17 August 2023
This season is a busy one for Twin Cities restaurants!
Earlier this spring, we visited 10 great new restaurants around the metro, but even more fun neighborhood spots outside of St. Paul proper have opened since then.
Here are five more new restaurants to check out this summer.
Don Papi Chulo
Enchiladas (left), beef birria torta sandwich (right) and Tony’s Fries with carne asada and queso (back), shown on Aug. 8, 2023, are all newer additions to the menu at Don Papi Chulo in Inver Grove Heights. The popular food truck expanded to a brick-and-mortar restaurant this summer. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
Popular South metro food truck Don Papi Chulo expanded to a permanent counter-service location in Inver Grove Heights this summer — and luckily, they kept their street-food sensibilities. The food truck menu was already quite extensive, and the brick-and-mortar kitchen has allowed them to branch out even more. So we figured we’d try some of the new additions.
They’ve always offered a few tortas, or Mexican sandwiches, but the birria torta is new, and delightful. Like the others, it’s served on cloudy, chewy telera bread; the beef is tender and absurdly flavorful, and the pickled jalapenos are a nice touch. And true to Don Papi Chulo’s street food roots, the sandwich comes wrapped in tin foil.
Another newbie is Tony’s Fries, a sizable basket of waffle fries topped with queso, carne asada, pico de gallo, sour cream and guacamole. What’s not to like?! At $16 and very, very heavy, it felt a little much for a side for just two people, but I’m confident a big group could demolish this bad boy. Speaking of: Don Papi Chulo offers a discounted menu for Simley High School students.
Other classic Mexican dishes that are recent additions to the menu are quite good, too. As far as enchiladas go, the tortillas are clearly high-quality and the sauce has a nice kick. The horchata agua fresca is phenomenal; one of the best I’ve had in the Twin Cities. It was perfectly starchy and cinnamon-forward, but a hint of vanilla gave it a much rounder flavor. Churros, topped with strawberries and whipped cream, are also on offer nowadays — so don’t miss out.
Don Papi Chulo: 7834 Cahill Avenue, Inver Grove Heights; 651-815-7771; donpapichulo.com/
Southern Social
At Southern Social, dishes include (clockwise from top left) skillet cornbread with smoked cheddar, pimento mac and cheese with barbecue, pulled pork sandwich, and rosemary-truffle fries, all shown here on Aug. 9, 2023. The restaurant, located in Eagan, is one of a number of new local spots to open in the East Metro. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
The building that houses Southern Social used to be a Green Mill — but you wouldn’t know it. The exterior got a classy coat of dark paint, and the inside has been given a sleek makeover. As for food, everything we tried was flavorful, colorful and plenty saucy. Drinks are strong and a little sweet; some are even available in 4- or 8-person punch bowls.
Southern Social’s menu runs the gamut of “Modern Southern” fare, from fried green tomatoes to shrimp and grits to skillet cornbread, baked with smoked cheddar and topped with melted honey butter. The menu gets a lot of mileage out of pimento cheese in particular — no complaints from me; the pimento mac and cheese with cavatappi pasta, crispy onions, thick bourbon barbecue sauce and optional added smoked brisket is hearty comfort food at its best.
We were seated at the bar; a couple service misses: Cornbread, technically an appetizer, came out at the same time as our entrees, and the mac and cheese initially arrived with pulled pork, not brisket as ordered.
The restaurant just opened in May, from the same folks behind Barley & Vine in Lakeville and Tamarack Tap Room in Woodbury. The menu started as a series of smoked-meat experiments at Tamarack but quickly grew into its own concept, said Ben Berry, the operations and business development director for Trellis Hospitality.
Southern Social: 1940 Rahncliff Ct., Eagan; 651-478-7919; southernsocialmn.com/
Lakewood Tavern
With smoked gouda and bacon jam, the Bourbon Bacon Burger, shown on Aug. 8, 2023, is a popular choice at the new Lakewood Tavern in Lake Elmo. The neighborhood bar and grill is a family-friendly addition to the East Metro. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
With well-made drinks and pretty good American-style food, this neighborhood spot in Lake Elmo — just opened in March — is a nice local addition to the southern end of the suburb. From the bar, the Lakewood Old Fashioned, with a house bourbon/rye blend, was great, and even non-alcoholic drinks like the Hudson Blvd are well-balanced and herbaceous.
