I am simultaneously mystified by the name Hot Grainz and irrationally pleased to see an immigrant restaurant not mark its cultural/national origin in its name. In an area where it seems to be almost required for every Thai restaurant to put either the word “Thai” or at least a Thai word in its name, Hot Grainz is named for…god knows what. I’m sure there’s a good reason for the name—I’m just saying it’s not obviously the name of a Thai restaurant. I wonder if this is why, almost two years since they opened, not too many aficionados of Thai food in the Twin Cities have probably heard of Hot Grainz. The fact that they are hidden away in the back of the Sunrise Plaza on University Ave. (where else?)—with no signage on the exterior indicating that they’re in there—probably does not help. But if you like Thai food and haven’t been there yet, you’d better get there soon. We ate there this past weekend and it was easily the best Thai food we’ve had in the Twin Cities in a while. Here are the details. Continue reading
Category Archives: Minnesota
Kim’s (Minneapolis, MN)
The business calculus involved in opening any expensive restaurant is complex. It is all the more so in the US for restaurateurs/chefs seeking to feature the foods of a cuisine that isn’t very prominent in the market they want to open a restaurant in; especially when the market, broadly speaking, still does not have a very sophisticated understanding of non-mainstream cuisines (in most parts of the US, this would be anything other than American, Italian and Mexican cuisines). The market I am most interested in, obviously, is Minnesota, specifically the Twin Cities metro. This is a region in which, in the year 2024, many East Asian groceries of one kind or the other still bill themselves as “Oriental” and where even in food-centered groups on Facebook requests for recommendations for Chinese restaurants routinely receive responses that list Thai or Vietnamese restaurants (or vice versa). This is not to say that there are not a lot of restaurants in the Twin Cities that specialize in the cuisines of different parts of Asia; merely that these remain largely marginal and outside the purview of the prominent food media outlets that disseminate knowledge of the local scene. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma XI, Spring 2024 (Minneapolis)
Here is a quick report on the second of two meals we ate at Alma in a span of just over two weeks. The first meal was one of our regular meals out. The missus and I ate one of the last outings of Alma’s winter 2024 menu (and enjoyed it very much indeed). 16 days later we were back with a much larger group and this time we ate one of the earliest outings of the current spring menu. This was a retirement dinner for one of my colleagues and in keeping with his long service and the high regard in which we hold him we decided to throw him a farewell dinner at a fine restaurant in the Twin Cities. Alma was at the top of our wishlist and as it happened there was no other restaurant that could have accommodated our group as comfortably as they did. And the food was not half bad either. Continue reading
Tea House III (Minneapolis)
At the end of my last review of Tea House, the Twin Cities’ OG Sichuan restaurant, I noted that it would likely be less than three years—the time elapsed since the prior review—till we came back to eat there again. Well, that was in the spring of 2018. In my defense, the years of the high pandemic had something to do with many of my review plans/promises of that period not being kept. It’s also true that when we get on Highway 35 to go north for Sichuan food it’s very difficult to not get off at Exit 6 and head to Grand Szechuan instead of driving for another 20 minutes. In the interim, however, Jon Cheng—the Star Tribune’s restaurant critic and one of the few professionals in the area who doesn’t seem to think his main job is to be a booster—named Tea House the best Chinese restaurant in the metro. That was in 2022. We’ve been meaning to get there ever since to see if very dramatic changes had happened since our last visit. Well, we finally got there this past weekend. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Homshuk + Bodega 42 (Apple Valley, MN)
Late last fall I heard talk about a new Mexican market that had opened in Apple Valley. Before I could investigate, we went away for three months to Bombay and Seoul and I forgot all about it. And so when my friend Ben P. alerted me last week to the presence of Bodega 42, raving about everything they had bought there, it was only going to be a matter of time before I got there. Checking out their website, I discovered that they also have a restaurant right next to the market, named Homshuk. Accordingly, earlier this week the missus and I drove up to Apple Valley for lunch and a bit of shopping. This is what we found. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma X, Winter 2024 (Minneapolis)
We welcomed ourselves back to Minnesota a few weeks ago with a big lunch at Grand Szechuan. The estranging effects of three months away are not so easy to shake off, however. Well, now that we’ve eaten dinner at Alma we’re truly back in Minnesota. Note: while the title of this post says “Winter 2024”, we ate there this past weekend, and not even the most pessimistic Minnesotan would say that April is winter. It’s just that this was part of their winter menu cycle; the switch over to spring is about to happen in a week or so, we were told. Well, whatever the season, a meal at Alma is a good thing; and this meal was a very good thing. Continue reading
