Filipino food has not by and large been very visible in the Twin Cities metro until recently. This is not a surprise when you consider that as per a January 2016 report from the Minnesota State Demographic Center, the numbers of Filipinos in Minnesota—whether foreign-born or not—is relatively low: 14,100 people at the time the report was published. Compare to 184,100 for Mexican, 66,800 for Hmong, 46,300 for Somali, 44,800 for Indian (from India), 29,800 for Vietnamese and 29,400 for Chinese. Of course, population numbers alone don’t account for this lack of visibility. The number of Ethiopians is only a few thousand higher than the number of Filipinos and there are lots and lots of Ethiopian restaurants in the Twin Cities, many of them popular with more than just an in-group clientele. The secondary issue here is probably that Filipino food does not have a very high profile in the US more broadly and so there has perhaps not been that “call” for it from out-culture groups. That is, so far. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Twin Cities Dining
Myriel (St. Paul, MN)
Myriel opened just about a year ago in St. Paul and has quickly garnered a strong reputation. The chef-owner is Karyn Tomlinson who was previously the head chef at Corner Table in Minneapolis. I have to admit we were not hugely impressed by our one dinner at Corner Table (which closed before the pandemic) but given the acclaim for Myriel we were looking forward to eventually eating there. We were first set to do so in May but those plans were scuppered by a late-breaking positive test among the staff (we ended up at Saint Genevieve that evening where we had a very nice dinner). We got rescheduled to early-mid June and when our friends couldn’t make it on that date we decided to take our boys along for another fine dining outing (which is a development they are hugely enjoying). Here is how it went. Continue reading
Vann (Spring Park, MN)
Even by my very low standards this is a very low-utility restaurant report. I’ll tell you why in a bit. But first a bit about the restaurant. Spring Park, a western suburb of Minneapolis is located alongside Lake Minnetonka, and Vann—Norwegian for “water”—is located just across the street from the lake and boasts lovely views of it from its large windows. The chef is Erik Skaar whose path to Spring Creek included stops in Tampa Bay, Denver and Seattle before a return to the Twin Cities where he cooked at the Bachelor Farmer and Tilia before finally opening his own restaurant in late 2019. No, it wasn’t the most fortunate timing. But they made it through the first two years of the pandemic and have now seemingly hit their stride again. We finally made the trek out to Spring Park earlier this month to try their food, and we were very glad we did. 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
Saint Genevieve (Minneapolis)
A few weeks ago we were scheduled to eat at Myriel in St. Paul with friends. But just a few hours before our reservation they had to close suddenly because of you-know-what. Rather than cancel our plans entirely we cast around for other places that might have tables and were happy to find that there was room at Saint Genevieve in south Minneapolis. Though I have not reviewed them before, this was not my first meal there. I ate there at a work-related engagement some years ago. I enjoyed that meal but somehow they fell off my radar and I never got around to going back with the missus. And when they came back on it they had switched to requiring full payment at the time of booking. While I don’t object per se to this model of dining, it’s a bit of a no-go for parents of small children like us. But on this occasion they had tables freely available and—not that it would have been an issue that evening—I wasn’t asked to pay ahead. As to whether that’s because they’ve changed that reservation model or whether the policy is relaxed when last-minute tables are available, I don’t know. I do know that we all enjoyed our meal very much. Continue reading
112 Eatery II (Minneapolis)
After our lovely dinner at Alma in April we decided it was time to go back to our old favourites in the Twin Cities more often. And so I immediately made a reservation for dinner at 112 Eatery, a restaurant we like more than the number of times I have reviewed it would indicate. It was the first fine dining restaurant I ate at in Minnesota, having been taken there for dinner when I was interviewing for my job (at which point I think it was just over a year old). And when we arrived in Minnesota it was one of the places we ate at most frequently. But when I started reviewing restaurants on the blog the urge to chase novelty meant fewer visits to old favourites. Our Alma meal reminded me of the folly of this practice and I am very glad it did: we had a very good meal at 112 Eatery as well. Continue reading
Khâluna (Minneapolis)
