“It was truly an opportunity to finally open my own restaurant,” he said about Caribbean Smokehouse in Stillwater. “People ask why I didn't do it 10 years ago. I wasn't ready.”
Standing off to the side while Café and Bar Lurcat Executive Chef Jordan Swiler prepares to plate the Braised Lamb is a quick finale since the magic of braising the meat has already been done.
Sundays in the Bronx were strictly for church and dinner at grandma's house. And there were no excuses.
Instead of cringe-worthy clichés like lutefisk, cream-based casseroles or Jell-O-whatever-the-hell, The Bachelor Farmer's new chef wants to know what's good and edible from our own forests, fields and shorelines.
The veggie burrito at Book Club seems almost too simple, but so is the “West Coast” style that encompasses the menu.
Kristin Tyborski is that coveted MVP who can play all the positions, moving gracefully from front of the house to the kitchen and back again without grandstanding.
Patrick Donelan grew up in a family where everyone cooked, and everyone hunted. “We did everything by hand,” canning the majority of their food, he says, especially sauerkraut.
The Octopus appetizer at Vann in Spring Park, already the subject of several early reviews of the restaurant, is here to stay. “It was never intended to be on the menu this long,” points out Erik Skaar, the executive chef and owner of the four-month-old, fine-dining establishment on Lake Minnetonka.
During a busy weekend, the cooks at Benedict's in Wayzata crack more than 2,000 eggs as they prepare various breakfast standards.
Casablanca's moment of silence started as a way for Chef Youness Bojji to catch his breath. There were 42 people in his original restaurant's tiny dining room and he was the only one in the kitchen.
Although Nyanyika Banda's Duluth restaurant is just nearing its first birthday, the concept itself has been a lifetime in the making.
Fourteen years ago, a 26-year-old Ben Pratt was fresh off a cooking stint at the fancy Cosmos restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, and ready for his opening night as chef/owner at Ingredients Cafe in White Bear Lake.
Thirty-five minutes northwest of Minneapolis along I-94, Minnesota's food culture comes into focus as corporate campuses and strip centers give way to the fields of farm country.
The Wilder Scratch Kitchen is a little off the main tourist thoroughfare of marinas, antique shops and shopping that the St. Croix River Valley is known for.
Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening since May 2001 Robert Tewes is on a different stage as chef and owner of Crescendo, his white-tablecloth restaurant in downtown Albert Lea.
Mari Harries didn't call her full-service restaurant a “restaurant,” choosing instead to name it River City Eatery.
With the farm-to-table mantra still a common refrain and the often-whimsical names of those farms populating many restaurant menus, Scott Graden takes a different tack, one in which he eschews what he sees as marketing tools in favor of simply doing what makes sense for his business.
Kari Davi's food says so much more about her than she does herself. While not shy, the co-head chef at Forager Brewery in Rochester is reserved.
Congratulations to Foodservice News' 2017 Top Chefs.
Heart of a Neighborhood
Modern Farmhouse Cuisine and Civility
Service Meets Mom's Recipes
Culture of Sustainability
Ramen Celebrates Authenticity
I think it's safe to say the Twin Cities restaurant community is glad Alex Roberts opted against a career in medicine, choosing instead to wield a blade in the kitchen, not an operating room.
Asked about the pre-opening hype surrounding St. Genevieve, Steven Brown played it cool, suggesting the frothy excitement before high-profile openings risked setting public expectations dangerously high.
In the pre-opening hours at Burch, it's plain to see how much work goes into running the vast upscale restaurant.
To find a top chef mentored by Tim McKee, all one has to do is stand blindfolded in front of a map of the Twin Cities culinary scene and throw a dart.
“Women have always been drawn to my kitchen because I'm a woman,” Brenda Langton says. “My goal is to keep a happy kitchen.”
Some may have considered it a career setback, to revert to line cook when you've been head chef and run the kitchen at a well-known steakhouse in town. For Justin Sutherland, though, it was anything but.
Being a woman on the line isn't the rarity it once was, but it's still nice to have a mentor in your corner of the kitchen.
“I've never experienced anything like it,” Gavin Kaysen says about the opening last year. When reservation lines opened, they sold out two months' worth of seats immediately.
Pairing Surly's brews with equally forceful food is Jorge Guzman's daily charge as executive chef of both restaurants at Surly's massive, still-new destination brewery.
At 19, Angel Luna and two friends came to the U.S. illegally. Luna, who grew up in Veracruz, Mexico, wanted to find steady work in order to send money back to his parents and sisters.
When Diane Yang heard that famed New York City Chef Gavin Kaysen was returning to his hometown to start a restaurant, she didn't believe it.
In his role as chef de cuisine at La Belle Vie, Mike DeCamp has been a driving force in the Minneapolis food scene for nearly a decade.
Just steps from the CC Club, Uptown's hallowed dive, lies Nightingale—one of the city's most ambitious neighborhood restaurants.
Since Saint Dinette's opening in June, its 27-year-old chef de cuisine Adam Eaton is having fun building a menu around what he labels “elevated fat-kid food.”
It's not every newly graduated chef who dreams of showing off her fancy new skills in a food truck.
Thomas Boemer, aka chef and co-owner at Revival, chef and co-owner at Corner Table, and King of Porc, is having a good year.
Joe Rolle, who's been leading the kitchen at Il Foro since its June opening, spent the previous two years at critically acclaimed North Loop restaurant Borough.
A Buddhist meal prayer is front and center when customers visit the Birchwood Café in Minneapolis.
Aaron Slavicek is soft spoken, quick to smile and pleasant to be around as executive chef of Bar La Grassa.
Robert Wohlfeil is executive chef at The Oceanaire in downtown Minneapolis.
Along with wife Ashleigh Newman, Leonard Anderson has created something quite different in the up-and-coming Payne Avenue neighborhood of St. Paul.
Thomas Kim's fantasy is to introduce street-style Korean fare to inquisitive Midwesterners who aren't afraid to fall down the rabbit hole.
Their food, which includes the mini donuts, bison burgers topped with a fried egg and pulled-pork nachos, has been included on some pretty notable national lists
Susan Dunlop, the chef and co-owner of Joan's who came up with the “labor-saving” plan of Chef's Day Off dinners.
“It's very humbling, it's very scary, if I can say that,” says Executive Chef Ryan Lund. “I'm always working to live up to Lucia's name and her standards.”
Lucas Almendinger chose working at W.A. Frost under Leonard Anderson and then Wyatt Evans during his transition from woodworker to chef.