The Restaurant
Myriel opened in 2021 in a small storefront at the corner of Cleveland and Highland Parkway in St. Paul's Mac-Groveland neighborhood, named for the merciful bishop in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. Chef-owner Karyn Tomlinson — a Corner Table alumna and former Charlie Trotter line cook — went on to win the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2024 and a Food & Wine Best New Chef nod in 2023. The dining room is intimate at thirty-two covers, walnut tables under low-hung pendant lamps, an open pass that the chef herself works most services.
The cooking is rigorously seasonal Minnesotan. Tomlinson grew up on a farm and the menu reads like a love letter to Upper Midwest agriculture: cured local trout with green strawberries and chamomile, smoked sunchoke in beef tallow with caramelised milk skin, a slow-roasted heritage duck served whole for the table with a sour-cherry mostarda. The pastry programme — a buckwheat honey cake with crème fraîche has become a signature — takes the same patient approach. Tasting menus run five to nine courses; an à la carte counter offers the kitchen's full range without the structure.
The wine list is concise and serious, about one hundred and forty references with a deliberate skew toward small Burgundian and German growers, several Wachau Grüners by-the-glass, and an unusual depth of cider and méthode-ancestrale sparkling from Minnesota and Wisconsin. The non-alcoholic pairing, built around shrubs and tisanes from the property's own herb supplier, has a quiet following among local sommeliers. For a dinner that signals St. Paul's seriousness rather than its provinciality, Myriel is the unambiguous first call.
Why This Is St. Paul’s Impress Clients Pick
For impressing a client who has flown into the Twin Cities, Myriel is the table that proves St. Paul deserves its own pin on the map. The James Beard medal and Food & Wine recognition carry their own signal value before a menu arrives. The thirty-two-cover dining room guarantees the conversation can land, the open pass lets a guest feel the kitchen is performing for them specifically, and the seasonal Minnesotan idiom — unfamiliar to most coastal visitors — turns the meal into an experience rather than a meeting venue. The bottle list permits a careful impression without forcing extravagance.
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