Category Archives: Minnesota

My Favourite Twin Cities Restaurant Dishes

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I didn’t have a Twin Cities restaurant report last week and I don’t have one this week (and there probably won’t be one next week either). I’ve not given up on eating in the Twin Cities. It’s just that we were out of town two weekends ago and with my mother-in-law visiting did not go out to eat this past weekend, and probably won’t this coming weekend either. I do have a Twin Cities restaurant report, however. It’s a post I’ve had on deck for a while, in place of the quarterly “Top Five Twin Cities Dishes” posts I do every three months in years when I’m not out of the country as much as I have been this year. This is a list of my favourite Twin Cities restaurant dishes. There are, of course, far too many to list in a coherent way. And so to make the list manageable, I have constrained it in the following ways: 1) to qualify a dish must be on the restaurant’s menu more or less permanently; and 2) no more than one dish per restaurant. The former takes restaurants with ever-changing menus off the table; the latter means I won’t list 30 dishes from Grand Szechuan. One more thing: I’m not listing categories of dishes in which the distinctions between the better versions available at different restaurants are too fine to be meaningful. For example, there’s no “Favourite Pho” here.

Okay, let’s get to it. And if you are not a fan of some of my selections or have some completely different picks of your own, please let me hear it in the comments. Continue reading →

112 Eatery III (Minneapolis)

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We ate at 112 Eatery last spring after a gap of several years and, unsurprisingly, enjoyed our meal very much. So much so that we resolved to not go years again between visits. We’d taken our boys with us to that dinner and it was perhaps their favourite adult restaurant meal out with us in the Twin Cities last year. And so when I asked the missus where she wanted to go for her birthday this year, she plumped for a return to 112 Eatery, with the boys joining us once again. I am happy to say that this was yet another very good meal at the restaurant. Herewith the details. Continue reading →

Pho Tempo II (Burnsville, MN)

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Earlier this year I posted a review of a couple of lunches at Pho Tempo, the revamped restaurant attached to Saigon Asian Market in Burnsville. I then pronounced it the best Vietnamese restaurant south of the river and one of the better ones in the Twin Cities metro on the whole. After several meals eaten there since then I see no reason to change that assessment: this is clearly the best Vietnamese restaurant in the South Metro and I don’t think there can be too many better ones in the larger area. And if there are, I would really like to know which they are. Here follows a quick look at three meals eaten there since the spring. Continue reading →

Grand Szechuan, September 2023 (Bloomington, MN)

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Well, it took a month but the tour of our favourite restaurants in the Twin Cities metro, after our return from a summer away, finally arrived at what is our family favourite restaurant in the Twin Cities: Grand Szechuan in Bloomington. Lunch here in June is how we had bid farewell to eating in the Twin Cities for more than two months. That we did not eat there right away on our return is down only to the fact that we unexpectedly ate very good Sichuan food in Dublin and so had other more urgent culinary desires to fulfill (Mexican and Thai among them). But this past weekend we finally made it there. We were accompanied by most of our usual Grand Szechuan crew. We were a large party of 11 diners (including our boys) and did a goodly amount of damage. Herewith the details. Continue reading →

Restaurant Alma VIII, Fall 2023 (Minneapolis)

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Our tour of our Twin Cities favourites after a summer away continues. I’ve so far reported on meals at Homi, Tenant and Krungthep Thai. This past weekend we went back to Alma for our dinner. At this point I need to specify that it was to Restaurant Alma that we went for dinner; this because Cafe Alma (in the same building) now also serves dinner till 8 pm from Thursday to Sunday. Maybe someday we’ll give their more informal space a go for a meal as well (I do after have sentimental ties to it myself). For now, though, it was back to the flagship restaurant. Having missed out on eating one of their summer menus (the menu turns over every 6-8 weeks or so), we were very much looking forward to the current fall menu. We’d really enjoyed our dinner there at the end of September last year and we had particularly fond memories of the sweet corn-centered dishes on that menu. We were hoping for more of the same at this meal; we were not disappointed. Continue reading →

Krungthep Thai IV (St. Paul, MN)

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We ate quite well in the nine weeks that we spent in Italy and Ireland this summer. But by the end we were missing a number of the cuisines we eat regularly here in Minnesota. Accordingly, after getting back a few weeks ago we’ve been hitting up some of our favourite spots for those cuisines. I’ve already posted a report on our lunch at Homi—where we fed our yearning for Mexican food. Here now is a report of the first Thai meal we’ve eaten since the beginning of the summer. You might think, based on my earlier reports, that just as we went to Homi for our Mexican fix, we would go to either On’s Kitchen or Bangkok Thai Deli for our first Thai fix in months. But in fact we chose to go to Krungthep Thai in St. Paul’s North End (at the intersection of Maryland and Rice). Continue reading →

Tenant X (Minneapolis)