In December 2019—just a few months before you-know-what happened—we ate dinner at Lat14 in Golden Valley and rather enjoyed it. We’d planned to go back but then ended up spending most of the next 2 years at home. By the time we began to get back into the dining out groove in Minnesota, the chef/owner of Lat14, Ann Ahmed, had a new restaurant in South Minneapolis: Khâluna. We had quite enjoyed our meal at Lat14 and so were looking forward to eating her food at Khâluna as well. Reservations, however, were hard to come by until I managed to score one for mid-January. And then the omicron spike happened in a big way and we had to cancel. It took another three months for me to finally make it there. I ate dinner there for the first time in early April along with some colleagues. I liked it so much that I immediately made another reservation to go back with the missus and some of our regular dining crew. We ate that meal this past weekend. I’d originally thought I’d post an account of both meals at the same time but after resizing 45+ photographs from the first meal, I gave that up. So what follows is an account of my first meal there. You’ll have to wait a few weeks for the second. Continue reading
Mucci’s Italian (St. Paul, MN)
As those who read my restaurant reports regularly know, our kids eat out with us whenever we go out to lunch. It’s rare though that they accompany us to dinner (unless we’re traveling). A big part of this is that it’s nice to have adult time away from your children; a not insignificant part of it is also that at fancier restaurants it’s harder to find dishes that young children will eat wholeheartedly without performing surgery on plates to remove unwelcome components. Our boys are more adventurous eaters than the average upper midwestern kids of their age but vegetables—for example—remain a hard sell for them; and so the question of taking them to places where they would discard 50% of what’s on their plate just doesn’t arise. At the same time, however, they are more aware each year of how much their parents enjoy eating out and with every year their desire to participate more fully in this grows stronger. And so we’ve come to the slightly reluctant conclusion that the money we’ve been saving on babysitting since the older boy became a teenager will have to begin to be spent on initiating them more fully, if slowly, into the world of fine(r) dining. Which is how we ended up eating as a family at Mucci’s Italian in St. Paul this past weekend. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma IV, Spring 2022 (Minneapolis, MN)
It has somehow been four and a half years since our last meal at Alma. I cannot really explain this. Yes, there’s two years of the pandemic in there, but even two and a half years between meals at what has always been one of our favourite restaurants in the Twin Cities is hard to justify. Well, it may have been four and a half years since our last visit but it’s not likely to be more than four and a half months before we go back for our next dinner. Before we’d even got to the end of our dinner there this past Friday, the missus noted that we should really try to eat their next menu as well and I was in ready agreement. This was one of the best meals we’ve had in the Twin Cities recently and—from top to bottom—one of the best meals at Alma that I can remember. Herewith the details.
Owamni (Minneapolis, MN)
Owamni opened last July in Minneapolis and quickly became one of 2021’s most acclaimed restaurants, both locally and nationally. It has featured on a number of lists of the best/most exciting/most important restaurants in the country and so forth. And more recently the restaurant made the James Beard Awards long list for “Best New Restaurant” and the chef, Sean Sherman was likewise on the long list of nominees for “Best Chef, Midwest”. It is a restaurant helmed by a Native American chef, which aims to foreground/promote indigenous ingredients and to present what it calls a “decolonized dining experience”. All of this is urgent, important and exciting. And so it gives me no pleasure to say that we enjoyed very little of the food at our recent dinner there. Continue reading
Sooki & Mimi (Minneapolis)
As you probably know, Sooki & Mimi is the new restaurant from Ann Kim of Young Joni fame (she won a Beard award for her food there). You probably also know that it is one of the buzziest restaurants to have opened recently in the Twin Cities. The buzz really picked up two months or so ago when the New York Times included it in a list of the most exciting restaurants in the country or some such. You see, here in Minnesota we are so confident in our identity that we manage to both tell the New York Times they know nothing when they say things about us we don’t like and to fall all over ourselves in excitement when they offer the slightest bit of praise. Well, we are famously a very emotional people here in the upper midwest and it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that we can be so volatile. Continue reading
Petite Leon (Minneapolis)