Thai Cafe, April 2024 (St. Paul, MN)
In reviewing our recent meal at Grand Szechuan a couple of weeks ago I noted that we hadn’t eaten much Chinese food during our three months away in Bombay and Seoul. Well, we didn’t eat any Thai food at all. As such, going out for a good Thai meal was high on our list of priorities when we got back. We got around to scratching that itch last weekend. Against all odds, we didn’t go to any of our usual top three: Krungthep Thai, On’s Kitchen or Bangkok Thai Deli. Instead we went back to the small restaurant that I once put almost on the same level as its bigger University Avenue (where else?) peers: Thai Cafe. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, March 2024 (Bloomington, MN)
We got back to Minnesota on Wednesday, March 27. On Sunday, March 31 we ate our first meal out. Of course, it was at Grand Szechuan, our family’s favourite restaurant in Minnesota. It’s always one of our favourite ways to welcome ourselves back to Minnesota after extended travel. And given that we hadn’t eaten any Sichuan food in three months—and no Chinese food beyond one Korean Chinese lunch in Seoul and one Indian Chinese dinner in Delhi—it was a particularly great way to welcome ourselves home after a long time away. We were joined by two friends who often eat with us there. Here’s how the meal went. Continue reading
My Best Restaurant Meals of 2023
I was all over the map in 2023. Literally so. In January and early February, the whole family was in India, spending time in Delhi, Agra and Goa. In March, I went off to Seoul for a week. In late-April I was in New York and New Jersey for a few days. In the summer we all went off to Europe for an extended stint, spending three weeks on vacation in Italy and another six on work in Ireland. And then, finally, in October, the missus and I took a weekend trip to New York. That’s a lot of traveling and a lot of restaurant meals. And, of course, we ate out at our usual once-a-week clip while in the Twin Cities metro. So my selections for my best restaurant meals of 2023 draw from a wider geography than usual (the really unusual thing is that we did not get to Los Angeles at all this year). I’ve divided the list up first to separate more expensive/formal places from less expensive/more casual places but the top five list draws from both categories. A few more Twin Cities-centered lists follow after that. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, December 2023 (Bloomington, MN)
This is not the last restaurant report I’ll be posting this year—I still have one each to come later this week from Dublin and New York. It is, however, a report on our last restaurant meal in 2023. Fittingly, it was eaten at our family’s favourite restaurant in the Twin Cities metro: Grand Szechuan. We descended on them for lunch on Christmas with our most die-hard Grand Szechuan crew. There were eight of us and we did a fair bit of damage, with an order that was a mix of old favourites and some things we had not got in a while. It was an excellent meal and the perfect way to bid farewell to Twin Cities dining for a while. We’re going to be gone to Bombay and Seoul (and then Delhi) for a few months—there will be lots of excellent eating done in all those cities but we’ll miss Grand Szechuan anyway. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma IX, Winter 2023 (Minneapolis)
For my last Twin Cities fine dining report of 2023, I have for you another dinner at Restaurant Alma, our favourite high-end restaurant in Minnesota. We ate there on two previous occasions this year (in the fall and in the spring). And, of course, back in February I did a pop-up Indian dinner with them in the Cafe Alma space. I mention this last to remind you that while I was already on record well before that with my high opinion of the restaurant, at this point I am obviously a “friend of the house”. As far as I can make out, we’re not treated any differently now than we were before but you should feel free to make whatever adjustment you see fit to account for possible bias in my estimation of our meals there. For, yes, it’s true: I am about to give you the details of another excellent dinner. Continue reading
Mandalay Kitchen (St. Paul, MN)
As I mentioned in my review earlier this year of Friends Cafe in St. Paul, there is a sizable Burmese population in the Twin Cities, mostly of the Karen/K’nyaw ethnicity. However, as I also noted in that review, while K’nyaw people have opened restaurants in the Twin Cities—specifically in the East Metro—these have not centered their own cuisines in their menus. Friends Cafe’s menu is largely Thai and Karen Thai’s menu is even more so. Of course, Thailand adjoins much of Burma/Myanmar and is home to a large Burmese population. It has also been a way station for many of the K’nyaw people now in the US. And so it makes all kinds of sense for Burmese, K’nyaw and Thai food to mingle in restaurant menus in the US. Still, it’s always nice to see a less represented cuisine proclaim itself more confidently, as is the case with St. Paul’s Mandalay Kitchen. It is, I am pretty sure, the Twin Cities’s first formal restaurant to center Burmese food of any kind. They opened a little over a month ago in the old Marc Heu space on University Avenue in St. Paul. We finally ate there this past weekend. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Kung Fu Hot Pot (Minneapolis)
