Now that my Seoul reports from July are in the books, I should really get started on Kyoto, where we were for a few days before heading to Seoul. Accordingly, here is a report from the weekend trip the missus and I took to New York in October. I’ve already reported on our first meal on that trip: excellent pizza for lunch at L’Industrie in Manhattan. After wandering a bit after that lunch, we headed to the Brooklyn Museum. After spending some time there—I highly recommend the exhibition of Seydou Keita’s photographs, A Tactile Lens—we wandered the mean streets of Brooklyn for a bit and then headed to dinner in Fort Greene. Our port of call? Theodora. This is not a restaurant I had heard of prior to the planning for this trip. But it came recommended by my friend Ori (of Foxface Natural), and as Ori is not generally disposed to over-praise, I resolved to get a table. This was not going to be a slam-dunk. Their tables become available a few weeks out and it was clear as I was tracking them that they go very quickly—especially for prime time on a Saturday, which is what we were aiming for. But by setting an alarm and logging on to Resy as soon as seats for our date became available, I was able to snag a pair (and, yes, they sold out right after that). I am happy to say that the clamour is for good reason: it was an excellent meal. Here are the details. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Global Cosmopolitan
All Saints (Minneapolis)
All Saints opened in North East Minneapolis just about four years ago. They received acclaim from the local press almost immediately. Cynics—not me, of course—might say that it’s hard to find a high-end restaurant in these parts that hasn’t received high acclaim from the local press. But in this case the acclaim from the press was matched by a number of regular readers of this blog who wrote in behind the scenes to recommend I eat there or to ask why I hadn’t already eaten there. The answer to that question is partly that the thing that had impressed itself on my mind from the early press was that this was a restaurant with not much meat on the menu. Now, I like my vegetables but when I go out to eat I do like to have a number of fleshly options. And so they receded from view a bit. When I looked at their website again recently I noted that the menu is described as “veg forward, meat friendly”. Perhaps this slogan has always been on the menu but I’m not sure what it means right now when 50% of the menu comprises meat dishes. Well, one of the things it means is that I made a reservation and we finally descended on them this past weekend, accompanied by a couple of friends we eat out with often. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Tenant XIV (Minneapolis)
We ate a very good dinner at Tenant in June before heading off on our summer travels. At the end of my report on that meal I said that we hoped to be back later in the summer to eat the current version of their tomato water course. That tomato water course—more a genre than a specific dish—is one of our two favourite culinary ways to mark the transition from late-summer to fall in Minnesota; Alma’s chilled corn soup is the other. We ate the corn soup at our dinner at Alma in August; and I’m happy to say that when we did make it back to Tenant a couple of weeks later there was indeed a tomato water dish as part of the proceedings. I’m even happier to say that both it and the menu as a whole were excellent, surpassing our previous dinner. Here are the details. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma XVI, Summer 2025 (Minneapolis)
When summer in Minnesota begins to edge in the direction of fall, our thoughts begin to turn to two of our favourite restaurant dishes in the Twin Cities: the tomato water course at Tenant, and the chilled corn soup at Alma. Soon after our return from our summer travels, I pestered Alma’s executive chef, Maggie Whelan to find out when the soup would make a return to the menu. After the 20th of August, she said. And so I made a booking for Saturday, August 23 and arrived with my lawyer’s number ready to dial in case it (the soup, not my lawyer’s number*) was not in fact on the menu. I think you will agree that I would have ample grounds for a lawsuit if that were to be the case, my friendly relationship with the restaurant** be damned!. I am happy to inform therefore that there was no need for legal shenanigans: the soup was on the menu and we ate the soup; the soup was excellent but so was everything else we ate. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Tenant XIII (Minneapolis)
It doesn’t fully feel like summer in Minnesota till we’ve eaten dinner at Tenant. It now feels like summer in Minnesota. We went back to one of our favourite restaurants in the Twin Cities this past weekend and enjoyed another excellent meal.
