein took over the kitchen at St. Paul's most venerable old restaurant, W.A. Frost and Company, and in that time he has managed to transform a reliable and occasionally interesting restaurant into the most delightful and consistently surprising... More >>
• BEST SEAFOOD RESTAURANT
  Sometimes seafood likes to get dressed up fancy in white-wine sauces on snazzy china, and sometimes it enjoys being served up fresh in a red plastic basket with a nice cold beer. Stella's Fish Café specializes in the latter category—po'boy sandwiches the size of the mythical "one... More >>
• BEST SERVICE AT A RESTAURANT
  There's something incongruous about being coddled, feted, pampered, respected, celebrated, and deferred and demurred to, in a shopping mall. And not just any shopping mall, but one that's home to an amusement park, an aquarium, and enough food courts to feed all the teenyboppers in the... More >>
• BEST STAR CHEF EXPERIENCE IN A RESTAURANT
  Five years ago you could go into most of our top chef-driven restaurants like Alma, Zander, or La Belle Vie and see the chef of note hurling pans behind the line just like folk. Nowadays not only are open kitchens falling from fashion, but you really have to work hard to find a lot of big-name... More >>
• BEST STEAK HOUSE
  You aced your Class B motor vehicle test. You won the Nobel Prize. You just found out Aunt Nedra left you the millions you thought were going to Mr. Chunky. You want steak. You'd prefer the steak to be the kind that yields to the gentle yet firm pressure of a silver butter knife. Murray's is... More >>
• BEST SUNDAY BRUNCH
  Imagine being invited to Sunday brunch at the home of your most elegant friend. She makes a handful of dishes—a strata, a plate of sausage, some homemade scones—and sets them out on the sideboard. She makes you feel welcome. You serve yourself. You linger over drinks. It hardly seems... More >>
• BEST TAKEOUT
  No babysitter? No bright lights, no big city. Nope, not unless you make the trek to Chiang Mai Thai, sighing just ever so remorsefully at its arty, wood-lined dining room and the memory of your evenings traipsing through its bargain-studded wine list, as you pick up your food at the bar and... More >>
• BEST THAI RESTAURANT
  Just when you feared that Thai food in these towns would never begin to match what you've had on one of the coasts, that you'd never get any help breaking out of the Bermuda triangle of rice noodles, coconut milk, and peanut sauce, along came Tum Rup Thai. The menu here offers all the standards,... More >>
• BEST VEGETARIAN-FRIENDLY RESTAURANT
  It's not so much that Sapor is a vegetarian restaurant, or even a fish- and chicken-serving one with a veggie aesthetic. It's that Sapor does to meatless entrees what it does to all of them: Chef Tanya Siebenaler and manager and wine fan Julie Steenerson seem to turn everything they put on a... More >>
• BEST VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT
  Just inside Mai Village's exquisitely embroidered menus, before the lists of Vietnamese delicacies including sesame beef and steamed walleye in ginger-soy sauce, reads the sentence: "We are a family business concerned with your satisfaction." This tiny phrase says it all; from the wall of green... More >>
• BEST WINE BAR
  It only took about a decade, but the core Twin Cities finally got a wine bar worthy of such a wine-smart metropolis. When the Riverview Wine Bar opened last year, we were impressed with the wide selection and stylish interior with its comfy fireplace and Tuscan color scheme, but the longer we've... More >>
• BEST WINE LIST
  There are quite a few remarkable wine lists in Minnesota. The deep, old, California red majesty of steak palace Manny's comes to mind, as does the unspeakably lengthy compilation of exotica featured at Stillwater wine bar Cesaré, and the astonishing Spanish breadth on offer at downtown... More >>