We were originally supposed to eat at Petite Leon (in Minneapolis’ Kingfield neighbourhood) in early September. We’d made those reservations in July before Delta took off. By the time September approached we were too wary about eating indoors and so cancelled the reservation. Now, of course, Omicron is the variant of concern—and Minnesota’s infection rates are still nothing to be happy about—but we still made Petite Leon our first indoor meal in the Twin Cities since our dinner at Estelle in late July. The missus and I have both received our boosters—as have the friends we dined with—and both kids are now fully vaccinated as well. As such, we are loosening some of our previous caution. Did the food at Petite Leon justify this change? Yes, it did. We thought it was very good indeed. Continue reading
Spoon and Stable III (Minneapolis)
I had not realized until just over a week ago that Spoon and Stable has outside seating. We’ve eaten there twice before but the last of those occasions was in the dead of winter and there was no question of anyone sitting outside. And I have no memory of seeing outdoor seating on our first visit in the late summer/early fall of 2015. This may, of course, be a more recent pandemic development but at least of late they have had a few tables set out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant with heaters by every table. Or rather they did. It turns out this past weekend was the last weekend for their outdoor seating. Well, if we’d known about this earlier we would have eaten there quite a bit earlier this year but I’m very glad we found out before it went away for the winter. Our meal there this past Saturday evening was very good indeed, on par with our previous very good meals there (here and here). Continue reading
Colita (Minneapolis)
Colita opened in South Minneapolis in late 2018 and quickly gained a reputation for its rendition of Oaxcan food passed through an upscale cheffy filter. For whatever reason we didn’t get around to eating there in 2019. Did they not take reservations at the outset? Was it very hard to get a reservation then? I can’t remember. Anyway, when we got back from India in early 2020 I finally made a reservation…for the month of April. You know how that went. Flash forward a year and change and it was drawn to my attention that they have a large patio for which they take reservations. I made reservations again and we were supposed to eat on that patio three weeks ago. And then it rained. Their patio, it turns out, does not have any kind of covering and so it was a no-go (we ended up eating at Andale on a patio under an overhang). And I made a fresh set of reservations, hoping like hell that the weather would not play us false again. Thankfully, it did not and we finally ate there this past Saturday with the friends we were supposed to eat with earlier in the month. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Meritage II (St. Paul, MN)
For the second weekend in a row it seemed like our plans to eat an outdoor meal at a fancy restaurant would be spiked by the weather. You may recall that we tried to eat at Colita the weekend before last but the forecasted rain (which did show up) led to the reservations on their patio being cancelled that morning. (Don’t feel too bad for us: we ended up under the awning on Andale’s patio and ate very well.) Undaunted by this damp outcome I made reservations for the missus’ birthday dinner at Meritage, whose website lists a terrace. Now I couldn’t remember a terrace from the last time we ate there—it turns out they use the word “terrace” for what I would call “the sidewalk in front of the restaurant”. But this is not the season for semantics. Winter is coming and we will take whatever opportunities for outdoor dining as present themselves. As the week went on I checked the forecast every day. Wouldn’t you know it, by Thursday there was rain predicted for the exact time of our reservation. Not wanting a last minute cancellation, I called the restaurant on Friday to see what kind of shelter they might have on their “terrace” and was reassured to be told that our table was under an awning and it would probably take a major thunderstorm for there to be any issues. To be safe, I moved our reservation from 8 pm to 7.15 pm. I am happy to say that there was no cancellation call on Saturday morning. Here is how the evening went. Continue reading
Estelle (St. Paul)
Estelle opened a couple of years ago in St. Paul in whatever that neighbourhood right by Macalester is called. It got rave reviews from the local press and despite my suspicion of the local press—whose excitement often seems to me to have as much to do with the idea of a place as with the food itself—we’d planned to eat there in early 2020. But you know what happened next. I don’t know if they had a takeout pivot through the pandemic but with the exception of one occasion with Tenant our pandemic takeout meals skipped the high end. But we finally made the return to dining-in last month (yes, at Tenant) and Estelle was the next place we made reservations at. We were joined by friends we eat out with regularly—and with whom we ate a number of takeout meals in the last year and a half. This is how it went. 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