Photo by Kevin Kramer
A casual, neighborhood restaurant with fine dining technique and service that you’d expect in a fancy North Loop spot has just been awarded Best New Restaurant from the James Beard Foundation. And a Minnesota chef with a passion for sourcing ingredients from farmers and ranchers in our area has been honored as the Best Chef in our region.
Bûcheron joins Owamni as the second Minneapolis restaurant over the past four years to win Best New Restaurant in the country. Chef Adam Ritter and Jeanie Janas Ritter are partners in life and in hospitality and they couldn’t be more deserving. (Read my first review from March 2024 here.)
At the June 16 award ceremony in Chicago, Janas Ritter said: “We are so deeply honored. We happened around our restaurant space when we were on a walk with our baby George… we are so unbelievably proud of what it has become.” Bûcheron opened in January of 2024—we celebrated my wife’s birthday there a couple weeks ago and trust me, they started strong and have grown and refined what they’ve done over the past year and a half. French inspired, Janas Ritter was the service brains behind Gavin Kaysen’s Bellecour in Wayzata, and Ritter has been the culinary talent at Spoon & Stable.
Bûcheron is “the neighborhood restaurant we always wanted in our neighborhood,” Janas Ritter said from the stage.
Courtesy of Steve Dolinsky
Sean Sherman and Andrew Zimmern presented the Best Chef: Midwest award to Chef Karyn Tomlinson, who is the heart and soul behind a very unique restaurant. Myriel, at times, gets more love nationally than it does in our own community. I’ve tried to spread the word! It’s a remarkable restaurant—the chef’s tasting menu is like a love letter to the producers who created the food, but Tomlinson manages to coax more flavor out of ingredients than you’d ever imagine. She brings precision of technique and infuses it with so much heart that it explodes with flavor.
“My heart is so full of gratitude,” said Tomlinson in front of the crowd, which included her parents, Tim and Anita Tomlinson. She was wearing her grandmother’s dress from 1941, when she was crowned the Dassel Corn Queen—”one of many Midwestern agricultural celebrations,” Tomlinson said in her acceptance speech. “I’m honored to work alongside an incredible team,” four of whom were with her. “The Midwest is beautiful, the Midwest is diverse, the Midwest is tenacious and strong, and we grow really great food, so let’s hear it for the Midwest.”
Tomlinson was a guest on my DeRusha Eats podcast earlier this year:
Chef Christina Nguyen from Hai Hai and Hola Arepa won the same award last year. Often there is concern that the number of Twin Cities chefs will cancel out each other’s votes, but Tomlinson topped Diane Moua of Diane’s Place and Shigeyuki Furukawa of Kado no Mise, as well as Loryn Nalic of the Balkan Treat Box near St. Louis and David Utterback of Ota and Yoshitomo in Omaha.
Minneapolis natural wine bar Bar Brava was nominated in the Outstanding Wine Program category, another national category, but Charleston in Baltimore got the nod.
Good luck getting reservations! Myriel has some 8:30 p.m. or 9 p.m. a la carte reservations on their Tock site, and Bûcheron has some patio reservations or early evenings, also available on Tock. Get on it! Support these winners!
You can see the full list of award winners via the James Beard Foundation website.
