Beyond the everyday lists for sandwiches and pizza, these are the destination restaurants. Some have James Beard medals on the wall. Some have been chef-driven neighborhood rooms for two decades. Some are brand new and already worth the table. Reservations recommended.
Isaac Becker’s small chef-driven restaurant has been one of the most-loved rooms in the metro since 2005. The foie gras meatballs are a permanent menu fixture. The burger has its own following. Late-night service makes it the move after a show. Often called "where chefs eat."
Read full entry →Isaac Becker’s sibling restaurant to 112, focused on hand-rolled pasta and Italian small plates. The soft egg and lobster bruschetta is the order. The half-priced bruschetta board at happy hour has built a separate fanbase. One of the most consistent rooms in the city.
Read full entry →Gavin Kaysen’s North Loop flagship in a converted horse stable. French-leaning American food with a serious tasting-menu option, and a happy hour at the bar that turns the room into one of the metro’s best deals from 4 to 5:30. The dining room is a special-occasion staple.
Read full entry →Gavin Kaysen’s 20-seat tasting-menu restaurant. A multi-course experience that has earned national attention since opening. Reservations are released monthly and disappear quickly. The most ambitious dining experience in the metro.
Read full entry →A New American kitchen and libation house in the Whittier neighborhood at the south end of Eat Street. Burgers, sandwiches, and entrees with serious craft cocktails and a thoughtful wine list. The room feels like it has been there longer than it has, in the best way.
Read full entry →Anna Morgan and Kevin Manley met at 112 Eatery (he was executive chef, she was general manager). Their tiny twenty-table St. Paul bistro is named after their son. Small plates, elevated bar food, a serious cocktail program. The Aperol Jell-O shots have become a thing.
Read full entry →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.
Read full entry →Daniel del Prado’s Linden Hills restaurant blending Italian pasta technique with Argentinian wood-fire cooking. The pastas are the headline but the wood-grilled meats are equally serious. The room is small and the bar is the move for walk-ins.
Read full entry →The Northeast corner room at 13th and University, recently relaunched as Northeast Social Club. Full bar, a kitchen that takes the bar menu seriously, weekend brunch from 10. A small patio for the summer months. The kind of neighborhood spot you walk to from a show at the 331 Club next door.
Read full entry →Kim Bartmann turned her Café Wyrd coffee shop into this French brasserie in 2001 and it has anchored the corner of Lake and Irving ever since, a few blocks off the lake. The steak frites and the mussels are the long-running orders, the wine list is honest, and the all-day room slides from morning coffee to late-night with the same ease. Weekend brunch is an Uptown ritual. Sibling to Bryant Lake Bowl, and the kind of place that feels like it has always been here.
Read full entry →Sean Sherman’s James Beard-winning Indigenous kitchen, now expanded into the Guthrie Theater space on the river. The menu is decolonized by design: no wheat flour, no dairy, no cane sugar, built instead on Native ingredients like wild rice, bison, cedar, and foraged greens. The original Owamni won Best New Restaurant in the country. This is the bigger, river-facing next chapter.
Read full entry →Alex Roberts has run this room near the U of M for 25 years, and it remains one of the most quietly serious kitchens in the metro. The format is a seasonal three-course or a chef’s six-course tasting, ingredient-driven and never showy. The downstairs cafe handles the morning and the hotel rooms upstairs make it a destination. A James Beard Best Chef Midwest winner who never coasted.
Read full entry →Russell Klein’s downtown St. Paul brasserie has been the city’s go-to for oysters and proper French cooking since 2007. The raw bar is shucked to order, the duck à la presse is carved tableside, and the wine program runs deep. In summer the terrace on St. Peter Street is the closest thing downtown has to a Paris sidewalk. The special-occasion room on this side of the river.
Read full entry →A tiny tasting-menu room in the old Piccolo space on Bryant, serving a seasonal six-course menu that changes constantly and costs less than the ambition suggests. No tipping, prices include everything but tax, and the kitchen is right there in front of you. Counter seats are the move for solo diners. One of the best-value serious meals in the city.
Read full entry →Yia Vang’s long-awaited Northeast restaurant, named for the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand where his parents met. The food is Hmong by way of his family’s story: grilled and braised meats off the fire, sticky rice, and a wall of hot sauces. Vang was a 2026 James Beard Best Chef Midwest semifinalist, and the room finally gives Union Hmong Kitchen a permanent home. Order the whole-hog board if it’s on.
Read full entry →Ann Ahmed’s upscale Laotian restaurant at 40th and Lyndale, designed to feel like a tropical resort dropped into south Minneapolis. The food is bright and herbal, built on the Lao and Southeast Asian flavors Ahmed grew up with, and the cocktails match the room’s vacation energy. The crispy rice salad and the curries are the orders. One of three restaurants in her growing group, and the most ambitious.
Read full entry →Daniel del Prado’s wood-fired Argentinian steakhouse in the former Bachelor Farmer building, his most personal project. The grill turns out entraña, hanger steak, and a domestic wagyu sirloin that built the early buzz, plus papas aplastadas and serious pasta. Downstairs in the old Marvel Bar space is the Flora Room cocktail bar. A North Loop special-occasion table that earned the hype.
