Dining Out is a Love Language
BY NICOLE CROWDER
On a recent walk around a lake, a friend and I were bouncing trivia questions around to one another when she asked “What’s a topic you can talk about for hours without running out of things to say?” To know me is to know 1: this question scratched all the right parts of my brain, and 2: running my mouth about anything, but in particular about eating out and putting folks on to recommendations for where to get the best of it is a favorite pastime. Dining out is my thrill and my self-care. It is the experience I have not just embraced but excitedly dress for in anticipation of the breadth of experience and taste it affords me in return: friendships and partnerships solidified around wood tables and ceramic plates.
Gai Noi’s indoor-outdoor rooftop is what dining dreams are made of.
The charge of talking about and experiencing the abundance of places to eat here in Minnesota is an instant conversation starter. You want to make a new friend? Talk about where you’re eating. Want to gift someone something special? Take them to a place they’ve never been with food they love. Smoothing over a falling out with a loved one? The words “Let’s go out to dinner tonight, my treat,” are among the sweetest in the English language. Dining out says “I thought about you. I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry.”
Our dining scene is stacked with iconic restaurants that have been Twin Cities staples for decades, juxtaposed with new darlings solidifying their own legacies. While you might come to the Twin Cities for the cherry on the spoon you’ll stay for the laab seen at Loring Park’s ingenious Gai Noi, or the sultry brilliance of the mafaldine with pistachio at Martina, where Argentinian and Italian flavors collide.
Pimento’s Braised Oxtail on repeat, always.
Fusion restaurants have been ubiquitous here for years,but recently, chefs have answered their inner calling to root down in their heritage. Pimento owner Tomme Beevas has brought the fruits of his native Jamaica through jerk chicken, curries, and yes, lord, those slow-braised oxtails. Chef Ann Ahmed’s adoration for her Laotian heritage comes through in her multiple award-winning restaurants Khâluna, Lat 14, Gai Noi, and the one that started it all, Lemongrass.
My partner and I recently dined at Vinai, the newest restaurant by award-winning chef Yia Vang offering cuisine of his Hmong heritage, a cuisine rarely found anywhere on menus in the U.S. We dined there in February, and the memory of each dish—crab fried rice, mackerel in a garlic and tomato confit, purple sticky rice, and lamb—lives sharply on my frontal lobes.
If you’re visiting Minneapolis, I always recommend rooting down in sacred ground through the indigenous flavors of Owamni and the luminous heart of its chef, Sean Sherman. I shed tears at the table thinking of how much love went into preparing the sacred meats that honored the animals from which they came.
Coming from Washington D.C., which has the largest number of Ethiopian restaurants per capita, I was lasered in on finding an Ethiopian restaurant in the Twin Cities, and I quickly found a favorite in Bolé Ethiopian near my neighborhood in St. Paul. I always order the veggie platter with extra salad and a side of fried fish (and ask for a generous pile of lemon quarters). It’s a meal you eat with your hands, tearing off pieces of injera, letting the food coddle you in a way that’s both deeply cultural and profoundly human.
And as much as I love to fawn over a beautifully designed new restaurant, being a regular patron of a place is how I cultivate my enthusiasm for dining out most. Minnesota is rich with restaurant gems that have been around for 15, 25, 70 years, or more in some cases, tethered to their neighborhoods not just because of the staff’s familiar faces and quality dishes, but because of patrons reciprocating dedication back to them. When my husband and I moved to St. Paul a few years ago, one of the things we quickly discovered was how many small restaurants were cradled within neighborhoods on quiet tree-lined streets, just as packed as the new Instagram darlings, sans the online hype. From Waldmans to W.A. Frost, from Macini’s to Monte Carlo’s, there are dozens of gems that fill out the culinary character of this state. And if you’re an excitable eater like myself, take your photos and your videos. Just like the word, this is how enthusiasm is passed. This is how we enforce within our bodies that we are present for the experience that is dining, that we belong here.
Nicole Crowder
Nicole Crowder is a Photo Director, artist, editor, and glassware curator living in St. Paul, Minnesota.Her work has been featured in major publications across the country, and in stores, and is also part of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.
