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Best Restaurants

From taquerias to fine-dining hot spots, these 29 restaurants offer the most bang for your dining dollar in the Twin Cities

Photo by Terry Brennan

(page 1 of 3)

I knew I had gotten in too deep when I stood eyeing the tray of lychees in the buffet at New King’s, located in Brooklyn Center, and started wondering: What would Ferran Adrià, the Spanish father of molecular gastronomy, do if he were locked in with this spread, with its four sections of raw stuff and cooked stuff, hot stuff and cold stuff, doughnut-like stuff and king-crab stuff? Would he make little ice-cream sandwiches with cucumbers on the outside and lychees in the center? Would he lug some doughnut holes over to the Mongolian barbecue and have them stir-fried with pork? Would he take king crab and marry it to cantaloupe chunks?

Surely this was how new cuisines were birthed! Then again, maybe not: What was the red goo on the bananas?

Then there was the time when I was trying to convince the art director of this magazine of the beauty of what I called the “Five Dollar Box of Infinite Falafel”—a square tray from the buffet at Holy Land in Minneapolis, crammed with whatever you can shove in there during the last few minutes before they shut it down.

“That doesn’t exactly sound...pretty,” he said.

“It’s amazing!” I insisted. “Picture it: You can just keep cramming food in there till you can’t cram anymore. It gets so heavy!”

In the end, no photos were commissioned.

In my defense, I was on fire with my quest to find the biggest bang for the buck in Twin Cities dining. Now, when I say bang for the buck, I don’t mean just where to eat cheaply, because fast food and junk food are going to win that battle every time. No, what I mean is: Where can you get the most for your money: the most pleasure, the most skill, the most memorable meals, the most delight?

What I found surprised me. The Twin Cities is full of bargains. There are bargain happy hours and bargain buffets where you can stuff yourself silly, of course, but there are even bargain steaks and lobsters—as long as you know where to look. In fact, my digging revealed that there are even ways for people to eat at the tippy-top of the Twin Cities dining scene and still get more bang for their buck: For instance, did you know that if you call up Porter & Frye and request a tasting menu, chef Steven Brown will consult with you personally to devise a menu directed to your exact taste? I had no idea.

I do, however, have more than two-dozen ideas on how to eat smarter, how to get more bang for my buck, and how to live more lushly when eating out in the Twin Cities. And now you do, too.
 

Stella’s Fish Café

Best for: budget-conscious seafood lovers
The rapper 50 Cent will forever be immortalized for penning the line: “I love you like a fat kid loves cake.” Fifty cents, the parking-meter worthy amount of money, will forever be immortalized in the Twin Cities for buying you really good oysters during the Friday “Oyster Orgy” at Stella’s Fish Café in Uptown. Yes, I’m talking about Stella’s, that restaurant under the best rooftop patio in town. Show up at Stella’s between 3 and 6 p.m. on Fridays, and you can get oysters—fresh, real, really good oysters—for 50 cents each. Fifty cents! (A lot of places charge $3.50 or $4 a bivalve.) Not only that, but they arrive on a bed of ice in a pretty, shallow tin bucket along with all the grace notes of a real oyster bar: lemon wedges, a little house cocktail sauce, and so on. The last time I dropped by Stella’s, the oyster of the day was from Totten Inlet in Puget Sound, in Washington state; they had the sweet, muddy, ocean-and-apple-butter taste of classic West Coast oysters.

There’s also $3.50 a pound shrimp. I’m a shrimp-snob; I usually find inexpensive shrimp to be too small, and I get the screaming wim-wams if they’re not properly de-veined or if they’re sodden from sitting around in melting ice. But Stella’s peel-and-eat shrimp are good sized, fat, pink, sweet, and tasty. Also: Tap beer, including Stella Artois, house wine, and drinks are all two for one during Stella’s happy hours.

They also offer a number of happy-hour appetizers, like a pair of rare seared ahi tuna–steak sliders with fries for less than six bucks. The tuna has a nice char-grilled flavor to it, and the fries are decent. If you’re doing the math, all of this means you can eat yourself silly on premium seafood for about 12 bucks.

