Hyacinth
A small St. Paul restaurant on Selby Avenue from chef Rikki Giambruno that has earned a serious following for handmade pasta, careful seafood, and a wine program that is one of the best in either city. Reservations book out weeks ahead.
The St. Paul neighborhood under the cathedral. Idun, Hyacinth, Nina's Coffee Cafe, all on Selby and Western. A favorite if you want to feel like you took a small vacation without leaving the metro.
A small St. Paul restaurant on Selby Avenue from chef Rikki Giambruno that has earned a serious following for handmade pasta, careful seafood, and a wine program that is one of the best in either city. Reservations book out weeks ahead.
The Selby Avenue Russian restaurant that has anchored the corner of Western and Selby since 1994, serving the metro’s most authentic Russian and Eastern European comfort food. Pelmeni, beef stroganoff, and a long list of infused vodkas poured cold. The patio in summer and the warm room in winter both deliver. A St. Paul institution.
On Cathedral Hill in the Blair Arcade building since 1996. The room is high-ceilinged and full of writers actually writing. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived a few blocks away. The coffee is competent, the room is the draw.
Bjorn and Megan Jacobsen’s Cathedral Hill room runs a frequently changing seasonal menu, but the move is the burger, served in a strictly limited run of eight a night. When they are gone they are gone, so order early. A serious kitchen treating the burger as a special.
The Selby Avenue Red Cow runs the same Tuesday-through-Friday window as the other locations, with two dollars off wine, beer, and cocktails and seven-dollar starters: ahi crisps, buffalo cauliflower, Brussels, wings, scotch eggs, Wisconsin cheese curds. The scotch eggs and a Moscow mule, two bucks off, is a reliable early-evening plan.
Old-school St. Paul glamour in a room that has been doing it since the Fitzgeralds were neighbors. Wednesday and Thursday from four to six: fifteen dollars for any app (cheese curds, fries, lamb sliders, cauliflower) and sixteen dollars for any cocktail from the classic list. Wednesday and Thursday also get half-off wine bottles. The late-night Friday and Saturday window from nine to eleven is the one locals know.
A genuine craft-beer bar that runs a daily happy hour with two dollars off all apps and a tight beer list at five dollars: Two Hearted, Pacifico, Coors Light, Hamm's, Summer Shandy. Two-Hearted for five bucks is the Cathedral Hill steal. The espresso martini at nine if you are staying.
A vegan-friendly bar and kitchen on the Cathedral Hill block that runs a happy hour Wednesday through Friday from three to six with a dedicated HH menu including HH-only items like the Midwest Tuna Melt. Drink prices vary by visit, so ask at the bar. Worth knowing if you are in the neighborhood.
A St. Paul shop in the Blair Arcade carrying contemporary independent women’s designers from across the country. The buying leans toward thoughtful natural-fiber pieces and labels that prioritize craft over season. The room is small and full of things you want to take home.
The largest curling club in the country, founded in 1912, on Selby Avenue under the cathedral. Six sheets of ice, a leagues calendar that takes the winter seriously, and a glass-fronted upstairs lounge where you can sit with a drink and watch a sport that almost nobody outside this metro and a few Canadian provinces actually plays. Visitors welcome to watch.
The Sunday VIP tour goes past the velvet ropes through three levels of the great domed cathedral on the hill, including spaces normally closed to the public.