If you thought you saw a version of this post yesterday but then couldn’t find it again, no, you were not imagining things. A first draft of this post was accidentally posted yesterday. Here now is the complete version, though you may not find it to be so. By this I mean that this is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of the Twin Cities “fine dining” scene. I have not eaten at every Twin Cities restaurant that aspires to or is covered by that label. Nor is it intended as a ranking per se or at least not in the usual sense. For one thing it’s not based (only) on the pure merits of restaurant kitchens and dining rooms, on how good the food or hospitality is. Instead, it’s based on the question of how often we (usually meaning the missus and me, with or without friends, but also occasionally our kids as well) would likely return to a given restaurant; i.e what our personal rotation is, given the limited number of meals per year we can give to this expensive genre.

This is a measure driven both by how good the food and hospitality at a restaurant is and by how expensive it is. No matter how much we enjoy the food at a super-expensive place, we would be unlikely to eat there once a year, leave alone more often. On the flip side, an affordable place might be higher in the rotation despite being not quite as strong if the food was compared head to head. Other idiosyncratic filters apply as well, as you’ll see below. In other words, this is a very personal list. Its intention is not to tell you which places you should eat at more or less often but to tell you where things fall for me/us right now and why. Being the kind of self-involved person who writes a blog I obviously think this is of interest to you. You are welcome.

As I noted above, this is very far from a complete list. There are many places that you might expect to find on it that are not on it simply because I/we have not eaten there yet. Such, for example, are All Saints, Diane’s Place, El Sazon, Gai Noi, Juche, Mara, Vinai etc.. Then there are others that I have no interest in. Such, for example, are steakhouses. Then there are places that I don’t have any strong objections to but don’t really have any interest in returning to and probably some places that have just slipped my mind. If you’re wondering about a place that’s not on the list below, let me know in the comments and I’ll tell you which category they fall into.

Before we get to the list, I should also note the reason for my putting the term fine dining in quotes in the first paragraph. That reason, of course, is that no one really knows what constitutes fine dining anymore.  Yes, there are restaurants in the world that still offer an old-school fine dining experience (white tablecloths, formal dress etc.) but there aren’t really any such in the Twin Cities. Nor am I defining “fine dining” in terms of cost alone. Though that is not generally an inaccurate way to describe it, there are restaurants on this list that cost so much more than others that a grouping based on price alone doesn’t really work. Nor is ambience a particularly useful rubric: at one of the most expensive restaurants on this list you’ll perch on a high chair at a counter; at many others you’ll struggle to hear your dining companions over the din (of the dining room or the music). And nor do the experiences at many of these places resemble each other: are Hai Hai and Spoon & Stable fine dining restaurants in the same way? For that matter are Spoon & Stable and Demi?

So what do I mean by fine dining? Following Justice Potter Stewart, we could say that while we can’t define it easily, we know it when we see it. Among its signs are “cocktail programs”; having to pay for bread and butter; foraged and/or fermented ingredients; the presence of crudo on the top of a menu and of a luxe preparation of what was once an off-cut of meat at the bottom; a named pastry chef; and, of course, a chef nominated or disappointed not to be nominated for a James Beard award. This is not an exhaustive list (and even with tongue in cheek it’s descriptive rather than prescriptive).

Finally, I should also clarify that this list is aspirational even for me/us. There are 12 months in a year. We average at the most 1.5 fine dining meals a month, which is a max of 18. And we’re not in Minnesota 12 months a year. Which is to say, this is not our actual Twin Cities fine dining rotation but the ceiling for the number of visits to each restaurant listed.

Okay, let’s get to it. (All restaurant links go to my most recent review.)

Several Times a Year

Restaurant Alma. This should be no surprise to anyone who follows this blog. Alma, is our favourite high-end dining restaurant in Minnesota since the demise of Piccolo. Their menus change often but are always excellent and surprising enough that we want to eat as many of them as we can. In most years that’s at least three times if we can swing it.

Twice a Year

Oro. Less than a year old but catching up very quickly to Alma on our list. We ate our second dinner there in early July and I immediately made a booking for late September, by which point the menu should have turned over some.

Tenant. Our last meal at Tenant didn’t get us very excited but we enjoy their playful menu surprises enough to try to go back at least twice a year.

Once a Year

112 Eatery. As with Alma, we’ve been eating at 112 Eatery since we arrived in Minnesota. Nostalgia is doubtless one of the things that keeps us going back—especially as our favourite dishes have never left the menu (which is not to say that the menu is static). One of the others, and the thing that really puts it in this tier, is that our boys love it as well. A meal there with them has become an annual ritual for us since 2022.

Hai Hai. Frankly, at the level of the food itself, Hai Hai is not at the level of the other places in this tier or even the next one. But if the food is not excellent it is very good and it is certainly a very good value. We paid $60/head all-in for our most recent dinner there, which is significantly less than every other place on this list. That qualifies it for an annual visit.

