How Minari (and Pikok) are rewriting modern Korean dining in Minneapolis

With moody red lighting, textured tiles, curvy deep-set booths, groovy midcentury lamps and rich crimson walls, it’s easy to be seduced by Minari’s stunning dining room.

The northeast Minneapolis restaurant is easily one of the most irresistible recent openings from Daniel del Prado’s expanding portfolio. Chef-owner Jeff Watson, who’s also the longtime culinary director of DDP Restaurant Group, has written a menu rooted in modern Korean cooking that bounces fearlessly between cultures and techniques. The result is ambitious yet crowd-pleasing, comforting yet surprising. And, above all, genuinely fun.

The more recent addition of Pikok Lounge, a casual sister concept in the bar space, expands that vision into a full dining ecosystem that can accommodate multiple dining modes, from quick drop-ins to group dinners, date nights and special occasions.

Watson’s approach traces directly to his upbringing. Raised by a Korean mother on a South Dakota Air Force base, the Korean foods of his childhood were never “traditional” in the strictest sense — it was what his mom could make with limited access to ingredients. Those early lessons in improvisation became a guiding principle that still informs his cooking.

After cutting his teeth in Minneapolis fine dining — including stints at Moto-i, Bar La Grassa, and a formative period under Nancy St. Pierre and Isaac Becker at Burch Steak — Watson landed at Martina, where he honed his Italian technique under del Prado. Now, he channels those accumulated influences into Minari.

The sprawling menu spans Korean dishes like hotteok and KBBQ, riffs on crudo and tartare, Chinese-inspired dim sum and dumplings, and mashup pastas — all while absorbing Japanese, French and Italian influences. Call it fusion or third-culture cooking, just don’t call it confused — Watson knows what he’s doing.

With a deep knowledge of Korean cuisine and its broader East Asian culinary context, he has an uncanny ability to push traditional dishes forward while never losing sight of their roots. Watson loves traditional Korean food but admits, “I always wanted to do my own personal interpretation of it.”

This happens frequently at Minari: dishes read almost traditional at first glance but recipes are guidelines, not rigid formulas.

Like how the hotteok — on the menu as “stuffed corn cakes” — get filled with an untraditional fontina cheese (usually it’s mozzarella) for a more creamy and nutty experience. Or the beef tartare, taking cues from yukhoe bibimbap (Korean beef tartare rice bowls) in which raw beef gets mixed with ssamjang and doenjang, but Watson veers from tradition by adding lemon juice and topping it with salmon roe. Or the tremendous mapo tofu, with a funk and depth of flavor not usually found with the iconic Szechuan dish. Made with a custard-like egg tofu, shrimp, calamari, fish sauce and pork skin (to make it “super sticky”), it’s unlike any mapo tofu I’ve had.

There are even cream cheese wontons, a crowd-pleasing Minnesota favorite, here served with hot honey and a housemade pickled plum sauce.

In Minari’s electrifying pasta program, Asian flavors crash into classic preparations with gleeful abandon, ranging from spicy dan dan noodles (made with mafaldini instead of a wavy Chinese wheat noodle) to a cheesy buldak (where housemade gnocchi takes the place of rice cakes). The gochujang vodka rigatoni is perhaps the most audacious: a riff on penne alla vodka that swaps tomato cream sauce for the funky, spicy depth of gochujang and doenjang.

These fusion dishes could easily veer into gimmick territory, but Watson’s technical precision and understanding of the culinary traditions at hand keeps it all grounded. The pastas are out of this world.

The barbecue is accompanied by a variety of greens (red leaf, Castelfranco and perilla leaf) as well as a couple of sauces: a lively cilantro-based “gosujang” and a classic ssamjang, made with a variety of ingredients including doenjang, gochujang and Sprite. “My mom would put Sprite in her ssamjang,” Watson tells me. “I don’t know why, but I think it tastes better.”

To go with the barbecue, you should definitely order the shivery scallion salad, dressed with sesame, gochugaru and soy — a steal at $4 — as well as the elaborately prepared banchan, which rotates but has included an herbaceous and savory perilla leaf kimchi and a bright wasabi zuke.

There’s a separate dim sum menu with new school and more traditional dim sum options, like a variety of plump, generously filled dumplings. Although the dough is on the thicker side, the dumplings are terrific, especially the chicken and green chili variety. Other highlights include the ribs with fragrant Sichuan peppercorns cutting through fatty pork, and oil-blanched long beans tossed with spicy mustard seed dressing, walnuts, herbs and fried shallots. You can also get the dim sum from carts that roam through the dining room.