Read full entry →Gavin Kaysen’s ode to the French and Italian Riviera, inside the Four Seasons downtown. Wood-fired Mediterranean cooking, a raw bar, and one of the most polished dining rooms in the metro, with a terrace overlooking the river bluff. It is the splurgy hotel-restaurant done right, and the bar is a fine place to land for a glass and a few plates. The third pillar of Kaysen’s downtown trio with Spoon and Stable and Demi.
Read full entry →A small, deeply seasonal restaurant on Cleveland Avenue in St. Paul that has earned some of the most serious praise in the metro since opening. The menu turns over constantly with whatever is at its peak, and the room is intimate enough that every plate feels considered. Dinner Wednesday through Saturday, and reservations are the move.
Read full entry →Pastry chef Diane Moua’s first solo restaurant, in the Food Building in Northeast, where her Hmong American cooking finally takes the lead instead of dessert. The all-day kitchen runs from breakfast through dinner, and the pastry program is, predictably, extraordinary. Food & Wine named it 2025 Restaurant of the Year, and Moua is a perennial James Beard name. Worth the table.
Read full entry →The neighborhood restaurant just up from Lake of the Isles, where chef-owner Joel DeBilzan cooks locally sourced seasonal plates and homemade pasta. A recent remodel added a proper bar open all business hours, which makes it an easy walk-in as well as a reservation. The kind of quietly excellent corner room every neighborhood wishes it had.
Read full entry →The Parasole steakhouse that opened in 1988 and has been the metro’s definitive special-occasion meat palace ever since, now inside the Foshay at 9th and Marquette. The cuts come to the table on a rolling meat cart, the portions are gleefully excessive, and the bone-in ribeye is the order. Regularly named one of the best steakhouses in the country.
Read full entry →Chef Shigeyuki Furukawa’s Edomae sushi and kaiseki counter, with the omakase served upstairs and a Japanese whisky bar, Gori Gori Peku, on the ground floor. Three set omakase menus build from delicate to all-out, and the counter is where you want to sit. The most serious sushi experience in the metro, and a genuine occasion.
Read full entry →The North Loop’s Szechuan kitchen and bar, turning out wok-fired Sichuan classics, handmade noodles, dim sum, and dumplings from family recipes. The heat is real and the cocktail program is more ambitious than the genre usually allows. Long the neighborhood’s only Chinese restaurant, and a reliably good one.
Read full entry →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.
Read full entry →The neighborhood bar that took over the old Clancey’s space on Upton in Linden Hills, where you are treated like a regular from the first visit. Lunch through late night with a kitchen that takes its bar food seriously and a room built for lingering. The easy, walkable corner spot the neighborhood had been missing.
Read full entry →Steven Brown’s French salon at 50th and Bryant, inspired by the cafés and buvettes of between-the-wars Paris. The wine list runs deep into French bottles, the bar pours from an amber bar cart, and the bistro plates are exactly right. As much a place to settle in for a glass and a snack as a full dinner. A true neighborhood gift.
Read full entry →A Japanese cafe on Washington Avenue serving udon, donburi rice bowls, and hand-rolled temaki for lunch and dinner, plus a roster of inventive desserts and drinks. Nine versions of donburi, from sashimi to grilled eel, make it an easy repeat. Small, bright, and more of a real meal than the name lets on.
Read full entry →Sean Sherman’s Indigenous barbecue counter inside NATIFS Wóyute Thipi, the old Seward Co-op Creamery on Franklin. The name means smoke or clouds in Dakota, the same word that lives inside Minnesota. The kitchen follows the Owamni rules with no wheat flour, dairy, or cane sugar, and turns out smoked meats and fish alongside maple-baked beans, dirty wild rice, braised greens, and a three sisters bison stew. The decolonized menu, now in barbecue form.
Read full entry →Danny Guerrero and Luis Puentes’ intimate Northeast room in the old Altburger space, where Mexican and Asian flavors meet across a fully gluten-free menu. Head chef Marco Luna runs tacos, sushi, and shared plates, and Guerrero, a Guadalajara bartender by trade, builds the cocktails around tequila and Japanese whisky. Low light, 68 seats, late hours on the weekend. The kind of date-night corner Northeast keeps minting.
Read full entry →The Central Avenue room that industry veterans Jeff Luten and Mike Hoolihan rebranded from Dutch Bar in late 2025, now a proper neighborhood cocktail and wine bar with a kitchen that takes its small plates seriously. The charcuterie board with marcona almonds and herb-buttered toast is the move, the wine list is curated, and the kitchen runs until 10. Open Tuesday through Saturday, late.
Read full entry →The pop-up darling from Mike Yuen and Tony Gao that finally landed a permanent home as the kitchen inside Steady Pour, the Northeast cocktail den on East Hennepin. The name is a Cantonese term for someone who builds their own identity while honoring their roots, which is exactly the food: playful Chinese American classics like mapo hotdish and the couples’ beef tartare, plated against one of the better bar programs in the neighborhood. Wednesday through Saturday.
Read full entry →The full-service evolution of Gustavo Romero and Kate Romero’s Nixta tortilleria, a James Beard-nominated room in the Northeast Arts District built entirely on their own nixtamalized masa. The tortillas and the masa run through everything, in original seasonal dishes that change with what is good. A small, focused kitchen open Wednesday through Saturday, and one of the most quietly serious Mexican rooms in the city.
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