Star Tribune’s List Of “Essential Restaurants” Includes These In North Loop
In a new annual guide to the restaurants that “define the Twin Cities’ dining scene,” the Minnesota Star Tribune released its inaugural Culinary North Stars feature this week. As you might expect, the list includes a number of North Loop favorites.
Kado no Mise and Kaiseki Furukawa from chef Shigeyuki Furukawa, earn praise for their monthly-changing menu that “rolls with the seasons to keep dining innovative and fresh.” You’ll find them at the corner of North 1st Street and 1st Avenue North.
In the same building (which the Star Tribune refers to as “a Japanese culinary powerhouse”) is Sanjusan, a blend of Japanese and Italian cuisines led by executive chef Peter Thillen. The guide notes that Sanjusan “opened four years ago to immediate buzz.”
Two of chef Gavin Kaysen’s North Loop restaurants, Spoon and Stable and Demi, are also on the list. The guide gushes that “Spoon and Stable didn’t just raise the bar for Minneapolis dining — it became the benchmark.” And it refers to Demi as “Kaysen’s 20-seat jewel box of a restaurant, where synchronized tasting menus turned dining into performance art.”
One of the North Loop’s newest restaurants also has a nice write-up: St. Pierre Steak & Seafood, from Isaac Becker and Nancy St. Pierre. The guide points out that the “shareable snacks lean decadent, but the entrees feel like a discovery.”
And as a bonus, a quick mention that Oro by Nixta, the James Beard-nominated restaurant in northeast Minneapolis, offers a more casual tasting of their food at their taco stand inside Graze Food Hall, Tixtli by Nixta.
To read the Star Tribune’s complete list of the “30 restaurants most vital to the Twin Cities,” click here.