We have been trying to get to Tenant for a while now. They opened in the Spring of 2017, while we were in London for three months. When we got back we cut back on our eating out for a while on account of the reckless eating we’d engaged in for an extended period abroad. And because of their limited seating and their constrained reservation system we couldn’t find a date that worked later in 2017. We finally made reservations this April but just a few days before the weather took a turn for the worse, a blizzard was predicted and we had to cancel (the blizzard did come to pass).
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Tag Archives: Global Cosmopolitan
Restaurant Alma III, Fall 2017
I’ve reviewed two previous dinners at Alma (one from 2014 and one from 2015). As I’ve said previously, before Piccolo became our favourite high-end restaurant in the Twin Cities, and a place we returned to again and again, Alma used to be the place we ate at most often. Now, of course, Piccolo is gone. And so, when the missus’ birthday rolled around earlier this month, we decided to go back again to Alma, for our first expensive meal in the Cities since Piccolo closed and we left for London. This was also our first meal there since Alma closed and reopened late last year after an extensive remodel. Continue reading
Piccolo XI (One Last Time with Feeling)
Piccolo serves their last dinner tomorrow. Here now is my writeup of our last dinner at Piccolo.
Ever since we found out about the impending closing back in December we’ve gone back with a number of friends who enjoy the restaurant as much as we do, and we did so again last Friday. We are going to miss this jewel of a restaurant dearly. Yes, there are some other excellent fine dining restaurants in the Twin Cities—and yes, we’ll go back more often to some of them now (Alma and Spoon and Stable especially)—but what Chef Flicker and his team have accomplished at Piccolo is something quite unique. Yes, his mark is on Esker Grove at the Walker and will doubtless be on Tenant, the new restaurant from two members of his Piccolo team which will take over the Piccolo space, but of all the major closings in recent years this is, in my view, the most irreplaceable. Chef Flicker himself will be moving on to something altogether more informal and while I’m sure it will be excellent it is not going to be Piccolo. God knows he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants but this is a big loss for our dining scene. Continue reading
Piccolo X
Will this be an account of our last meal at Piccolo? I hope not but they seem to be entirely booked up from now through their closing on March 11. I’m hoping we can get in one more time but if not, at least our last meal there will have been excellent. After eating there in mid-December and again over the New Year’s weekend, we went back again in late-January with another set of friends who are also big fans and we were all well pleased.
This review and, if we can indeed get in one more time, that of our next meal there will be the exceptions to my recent shift of emphasis to smaller immigrant-run restaurants. Piccolo was our favourite restaurant in the Twin Cities and I wanted to say farewell. Next week we’ll be back to Somali food. Continue reading
Piccolo IX
I don’t have a whole lot left to say about Piccolo except that this is my ninth review of a meal there in the last few years and that I still am depressed about the fact that they will be open for less than two more months. We last ate there in the second week of December and when we found out at that meal that they were going to have a special New Year’s weekend menu, and that Doug Flicker would be in the kitchen cooking it, it took about 3 seconds for us to decide that we’d be back soon to eat it. This is a brief account of that meal. We were joined by friends we’ve eaten there with before, and who are also big fans. It turned out to be one of the best meals any of us had eaten there—which is saying something, as the last meal we ate there together was pretty amazing too. Continue reading
Hotel Herman (Montreal)
This is the final big meal report from our trip to Montreal in late October, though not the final Montreal report per se—I’ll have another very brief report next week, probably, on some pastry eating. This dinner at Hotel Herman was the last meal of our trip (unless, you count the terrible food we ate at the airport for breakfast and lunch the next day after missing our early morning flight to Minneapolis). It followed dinner at Joe Beef the night before (and brunch that morning at Olive et Gourmando). I wasn’t expecting to say that I might have liked this meal even more than our dinner at Joe Beef but that might possibly be true. Continue reading
Piccolo VIII
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone: the best restaurant in the Twin Cities, and one of the best in the country, is closing. Yes, Piccolo will serve its last meal on March 11. Read Chef Doug Flicker’s announcement here. Why they’re closing is not entirely clear. My best guess would be some combination of the (not-so) slow death of the market for serious food for adults, a desire to go out on his own terms, and a desire to do something else after seven years of Piccolo. The good news is we are not losing Doug Flicker: his stamp will be on the new Esker Grove at the Walker Art Center; Sandcastle will still be around at Lake Nokomis for people who want lakeside food that raises the bar for the genre; and he will doubtless surface soon elsewhere (though if it’s at the helm of a burger and ramen shop I will not be happy). The bad news, again, is that Piccolo is closing. Continue reading
Hedone (London)
Hedone is located in Chiswick, a long tube ride from central London. A lot is made of this incongruity in some quarters; and even for someone like me who doesn’t have much of a sense of the geography of London, physical or cultural, the setting does seem unlikely: it’s not just that it’s far away from the center of the city but also that Chiswick High Street, once you get to it (after getting off at a very unprepossessing train station), doesn’t really seem like the kind of place where you’d find a Michelin starred restaurant that is one of the most innovative in England. Then again, Hedone is far from the only restaurant of its ilk in the world to be located in unlikely surroundings and it’s probably very likely that lower rents in Chiswick allow for their food to be sold at lower prices than would be possible in hipper locations. It’s not that a meal at Hedone is cheap—I hasten to add—but it’s both extremely good and clearly made from top-notch ingredients. It was a superb meal—the best I ate on my short trip—and, while not cheap, it felt like a good value for what I was eating (though the post-Brexit exchange rate helped). Continue reading
The Clove Club (London)
