We left home on Saturday with the intention of meeting friends for lunch at a new(ish) Lao restaurant in St. Paul. Alas, we arrived to find they were randomly closed that day. To salvage the situation we headed to Hot Grainz, a mere 10 minutes drive away, down the other end of W. 7th St. We arrived to find some sort of art extravaganza in progress in the larger Schmidt’s complex. This meant we had to park quite a bit further away in the complex than we had on our first visit to their new location; but we did find parking easily enough. As we walked up to the restaurant, our hearts sank: there was yellow construction tape across the windows! Were they shut too? Thankfully, no: it turned out to be part of their Halloween decorations. Having been properly frightened we needed some good, hot food to restore us. And so it came to pass. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Twin Cities Thai
Hot Grainz III (St. Paul, MN)
We ate at Hot Grainz’s original location in the Sunrise Plaza on University Avenue for the first time early last summer, and I was ready, on the strength of that meal, to proclaim them the best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities. Our follow-up meals there later in the summer confirmed that evaluation. We didn’t end up getting back there later last year or early this year. But that was because of the seating situation at that location: basically, it was very difficult to find a table in the tiny dining room on weekends; and coming, as we are, from 50 minutes away, takeout was not a great option either. This seemed to become an insurmountable problem when I heard earlier this year that they had moved to a takeout-only option. I hadn’t yet confirmed this for myself when I got the happy news—while we were travelling—that they had moved to a new, larger location on W. 7th Street with ample seating. We’d planned a meal there as our first lunch out after we got back but then ran into another unexpected discovery as we were about to get into the car: they’re not open for lunch on Sundays. We ended up going to Zao Bakery+Cafe instead that day (and had a very nice meal). We finally made it to the new location of Hot Grainz for lunch this past Saturday, and I can confirm that it is indeed, in our family’s opinion, the best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities. Read on to see what we ate. Continue reading
Krungthep Thai V (St. Paul, MN)
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities. Let’s get back into the swing of things with the restaurant that I once called the best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities: Krungthep Thai. I wouldn’t give it that rank now but that’s not because our lunch there this past weekend was sub-par; it’s only because our hearts and tongues have since been won over by Hot Grainz. Indeed, our lunch on Saturday was as good as the best of our previous meals at Krungthep Thai—which is to say it was very good indeed. We were there with friends we’ve eaten there with before and we ordered a number of old favourites. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Hot Grainz II (St. Paul, MN)
Back in early June I posted a quick write-up of lunch eaten with friends at Hot Grainz, the (relatively) new Northern Thai restaurant in the Sunrise Plaza on University Ave. (where else?) in St. Paul. At the end of that review I noted that we’d be back soon. For a change, I am not a liar. We’ve actually been back for lunch twice this summer, most recently late last week. Here is a quick writeup of both meals. Spoiler alert: we loved both of them and I think I am ready to pronounce Hot Grainz the best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities, even though we just also ate a very good lunch at Bangkok Thai Deli in July. Is this too high praise? Should I wait till we’ve gone back again to On’s and Krungthep Thai? Probably; but I didn’t get where I am today (nowhere) by being temperate. Continue reading
Bangkok Thai Deli, July 2024 (St. Paul, MN)
It’s been two months since my last writeup of a meal in St. Paul and somehow it’s been more than two years since my last writeup of a meal at Bangkok Thai Deli. I am happy to fix both oversights in one go. Since my last report of lunch there in May 2022 we’ve eaten Thai meals in St. Paul at On’s Kitchen, Friends Cafe (okay, that was really a Burmese meal), Krungthep Thai, Thai Cafe and most recently at Hot Grainz. I have in the intervening period proclaimed both Krungthep Thai (Bangkok Thai Deli’s satellite location) and then Hot Grainz to be perhaps the current best Thai restaurant in the Twin Cities. Well, after a belated return to Bangkok Thai Deli I can only say that it would be a mistake to pass them over too quickly. Here’s how our lunch there this past weekend went. Continue reading
Hot Grainz (St. Paul, MN)
I am simultaneously mystified by the name Hot Grainz and irrationally pleased to see an immigrant restaurant not mark its cultural/national origin in its name. In an area where it seems to be almost required for every Thai restaurant to put either the word “Thai” or at least a Thai word in its name, Hot Grainz is named for…god knows what. I’m sure there’s a good reason for the name—I’m just saying it’s not obviously the name of a Thai restaurant. I wonder if this is why, almost two years since they opened, not too many aficionados of Thai food in the Twin Cities have probably heard of Hot Grainz. The fact that they are hidden away in the back of the Sunrise Plaza on University Ave. (where else?)—with no signage on the exterior indicating that they’re in there—probably does not help. But if you like Thai food and haven’t been there yet, you’d better get there soon. We ate there this past weekend and it was easily the best Thai food we’ve had in the Twin Cities in a while. Here are the details. Continue reading
Thai Cafe, April 2024 (St. Paul, MN)
In reviewing our recent meal at Grand Szechuan a couple of weeks ago I noted that we hadn’t eaten much Chinese food during our three months away in Bombay and Seoul. Well, we didn’t eat any Thai food at all. As such, going out for a good Thai meal was high on our list of priorities when we got back. We got around to scratching that itch last weekend. Against all odds, we didn’t go to any of our usual top three: Krungthep Thai, On’s Kitchen or Bangkok Thai Deli. Instead we went back to the small restaurant that I once put almost on the same level as its bigger University Avenue (where else?) peers: Thai Cafe. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Krungthep Thai IV (St. Paul, MN)