We arrived a little early for our 8 pm reservation and decided to begin proceedings in their Next Door space. I am pleased to say that the vibe there is still chill and the cocktails still both priced and mixed very well. The missus got the current incarnation of their Collins (with rum, pineapple etc.) and I got their Martini. We enjoyed both drinks very much. We hadn’t gotten very far into them before we were summoned to the dining room through the interconnecting door. We were seated at the counter and it wasn’t too long before proceedings were underway. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma XV, Spring 2025 (Minneapolis)
In my post, The Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation, which ranked restaurants by how many times in a year we’re likely to eat there, Alma was the only restaurant I had in the “Several Times a Year” tier. And so it should be no surprise that with less than four months gone in the year, I am posting my second report on a meal eaten there in 2025. The first was of an excellent dinner in January. That meal featured a change in how Alma’s presentation of both pricing and the menu structure. Last year a meal cost $95/head with an obligatory 21% hospitality charge added to the bill. Now a meal costs $115/head but this is an all-inclusive price with no further expectation (or ask) of tipping. And while you’re still paying for a set number of courses, the opening course of “snacks for the table” and the closing dessert courses are now the only ones in which no choices are made by diners. The three larger intervening savoury courses feature a choice of two dishes. This is a distinction without a difference for the missus and I when dining there as we share everything anyway. Which means we ate the entire menu on this occasion as well and so I can tell you from direct experience that the current early spring menu—which we were told will continue for another 2-3 weeks—was excellent as well. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma XIV, January 2025 (Minneapolis)
[A reminder: my regular restaurant reports are now being posted on Wednesdays, not Tuesdays.]
My first restaurant report of 2025 was of a couple of lunches at Hoa Bien in St. Paul. Those meals were, however, eaten in 2024. With the missus off in Los Angeles by herself through the first week of the year, we didn’t go out to eat in Minnesota for the first time till this past weekend. I am glad to report that we managed to start the year off very well in gastronomic terms, with dinner at our favourite fine dining restaurant in the Twin Cities: Alma. As it happens, Alma is also doing something new in 2025 and we ate a very early iteration of it. Read on to find out more. Continue reading
112 Eatery V (Minneapolis)
Here is my second report this year on a meal at 112 Eatery. No, I have not promoted them from the “Once a Year” tier in my Twin Cities fine dining rotation; After our meal there in the summer we’d expected to next eat there again a year later. But as it happened, a combo of a friend’s birthday dinner and a mini-grad school reunion brought us back there in mid-September. Two of the friends we were eating with were in the Twin Cities for the first time and while I don’t think it had been picked for that reason, 112 Eatery is really a very good way to introduce people to the Twin Cities dining scene. It was a nice meal again, on the whole, though it is probably fair to say that we were reminiscing and laughing a little too much to be able to pay close attention to the food. Once again, 112 Eatery is the perfect restaurant for that kind of a meal: the food is good if you pay attention to it; but it’s not striving to be a temple of haute cuisine and you don’t feel out of place if your table gets a little too loud. Here’s a quick look at the meal. Continue reading
Petite Leon III (Minneapolis)
I placed Petite Leon in the “Once a Year” tier in my Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation, along with112 Eatery, Hai Hai and Spoon and Stable. We’ve eaten at all three of those restaurants this year and so to keep up appearances it was necessary that we eat at Petite Leon as well before the year runs out. Accordingly, after a bit of reservation shuffling, we ate there this past weekend with the same friends who’d joined us for dinner there in May 2023. I think we all enjoyed this meal at least as much as we had the previous and I am glad to say it did not make me think I’d been overly generous in my estimation of them in my rankings. Though not everything we ate got us equally excited, we enjoyed every single thing we ate, as we did our cocktails; and the meal turned out to be very reasonably priced as well. Hmm maybe we should eat at Petite Leon more than once a year… Continue reading
Tenant XII, Fall 2024 (Minneapolis)
We ate at Tenant at the beginning of June, right before we headed off to California. Though there were things we enjoyed at that meal, it was not our favourite of our recent meals there. But as I said at the end of that report, it wasn’t going to keep us from going back. Given how much we enjoy their take on fine dining, odds were good that we’d have no quibbles about the next meal, especially if it included their usual end-of-summer tomato water course. I am happy to report that our meal there two weekends ago did include a tomato water course, that it was very good, and that the rest of the meal was excellent as well. Here are some details. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma XIII, Late Summer 2024 (Minneapolis)
My term starts on Monday which means summer is truly about to end. But in a way summer already came to a close at the end of August for it is then that Alma served their last bowl of chilled corn soup for the year. Despite this soup having been a recurring staple at Alma since they opened in 1999, we somehow ate it for the first time in September 2022. We utterly loved it. We ate another version in September 2023—this one was also very good (even if it wasn’t chilled). We were planning to go back this September to eat it again but seeing repeated mentions of it on Instagram, I was not able to wait and we grabbed a table for Saturday, August 31. And it turned out to be a close call: our server informed us that it was the last weekend of the late summer menu featuring the corn soup! This means this is an even lower utility restaurant report than my usual: you couldn’t go eat this menu at the restaurant if you wanted to. Anyway, the soup was outstanding and the rest of the meal was not far behind. Here are the details. Continue reading
State Bird Provisions (San Francisco, June 2024)
I had hoped to get my meal reports from our California trip in June done by the end of August; but that plan has gone the way of all my previous plans this year. The new goal is to get them all done by the end of September. This is totally going to happen!