The Clove Club, located in trendy Shoreditch, is one of London’s hottest restaurants. It started out as an informal supper club and moved to its current location in the space of the former Shoreditch town hall in 2013. It has a Michelin star and was recently named to that silly list, “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants”. Despite the latter disqualification a number of people whose opinions I trust recommended I eat there on my recent trip to London, and so it happened that on my second full morning in the city, I woke up in my hotel by the Tower of London, took a shower and walked down to Shoreditch (passing St. John Bread and Wine again on the way). Continue reading
Piccolo VII
Five months after my last Piccolo review, here I am with a write-up of our second dinner there this year and our seventh overall. Not that we need any excuse to go back to Piccolo—we have to make a concerted effort to not just go there every time we plan a dinner out in the Twin Cities—but this visit was sparked by the intriguing news that Chef Flicker will be overseeing a new restaurant at the Walker Center that will be opening this winter. We look forward to eating there once it’s open and on its feet but the news was a good reminder that we’d planned to eat at Piccolo more often this year. Well, I am glad to say that the meal did not disappoint. Unfortunately, with the busy season at work about to start, and travel plans in October (to Montreal, if things hold) and December (to Delhi and Calcutta via Hong Kong again), I’m not sure we’ll be able to go back again this year but this meal will do nicely to tide us over to our next. Continue reading
Piccolo VI & Some Complaining about the James Beard Awards
At the risk of turning into Piccolo’s house blogger here is my sixth review of dinner at Piccolo. But before I get to it allow me to complain a little bit about the James Beard awards, specifically the category for Best Chef: Midwest, which Doug Flicker of Piccolo has not only never won, he’s also never been a finalist for. You’ll say I should know better than to complain about the James Beard awards which, like most industry awards, are mostly a matter of who knows whom, who worked with whom and who has the hardest working p.r team. But I’ve never let knowing better stop me from complaining before so why start now? Continue reading
Restaurant Alma II, Summer 2015
Alma was once our absolute favourite fine dining restaurant in the Twin Cities. My first review was of our fifth or sixth meal there. This one comes more than a year and a half after that meal. This is not because that was a bad experience (as you’ll see if you read the review) or because Alma’s reputation has gone downhill since—in fact, they’re on the verge of a major expansion. It’s just that it was shortly after that meal in January 2014 that Doug Flicker did whatever strange hoodoo he’s done on our brains and palates, and Piccolo has since become our regular rotation place (we’ve eaten there five times between my two Alma reviews).
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Piccolo V
Last week my place of work hosted a rather famous art critic and his partner; he was the chief guest (as we say in India) at our end of year festivities (and a beautiful, moving speech he delivered too). In past years people in his role have been fed dismal dinners on campus the evening before the main event; but on this occasion the person in charge was one of my more gastronomically oriented colleagues who decided to take a smaller number of people up to a fine restaurant in the Cities instead. And she invited the missus and me to join. I asked where we were going and she said she had her eye on Bachelor Farmer, never having been there before. I asked if she’d been to Piccolo and when she said she hadn’t I said that in my opinion Piccolo was both the best and most striking Twin Cities meal we could showcase for our big city guests.
Piccolo IV: Fifth Anniversary Dinner
No, not our fifth anniversary, the restaurant’s. Piccolo turned five this month. We only ate there for the first time last March but it has quickly become our favourite fine dining restaurant in the Twin Cities. So when I saw a reference to a fifth anniversary dinner in a glowing piece on Chef Doug Flicker on Eater in December it took only a few minutes for me to find a phone and call the restaurant about reservations. As far as I can tell, they didn’t really advertise this dinner—I didn’t see anything on their website nor did I see any tweets from the restaurant touting it in the weeks preceding. From this I conclude that most of the tables were set aside for regulars and friends of the house*, and as we are neither (this would be “only” our fourth visit—see here, here and here for reviews of our prior meals) I felt we were very fortunate to get a table. And even more fortunate that due to a cancellation the evening prior we managed to get our reservation moved from 9.30 pm to 8.45 pm.
Piccolo III
Okay, so we like Piccolo a lot. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that we can only manage one restaurant dinner in the cities each month (living an hour south, with small kids, and a limited fine dining budget) we’ve now eaten at Piccolo three times this year, passing up the opportunity to eat at other local luminaries that we have not yet visited (Corner Table, Meritage), visited in a while (Heartland, 112 Eatery), or which we used to revisit regularly in the past (Alma). What can I say, Doug Flicker’s modernist soul food (though the restaurant might not describe it this way) is in our sweet spot. We haven’t always loved everything we’ve eaten at every meal there but it’s always a stimulating experience. Continue reading
Piccolo II: The Re-Piccoloning
We enjoyed our dinner at Piccolo in March so much that when it came time for figuring out where to go for our anniversary dinner last month it was the first place we both came up with. We were interested to see if it would be consistent with the level of creativity and execution of our first meal—I’m pleased to report that it was and that we enjoyed this meal even more. Continue reading
Piccolo
Here, with only a day or two to spare, is your Twin Cities fine dining report for March. This time we dined at Piccolo and did not have to endure terrible road conditions on the way there or back. And it was a very good dinner, always interesting, sometimes great.
A few quick notes on the restaurant for those who haven’t been there. It opened a few years ago and is housed in a very small/intimate space. There are two small dining rooms–one larger and brighter (and warmer) as you enter, and a smaller one with just three tables on the other side of the kitchen, which you pass through on the way there. The space in a sense prepares you for the food: small rooms, small plates; close quarters, fussy attention to detail; unusual layout, highly creative cooking. The menu, which changes every eight weeks or so, comprises five courses with only three selections in each, and while you can order a la carte, the smart thing to do is to order all five courses for the set price of $55. As we are smart that is what we did. More on what we ate in just a bit. Continue reading