Early Reviews of Week-Old Burch and Red Cow

Isaac Becker's newest restaurant, Burch Steak, has been open for a week now, and City Pages' Joy Summers says the kitchen is already killing it. Summers sampled some of the dumplings—the "delightful" pretzel dumpling was her favorite—and sides (sunchoke gratinnatta was "creamy, crunchy, and topped with wonderfully butter-drenched crumbs"), but she saves her greatest praise for the steak:

However, the name of the game is steak, and oh my, what they do with a steak. A small rib eye arrived absolutely perfectly seasoned. A simple salt-and-peppered crusty exterior belies the tender meat inside. Like opening a beautifully wrapped present, the knife reveals an interior as rosy as a virgin's blush. A medium-rare order resulted in a thin ribbon of purple drawn through the very center of the meat. That is how you do steak.

In South Minneapolis, the Heavy Table's Tricia Cornell heads to the also recently-opened burger-and-beer joint Red Cow. Housed in a strip mall former Blockbuster building, of all locations, Red Cow has 15 burgers on the menu—all north of $10 each, Cornell points out—and Cornell tried at least five of them, including an elk burger, salmon burger, chickpea burger, BBQ burger, and a breakfast burger (with bacon, egg, cheese...and peanut butter). But the burger fillings are outshone by all the extras—the sweet potato fries, the beer list, and, especially, the bun:

The bun, we are unafraid to say, is perfect. Perfect is a strong word, you say, not one that should be thrown around casually in reviews or in life in generally. So true. So we'll, say it again: perfect. This is the ultimate burger bun. It's a high, crusty, brown dome, substantial but airy, enriched with milk and butter, soft enough to sop up any burger juices but sturdy enough that you can actually pick up your burger. It is exactly the right size. It is flavorful in its own right without overshadowing the burger. It is perfect.

· Burch in Lowry Hill: A First Look [City Pages]
· Red Cow at 50th and France in Minneapolis [Heavy Table]
· All Coverage of Burch Steak [Eater MPLS]