December 2014

A Buddhist meal prayer is front and center when customers visit the Birchwood Café in Minneapolis.

Aaron Slavicek is soft spoken, quick to smile and pleasant to be around as executive chef of Bar La Grassa.

Robert Wohlfeil is executive chef at The Oceanaire in downtown Minneapolis.

Along with wife Ashleigh Newman, Leonard Anderson has created something quite different in the up-and-coming Payne Avenue neighborhood of St. Paul.

Thomas Kim’s fantasy is to introduce street-style Korean fare to inquisitive Midwesterners who aren't afraid to fall down the rabbit hole.

Their food, which includes the mini donuts, bison burgers topped with a fried egg and pulled-pork nachos, has been included on some pretty notable national lists

Susan Dunlop, the chef and co-owner of Joan’s who came up with the “labor-saving” plan of Chef’s Day Off dinners.

“It’s very humbling, it’s very scary, if I can say that,” says Executive Chef Ryan Lund. “I’m always working to live up to Lucia’s name and her standards.”

Lucas Almendinger chose working at W.A. Frost under Leonard Anderson and then Wyatt Evans during his transition from woodworker to chef.

Since meeting in 2004 when he interned at the restaurant under Steven Brown, it’s been an on-again, off-again relationship for Adam Vickerman and Café Levain.