The Minnesota Star Tribune names its 10 best new restaurants of 2025

Every once in a while, it’s good to shake things up. And that’s what we did with 2025’s year-end restaurant coverage.

Instead of singling out one restaurant (or three, as we did in the highly unusual year that was 2024), we’re recognizing this year’s entire class of best new restaurants. The Taste team, including new critic Raphael Brion, dined and debated our way around the Twin Cities and beyond, focusing on restaurants that opened between November 2024 and the end of October.

Our final 10 capture what made this year remarkable, from boundary-pushing fine dining to fast-casual eats that redefine expectations; from neighborhood comfort elevated in thoughtful ways to North Woods flavors worth the three-hour drive. Together, they tell the story of where Minnesota dining is right now.

Yet, among them all, one restaurant stood out again and again: Khue’s Kitchen in St. Paul is the Star Tribune’s Best New Restaurant.

Eric Pham comes from a long line of restaurant royalty. He grew up inside Quang Restaurant, the Vietnamese institution on Minneapolis’ Eat Street founded by his grandmother in 1989, and currently run by his mom, Khue, his restaurant’s namesake. At Khue’s Kitchen, Pham blends his family’s homestyle Vietnamese food, refined technique he learned at Spoon and Stable, and contemporary flair.

The electrifying menu is a rich autobiographical take from a third-generation, Vietnamese-American 25-year-old Gen Z kid who grew up in Minnesota restaurants, with some of his favorite dishes from different stages of his life. So you’ll find his cultishly adored fried chicken sandwich with chili crunch, cream cheese wontons stuffed to the max, and sticky jicama ribs, a mind-bending vegan dish with layers of marinated tofu and fried jicama that brilliantly mimics the taste and texture of pork ribs. Vibrant, playful and easy-going, the food is more ambitious and complex than it lets on.

693 Raymond Av., St. Paul, khueskitchen.com

241 Fremont Av. N., Mpls., animalesbbq.com

When it looked like this beloved Lowertown restaurant was about to fade into memory, it was clear we lost someplace special. When it returned over the summer with a serious amount of hospitality experience at the helm, Dark Horse fully lived up to its name by becoming the casual bar restaurant success no one saw coming. Shane Oporto’s menu reads like a road map of all the storied establishments he has worked, served with the excellence one would expect from a fine-dining chef with a deep love for bar food. From pizzas and the glorious burgers to lobster rolls and pate, Dark Horse is just as well-suited for the neighborhood as it is a destination before any St. Paul-based event — or just a cozy date night. Our money’s on this steed to go all the way.

250 E. 7th St., St. Paul, darkhorsestp.com

Since taking over ie Italian Eatery in south Minneapolis earlier this year, Mike Brown, Bob Gerken and James Winberg of Travail Collective are leaning hard into the house-made pasta game. Some dishes from the previous owners carry over, but the team (also behind Travail and Nouvelle Brewery, Pig Ate My Pizza, Dream Creamery, Stargazer and Graze Food Hall) are making it their own.

Dishes are seemingly simple, yet nuanced. Take the spaghetti pomodoro with a house tomato-basil sauce, so humble and fresh it practically summons the garden. But not to be overshadowed by the oxtail ravioletti, cooked to a perfect al dente and presented Ravioles du Dauphine style, or as a whole, large sheet to be cut up at the table. Then there’s the crisp-skinned, tender-centered roast chicken atop a straightforward yet vibrant tomato sauce with briny capers. This is all after you might still be humming from appetizers such as the burrata, decadently creamy with a sprinkling of sea salt and served with 720-day, dry-aged, buttery prosciutto. A solid cocktail program and all-Italian wine list round out the attention to detail as the team positions itself to be indispensable right out of the gate.

Nestled deep in a suburban retail development, Liliana refuses to coast. The team behind Estelle and Mario’s gives executive chef Kenzie Edinger a workshop for constant tinkering, and since its July opening, she’s put out a pasta menu that’s already gone through several rounds of intriguing updates. In its current iteration, there’s a white Bolognese with pumpkin, cheesy ravioli topped with balsamic beads that burst like little fireworks, and a cannoli turned savory with chicken liver mousse. The polished dining room sends you straight to the North Loop by way of Woodbury. Service is sharp and genuinely informed, and the bar has a build-your-own spritz list with what feels like hundreds of possible paths. Liliana even rolled out a playful late-night menu (think Italian nachos). It’s a place that keeps calling you back, just to see what Edinger dreams up next.

