Heather Jansz’s “Mother Sauce” comes with a side of mothering. Known as “the Curry Diva,” Jansz was doing nut-free, dairy-free, gluten-free food before it was all the rage. Her Sri Lankan fare boasts vivid colors and health-affirming ingredients that activate all six senses, plus sweet, sour…

Randall Prudden took all the cooking classes his Chicago high school offered—Foods I, II, III—and then he took them again. And while he got his basics in the classroom, he learned the real story during the summers working at a burger place in Lake Geneva where his parents summered. “They wer…

Café Cerés co-owner and pastry chef Shawn McKenzie became obsessed with baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie when she was a kid. Store-bought dough wasn’t good enough. The texture has to be just right, and the chocolate chips can’t be too hard or too soft—but they still have to melt in y…

As pastry chef for The American Swedish Institute’s restaurant FIKA, Brenna Morrison employs a bevy of sleight of hand maneuvers. Take, for instance, her directions for the popular-must-have-in-the-bakery-case Cardamom Buns: “Hold strips of dough with both hands using pincer fingers, twist t…

An egg yolk is among the most ubiquitous ingredients out there, but after a week in smoked curing salt, that modest yolk becomes a deeply complex flavor bomb. When you get that yolk shaved over a dish, do you still see it as just an egg yolk?

When Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde met the man who would later become her husband, “he introduced himself as a baker and a lover,” she recalls, laughing. Neither knew it at the time, but that phrase would reemerge years later in the form of their company name, Baker & Lover Inc., when in 2017 …

2020-2021 have been defining years for chefs in the Twin Cities and elsewhere. Nothing has been easy nor predictable and the normal long hours either increased or went away completely. Menus have had to be entirely rewritten and concepts redefined. And never has the need for creativity been higher.

Epicenters of life and culture in our Twin Cities are more precious than ever. The anticipation of waiting in line outside a beautiful neighborhood patisserie. Overheard conversations of what to order. Spring light illuminating a bakery case filled with tarts, croissants, galettes and pastry…

Ryan Cook wasn’t sure at the time what he was running toward, he just knew he was young and he wanted to get out of the place he was born and raised, Fargo, North Dakota. He came to the Twin Cities not to study cooking, but rather music, even though he never viewed music as a career. An AA d…

Conveniently located just down the block from my apartment building in Minneapolis, Gorkha Palace has served Nepali, Indian and Tibetan cuisine for the past decade. Striking oil paintings from Nepal depicting mountains and figures crossing bridges over cliffs decorate the orange and red wall…

“Koreans love their processed meats,” quips John Gleason as he ladles kimchi jjigae from a large pot, its simmering broth a rich fire-red courtesy of the gochugaru and gochujang chili paste combo. Cubes of Spam, that canned meat with a salted pork flavor, are a main ingredient, and Gleason d…

Inside the soon-to-be Petite León, Jorge Guzman was thinking through the menu and all the trials, tribulations and inspirations that brought him to the little space at the corner of 38th and Nicollet Avenue. There's a lot to think about: his unique Yucatán heritage, his French training, his …

Who knew you could start a business with your camping gear’s propane burner, a really good crepe recipe and a dream.

Gerard Klass, co-founder of Soul Bowl, is arguably sitting on more big ideas than any other chef in town, and this pan-cession won’t get in his way even if the worst comes to pass. Entertaining an apocalyptic scenario for his budding, multi-concept restaurant group, Klass said he and his wif…

Mary Richter was looking for ideas for the fall/winter menu at Sidebar, the new restaurant at Surdyk’s Liquor & Cheese Shop, when a friend sent her a message on Facebook saying how much they missed her lobster pasta. “It was something I had (on the menu) in my restaurant in D.C.,” she sa…

It was a sad day when Fig + Farro closed its doors in Seven Points (formerly Calhoun Square) in Minneapolis’ Uptown, not only for the owner, Michelle Courtright, and her staff, but for the ideal of combining good food with doing good for the environment.

Before Amalia Moreno-Damgaard turned seven, she was proficient at repackaging bulk bags of salt and sugar into individual packages and sealing them with wax from a candle, to be sold in her maternal grandmother’s variety store in Guatemala.

“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.