While dim sum is also available during Sunday brunch, you’ll want to assemble a crew to sample the standout brunch-only dishes, like the Hong Kong-style stuffed French toast, crispy potato hashbrowns with “fancy ketchup” (it’s just ginger and ketchup), the impossibly tender mochi biscuits and the astonishingly great spram, egg and cheese sandwich (made with Minari’s housemade Spam).

The strong Korean and Japanese influences carry over to the cocktail program, created by DDP beverage director Megan Luedtke. Like the Sunchang, a bright and sunny mezcal spritz-adjacent cocktail with kumquat soju, gochujang honey, ume, grapefruit and lime; or the Kumiho, a nimble play on an espresso martini but amped up with banana, miso and amaro.

After nearly a year focusing exclusively on Minari, Watson launched Pikok Lounge. It shares space and DNA with Minari, but has neighborhood hangout vibes and an exclusive menu of casual bar food as well as more quirky, Tiki-esque cocktails.

This is where you come for Korean fried chicken wings — double-fried with a thin batter of cornstarch, rice flour and potato starch, then brushed with a gochujang glaze that provides sweet heat without overwhelming the ultra crispy skin.

The housemade chicken nuggets deserve equal attention. Made with ground chicken thighs and whipped with butter to create an almost ethereal texture, they’re shaped into nostalgic nuggets before undergoing the same meticulous double-frying process as the wings. The result is something that evokes childhood comfort while tasting decidedly grown-up, and you can also get the nuggets topped with white sturgeon caviar, a rather on-trend moment.

Other simple, snacky and exuberant dishes are the buttery, browned shrimp toast sandwich (a riff on a classic appetizer that still pulls off the correct shrimp-bread ratio); succulent grilled prawns with a squid ink vinaigrette and lime leaf sauce; and hand rolls (like a bluefin tuna with fermented chili or scallops with a spicy chimichurri). The only letdown was the grilled bulgogi skewers that were overcooked and chewy.

The kimchi cheeseburger should be considered one of the city’s best, walking that fine line between decadent and balanced. Made with two 4-ounce domestic wagyu smash burger patties, American cheese, kimchi mayo and cucumber pickles on a Martin’s sesame bun, it’s intense and juicy but never overwhelming. Alas, the burger doesn’t come with fries (Pikok doesn’t do fries), but an acceptable alternative is the crackly grilled rice cakes with their lightly charred exteriors and chewy centers — simple but deeply satisfying with a gochujang glaze.

At their best, Minari and Pikok deliver modern Korean food and drink that feels both rooted and forward-looking. The menus aren’t strictly authentic, which is sort of the point. They succeed by approaching Korean cuisine less as a fixed tradition and more as a living language that’s always evolving. The end result is inventive, approachable, and ultimately, a sheer delight.

★ ★ ★

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

Hours: At Minari: Mon.-Thu. 5-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 4-10 p.m., Sun. 4-9 p.m. and brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m. At Pikok Lounge: daily from 4-10 p.m., happy hour from 4-6 p.m.

Noise level: Reasonable to loud when the room gets humming.

Beverage program: Beyond the excellent cocktails (especially at Pikok Lounge), there are wines by the glass that veer toward lighter reds and aromatic whites and a small but nimble selection of sake, soju and shochu. There’s a deep NA bench including cocktails, spirits and sparkling beverages.

Recommended dishes: At Minari: Bluefin tuna gimbab, gochujang vodka rigatoni, boneless galbi, chicken bulgogi, mapo tofu. At Pikok, shrimp toast sandwich, kimchi cheeseburger, grilled rice cakes.

Worth noting: If you’re seated at Minari, they won’t let you order off the Pikok menu, but if you’re seated on the Pikok side, you can order from both the Pikok and Minari menus. These are the rules, I did not make them.

Also, it’s not immediately obvious, but there’s sort of a secret parking lot across the street from Minari on 13th Avenue.

Service and hospitality: The service is tight and focused, and it feels as though people genuinely like working here.

★★★★ Extraordinary. Restaurants operating at a nearly impossible level: ambitious, precise, and deserving of local, national and global attention.

★★★ Excellent. Highly recommended. Worth going out of your way for.

★★ Remarkable. A solid, dependable experience that delivers on its promise.

★ Very Good. Worth a visit, but inconsistent at times.

Zero stars: Not Good. Best to avoid.