There’s no party like a Travail party. This trail-blazing chef collective specializes in creating an atmosphere of delight and wonder. Travail made its name subverting the traditional restaurant model, eliminating servers, and bringing chefs table-side to dish out an intriguing tasting menu (including cocktails bubbling over with liquid nitrogen). The latest iteration of the restaurant is an expansive three-level building in Robbinsdale. Buy a ticket for the tasting menu (think delicata squash tempura, nitro passion fruit fluff, and a “caviar” of Thai basil panna cotta and smoked scallops) or sip a curated cocktail flight at the basement bar.

James Beard–nominated chef Christina Nguyen’s Southeast Asian restaurant Hai Hai is one of Northeast Minneapolis’s most compelling restaurants for upscale dining. In 2017, Nguyen and co-owner Birk Grudem expertly transformed a divey neighborhood strip club into a lush patio space and interior: Hai Hai’s deep teal walls and canopy of ferns and paper lanterns make the space hum with tropical charm, even in the dead of winter. The cocktails are thoughtful and creative — think lychee slushies and espresso martinis with Vietnamese coffee and coconut — and the menu has standouts like Thai banana blossom salad, beef larb lettuce wraps, and a tender Balinese chicken thigh with macerated kale and bean sprout salad.

El Taco Riendo might just serve the best chicken tinga in the Twin Cities. This marinade doesn’t overload on heat — it balances the tomatoes’ tang with the chipotle peppers’ smoke, rounding it all out on a slightly sweet note. Order it on tacos or up the ante with a chicken tinga chimichanga, which pairs exceptionally well with an ice-cold horchata. El Taco Riendo is a cornerstone of Northeast’s Central Avenue dining corridor — owner Miguel Gomez rebuilt the restaurant after it was severely damaged in a fire in 2020.

Back in 2012, chef Sammy McDowell pooled his personal savings and opened Sammy’s Avenue Eatery, a sunny, casual sandwich spot in North Minneapolis. Ten years later, the restaurant is a cornerstone of Broadway Avenue, a place where people come as much for the juicy sandwiches as for the sense of community. Catch the teacher’s union gathering there for turkey melts and tuna clubs, or come on a day when McDowell is collaborating with local chefs on a soul food menu (think smothered chicken and rice or cheeseburger meatloaf). Sammy’s was even featured in Season 6 of Hulu’s Small Business Revolution. A second Northside location is forthcoming.

James Beard Award-winning chef Isaac Becker’s sultry Italian restaurant is a North Loop classic. Start with the soft eggs and lobster bruschetta, infused with intoxicating truffle oil. Then it’s onto the pasta: Mafalda bolognese, crab ravioli, or red wine spaghetti sprinkled with pine nuts. Bar La Grassa’s open-floor dining room is elegant and a little crowded, which gives dining there the convivial feel of a French brasserie.

Chef Yia Vang first started Union Hmong Kitchen as a roving pop-up around the Twin Cities. When he began cooking and serving foods from Hmong culture made with the fine dining skills he had gained working in area kitchens, Hmong food wasn’t a familiar cuisine in the Twin Cities restaurant world. Years later, his pop-up Union Hmong Kitchen is now a permanent restaurant in the North Loop’s Graze food hall, and Vang is a 2022 James Beard finalist for best chef Midwest. The menu standouts at UHK are the Zoo Siab meals — which means “happy meals” in the Hmong language — made with proteins like chile-glazed pork shoulder and Hmong sausage, all served with purple sticky rice, pickled veggies, and sides like chilled khao sen noodles. Saturdays only, try the Hilltribe fried chicken sandwich, tossed in chile oil, and for Sunday brunch, don’t miss the hangover noodles made with minced beef and peanut sauce. Vang’s much-anticipated restaurant, Vinai, is on the horizon in 2022, and his noodle pop-up Slurp is now open in Uptown.

Chef Gerard Klass and Brittney Alise Klass started Soul Bowl as a pop-up in 2018 with a mission to celebrate the culture and community of North Minneapolis: For two days, they served bowls of black-eyed peas, cornbread dressing, and barbecue-braised beef out of New Rules on Lowry Avenue, and ran a line around the block. The Klasses have since expanded Soul Bowl to two permanent locations at Graze Provisions and Libations in Minneapolis’s North Loop, and on Chicago Avenue in Richfield (plus a stand at Target Field). The restaurant is beloved for its customizable soul food bowls: Diners can start with bases like mac and cheese (eminently creamy and well-seasoned) or yellow rice, add veggies (think sweet plantains, smoked mushrooms, and candied yams), and finish with meats like barbecue chicken and Cajun salmon.

