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
Tag Archives: Tenant
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
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
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
Tenant X (Minneapolis)
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
Tenant IX (Minneapolis)
We ate at Tenant thrice last summer (reviews here, here and here). We’d hoped to make it there again at the end of the year before heading off to Los Angeles and India, but it never happened. And so I was happy on return from India to score two seats at the counter for a Saturday at the end of March. As this is my ninth review of a meal at Tenant, you will not be surprised to hear that we are big fans of their playful takes on fine dining, delivered in the form of a “surprise” six-course menu (you find out what each course is when it’s brought out to you). Dinners there have a familiar rhythm at this point—we usually have a good sense of the kinds of dishes we’re likely to get in different seasons. But given how much we like it, familiarity in this case only breeds enjoyment. Continue reading
Tenant VIII (Minneapolis)
This is my second review this month of a meal at Tenant but it’s not my second review of a meal eaten at Tenant this month. Try saying that three times fast. No, my previous review was of an outing to Tenant in early July. This meal, on the other hand, is of a meal eaten this past Saturday and represents my attempt to become current with at least my Minnesota meal reviews. It took some doing to get to this meal. We were originally supposed to eat there on the Friday of the prior week. But it transpired that the menu had not yet turned over since our dinner in July and so they very kindly got us in a week later. And then the ongoing reconstruction of Bryant Ave. led to an issue with water mains and they had to close at short notice on Friday. Thankfully, they managed to squeeze us in the very next day and so here I am with a report on possibly the best meal we’ve had at Tenant in a year. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Tenant VII (Minneapolis)
Turning a menu over every six weeks is no easy task for a restaurant. I suppose it’s easier if, like Tenant, the restaurant is small and serves only a set menu every night. Of course, Tenant doesn’t turn the whole menu over all at once: new dishes are introduced one or a few at a time till finally the whole is transformed. And it’s also true that this discipline would have been ingrained in the proprietors from their long tenure at Piccolo which also had a similarly restless menu. Nonetheless, it cannot be easy. Difficulty of conception and execution of new menus aside, it’s a canny move. This because it encourages those who particularly like their approach to come back often to try dishes that they might not otherwise encounter again. And so it is that we—who rarely go back to the same restaurant twice in the same year—find ourselves back at Tenant over and over again. We ate there in June before leaving for our travels; we ate this meal in July after coming back from our travels; and in less than two weeks we’ll be eating there again. If the next meal is as good as this one was we’ll be very happy indeed. Continue reading
Tenant VI (Minneapolis)
Tenant was the first restaurant we dined indoors at after the pandemic started. That was back in July of 2021. At the time things were threatening to look up on the pandemic front and we’d begun to think hopefully of a return to something approaching normalcy. Then the delta wave hit…and soon we were not eating in again. Just when we got started again there was omicron… When we finally got comfortable with the idea yet again at the start of the spring, Tenant was one of the first places we’d hoped to return to. But between the need to make reservations more than a month out and the need to cancel the first set of reservations I was able to make, it was not until the end of May that we got back there. It was both a happy return to a familiar space and a new experience of the restaurant for us. Details follow. Continue reading
Tenant V (Minneapolis)
It took till mid-July but we finally ate a meal inside a restaurant for the first time since March 2020. Sakura was the last time I ate inside a restaurant. That was not planned. We could tell restrictions were looming but we didn’t know when they would come or how long it would be before in-person dining would again become viable. Of course, in-person indoor dining’s been back in Minnesota for a few months—but we didn’t start to get comfortable with the idea until the end of June. Once we were ready to take the plunge there was not much doubt where we would go first. Tenant has become our favourite fine dining restaurant in the Twin Cities—as their predecessor, Piccolo was before them—and it was only appropriate that our return to dining in happen there. (Grand Szechuan would have been even more appropriate for the whole family but it’s only on our recent outing to Kansas City that we’ve finally taken the boys indoors to eat.) I’m happy to report that our first fine dining meal since the pandemic began was a very good one. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 11: Tenant (Minneapolis)
Last week I had a review of takeout barbecue from a restaurant in South Minneapolis. Today I have a review for you of takeout barbecue from another restaurant in South Minneapolis. The two restaurants could not, however, be more different. Ted Cook’s 19th Hole is a 51 yo Black-owned restaurant that is takeout-only and which serves no-nonsense barbecued meats and sides. Tenant, on the other hand, is a 3 yo hard-to-get-into, cheffy prix fixe restaurant in what I call the Global Cosmopolitan school. That’s in normal times. The pandemic has caused a temporary convergence as Tenant, like most other local fine dining restaurants, has pivoted to a takeout model to keep its doors open and its staff employed. The restaurant’s bare bones structure—very few people in the kitchen, doing all the jobs—has perhaps allowed it to be more flexible in this regard than most of its fine dining peers. They’ve not, however, been serving the food people normally book six weeks in advance to eat. For the first couple of months of the pandemic they were selling takeout soup and sandwich packages; as of about a month ago they’ve pivoted to barbecue. Continue reading
Tenant IV (Minneapolis)
We went back to Tenant for dinner a week and a half ago. This was our fourth visit. Our previous meal there was just about 6 weeks prior to this one and the one before wasn’t too much longer before that one. Both those meals were very good indeed, catapulting Tenant to the top of our Twin Cities fine dining list. They also took place at the height and end of summer respectively. We were interested to see, going into this one, how the kitchen would deal with the relatively depleted produce options of Minnesota in the late fall/early winter. Well, our experience was a little mixed. This was probably the least of our meals there so far. But only some of this was likely down to the market offerings of the season (no more tomato water!). It’s more the case that going every six weeks or so, as we’ve been doing since mid-summer seems to have resulted in a bit of deja vu. While none of the courses were identical to those at our last meal there was some sameness. Now you might say that this is an odd criticism—most restaurants have far more static menus. But one of the things we enjoyed most about Tenant on our previous visits was surprise and there wasn’t much surprise at this meal. Which is not to say, of course, that it wasn’t a good dinner in its own right—for it was. And keep in mind that this is not a problem you would have on your first visit there or if your visits were spaced further apart. Continue reading
Tenant III (Minneapolis)
I said in my review of our second dinner at Tenant—in July—that we were already planning a return trip in September. And for a change I was not a liar. We made reservations for the first weekend of September as soon as spots were available, and so it came to pass that at 6 pm last Saturday we sat down at their counter once again. Our second dinner had surpassed the first and we were curious to see what we would make of our third. Sorry to kill the suspense so soon but we thought it was excellent and perhaps, top to bottom, an even better meal than the previous. Indeed, it’s becoming hard to see how we will give our fine dining dollars to any other Twin Cities establishment. Herewith the details.
Tenant II (Minneapolis)
Tenant opened in the old Piccolo space, just a month or so after that great restaurant closed in the spring of 2017 (though in Minnesota it may still have been winter). We tried to go eat there a few times that first year but it wasn’t until the fall of 2018 that we finally managed it. We really liked that meal and wanted to go back a lot sooner than in another year and a half. Alas, between our schedules, travel and the difficulty of scoring seats at the tiny restaurant it was almost another year before we made it back for our second meal. That was last weekend. We liked this meal even more and I think we are both ready to say that it may in fact now be our favourite and quite likely the best fine dining restaurant in the Twin Cities metro. Depending on your view of fine dining in the Twin Cities you may think this faint or high praise but either way Tenant is very good indeed. And we are already plotting a return in September. Continue reading
Tenant (Minneapolis)
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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