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
Friends Cafe (St. Paul, MN)
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
On’s Kitchen VIII (St. Paul, MN)
If Grand Szechuan is our family’s favourite restaurant in the Twin Cities, On’s Kitchen is a close second. We’ve been eating here since it opened and it has very rarely let us down. One of those occasions was our last dine-in meal there in late 2019. Later I learned that On had retired from the kitchen earlier that year—significant news that you might think the local food media would have shared loudly while honouring her. We nonetheless ordered takeout from On’s on multiple occasions during the height of the pandemic and it seemed to us that the quality had once again gone back up. This past weekend we finally ate there in person for the first time since that 2019 meal. And I am very happy to say that it was a rather excellent meal. I don’t know who is running the kitchen now but they’re putting out very good food. Continue reading
Khâluna, Again (Minneapolis)
I first ate at Khâluna in early April. That meal was eaten with some colleagues and I liked it so much (see my review here) that I was resolved to eat there again soon with the missus. That happened only three weeks later but it has taken me almost three months since to write the second dinner up. This is not because I was less enthusiastic about this meal—it was also very good. It’s just that I had a big backlog of restaurant write-ups to get to and didn’t want to run a write-up of a repeat visit so soon after the first. The good news is that since Khâluna’s menu does not turn over much, if at all, this write-up is still relevant: everything we ate at this dinner is still on their menu. Having now eaten most of that menu, I would recommend most of it if you have a reservation. Continue reading
Bangkok Thai Deli, May 2022 (St. Paul, MN)
It took more than two years but we finally ate in at Bangkok Thai Deli again. Our last visit was in February of 2020. During the pandemic we got takeout from them a number of times and enjoyed all those meals very much (here, here and here). But it’s not the same as eating in—and not just because some dishes don’t take so well to being reheated after a 50 minute drive. Some restaurants mean more to people than others and for us Bangkok Thai Deli is one of the cornerstones of our Twin Cities dining life. We’ve been eating there since we arrived in 2007 (which is when they opened, as per their menu; I would have guessed it was earlier) and it would have been a big blow if the pandemic had claimed them as well. All this to say, we were very happy to eat there again in person. 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
Basil Cafe, In Person (St. Paul, MN)
We first happened upon Basil Cafe during the height of the pandemic, almost exactly one year ago. They’d only opened in 2019 and we hadn’t had a chance to eat there before everything closed to in-person dining in 2020. Thankfully, they survived not only that first year but also the next and seem to be going strong now as things slowly return to something approaching normalcy. We too have been eating out more often this year—and so while our 2021 meal had been takeout, this past weekend we finally made it in to eat there in person. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 74: On’s Kitchen in the New Year
It took till February but we finally made it to the Twin Cities for a meal in 2022. My first Minnesota report for the year was of Mexican lunch from a favourite in our town, El Triunfo. The next weekend I ventured a bit further north to Burnsville to pick up Indian food from India Palace. This past weekend we finally made it up to St. Paul for a Thai meal. The original plan had been to go back to Basil Cafe, whose food we quite enjoyed last spring. But they didn’t seem to be open: Google showed them closed all week except on Tuesday and I couldn’t raise them on the phone either. I hope this is a temporary situation. Well, it was with no reluctance or disappointment at all that we fell back on On’s Kitchen instead. We thought about eating in but in the end it was takeout again. This time, however, we didn’t bring the food back to our place, driving instead only a few minutes to the home of friends who often join us on our Twin Cities outings. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 69: Bangkok Thai Deli (St. Paul, MN)
It has been a dangerously long time since our last Thai meal. That was takeout from Krungthep Thai in St. Paul. Having gone more than two months since then without Thai food, urgent action was required. Accordingly, on Sunday I drove to Bangkok Thai Deli on University Avenue and picked up a rather large order. It was a warm November weekend in southern Minnesota and so we had what was likely our last pandemic takeout meal on our deck with friends. There’s snow on the forecast for this weekend and it’s going to keep getting colder and we never did get around to buying any of those patio heaters. Well, as last hurrahs go, this was a good one. This was one of the best Thai meals we’ve had over the course of the pandemic. All of it would have been better coming straight from the restaurant’s kitchen to one of its tables, but it was pretty good even reheated after a long drive. Continue reading
Pandemic Takeout 67: Krungthep Thai (St. Paul, MN)
Having gone back to Grand Szechuan for our previous pandemic takeout outing it followed naturally that this weekend’s takeout would be Thai. It was tempting to just go back to one of our University Ave. standbys—Bangkok Thai Deli, On’s or Thai Cafe—or to hit up newcomer Basil Cafe again; but in the end we decided to return to Krungthep Thai where we had an excellent meal back in late 2019 and which we’d inexplicably never gone back to. Well, it’s not that inexplicable, I guess—they’re a bit further out for us than the University Ave. stalwarts. Anyway, we did go back to pick up some food and bring it back to eat on our deck with friends. And I am pleased to report it was again an excellent lunch and perhaps the best of our recent takeout Thai meals. Details follow. Continue reading