Chef Gavin Kaysen worked as an executive chef for Daniel Boulud before leaving New York for Minneapolis, his hometown, in 2014. His list of restaurants — three Bellecour Bakery locations, Demi’s intimate tasting menu experience, opulent Mara at the Four Seasons Hotel — is long, but there’s something particularly essential and enduring about Spoon and Stable. This North Loop restaurant, which dates to 1906, was once a horse stable. The menu changes often, keeping pace with Midwest seasonality, but still manages to feel timeless. Expect dishes like cappelletti with butternut squash, striped bass with collard greens, and a delicate strawberry and sorrel mille-feuille.

First opened in 1999, Restaurant Alma has built a reputation as one of Minneapolis’s finest restaurants. In 2016, chef Alex Roberts and Margo Roberts expanded Alma into a boutique hotel, all-day cafe, and fine dining restaurant, all tucked into an elegant brick building on University Avenue. The prix fixe menu (which runs at $95) includes delicate starters like marinated fig bruschetta, and entrees like seared Maine scallops or roasted New York strip with coconut-braised chard. Restaurant Alma has an extensive wine list and offers a pairing menu — a series of 3-ounce glasses plus dessert wine — for an additional cost. The restaurant is also known as one of the most accommodating spots for dietary restrictions: A complete vegetarian prix fixe menu is available, and gluten-free, dairy-free, pescatarian, and vegan adaptations are possible upon request.

Owamni — which won the intensely competitive James Beard Award for best new restaurant in 2022 — is the most exciting restaurant to have opened in the Twin Cities in recent years. Here, chef Sean Sherman and co-owner Dana Thompson have brought Indigenous cooking to the forefront of the national restaurant scene. The decolonized menu is built on foods that are indigenous to North America — meaning no flour, dairy, beef, pork, or refined sugar is used in the kitchen. In their place are bison tartare with duck egg aioli, maple-baked tepary beans with cedar, and wild rice sorbet. Owamni started as a kickstarter campaign, breaking a site record in 2016 by bringing in $150,000 in a month. Today, it’s a modern, full-service, Indigenous restaurant, stationed in a white stone building on the banks of the Mississippi River, not far from St. Anthony Falls — or, in the Dakota language, Owámniyomni, a sacred site of peace and well-being.

A true izakaya in the heart of Minneapolis’s East Town neighborhood, this is an ideal stop before a Guthrie show or after a long meander down by the Mill City Ruins. The dishes are perfect for soaking up a night of drinking: Think crispy fried karaage or hearty bowls of udon. Thanks to chef and co-owner John Ng’s ramen obsession, the weekly specials are the North Star of the Cities’ ramen scene. Try the tori tantanmen, made with ginger chicken paitan, Sichuan spice ground chicken, and kikurage. Snacks like pork katsu and Japanese potato salad are also notable. Order early in the weekend before they sell out.

Pimento is a pillar of Jamaican cuisine in the Twin Cities, and a popular resident of Nicollet Avenue’s Eat Street. Chef Tomme Beevas and his neighbor Yoni Reinharz started Pimento as a pop-up in 2012, carting Beevas’s backyard grill around the city; in 2013, they won Food Network’s Food Court Wars. During the social uprisings of 2020, Pimento operated a robust mutual aid network out of its restaurant space. Today, Beevas continues to serve as a community leader with Pimento Relief Services, a nonprofit he runs that supports healing and long-term rebuilding in Black communities. The menu features entrees like Kingston-style jerk chicken, slow-roasted jerk pork, curry veggies, and braised oxtail, all served on a bed of seasoned rice and beans with slaw and plantains, dressed with a selection of house-made sauces. Make sure to try the sweet, pillowy coco bread, too. The rum bar often hosts live music and other events on the weekends.

A casual spot on Nicollet Avenue’s Eat Street, Lu’s serves generous banh mi that are expertly balanced in their crusty/chewy and pickled/roasted ratios. The baguettes crackle beautifully around the tender grilled pork, and the zippy vegetables balance the savory meats. The classic grilled pork banh mi is one of the best in the city, but options like the Special Ham, made with Vietnamese meatloaf and pork belly, or the pork meatballs (marinated Shanghai-style) are also great bets. Lu’s operates three Minneapolis locations and a food truck, but its cafeteria-style space on Nicollet is the original spot.

