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Jan 5, 2025 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
This year’s winners – Bûcheron, Diane’s Place and Vinai – are distinctly Minnesotan.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
Chef Jason Sawicki melds culture, comfort and fire to put his own stamp on northeast Minneapolis dining. November 29, 2024 at 1:00PMChef-owner Jason Sawicki works the hearth at his Minneapolis restaurant, Black Duck Spirits & Hearth. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune)Like at any easygoing restaurant, the menu of the low-slung, white tavern building in Northeast offers oysters, smash burgers, waffle fries and a Caesar.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
When I arrived in the Twin Cities three years ago, I gave myself a year. Though I spent my formative childhood years in Singapore, my family hailed from Hong Kong. And after leaving my “home” country to attend college, I’ve spent no more than a few years in each city: Boston, London, the Bay Area and New York, where I was for five. “Where are you from?” is a question that often stumped me.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
The Minneapolis restaurant is a window to the chef’s past as it charts the cuisine’s future. October 24, 2024 at 12:00PMChef Yia Vang poses for a portrait in his new restaurant Vinai in Minneapolis. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)The wood-burning grill that takes center stage of an open kitchen is a gleaming, magnificent beast flanked by two bumper car-sized wheels — a hangar for various meats, engulfed in flames that swell like bonfires.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
I rarely answer such pointed and specific questions, but it is my duty to re-establish Krewe, in St. Joseph, as my go-to for peerless renditions of New Orleans classics. I think fondly about the jambalaya, gumbo and Key lime pie. Comparing the Twin Cities dining scene with New York City’s dining scene, are we in the infant or teenager stage? What are we missing? Rather than assess maturity, I’d instead assess breadth.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
There's no shortage of terrific tacos in and around the Twin Cities. Over the past few weeks, I scoured the metro area — as far as Lake Elmo — to try dozens of taquerias recommended by friends, trusted confidants and readers. But there were rules: In the spirit of fairness, anywhere with table service was eliminated from this list. And yet these taquerias stand tall not just among any that serve tacos in the Twin Cities, but nationwide, too. Here are my top 10.
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Sep 5, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
Tea Leaf Salad and Mohinga Soup from Mandalay Kitchen in St. Paul. (Jon Cheng/The Minnesota Star Tribune)Mandalay KitchenMandalay Kitchen made headlines for its chapli-patty Juicy Lucy ($14.95), and while a fantastic burger, it shouldn’t be emblematic of food that chef/owner Chris Tunbaw cooks at this newish Frogtown eatery. His tea leaf salad (Lahpet Thoke, $13.95) is, though.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
This, happily, encourages more grazing, more frequent dining at Gia, where the menu changes each week in accordance with the seasons. In early July, I had bright, ruby-colored grape tomatoes on bruschetta; the next week, tomatoes were roasted instead, and featured in a panzanella salad. Juices from the grilled scallop and halibut seeped into the salad, and the Salmoriglio sauce — oregano, lemon, olive oil — tied it all together very appealingly.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
This, happily, encourages more grazing, more frequent dining at Gia, where the menu changes each week in accordance with the seasons. In early July, I had bright, ruby-colored grape tomatoes on bruschetta; the next week, tomatoes were roasted instead, and featured in a panzanella salad. Juices from the grilled scallop and halibut seeped into the salad, and the Salmoriglio sauce — oregano, lemon, olive oil — tied it all together very appealingly.
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Jul 11, 2024 | 
startribune.com | Jon Cheng
Affixed to the restaurant's name, Chilango, is the descriptor Mex-Tex — a linguistic sleight of hand that may at first sound like a grift. Tellingly, will diners still think of stale taco shells, lukewarm lettuce and fluorescently colored cheese? There is no such scheme at Chilango, nor any promise that the food served here is more sainted than that served north of the (southern) border.
