Eater Twin Cities’ Best Dishes of the Month: May 2024

Welcome to Eater Twin Cities’ Best Dishes column. True, the heatmap is the best resource for intel on exciting new restaurant openings around Minneapolis and St. Paul — but here we’re tracking standout dishes at restaurants old and new. Here are the best dishes an Eater editor ate around the Cities in May.

Salmon and pasta at Mama Safia’s Kitchen

I’ve been thinking about spaghetti a lot lately, so I ordered a plate of pasta with salmon at Mama Safia’s Kitchen on Lake Street, where chef and owner Safia Munye relocated after her original location burned down in 2020. (You can see the fish peeking out from underneath the sauteed onions and peppers in the lead photo of this story.) Pasta was introduced to Somalia during the 19th and 20th-century Italian colonial occupation of East Africa, but Somali, Eritrean, and Ethiopian families and chefs have since made it their own, creating dishes like suugo suqaar and berbere-spiced lasagna. Mama Safia’s usually serves this pasta and fish plate with tilapia, but had salmon the evening I visited — it was hearty and comforting and brought to new heights by the requisite banana, its starchy sweetness balancing the hot green sauce I drizzled over it. Also pictured are a plate of slow-cooked, aromatic goat with rice and a pretty immaculate sambusa.

Red shrimp at Guacaya Bistreaux

It’s far too easy in this city to live through an entire summer without getting your hands messy in a seafood boil, and while this Patagonian royal red shrimp dish from Guacaya Bistreaux came grilled and served in a small cast-iron skillet, it was just as satisfying. I really put my cloth napkin to the task, peeling the shrimp and dragging them through the garlic butter and fresh chimichurri that had pooled at the bottom of the skillet, then doing the same with slices of toast. Guacaya’s mahi mahi, served on a bed of creamy, buttery gigante beans with baby carrots, fennel, and little morsels of blood orange, was equally good.

Momos and a masala dosa at Momo Dosa

There are many great South Indian restaurants around the metro, but I’m grateful to have Momo Dosa’s Midtown Global Market location at a walkable distance. This dosa was broad as a sun hat; crispy at its edges and perfect for scooping up sambar and stuffed with a red chili-studded masala potato mix. I split my order of momos half chicken and half vegetable; both were packed with bright spring onion flavor.

Chengdu ravioli by Bao Bao Buns

Earlier this month I found myself at a pop-up dinner hosted by chef Ed Zhang, co-owner of new bao pop-up Bao Bao Buns with Caitlin Higgins. I’m still thinking about these tender, neatly crimped ravioli, stuffed with chimichurri pork and served in a swirl of reduced Chengdu soy sauce and garlic mushroom cream. BBB is still slinging bao around the Cities, but Zhang plans to do more of these plated pop-up dinners, so keep an eye on Instagram for potential future dates.