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Since getting back to Minnesota a couple of weeks ago, after a summer away, we have been slowly getting back to our favourite restaurants in the Twin Cities metro. I’ve already posted a report on our lunch at our favourite Mexican restaurant in the Cities: Homi in St. Paul. Here now is a report on dinner at one of our favourite fine dining restaurants in the Cities, Tenant. We ate dinner there a week ago Tuesday. It was our second meal there this year and our tenth overall. We particularly look forward to eating at Tenant in the summer—especially on account of one genre of dish that reliably shows up in the summer, and only in the summer. And so as our stay in Ireland came to an end, this was the first reservation I made. I am very pleased to say that the meal did not disappoint us at all. Continue reading →

Homi, August 2023 (St. Paul, MN)

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Hey, it’s a Twin Cities restaurant report! We were in Europe for nine weeks this summer, first in Italy on vacation and then in Ireland on work. We ate well in both countries, particularly in Italy and I’m not complaining about our time away. But when you’re gone for nine weeks, there are things you take for granted at home that you are invariably going to miss and hanker for. And for us, when going to most parts of Europe from the US, at the top of that list food-wise are most Asian cuisines and also Mexican cuisine. Now, as it happens, we found surprisingly good Sichuan food in Dublin—and also better dim sum than is available in the Twin Cities. Unsurprising, though, is that Mexican food in Ireland does not have the best reputation. This was drilled into our heads by every American we met who’d eaten at some Mexican restaurant or the other in Dublin, and after a few repetitions we decided not to put that to the test. So when we got back to Minnesota last week the thing we really wanted to go out to eat was Mexican food. And what better place to go than Homi on University Avenue in St. Paul? Continue reading →

Grand Szechuan, June 2023 (Bloomington, MN)

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We are out of Minnesota for most of the summer. Fittingly, the restaurant meal with which we bid goodbye to the Twin Cities metro was a dinner at Grand Szechuan with many members of our usual Grand Szechuan crew. I am very pleased to report that the restaurant is now all the way back from its staffing issues that lingered from late last year into the early part of this year. Yes, we had a very good meal there in late March (see here) but that had still featured the smaller, folded paper menus and there weren’t many familiar faces to be seen. At this meal we were once again presented with large, formal menus. Not everything that used to be on the pre-crisis menu is on it—no “Spicy, Hammered Chicken” for instance—but it is mostly comprehensive. And though we didn’t see Chef Luo at this meal either (though we were at an out-of-the-way table behind the check-in desk) we saw plenty of other faces we’ve known for a while. And, most importantly, it was a rather excellent meal. Here are the details. Continue reading →

Pizza Karma (Apple Valley, MN)

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By the time this posts we’ll be off on our summer travels. But I have a couple of Twin Cities restaurant reports cued up to post while we’re gone and here is the first one: a an account of a couple of lunches at the new branch of Pizza Karma in Apple Valley. The first Pizza Karma opened in Eden Prairie in 2017. We had been interested but it was a long way to go for what seemed then like an uncertain proposition. During the height of the pandemic we did make it out to Eden Prairie to eat Indian pizza at Bombay Pizza Kitchen. We mostly enjoyed that meal and it strengthened our resolve to eat soon at Pizza Karma. But for one reason or another we never got around to it. That is until they opened a branch much closer to us, in Apple Valley. We’ve now eaten two lunches there in the last month. Herewith my report. Continue reading →

Khâluna III (Minneapolis)

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I ate at Khâluna twice in 2022, once after a work event and once with the missus and friends. Both meals were among the highlights of my Twin Cities restaurant outings in 2022. We had planned to go back again this year for dinner. As it happened, it was once again a work event that was the occasion for it. My department held a retreat* in the Twin Cities and I was asked to help figure out dinner after, somewhere not too far away from where we spent the day in discussion. It was a Monday and we were a large group and through a process of elimination we arrived at Khâluna. Not that it was simple. We were originally to be a group of 10-12 and Khâluna’s largest tables in the restaurant seat eight. Booking the private dining space was outside our budget; this left one option: their so-called Patio Lounge. This is one end of their large covered patio space, where up to 14 guests can be accommodated on a combination of couches and poufs. There’s a minimum required spend of $350 but as we were certain to pass it, we made the booking. Quite predictably, by the morning of the event our dinner numbers went down to eight. But we were glad to be in the lounge space anyway as it made for a more convivial gathering. Here’s how the meal itself went. Continue reading →

The Weekday Lunch Thali at Godavari (Eden Prairie, MN)