The food menu ranges from handheld sandwiches to pizzas to burgers like the bourbon bacon burger with smoked gouda, black truffle aioli, and bacon jam. Thick patty and good cheese coverage; the truffle wasn’t overpowering. It’s listed on the menu as “award-winning” — we’re not quite sure which award it won, but my dining partner sure enjoyed it.
On the “Lakewood Favorites” section of the menu, our server specifically recommended the walleye fingers. They were just fine; I wasn’t upset I’d ordered them, but I’d try something else next time. The batter wasn’t greasy, but the meat was sweet and a little fishy. The house-made tartar sauce was good; the spiced sour cream, for an unannounced $1 upcharge, is skippable.
Lakewood Tavern: 9939 N. Hudson Blvd, Lake Elmo; 651-390-6760; lakewoodtavern.com
Howard’s Bar
Pork schnitzel (left) and the housemade Reuben (right), shown here Aug. 11, 2023, are popular items on the menu at Howard’s Bar, a rebranded and redesigned longtime bar — formerly Whitey’s —on Main Street in Stillwater. Howard’s Bar is owned by husband-and-wife team Caroline Smith, a local musician, and Adam To, a chef. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
Howard’s Bar has been a bar forever. A neon-esque sign above the backbar proclaims, “I remember when it was John’s Bar,” the precursor to Whitey’s Bar, which local musician Caroline Smith and chef/husband Adam To bought last year. They reopened the bar as Howard’s this summer, named after their dog.
And with new wood paneling and vintage photos on the walls, it looks even cozier and older — in a good way! — than it did before. To, who cooked at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Los Angeles before the couple moved back to Minnesota, has completely remastered the menu, which is gorgeously designed with little cartoons that have a nostalgic ‘60s pop culture aesthetic.
Across the board, the food is fun and comforting but not quite up to its full potential.
Gotta start with cheese curds, of course. Satisfyingly hot and greasy and melty, and the house-made dill pickle ranch is really, really good — and a nice precursor to this year’s State Fair pickle-mania. For the Reuben, they make the corned beef from scratch; all their beef comes from high-quality Peterson Craftsman Meats in Wisconsin. The corned beef on its own was tender; overall, the sandwich was tasty but not spectacular. The French fries, also made in house, had a slightly over-fried, oily taste.
The entrees have an elevated supper club vibe. Think homemade meatloaf, lasagna with fresh pasta, pork schnitzel with a fingerling potato salad. The schnitzel came with a lemon wedge, which my dining partner reported gave a helpful boost of acidity. The potatoes, tossed in a dill sauce with little pickle chunks, felt Nordically Minnesotan but under-salted.
Beer, wine, and fresh-squeezed juice round out the menu, with rail mixed drinks by request, although they do have some liqueurs for cocktails.
Howard’s Bar: 302 S. Main St., Stillwater; 651-439-9902; howardsbar.com/
Baba’s
Lahme bi ajeen, topped with spiced beef, is a type of mana’eesh flatbread served at Baba’s, a new Palestinian hummus-focused restaurant that opened in August 2023. In addition to packaged hummus, Baba’s is also known for their retro Airstream State Fair trailer. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
To conclude this journey, I trekked to the lesser-known St. Paul suburb of Minneapolis to visit Baba’s Hummus House & Mana’eesh Bakery. The sibling-run operation is known for its silky packaged hummus and retro State Fair Airstream trailer, and earlier this month, they converted a boarded-up storefront in the Wedge neighborhood into a bright, colorful, and delightful-smelling Palestinian cafe.
The restaurant is family-run, so I thought I’d be a good son and invite my mother for lunch. Baba’s hummus itself is, as we’ve come to expect, wonderful. Their housemade tahini, my mother happily exclaimed, is even better, with a roasty and savory sesame flavor.
She got the Super Green bowl, with falafel, edamame and pistachio. The falafel, though a bit dry, was particularly herbaceous. I went for mana’eesh, a flatbread that’s common in the Middle East and not so much in the Twin Cities yet. The lahme bi ajeen flatbread, topped with spiced beef, was unbelievably juicy, just dripping with those tantalizing Mediterranean spices. They’ve got six varieties of mana’eesh right now and I will be trying them all, thank you very much.
Besides fast-casual food, they’ve also got coffee and assorted drinks, each of which comes with a cute little pistachio shortbread cookie. Mama’s mint tea was not as mint-forward as I was expecting, but the Arabi cardamom espresso was appropriately well-spiced and strong.
Baba’s: 2220 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis; lovebabas.com/
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