James Beard Award-winning chef Ann Kim’s Sooki & Mimi is perhaps the most exciting restaurant to open in Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood in recent years. A sibling to other Eater favorites like Pizzeria Lola and Young Joni, Sooki & Mimi recently transitioned from a prix fixe to an a la carte menu. Look for dishes like mushroom birria tacos and a butcher’s cut with morita au poivre. The cocktail menu, formulated by veteran bar lead Adam Gorski, is equally notable, including items like tepache fermented on-site. Kim also has a thing for secret bars, so look for the light in the alleyway on the building’s west side and slip into the basement speakeasy, where the vinyls are always on rotation.

Las Cuatro Milpas is said to be the first restaurant to introduce birria to the Twin Cities restaurant scene, when chef Hector Hernandez, originally of Mexico’s Zacatecas state, moved to Minneapolis. Twenty-some years later, birria tacos and quesabirria are among the nation’s hottest culinary trends — and Hernandez is still selling Minneapolis’s finest birria dishes under an emerald-green awning on East Lake Street. Stop in for lamb, goat, and beef birria tacos, cups of hot, brothy birria stew, or pizzabirria, loaded with cheese and served in an aluminum tin. Las Cuatro Milpas is a cornerstone restaurant on East Lake Street’s bustling stretch of Mexican restaurants and groceries.

Chef Matthew Kazama left his gig as ramen chef at Fuji Ya, one of the Twin Cities’ first Japanese restaurants, to open Ramen Kazama in 2015. A drummer and singer in the Minneapolis punk rock group Birthday Suits, Kazama brings a bit of punk flair to his work as a ramen chef, infusing his cooking with the same passion that drives him as a musician. The ramen menu plays to classics like rich tonkotsu and shoyu ramen, though the karamiso ramen, made with a spicy pork miso broth, is a standout. The Ramen Kazama space is casual but cozy — there are few better spots to enjoy a steaming bowl of ramen on a snowy winter evening.

It’s been a rollercoaster ride in Minneapolis’s food world for chef Jorge Guzmán, the former head chef of Surly’s Brewer’s Table, which debuted an ambitious beer-pairing menu, gained national renown, and abruptly shut down. Guzmán then rolled out a charcoal-grilled chicken pop-up, Pollo Pollo al Carbon, and somehow managed to open Petite León in the middle of the pandemic. A year later, the restaurant earned him a James Beard nomination for best chef Midwest. Guzmán draws on his Yucatán peninsula roots with this menu, like the pollo al carbon, for example, or the birria-braised lamb. Bar lead Travis Serbus’s cocktail menu is notable as well. Look for citrus-forward pours like the Moon Dog, made with mezcal, tamarind, and lime.

This sunny corner at 38th Street and Grand Avenue has been a neighborhood gathering space for decades. In the 1920s, the building that currently houses Victor’s 1959 Cafe was a Shell gas station, then a Dairy Queen, then a bustling all-American breakfast restaurant. Owner Niki Stavrou bought the building in 1959 and transformed it into the Victor’s of today: a stout, turquoise-blue establishment with hand-painted decals and, in the summer months, an assortment of umbrellas on the tropical-themed patio. Inside, the walls and booths are adorned with years’ worth of graffiti and art. Stop in for breakfast and order the ropa vieja or the bistec criollo, served with yuca frita — or grab a cafe con leche from the pick up window.

Chef Ann Ahmed’s latest restaurant is an enchanting homage to Laotian and Southeast Asian cooking, and one of Eater’s best new restaurants of 2022. After opening Lemongrass in Brooklyn Park and Lat14 in Golden Valley, Ahmed’s debut of Khâluna on Lyndale Avenue is perhaps her most ambitious yet — and another step down the path she’s paving for Southeast Asian food in the Twin Cities. Try the mieng paa — a small plate made with puffed rice, banana blossoms, and peanuts — the duck laab, or the whole fried red snapper with mango tamarind slaw. Ahmed’s rainbow rice, when sprinkled with lime, turns from delicate blue to lavender. The bar menu offers cocktails with flavors of passionfruit, persimmon, and makrut lime.

Co-owners Nick Rancone and chef Thomas Boemer helped kickstart a fried chicken renaissance in the Twin Cities when they opened Revival in 2015. Since then, they’ve expanded to St. Paul and St. Louis Park, and combined Revival Smoked Meats, their Carolina-style barbecue operation, with their fried chicken menu on Nicollet Avenue. The Southern-style offerings range from Tennessee hot half-bird, its fatty skin expertly crisped, to classic brisket and pork shoulder. Save room for a slice of not-too-sweet banana cream pie.

