When Minneapolis chef Isaac Becker (formerly of D'Amico Cucina and Café Lurcat) and his wife Nancy St. Pierre (a decade in the front of the house at Cucina) opened their homey little downtown restaurant with its cozy booths, they changed the face of fine dining in Minneapolis. First,... More >>
20.21 unites two famous brand names: the Walker Art Center, where fine-dining restaurant 20.21 is located, and Wolfgang Puck, the grand old titular chef and international businessman. What results is a restaurant that dazzles with style, polish, and pop, but lacks any particular heart. But will... More >>
Notched your belt with all your eastern-Mediterranean cuisines, have you? Your Lebanese, Egyptian, and Syrian? But ask yourself, have you eaten Kurdish? Probably not--if you haven't been to Babani's, which looks to be the first Kurdish restaurant in the nation, a quiet corner shop where one can... More >>
Barbette is an Uptown dining legend--the fries consistently win awards as the best in town, the wine list is shockingly affordable and well chosen, the food has tended to showcase fine-dining sourcing at everyday prices. Seriously, this has long been the place wine and dining professionals go... More >>
How can you turn Twin Cities-area farm products into the food that the food cognoscenti really, really want--namely well spiced, healthy, various, filling, affordable, and local? Chef Alex Roberts, the James Beard-nominated chef who also owns fine-dining standard-bearer Restaurant Alma, answered... More >>
Step right up, ladies and gents, see the miracle material molded into a hundred different spine-tingling shapes. You've seen it before, it's pasta, but you've never seen it like this: Thrill to the sight of trenette (thin noodles) dancing with hand-ground pesto. Gape at exquisite preparations of... More >>
Reborn from the ashes of former fine-dining standard-bearer Restaurant Levain, Café Levain is a T-shirt casual, safe and sound little French-oriented bistro, with the emphasis on safe and sound. The French onion soup is the best in town--beefy as a steak, comforting as a quilt, and... More >>
Café Maude debuted in 2007 with a simple idea: Be as chic as Chanel, as hip as a San Francisco DJ, and as affordable as T.G.I.Fridays. Sound good to you? Yeah, you and everyone else in town. If you do ever get in, some of the highlights youll find: creative cocktails (try the... More >>
Is the Jeans-Georges Vongerichten restaurant in the basement of the new Chambers Hotel good enough? If youre a contemporary art lover, your answer will almost certainly be yes: Where else do you get to dine among Damien Hirsts and other priceless works of art from Chambers patron Ralph... More >>
This mobile kitchen operated by two local culinary pros, Carrie Summer and Lisa Carlson, dispels misconceptions about mediocre street food every Saturday morning during the Mill City Farmers' Market and Thursday nights at White Bear Lake's Marketfest. Summer, who, by day is pastry chef for Taher... More >>
Most of food-oriented Minneapolis was reeling when three of our biggest of our big-name restaurants closed, namely Auriga, Five, and Restaurant Levain. What to do? Where to go? Who would carry the locally sourced, local-talent train forward? Luckily, the answer was right in plain sight, at the... More >>
It might not be one of the seven wonders of the world, but it sure ranks as one of the seven design wonders of Minnesota. The word breathtaking doesnt even do justice to this Charles-and-Ray-Eames-meet-the-Matrix marvel of a dining room, where elements of classic Modernism are interpreted... More >>
The first really nice, upscale, celebration-destination dinner restaurant in the recent history of East Lake Street combines an American Arts and Crafts decorating scheme, a lovely outdoor patio, an over-ambitious menu, and a wonderful bar that serves a number of imaginative, well-executed, and... More >>
The standard line on the Dakota is that it has the best food of any jazz club in the country. That's got to be true, but doesn't really cover it. When there is no music playing at all, the Dakota is a very classy lunch or dinner spot, thanks to the great work of chef Jack Riebel, formerly of... More >>
The white vintage oven at the Grand Cafe has been there for more than 60 years, baking basic sugar cookies for the Grand Bakery and, in more recent years, delicate scones for the Bakery on Grand. The quaint little storefront, with its multi-paned windows and scuffed hardwood floors, seems... More >>
In the grand tradition of emigrés who appreciate their adopted land more than the natives do, Jersey-native, French-kitchen-trained Lenny Russo is the Minnesota chef most dedicated to exploring the possibilities of a native Midwestern cuisine. Amazing explorations of Midwestern bounty can... More >>
Pilot yourself over to Heidi's, the new restaurant by Stewart Woodman, and try to get a table in the first dining room, against the east wall. From there you can turn your head to the left at any given moment and see Chef Woodman, onetime New York City power player at such restaurants as Alain... More >>
The veal shank osso bucco at I Nonni is the sort of dish that lingers in your memory...the tenderness of the braised meat, the rich, buttery marrow you scooped from the bone with a tiny spoon. It's one of those meals that makes it difficult to order anything else on the menu. But if you can bear... More >>
A snazzy, five-table little deli right in the middle of the sweet spot of Eat Street, the Jasmine Deli is the sweet spot of choice for much of the Vietnamese community. They make the special boiled cakes necessary for Vietnamese New Year and Full Moon celebrations, sticky rice coconut loaves... More >>
Minnesota's biggest Cantonese restaurant and dim sum palace JunBo occupies the massive old Chi Chi's space just north of 494 and spaciously seats 400. Through these vast fields dim sum carts wheel every day, carts innumerably packed with dishes uncountable. Or, it seems that way anyway, as the... More >>
Fine dining is often attempted, but rarely done. Why? Few and far between are the chefs with the cooking skills to design an unforgettable menu, and fewer and farther between are the cooks with the skills to pull those menus off flawlessly, all night long. Few and far between are the dining... More >>
Lucia Watson, the chef of Uptown's most beloved bistro, is the Jerry Graham of local ingredients, and acolytes use her Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland as the bible of Upper Midwest cooking. Look for dishes using springtime's first watercress, summer's piebald heirloom tomatoes,... More >>
D'Amico's Mexican restaurant Masa opened to the kind of reviews that kept using words like upscale and high design; words that made most people assume: expensive. Not so! Masa is really just an everyday Mexican restaurant, albeit one in a nicely polished room with some splashy cocktails. At... More >>
St. Paul chef Russell Klein (formerly of W.A. Frost) and his wife, Desta (who worked as a banquet captain at Frost), operate the classiest restaurant in downtown St. Paul. Their brasserie, in the charming Hamm Building in what was once the home of A Rebours, is named after an American wine made... More >>
The pot roast at the Modern is the stuff of legend. The fries and breakfasts are tops, too. And the fact that you can get beer and wine? That's the sprinkles on top of the cherry on top of the whipped cream on top of the sundae. Is the Modern the absolute perfect definitive postmodern diner?... More >>