On Friday I had to drive up to South Minneapolis to pick something up—okay, okay, it was three bottles of mezcal. As I was probably going to be up there close to lunch time I tried to figure out where I might grab a bite in the general vicinity. One of the first places I thought of was Szechuan Spice, the small Sichuan restaurant that we’ve quite enjoyed in the past. A few minutes later I discovered that they closed earlier this year—apparently, this was first said to be for renovation but they never re-opened. I was very sad to find this out as we’d liked a lot of things we’d eaten there. I was intrigued, however, to see that the space had been quickly filled with a hot pot restaurant named Kung Fu Hot Pot. As I noted Szechuan Spice’s closure in a comment on my most recent review of a meal there, I noted that I might check it out soon. Flash forward to three hours later, when the missus and I sat down at a table by the window. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Pho Ca Dao (St. Paul, MN)
I have a quick report today on one of the Twin Cities’ classic pho restaurants. Pho Ca Dao is located on University Avenue (where else?) at Arundel—right across the street from Thai Garden and Cheng Heng—and is as pure a pho operation as you can get. Well, I suppose if they only served pho it would be purer but they don’t serve very much more than that. Only one other savoury dish in fact: egg rolls. Yes, if you turn the menu over there are some desserts and some drinks but you don’t go to Pho Ca Dao if pho is not what you are looking for. You can choose between two set options, the Traditional (with steak, flank and tripe) or the House Special (which adds meatballs) or you can rig a custom bowl with a choice of any three meats (tendon, fatty brisket and chicken are the three others available). Your only other choice is whether you want a small or a large bowl. Then you sit back and wait. Continue reading
Herbst (St. Paul, MN)
Herbst opened on Raymond Avenue in St. Paul in May, just before we left the country for the summer, and I started hearing almost immediately from people who said I should eat there. The early reviews from the professionals were also positive but grade inflation in Minnesota being what it is, I place more stock in the recommendations from blog readers and friends. I put it on the list for when we’d be back in town but a measured review in September from Jon Cheng at the Star Tribune—the one local food critic who doesn’t seem to think the job requires being a booster—took the wind out of my sails a bit. I decided to give them a couple more months to hopefully fully hit their stride. And so it wasn’t till this past weekend that we finally ate there. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
India Market/Spice Bazaar (Lake Elmo, MN)
[Note: this post has been updated with more information about changes to the store.]
It’s been a while since my last look at an immigrant market in the Twin Cities metro. Eight months, in fact. My last market report from the area was of the Desi Brothers store in Bloomington back in March. I have for you today a look at India Market/Spice Bazaar in Lake Elmo. Spice Bazaar is the old name and is still the name on the signage. But apparently the store is now under new ownership and the name is about to change officially to India Market. This report, however, is based on a visit there in May of this year (right after our lunch at El Itacate, as it happens). I took lots of pictures with plans to soon post a look at this large store, but the end of my spring term and our impending summer travels put paid to those plans. And then it got lost in the flood and backlog of posts from said summer travels. I’m told that as of a few weeks ago there had been no major changes to the actual layout of the store. But please know that there’s a possibility that the store now looks different than it does in the truly excessive slideshow that follows. Even if it does, however, you should still get a good sense of what to expect there. Continue reading
Oro (Minneapolis)
People plugged into the Twin Cities restaurant scene probably know the Oro origin story well but here’s a short version for the rest of you. Chef Gustavo Romero and his partner Kate Romero opened Nixta, a tortilleria, during the pandemic in 2020. He is a veteran of San Francisco’s fine dining world and she a veteran of the Twin Cities fine dining world (with stops at Surly’s Brewer’s Table and Travail). Nixta did brisk business with takeout meals during the height of the pandemic and beyond and this year they purchased the adjoining space and developed it into a standalone restaurant: Oro. It started out as a counter-service restaurant but is now a formal dine-in restaurant with a liquor license and cocktails and everything. It’s also probably the best Mexican restaurant in the Twin Cities metro. Or so we thought after our first dinner there this past weekend. Continue reading