Hey, look, I’m behind schedule again with the week’s restaurant reports! What a surprise! But I’m less than two days late. Please remember: this is not my job; you’re lucky I post at all. You’re welcome.

This week’s restaurant report comes to you from Minneapolis, from Bucheron. We ate at Bucheron for the first time last summer and I immediately added them to my “Once a Year” tier in the 2025 edition of my Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the places I wanted to go back to for sure this year. And so it came to pass. We returned a couple of weekends ago with the same friends we’d eaten that first dinner with. And it was another excellent meal, though with some non-food hiccups that may be more meaningful to point out now that Michelin is coming to Minneapolis. Read on to see what I’m on about.

At the time of our meal in late May, 2025, Bucheron had been nominated for the James Beard award for the Best New Restaurant in the US. They went on to win that award two weeks after our meal. Certainly not the only Twin Cities restaurant to have pulled that or another major Beard award off in this decade but on the basis of our last meal and this one I would say it’s the one that most delivers on that recommendation. To say that we were unimpressed by Owamni (now Indigena) in 2022, the year they won the Best New Restaurant award, is an understatement; and while we very much enjoy Hai Hai—whose Chef, Christina Nguyen, won Best Chef: Midwest in 2024—they’re not quite at this level (as I note in both editions of my Fine Dining Rotation, where I have them in the “Once a Year” category anyway). And so I’m happy to say that, in terms of the food, our second meal at Bucheron may have been even better than the first. Here are the details:

We had an earlier reservation this time—at 8 pm rather than 8.30—but, of course, it’s a lot darker at 8 pm in mid-September in Minnesota than it is at 8.30 pm in late-May. It was not cold, however, and their outdoor dining was fully on the go (and I think we were told it will remain on the go till mid-October). We, however, again had a table inside. But now the restaurant was very dark from the start of our meal to the end. This will likely not bother people who are not foolishly fussing with cameras to photograph their meal, but the cramped nature of much of the dining room might. This time we were seated at a four-top along the front windows. I had the inside seat in front of the windows and I was both extremely close to the person on my side at the two-top alongside and had no way of getting out to go to the restroom without making the person next to me get up and move out into the dining room. It was a bit like being in a crowded airplane cabin. There’s not much to be done about the total amount of real estate available but a little more elbow room certainly would be nice.

Having settled in, we got our coctail orders in. One of our friends got the Paper Plane (done here with tequila) and the other got the Apple Negroni. The missus got the Sandhill (gin, herbal liqueur, honey) and I got the Nicollet Yacht Club (rum, falernum, curacao, lime). The other three were very good; mine, I am sorry to say, was the only one that missed the mark—it may have been an execution issue as the lime was just a bit out of balance leaving an astringent finish.

The opening round of food similarly had a 3/4 hit rate. We shared all the dishes (an approach endorsed by our server). The Pommes Dauphines were as much of a hit this time as they had been in 2025 and the same was true of the Venison Tartare. The presentation on both was exactly the same as previous, by the way. Our two other dishes in this round were not repeats. The one we also all liked very much was the Wedge Salad, with lamb bacon, Big Woods Blue cheese (from Shepherd’s Way in our neck of the woods), beets, tomato and ground cherry vinaigrette. The odd one out was the Dutch Herring Tartine, with tomato and marigold. This was not because there was anything wrong with the dish in and of itself (beyond the initial presentation—more on this below) but because it was a bit of a non-sequitur along with the other dishes (both in this round and everything else that followed)—and I’m not sure it would have gone with anything else we might have ordered. It’s also not a good dish to order to share among four people, but that may not be a relevant issue for you.

There were no quibbles from here on out. Both the mid-course dishes were excellent. The Corn & Taleggio Agnolotti with ratatouille purée, cherry tomato, roasted mushrooms, lovage was very good indeed. But if I had too I would pick over it the Grilled Carrots with curry, cilantro yogurt, carrot sweet & sour sauce, sauerkraut, fried chickpeas. This despite the generic deployment of the word “curry” in the list of components. As always, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean: did they use curry powder? some other spice or blend that signifies Indian flavours? Nomenclature aside, this was a wonderfully composed and executed dish.