Petite Leon. We’ve enjoyed both our meals at Petite Leon a lot and would love to get there once a year if we could.

Spoon & Stable. As I’ve noted before, Spoon & Stable feels like the culinary equivalent of driving a luxury sedan: everything is done very well but it’s not a particularly exciting experience. Still, it’s nice to eat a meal where everything is done very well.

Once Every Two Years

Demi. Demi is in this slot mostly because of the cost. We were not wowed by every aspect of our two meals there but the highs were high enough that at 2/3 the price I could possibly see us eating there every year.

Herbst. We enjoyed our first dinner there last year enough to want to come back but I can live with it happening next year.

Khaluna. I enjoyed the hell out of all my meals at Khaluna. So why is it down here and not in the “several times per year” or “twice a year” categories? Simple: the menu has barely changed since my first meal there. I like having favourite dishes stick around (see 112 Eatery) but I also like to be able try new things on each visit.

Meritage. Meritage, like Spoon & Stable and Alma, is a grown-up restaurant for grown-ups and I’ve enjoyed all my meals there over the years. But I also can’t shake the feeling at the end of each meal that it costs a bit more than the meal deserves.

Once Every Few Years

Bar La Grassa. I have to admit that I am not on my own a big fan. But the odds are we’ll go there for one of the boys’ birthdays once every few years because they really enjoyed their meal there in 2022 and they’re not yet jaded assholes like me.

Borough. I put Borough here even though we haven’t eaten there again since our first dinner in 2014 (!). So it’s clearly been more than a few years since we ate there. If we manage to go this year it will more accurately be in the “Once Every 10 Years” category. But I place it here because I liked that meal enough to want to go back once every 2-3 years. There’s no real good reason that we didn’t. Okay, I’ll admit it: at some point I had convinced myself they had closed.

Colita
Martina

I enjoyed our first meals at both Colita and Martina enough to be happy to eat there again if it came to pass but not enough to make it a big priority over the place in the tiers above.

Myriel. This is one of the Twin Cities’ new darlings. We were not convinced by our first meal there in 2022. We keep meaning to go back and try them again. Maybe next year we will.

St. Genevieve. We enjoyed our last meal at St. Genevieve a fair bit (we actually ended up there because Myriel had to close unexpectedly) but, again, not enough to need to check in very often over places we like better for pretty much the same price.

Wouldn’t Object If Someone Else Really Wants to Go

Joan’s in the Park. Our meal at Joan’s in the Park in 2019 was inconsistent but fine enough on the whole. But I can never quite summon up the enthusiasm to eat there again on my own steam. It was, on the one hand, not very interesting; on the other, it was quite expensive for what it was.

Kado no Mise/Kaiseki Furukawa. My experience of their sushi in 2018 was ho-hum enough that I’ve not been able to bring myself to check out their kaiseki experience. It doesn’t help that the people who rave about the latter are usually also very enthusiastic about their sushi. And as the missus is a hard sell on expensive sushi in Minnesota I’m going to have to wait for another out-of-town friend who wants to give it a go.

Kim’s. In my review of Kim’s I noted the reasons that put it down here in the list for us: there is a very good Korean cook in our family and we visit places with excellent Korean food often. And so eating the kind of takes on Korean food that Kim’s puts out is not a huge priority for us.

Owamni. My review of our dinner at Owamni in 2022 got a lot of people mad at me on Facebook. I really did not like that meal at all. That said, their current menu format is very different. It’s true that we have friends who’ve eaten there more recently who didn’t care for it very much either but if somebody else really wanted to try it I’d be up for giving it another go. Maybe.

Only If Someone Else is Paying

Travail

The only reason I would go back to Travail is out of morbid curiosity, but not on my own dime.

Alright, that’s our rotation. Let me know how yours differs or if there are places I’ve not listed that you think I should really get to this year or in 2025.

Here are some food pics from the restaurants above for you to look at.

Borough, Third Course: Arctic Char – Fennel, Salt Cod Agnolotti, Leeks, Pimentón I was one of those that got this. The char is grilled very slowly and was flat-out the best piece of fish I have had in a very long time. It was a pleasure to eat it slowly (and the dabs of trout roe on top of it were a very nice touch, as was the little triangle of crisped up skin). There’s a bit of caramelized fennel under the skin in this picture and that was fine too. I was less enthused about the fennel-tarragon puree on which the fish sat and the agnolotti. The puree I thought was too cloying; the fennel and tarragon somehow produced an effect of mint–it could work well with something else but didn’t seem complementary here; and while the brandade in the (squid ink) agnolotti was fine on its own I’m not sure it did anything for the char either. I wonder if this is a case where the composition of the dish was driven more by painterly considerations than culinary ones. It certainly is an attractive looking plate, but the components somehow added up to less than the sum of their parts. A pity as the main player was just so good.

Kado no Mise: And when opened too.

Travail: And then a third places a cracker on it. An involved presentation of what ends up tasting like uninspired shrimp cocktail.