Demi opened in Minneapolis in 2019. We ate there for the first time, not too long after, in January 2020. That meal didn’t blow us away but we liked it enough to say that we might make it an annual indulgence. But then some stuff happened in the world and we didn’t go out to eat very much for the next two years. When we did start going out to eat again they’d fallen off our radar a little bit. And so we didn’t get back there till the fall of 2022. Our response to that meal was similar to our response to the first: everything looked exquisite, a number of dishes were very good to excellent, but the whole didn’t quite add up to the sum of the parts. We left that meal thinking we’d be back two years later. Instead, it’s been four (almost exactly four, as it turns out). Did the third time finally deliver a meal that blew us away? Read on to find out.

Okay, let’s do away with the suspense: it did not. The reasons are not very different than the first two times. Again, everything looked very good; a number of dishes were very good, a few were excellent; but the meal as a whole didn’t come together, didn’t cohere. And four years later, I have to say I have less patience for this dining model than I once did—and I never had so very much patience for it. On Demi’s website—and on the back of the menu once it’s finally given to you at the end of the meal—there’s a poem that runs through all the things that humans can live without before asking rhetorically, “But where is the man that can live without dining?”. Well, I will certainly not be able to live without eating for very long but I’m afraid I could quite happily live without dining in this way too many more times. That is to say, eating elaborate, multi-course tasting menus for two hours plus while perched at a counter watching chefs not cooking but assembling dishes. It’s true I’ve had some very good meals that way—for example, at Hedone in London in 2016 and at 7th Door in Seoul this past May (a meal I have not yet reported on)—but at those meals the food was so outrageously good that I was able to look past the inconveniences of the format. None of our meals at Demi—which adds a dark room and a hushed atmosphere—have quite risen to those levels.

Indeed, at this meal, even including the dishes we did love, there was a kind of predictability to the meal, as we stopped dutifully at all the stations of the contemporary fine dining cross: here’s your dashi, here’s your hamachi crudo, here’s your foie gras, here’s your house-made pasta, here’s your game…I was tempted to yell “Bingo!” when we inevitably got to the wagyu (not that it was a surprise as we’d resisted the upsell from American wagyu to Japanese A5 wagyu at the start of the meal). And it seemed like every other course involved something being poured into or over a dish as it was placed in front of us. Once is fine, twice if you insist, but four times in nine courses is a bit much; especially considering that it was all done in an efficient, pro forma kind of way and none of it was interesting in the slightest to see—so why do we have to see it so many times?

And then there’s the service. From one point of view it was flawless. Everyone knew everything about the menu—there were none of the weird moments we’d encountered at our recent meals at Bucheron and Myriel when asking questions about the dishes; the meal was paced perfectly; water was refilled, cutlery was replaced exactly when needed. But there was something very bloodless about it. The staff were personable but in the way that concierges at high-end hotels are friendly. I wouldn’t say it quite felt like hospitality exactly and you do want that ineffable feeling of hospitality when you go out to eat; at least I do. It’s not that you’re not treated with respect or not taken care of at a place like Demi; it’s more that it feels like you are there really to be impressed by your meal and not so much to have a good time (and you can’t really go there as a party of more than two people). And then if the meal as a whole doesn’t quite deliver, those other parts become more visible (just as the conversation of the stranger sitting as close to my right as the missus was to my left became increasingly audible as the night went on).

Okay, so what of the meal itself? As always, you are not given a menu when you sit down. Each course is brought out by a chef who while setting it down quickly delivers a lot of detail that is impossible to keep track of when it’s so many courses in a row. At the end of the meal a card with a list of dishes (and their key components) is delivered to you. Here’s what the menu for fall 2026 looks like. Please forgive me but I did not take any notes and there were too many dishes for me to remember all the ins and outs of.

