As a critic and a cheerleader for the Minnesota food scene, I’ve argued over the past decade that we have restaurants and chefs that would compete in the largest, most acclaimed cities around the country. But come on. Do we? Are we ready for the biggest critique in food?
The ultimate judge of fine dining around the world is the Michelin Guide – earning one Michelin star is seen as a true triumph, a recognition of culinary excellence and incredible service. Two Michelin stars means it might be worth making a detour on your trip to go here. Three Michelin stars is exceptional, worthy of a trip just to visit the restaurant.
Gavin Kaysen from Spoon & Stable has publicly urged the Michelin Guide judges to come to Minnesota. For context, the first Michelin North American Guide was published for New York (Kaysen used to cook at Michelin restaurants in New York City) in 2005 for New York. Now there are guides for the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Miami/Orlando, and tourism boards have paid for Michelin to come to other parts of California including Los Angeles and most recently to Colorado.
The New York Times reported that four Colorado tourism boards agreed to each pay between $70,000-$100,000 annually for three years, I don’t see our tourism people paying $350,000 to get Michelin here. We wouldn’t pay to get “Top Chef” to film here. Let’s be serious.
But would we even compete? Colorado got five restaurants, each earning one star. Our metro area is slightly bigger than Colorado (3 million for metro Denver, 3.7 million here). Do we have one-star restaurants?
I visited one-star St. Lawrence in Vancouver with my wife last week. We’ve been to three-star restaurants and a handful of one-stars in the past. St. Lawrence was fabulous. The room felt like a neighborhood bar, the service was informative, warm, friendly, perfectly paced, and the food was a master-class in using precise technique in service of beautiful flavor. I got to pick a starter, a main, and a dessert, and the restaurant filled in those choices with other courses, it reminded me of the set-up at Restaurant Alma or The Bungalow Club right now. By the way, the tasting menu was 125 Canadian dollars, which is about $91 USD right now.
We started with Boursin cheese Gougères, then a foie gras flan made from duck liver custard and topped with maple aspic. It was amazing. An heirloom tomato tart, with thin shavings of tomato artfully arranged in a circular pattern inside a pastry crust, was stunning. A torch-seared smoked pink trout with sorrel vichyssoise and leeks followed.
The craziest dish was a sweet corn surprise-a buttery, salty, airy nearly foamy version of corn. It tasted like corn on the cob without the kernels stuck in my mouth.
We added a pâté en croûte, with mains that were a torch cooked halibut and grilled lamb. OK, so you get the idea. St. Lawrence is one of nine one-star restaurants in a city of 660,000 people (metro 2.5 million people), similar size as us but exponentially more business travel and wealth. Vancouver is the gateway to Asia so there is quite a bit of big money investment there.
So enough pre-amble. Here are my suggestions of what would earn Michelin accolades:
Two-star restaurant:
Demi. Incredible food, checks all the Michelin boxes, and the small/unique setting makes it unique in our market, and unique in much of the country. Worthy of a detour to visit Demi? I’d say so.
Potential one-star restaurants:
To get one-star you typically need a tasting menu format, and that leaves off many of our great restaurants. This is a fine-dining guide, if they were coming here, perhaps Spoon & Stable would add a tasting menu, perhaps others would as well. As of right now – this is what I’d think would be in the mix.
Restaurant Alma – A no-brainer. The tasting menu format, the celebration of regional and local ingredients, creative, consistent, Alex Roberts’ team has been getting it done for decades now.
Meritage – The combo of the casual oyster bar and the fine-dining main room bringing perfectly cooked French classics should be in this discussion. Among the best wine lists in the Midwest from Desta Klein, and the incredible flavors from Chef Russel Klein.
Travail – Still one of the most fun fine-dining experiences in the state—the inventiveness, the creativity, the beautiful building, in the mix for sure.
Kaiseki Furukawa – Shigueyuki Furukawa is the only Kaiseki chef in the Midwest. With 10-courses of art and culture, this is a truly special experience.
Myriel – Karin Tomlinson’s cooking is a glorious link from her love of farming to her absolute obsession with technique.
Owamni – I’m not sure Owamni rises to the one-star level on pure culinary consistency, but I think the quality of ingredients, the uniqueness of the experience, it’s at least worthy of being in the conversation.
That’s it, right? Denver seemed disappointed to only have five one-star restaurants. My list has seven spots with stars here. Am I missing anyone? And does it even matter?
Our tourism authorities seem to have prioritized getting big events over pushing food tourism. We have the U.S. Gymnastics Olympics trials next year, we had the Super Bowl, these events bring huge crowds over one week or weekend and they never come back again. Let’s just be honest about that. Food tourism brings more of a trickle of people, but it’s a consistent trickle. I suspect it does more for business recruitment and long-term relocation than a one-off event, too. Obviously I’m biased, but I think we should be spending more bringing people here to eat.