Chef Sheila Brathwaite and her husband Frederick Brathwaite opened Mama Sheila’s on the corner of Bloomington Avenue and 38th Street in south Minneapolis in 2018. In the years since, the restaurant has established itself as one of the Cities’ premier destinations for exceptional Southern cooking — a tricky cuisine to track down in this chilly northern landscape. The soul food buffet is stocked with Southern classics like catfish, smothered chicken, salmon croquettes, candied yams, and black-eyed peas. (Leave room for banana pudding and peach cobbler.) Mama Sheila’s always has soul music playing, and the restaurant’s gilded interior, hung with portraits of Prince and other Black musicians, is a go-to gathering space for events, parties, and community meetings.

Located on a bustling corner in Minneapolis’s Powderhorn neighborhood, Reverie Cafe and Bar is one of the Twin Cities’ most-loved vegan restaurants. The entire menu is plant-based, built around familiar dishes with fine dining flourishes. Mojo smoked Brussels sprouts with sweet horseradish crema make for a great starter. As far as entrees go, the crispy cauliflower tacos and kimchi BLT (made with tempura tempeh bacon) are highlights. Reverie’s dark chocolate beignets are almost the size of baseballs — they come hot, dusted in sugar, and suffering nothing from the lack of butter. The backyard patio is a favorite spot for dining at all times of the year.

Doug Flicker was a longtime fine dining chef who influenced a generation of Minneapolis chefs, but he walked away from the world of white linen to open a neighborhood bar alongside his wife, Amy Greeley. The two have created a watering hole with all the best aspects of a corner bar: a jukebox, pull-tabs, and a menu loaded with fantastic things from the fryer and the grill. Stop by for the famous pickle-brined chicken, its tangy, juicy meat wrapped in a crusty shell.

Cecil’s is the Twin Cities’ oldest Jewish deli. Cecil and Faye Glickman opened their delicatessen on St. Paul’s Cleveland Avenue in 1949. More than 70 years later, Cecil’s is still serving hearty matzo ball soup, potato latkes with applesauce and sour cream, and a whole array of popular hot sandwiches: Try the Sasha, made with hot brisket pastrami and the “bird sauce” the deli has been making in-house for 40 years. Cecil’s is also stocked with grocery items, including handy Passover items like gefilte fish and matzo.

Karyn Tomlinson’s much-anticipated Myriel — a name that nods to Les Miserable — opened in summer 2021 in Highland Park. Myriel’s menu is truly unique in the Twin Cities’ fine dining landscape: Tomlinson’s touch is at once rustic and refined, and totally uninterested in ostentation. The a la carte menu isn’t available online because it changes often, but expect dishes like beef, pork, and lamb sausage (sourced from local farms) with white bean ragout and fermented pepper with pink celery leaves. Tomlinson also makes an infamous crust — if apple pie appears on the menu, order it, and pair dessert with a Scandinavian egg coffee. Myriel’s interior, all European silhouettes and shades of cream and sand, is stunning.

Tucked into a petite stone building on University Avenue in St. Paul, Cheng Heng is a mainstay of the Frogtown neighborhood’s food corridor. Cambodian restaurants are relatively few and far between in the Cities’ robust Southeast Asian restaurant scene, and Cheng Heng, which has won a slate of awards from local newspapers and magazines, takes up the mantle well. Try the kor koo noodle soup, brewed a fiery red in Cheng Heng’s kitchen, or the machu angkor, made with winter squash, pineapple, and lotus stems. Save room for the thuck kaw chuew: Beans nestled under sweetened condensed milk and crushed ice.

Chef Justin Sutherland — an Iron Chef America winner known for his philanthropic ventures — opened the Handsome Hog in St. Paul’s Lowertown in 2016, and eventually relocated to Cathedral Hill amid the pandemic. Sutherland serves Southern cooking that’s hard to find elsewhere in the Twin Cities, and has an expert hand at the smoker. The dry-rub spare ribs or smoked beef brisket, both served with Texas toast, are great bets. For brunch, stop in for chicken and waffles, or rock shrimp with grits. Even a bloody mary takes a Southern twist with an infusion of bourbon.

Meritage, tucked into an elegant, glass-paned storefront in downtown St. Paul, is one of the Cities’ most romantic dining destinations. More than anywhere else, it successfully mimics a Parisian dining ambiance. Before your meal, sample oysters at the crescent bar with a Parisian cocktail: an absinthe-soaked sugar cube dropped into a glass of Champagne. Chef Russell Klein’s menu features a seasonal preparation of Au Bon Canard foie gras and a decadent crab Louie. The Magret duck breast a l’orange is worth the price tag.