(Oh yes, we’d switched to wine before this course, getting a bottle of the Mae Son Vino, a biodynamic orange wine made from Müller-Thurgau grapes in Alto Adige. It went very well with the dishes in this round and the ones that followed.)

We got three mains between the four of us. We ignored the wagyu options and instead got the following: Fried Lion’s Mane Mushroom with Carolina gold rice, creamed corn, kohlrabi, blueberries and ginger mint; Blue Corn-Crusted Pork Loin with succotash, apple bbq sauce, polenta, pork jus and basil; and Red Lake Walleye with pearl couscous, potato-garlic sauce, red potatoes, broccolini, fennel and olives. All were very good but we all had the mushroom and the pork loin above the walleye. There was nothing wrong with the walleye, it’s just that the other two were a cut above. All three plates were harmoniously put together with no gratuitous elements.

All that was left to do was to eat some dessert. We did so. We got the Raspberry Parfait with almond cake, sorghum ice cream, roasted figs and almond tuile; the Peach Cobbler with basil whipped cream and Door County cherry sorbet; and the Bucheron Goat Cheese with maple, blueberry jam, wild rice crackers, anise hyssop and olive oil. All very good again but the peach cobbler was our unanimous top pick.

For a look at everything we drank and ate, launch the slideshow below (and please forgive the variable quality of the photos taken on the run in a very dark room). Scroll down to see what my reservations about the service were and to see how much all of this cost.

So, what were the service issues? I will pass silently over the fact that our enthusiastic young server asked us as we sat down if we were celebrating anything or “just out for funsies?!”. The bigger issues were, first, that all through the meal dishes kept going to the incorrect tables. This didn’t just happen to us or in our vicinity but our direct experience included the following: two occasions on which a neighbouring two-top’s dishes were almost given to us and one on which it was. This third was a particularly egregious case. The dish was brought out by someone from the kitchen; when they set it down on our table, I told them that if it was for us it had come out too early (it was a main we had ordered but it showed up before our first course). He looked at us blankly, looked over at the server, left it on the table and walked away. Our neighbours were laughing because, sure enough, it was meant for them. Our server eventually came over and took it away and we can only hope that a fresher version came out for our neighbours.

The other problem—again involving people from the kitchen bringing dishes out—had to do with providing details on the dishes beyond what was on the menu. We had really liked an un-billed squash that was on the plate with the walleye but weren’t sure if it was indeed chayote as we thought (or chow chow as it’s known in India). Our server had not inspired confidence in us that she would be able to answer the question and so we posed it to the chef (so it seemed he was based on his clothing) who brought out our desserts. His answer? “It’s just a summer squash; it’s whatever was delivered.” Okay. I should have known better at this point but I went on anyway to ask if he could tell us more about the goat cheese on the cheese plate. “It’s from France,” he said and walked away. His demeanour throughout this conversation suggested he’d rather be doing anything but talking to customers. Which is fine for someone who makes his living in the kitchen but a) don’t then send them out and b) shouldn’t the people in the kitchen know a little more about what is being served? We had actually liked the service a lot last year so these may just be transient service issues. But probably best if Michelin inspectors don’t experience them.

Okay, cost? $500 all-in. The prices on the menu look high but include a 18% service charge. So it was $125/head. Which is both excellent value in the Twin Cities for what we ate and also more or less the same price we paid last year. Now this, I support wholeheartedly.

Alright, my next Twin Cities restaurant report will not be from the high-end. It will either feature barbecue or Thai food. Tune in next Wednesday (if you’re lucky) to see which it will be. And come back tomorrow for another Seoul report and on the weekend for one and maybe even a second Delhi report.