1. As we sat down, and while we were still getting situated and beginning to look at the drinks menu, two small bowls were set down in front of us and before we were quite ready, the meal had begun. A chef came over and poured a warm broth into them from a kettle. It was a mushroom dashi broth with roasted corn and bergamot and was a lovely, if unexpectedly sudden start to the meal.
2. Next arrived a trio of “canapés”. We were instructed to eat them from right to left: whitefish chawanmushi with smoked trout etc.; a nori tart with toro, yuzu etc.; and a little lettuce wrap billed as wild rice falafel. Well, the falafel did nothing for us but the other two were excellent.
3. Next up was hamachi crudo. Predictable, yes, but also a quite perfect blend of textures and sweet and pickled/fermented flavours. So far, so good. Three Japanese-inflected courses that made for a seamless progression.
4. Alas, the next course didn’t quite fit. On its own terms, the rabbit and foie gras terrine was perfectly executed, and the sour dough focaccia it was served with was excellent as well, but it felt like a non-sequitur after the previous three, like it had been dropped in from a different meal. And we felt this especially since the next course seemed to us to go much better with the previous three than this one did.
5. That course was one of the highlights of the night: crisped walleye and matsutake mushroom with buckwheat etc. and a warm broth poured around it whose particulars I do not remember. As I say, subtract the foie gras and you have coherence.
6. An abrupt change then to pasta: eggplant agnolotti with chanterelles, romano beans etc. Not only did this not quite follow for us from the previous course, we didn’t find it interesting at all. Alas, this is how we felt about the two savoury money courses that followed.
7. The various vegetable components on the next course were excellent: the celery puree, the brussels sprouts, above all, the black lentils. Alas, the main event,  the bacon-wrapped pheasant, while perfectly executed, left us cold. Not even the excellent albufera sauce (yes, poured over in front of us) could make it interesting.
8. It was a similar story with the wagyu strip loin (grilled over binchotan, I think the chef said). The sauce bordelaise (thankfully laid on before it came to us) and the supporting cast of a badger flame beet (which might possibly be delivered to them by our CSA, Open Hands Farm) smeared with what the chef said was akin to beef bourguignon were both excellent; but the star, the wagyu itself, was nothing very special (though it was cooked perfectly).
9. After three uneven courses the pre-dessert got things back on track. It featured sheep’s milk sorbet with whipped sheep’s milk yogurt and was rather good. A definite local connection here for us as it featured sheep milk products from Shepherd’s Way located not too far from our town. Indeed, we might have liked it even more than the main dessert.
10. But we did like the main dessert very much as well: the so-called caramel apple with burnt vanilla ice cream.

Here ended the meal proper. They next kindly brought out a mini-bundt cake with a candle for the missus (for we celebrating her birthday) and a set of mignardises. Nothing very special here.

Ah yes, drinks. We each started with a cocktail. The Spritz for the missus and their take on the Old Cuban. This latter is classically made with rum but Demi’s version is with blanco tequila and it just ended up tasting like an unremarkable margarita. The missus—who is not much of a drinker—nursed her drink, which she quite liked, for a large chunk of her meal. I switched halfway through to wine. They have a small selection of wines by the glass but also offer pours from bottles opened for their pairing. I asked for a recommendation for one that might be flexible enough to go with whatever else was coming and was brought tastes of a pinot meunier from Oregon (on the pairing) and a chenin blanc from Vouvray (on the by the glass list) Both were very good but I opted for the pinot meunier. I was curious to see how much it would cost on the check at the end of the meal. It was $25 for the pour (the wines available by the glass are all at $18), which is a pretty decent markup for that bottle.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate and drank, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

Now, you may be thinking that I’ve been over-critical in my evaluation of the meal. But I think that’s appropriate both for a restaurant of this ambition and for a meal that came out at $275/head with tax, tip and the $50/head charge paid at the time of booking. If I’m paying that much for a meal—and keep in mind that it would be a LOT more if we’d both done the Japanese wagyu upgrade to say nothing of the wine pairing. By the way, I note that the wine pairing was $55 in 2020 (when we split one among us) and $80/$110 in 2022. Now there’s only one wine pairing offered and it costs $125—for what we were told amounts to about 2.5 glasses of wine. As in 2022, there’s also only one option for the meal itself: the so-called W.C. Whitney menu at $175/head before tax and any supplement/upgrade. But now there’s no longer a surge model in the pricing: you pay the same whether you eat on a Wednesday or a Saturday night.

Even though this is now three meals in a row that we’ve not been fully convinced by, we aren’t writing them off. The highs are high enough that we’ll be back in the hope of a meal that finally delivers from end to end. But I don’t think it’ll be for another 2-3 years at least (and you can expect a ranking to match in this year’s edition of my Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation, which will go up in December). By the time we next visit they will almost certainly have picked up a Michelin star (Minneapolis is part of Michelin’s new Great Lakes grouping that will see their own edition of the guide next year) and I expect the price will shoot up further to match. The place is built to get a Michelin star (or make it onto that stupid 50 Best Restaurants list—though that hasn’t happened yet, I don’t think). I’m pulling for them as I am sure it will be crushing for them if they don’t get it or, worse, just get a Bib Gourmand. Though if that were to happen, the Twin Cities food media might be even more crushed—I’ve seen one luminary opine that Demi is deserving of two Michelin stars*…

Alright, next week’s Twin Cities report will be of an altogether more humble meal: a lunch thali eaten at the start of the month at an Indian restaurant in Eden Prairie. Before that I hope to have a Seoul report up on Friday and another Delhi report on the weekend (and probably another on Tuesday). Let’s see how it goes.

*Once I’ve posted my fine dining reviews from our time in Seoul in May, I may put up a post on the Twin Cities and Michelin that will be sure to make me even more friends in the local scene.