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On the weekend I posted the second of two reports of the lunch thali meals I ate in New Jersey towards the end of April. The first of these was at Kathiyawadi Kitchen and was really excellent. The second was at Samudhra, and while I didn’t like it nearly as much as I had Kathiyawadi Kitchen’s thali, resizing the photographs from that meal earlier last week put me in the mood for another thali lunch. My hands-down favourite thali in the Twin Cities metro—and indeed my pick for best lunch deal in the area—used to be the weekday thali at Kabob’s Indian Grill in Bloomington. Alas, as has been reported in the comments here on multiple occasions, Kabob’s no longer offers that thali. Nor, for that matter, does Kumar’s in Apple Valley still offer their weekday lunch thali—it’s been replaced by a buffet. Thankfully, Godavari in Eden Prairie—the restaurant that has topped all editions of my Twin Cities South Asian restaurant rankings—now offers a lunch thali. And so it was to Eden Prairie I went for lunch on the day after the last day of my term. Here is what I found. Continue reading →

Petite Leon II (Minneapolis)

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We first ate at Petite Leon in late 2021, after the end of the Delta wave and right at the start of the Omicron wave. The pandemic isn’t over yet, of course, but those days do seem behind us (I hope not to jinx anything). Anyway, Petite Leon then was our first indoor meal in months and we really liked it. I said then that the menu as we experienced it then was not so much Mexican as a hybridizing of Mexican ingredients and approaches with ingredients and flavours from other parts of the world: the kind of cooking, in short, that once might have been thought of as fusion but which in this incarnation I prefer to describe as Global Cosmopolitan. Anyway, though not everything at that meal was great, the average was pretty high. And so we’d expected we’d be back in 2022. Well, it took a little longer but we finally got back there with a couple of friends this past weekend. And though there were a couple of dishes that didn’t land for us, this meal may have been even better than the first. Herewith the details. Continue reading →

El Itacate (Maplewood, MN)

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The quality of the Twin Cities’ Mexican food scene seems to still be more of a secret than it should be. Inside and outside the state, I suspect this largely stems from stereotypical ideas of who is recognized as Minnesotan. Now, it’s true that Minnesota is still overwhelmingly white and that of largely northern European extraction. But non-white populations are rising steadily—and Hispanics in general, and Mexicans in particular, are a large part of that. As per the 2020 census, there are now >340,000 Hispanics in the state, making them the third-largest racial group in the state (African Americans are in second place); the growth in this population has accounted for >25% of the entire population growth of the state in the last 20 years. (And keep in mind that it is believed that the 2020 census may have significantly undercounted the Hispanic population.) With this growing population it is hardly surprising that the number of Hispanic and, in particular, Mexican restaurants is also steadily growing. There may not be huge regional variety yet in the food that’s available but much of what is now available is really quite good. That’s certainly the case at El Itacate, which opened in Maplewood just about three months ago. Continue reading →

Friends Cafe (St. Paul, MN)

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Friends Cafe opened six years or so ago on Rice Street in that part of the Twin Cities metro where St. Paul, Roseville and Maplewood combine to create geographical confusion. It’s located in a large strip mall on the northwest side of the Rice and Larpenteur intersection but frankly, I’m not sure which city it is technically in. The restaurant’s menu says Roseville; Google and the restaurant’s check says St. Paul; meanwhile, a restaurant across the street is apparently in Maplewood. I will leave this to other people to sort out. What I can tell you for sure is that I deeply regret having let it fall off my radar before and during the pandemic, and that I am deeply grateful to longtime blog reader, Jim Grinsfelder for jogging my memory about it a couple of weeks ago. Yes, we finally made it out there for a meal and it was really very good. Herewith the details. Continue reading →

Cheng Heng: The Return (St. Paul, MN)

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In the last year and a half or so, as the pandemic entered its (hopefully) late and waning period, we’ve been eating in at restaurants pretty much as we had been prior to March 2020. In the Twin Cities metro we’ve eaten in that time at a number of newer/new to us restaurants (your Khalunas and Kalsadas, to take only the ones starting with the letter K); and we’ve also been going back to eat at many of our old favourites. Some of these have been at the high end (Alma, Spoon and Stable, Tenant) but not all. We’ve been back to Grand Szechuan, Kabob’s Indian Grill—both in Bloomington; and in St. Paul to On’s Kitchen, Bangkok Thai Deli and Trieu Chau. And this past weekend we went back to another St. Paul stalwart, located, like those aforementioned, on the Twin Cities’ true Eat Street: University Ave: Cheng Heng. Here’s how it went. Continue reading →

Kumar’s, April 2023 (Apple Valley, MN)

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Here is a report on a recent, unplanned weeknight dinner at Kumar’s. I ended up here with a small group from work after we were thwarted in our attempts to have a decent sit-down dinner in our own town. This because the acceptable options were either closed (it was a Monday) or about to close (it was close to 8 pm by the time the event we were at ended). Rather than eat fast food we decided to drive 20 minutes to Apple Valley, to Kumar’s (which thankfully was still seating people when we got there a bit after 8.30). And so it was that I came to eat my first dine-in non-buffet meal at Kumar’s. Continue reading →