The 5 best things our food writers ate in 2025

When the popovers landed on our table, the light-as-air dish carried with them the weight of nostalgia. In Grand Rapids, Minn., where I grew up, there was a place that used to serve them that isn’t there anymore. Neither is the house I grew up in. But these eggy, crusty wonders held not only all the crannies built for harboring butter, but also the warmth of all the meals from when I’d encountered this dish before. There were the two years my sister spent trying to perfect her own recipe; the family special occasion meals where my grandmother and great aunt treated us to prime rib suppers — precluded by a basket of popovers.

But maybe best of all was that these hall-of-fame worthy entries into the canon of great popovers were served at an entirely new restaurant. The Pines is forward-thinking in approach, but the cuisine honors the classics by embracing the best of each of northern Minnesota’s seasons.

This basket of warm, bready goods ($8-$15) was both the best of my early memories and the start of something new. (Joy Summers)

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

It feels like cheating to choose this as my favorite bite of the year, but since I’m still excited about these sticky ribs nine months later — and have been back for them twice — it’s the right move.

Chef Eric Pham forms marinated tofu and fried jicama into ribs that expertly (and surprisingly) mimic the taste and texture of pork ribs. The sticky soy glaze keeps the meaty illusion going, making it a top-tier vegan dish ($21).

When Pham first opened his restaurant, it was the viral spicy fried chicken sandwich that was getting all the attention. Now it’s this dish, which has become his most popular menu item and the one everyone posts on social media.

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

The mapo fries ($17) at the dimly lit, late-night Korean restaurant Juche in St. Paul are a thing of beauty, in which a healthy amount of mapo tofu and oozing cheddar cheese sauce get ladled on top of crackly fries. The mapo tofu: Sichuan pepper-laced, chile oil-inflected, spicy and umami-rich with a savory funk. The fries: four times fried, skin-on, and impossibly crispy. The cheese brings it all together.

Basically, chili cheese fries, but make it Sichuan, there’s nothing especially original about this fusion dish. Mapo tofu fries have been around for a while, appearing on menus across the globe, but it’s the execution at Juche that keeps you coming back for more. Which is exactly what happened on a recent night. Even though our table kept getting filled with wave after wave of electrifying dishes, we all kept diving back into the mapo fries, a testament to how truly good they were. (Raphael Brion)

1124 Payne Av., St Paul, juchestpaul.com

Abraham Gessesse is honoring Hyacinth’s taste of Italy past while merging flavors from Ethiopia, where the chef grew up and where he said Italian restaurants are abundant. The result is a skillful execution of techniques and global flavors from the chef whose resume includes notable restaurants such as Oslo’s Michelin-starred Kontrast.

We hope this dish returns to the menu, which changes more frequently than the seasons. Either way, we’re just glad Gessesse, a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Midwest, is taking us along with him on his culinary journey. Oh, the places we’ll go. (Nancy Ngo)

790 Grand Av., St. Paul, hyacinthstpaul.com

I ordered the steak frites knowing it would be good, but I wasn’t ready for it to be a goodbye. Café & Bar Lurcat closed this fall after more than two decades — one of the tougher losses in a year full of them — and sitting in that soaring, chandelier-lit dining room one last time felt like opening a portal to every moment I’d marked through the years at that grand bar: winning an award, toasting my spouse’s job offer, celebrating multiple friends’ weddings, remembering a loved one.

The 10-ounce steak itself was exactly the same: dark, well-seared wagyu with crusty edges, deeply rosy in the middle. And those thick-cut, salty frites were still among the best in the Twin Cities. Getting a pot of fries and dunking in béarnaise had always been one of Loring Park’s greatest thrills.

I wasn’t the only one feeling it that night. Other guests were there bidding farewell to a restaurant that had been the backdrop for their celebrations, too. Maybe they were digging into the miso-glazed seabass, lacquered and perfect, or the iconic apple–Manchego matchstick salad. For me, the steak frites brought so much rushing back, and still managed to stand on its own. (Sharyn Jackson)