10060 City Walk Dr., Woodbury, lilianamn.com

Focusing on northwest regional Chinese cuisine with an emphasis on fresh hand-pulled noodles, Meet Up Noodle on Minneapolis’ Eat Street offers exhilarating and complex dishes that the Twin Cities hasn’t really seen before. The Central Asian and Silk Road influences result in warming, cumin-heavy, robust spicy flavors in dishes like noodle soups, flatbreads and platters, often rich in lamb and numbing Sichuan peppercorns. Food that works incredibly well this time of year.

Standout dishes include the irresistibly tender spicy Sichuan-style wontons in chili oil; the bold and aromatic Chongqing spicy noodles; the 3-in-1 oil splash noodles with a savory minced pork sauce that’ll keep you going back for more; the Lanzhou beef noodles in a slow-simmered beef bone broth, ideal for cold Minnesota winter nights; and the roujiamo, called a cumin lamb sandwich here, a flatbread bun filled with tender, fragrant braised lamb.

There are seven kinds of hand-pulled noodles: regular, extra thin, thick, flat, wide, extra wide and hand-shaved. Some dishes have a recommended noodle, but in most cases it’s a choose your own adventure situation. Either way, you’ll probably need the supplied scissors, as the springy, buoyant noodles come out comically long.

When you can’t decide which of a restaurant’s menus is your favorite — dinner, weekend brunch or the lounge — you know a place has struck the right chord. Chef Jeff Watson of DDP Restaurant Group is putting his modern spin on East Asian fare, including dishes that lean into his Korean roots. At brunch and dinner, the place is abuzz as dim sum carts — offering up squid ink and kimchi dumplings, pork-ginger-glutinous rice pearl meatballs and more — roll through the stunning, dramatic crimson dining room. In addition to dim sum, a la carte noodle, rice and barbecue dishes are available at dinner. The Sunday brunch menu carries a much more playful tone with items such as mochi biscuits, Hong Kong-style stuffed French toast and, our favorite, the “Spram” egg sandwich, Minari’s house version of the beloved Minnesota canned meat product.

More recently, Minari rolled out the Pikok Lounge off the main dining room. Like with dinner and weekend brunch, a few dishes cross over, but this menu also has its own distinct feel (neighborhoody) and exclusive offerings, heavy on noshes ranging from caviar chicken nuggets to hand rolls. No matter which menu, Minari is proving that it can pivot and cater to a wide range with relevance, leaving memorable imprints every which way.

323 13th Av. NE., Mpls., minarirestaurant.com

Co-owners Amanda and Kyle Lussier opened the Pines in June in a lovingly restored historic building in downtown Grand Rapids serving a blend of seasonal farm-to-table North Woods ingredients with a modern culinary sensibility.

The menu utilizes local northern Minnesota products to great effect, like a tender tempura walleye and crispy wild rice fritters, while embracing global flavors, like a rosy grilled bone-in pork chop with a tamarind glaze and a Thai squash purée. You’ll find spectacularly fluffy popovers (served with seasonal butter and jams) and unexpected and striking dishes like chicken-fat poached turnips (topped with chicken skin crumbles).

12 NW. 3rd St., Grand Rapids, Minn., thepinesmn.com

St. Pierre Steak & Seafood introduces chef Isaac Becker’s latest chapter — not new, exactly, but a confident, layered merging of his hits from two beloved closures, Snack Bar and Burch. It’s a subtle remake with a massive menu, the kind you navigate with intention; leaning too hard on the butter-potato-cheese side of things or treating it as a straight steakhouse can distract from the finesse elsewhere. Becker’s entrees, like a beautifully handled pork dish for two, show the kind of thoughtfulness and devotion to flavor that has made him one of the Twin Cities’ defining chefs. And the service, led by his wife and partner, Nancy St. Pierre, is as warm as ever. Together, in this clubby, intimate North Loop space, they remind you why they’ve been pillars of the Twin Cities dining scene for two decades.

800 Washington Av. N., Mpls., stpierrerestaurant.com

The story of Peter Bian and Linda Cao’s dumpling empire has been a model for success: pandemic project leads to viral pop-up sensation and an entire community craving the namesake product. This year the couple opened two restaurants and a food hall stand, each lively space dotted with pops of the company’s signature pink. They could have rested on their dumpling laurels, but instead keep raising the bar on what fast-casual Asian fare can be. Dumplings are still the star; however, the rest of the menu is also worth a turn in the spotlight. Breakfast scallion pancake burritos, rice bowls featuring chicken, braised pulled pork or veggies, cumin fries for the ages, refreshing Hainanese chicken salad sandwiches on scallion focaccia all command your attention. And Bian and Cao just keep the surprises coming. Their latest menu addition, congee hash browns, is one of them. Shatteringly crisp on the outside and luxuriously flavorful on the inside, we promptly ordered seconds. “We’ve got more ideas than ever,” Bian recently told the Star Tribune. We can’t wait to see them come to life.