My visit to Stella’s nearly completely changed my view of the place, which was that it was a place where people too young to know any better do shots and meet their first husband. Now I realize why full-on adults from the neighborhood crowd the tables starting at 3 o’clock. If you want a table, you need to get there before 4 p.m. 1400 W. Lake St., Minneapolis, 612-824-8862

Barrio Tequila Bar

Best for: drinking and dining
The main problem with award-magnet Tim McKee’s cooking is that I want it more often than I can afford. So when Barrio Tequila Bar debuted with 13 dishes priced at $7.50, and seven priced at $4 or under, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. This couldn’t be true, could it? But it is true. For now, please know that the $4 spiced shrimp taco, with grilled tomato-mint salsa, is as light and lively as clicking castanets, and that the fried mahi-mahi taco with its citrus-cucumber pico de gallo is the best fish taco I’ve ever had in Minnesota—and I’ve had dozens. To find out more, check out my full review on page 99. 925 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, 612-333-9953
 

Salut Bar Americain

Best for: Sunday dinner with the family
Here’s a bit of useful information: Salut, the French restaurant that features glimmering fresh seafood, a fat wine list, and some of the best burgers in town, is owned by Parasole Restaurant Holdings, the local company that also owns several notable Twin Cities restaurants, including Figlio, Pittsburgh Blue, Manny’s, and Chino Latino. Why should you care? Because one secret of local budget dining is to know that most Parasole restaurants (though not Manny’s) offer specials on Sundays for under $10. And Salut has one of the best of the bunch: a three-course prix-fixe lunch for $9.95, or a three-course prix-fixe dinner for $15.95. Seriously! A Sunday dinner at a nice restaurant for under $20. Bring the whole soccer team, why don’t you? 5034 France Ave. S., Edina, 952-929-3764; 917 Grand Ave., St. Paul, 651-917-2345; information about Sunday deals at other Parasole restaurants is available at parasole.com
 

Vincent

Best for: Power lunches for the parsimonious
One of the great joys of my life is bringing people to Vincent for lunch. The room is pale and elegant, and somehow seems eternal. It also seems like it should be in Manhattan. Why is that? Is it the bread in the little flowerpots, the sweet butter, or the light glinting off the skyscrapers outside the vast windows? When you learn you can get a two-course lunch for $12.50, you know it’s not New York. A typical offering might be orecchiette pasta with roast chicken, corn, sautéed mushrooms, and a creamy truffle-Parmesan sauce followed by a warm plum and frangipane tart. As my friends swoon over the food, I tell them that the few times I’ve talked to Eric Ripert, the world-famous chef of New York’s Le Bernardin, he has told me that his old friend Vincent Francoual, Vincent’s chef and owner, is the more talented of the two. “Why don’t I ever come here?” my friends always ask. I just try not to look smug, happy in my knowledge that one of the city’s great treasures is hiding in plain sight. 1100 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, 612-630-1189

Brasa Rotisserie

Best for: Locavores
When chef Alex Roberts opened Brasa, the place was quickly heralded as the greatest cheap restaurant in the Twin Cities since Punch Neapolitan Pizza. But how has it held up in the year-plus it’s been open? A recent visit found that, on one hand, not much has changed: The place is still all about locally sourced meats and fine-dining quality side dishes. The grits are still staggeringly creamy, the slow-roasted pork still spoon-tender. Yet, on the other hand, lots of little things have been tweaked: The skin on the rotisserie chicken is spicier and crisper than it used to be, though the meat is still sweet and tender. The red velvet cake is subtler, moister, and better, and the service is now practiced and easy. Today, Brasa seems like more of a bargain than it’s ever been: How nice that they don’t have appetizers, and how nice that the vast combo plates—two meats and two sides for $14.50—will leave even folks training for marathons comfortably full. 600 E. Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, 612-379-3030