When last seen in California, we were eating Cal-Mexican food at Mi Casa in Morro Bay. The next day we abandoned the Central Coast and drove north on the 101 to San Francisco. Our first meal after arrival was at State Bird Provisions in the Fillmore District. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Foxface Natural 2 (New York, May 2024)
Here finally is my long-promised last meal report from my brief trip to New Jersey and New York in May. It features my second dinner at Foxface Natural in the East Village. Considering it took me two months last year to write up my first dinner there (in the company of the missus), it’s only fitting that it’s taken me almost three months to write up the second. But will you be grateful? No. This meal was not eaten with the missus—who did not accompany me on this trip—but with a friend, with whom we’d eaten at Semma last year and I’d eaten at Baar Baar with in 2019. I don’t know if she’ll agree re Semma but I think this is easily the best of our three NYC meals together, even if it resulted in the confirmation of the Curse of Foxface Natural. What do I mean by the Curse of Foxface Natural? Read on. Continue reading
112 Eatery IV (Minneapolis)
We returned to 112 Eatery in 2022 after a long break (see here for my write-up) and since then eating there seems to be threatening to become an annual thing for us. We went back in October 2023 for the missus’ birthday dinner with the boys in tow—they’d also accompanied us in 2022 and loved the food (see here for the write-up of that meal). And when the younger boy was asked where he would like to go for his 13th birthday this year, he picked 112 Eatery. And so there we were again last weekend, sitting at the same table we sat at last year, feeling a slight sense of deja vu. Here’s how this year’s meal went. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma XII, Summer 2024 (Minneapolis)
A couple of days after we returned from California at the end of June, I received a WhatsApp call from my mother in the morning, and that is how the missus and I learned that it was our wedding anniversary. This is an annual event: the next time we remember on the day of—or even a week prior—that it is our wedding anniversary will probably be the first time. But as it was a signifcant’ish number (21), we decide to try to go out and mark it with a nice meal, even though we’d been eating out pretty much every day for the previous two-and-a-half weeks. Our first choice, of course, was Alma. We couldn’t do that evening but I was able to grab the last table for two in the dining room for the day after (a Saturday). We arrived happy to eat their still new summer menu. And it did not let the occasion down. Continue reading
Tenant XI, Summer 2024 (Minneapolis)
Here is the long-promised report on the dinner we ate at Tenant in the beginning of June before going away to California. I don’t know why I’ve been apologizing so much for the delay in posting this when I still have three reports to come from Seoul in March. Well, that’s not entirely true: as Tenant’s menu changes every six weeks or so, my already-low utility approach to reviewing restaurants may have reached the point of total irrelevance with this report. By which I mean that there’s a good chance that this menu has totally turned over in the intervening period. Well, while this may not give you a good sense of what exactly you might find if you ate at Tenant very soon, it should, hopefully, give you some sense of the kind of thing to expect. Continue reading
Foxface Natural (New York, October 2023)
My last whisky review of the year turned out to be of one of the best whiskies I drank all year, and I am very happy to say that my last restaurant review of the year is also of one of the best restaurant meals we ate all year. It wasn’t planned this way: this was not our last meal out this year and nor did I save it up for the end. We ate at Foxface Natural on our weekend trip to New York in mid-October and the only reason it has taken me so long to get all the meal reports from that trip up (see also Gouie, Momokawa and Semma) is that I had such a backlog from our summer travels. But I am very happy to close the year in restaurant reviews out on such a high note. For it was indeed an excellent meal. Before I can tell you about it though I have to give you some caveats. Continue reading