The best thing I ate in Minnesota in February.

Rural cheese curds. That's the whole thing.

Mar 02, 2025

The title of this new ongoing column is The Best Thing I Ate in The Twin Cities in MONTH, but…

My best bite of this month was far and away the best that I must tell you about.
Many of you will journey through here in the summer and have no idea where to eat when you’re there.
I love to break the rules.

My favorite dish of this month is 2.5 hours away in Pequot Lakes. Yep. So much better than anything I ate from a fine dining spot in the Twin Cities this month that I’m sure if you took a trip out there just for this dish, you wouldn’t regret going.

I ate the cheese curds at Lakes Tavern on February 1st, comparing everything else I ate this month to those cheese curds. Nothing came close.

The problem with “best of Minnesota” lists written by our local writers is that they do not actually eat all around the state. They eat in the Twin Cities, Rochester, Duluth, Grand Marais, and at a spot by their cabin of choice. It leaves me rubbing my eyes really hard with my hands when I read these lists that are so obviously missing some of our best rural restaurants that are off the beaten path. They have the budget to travel to places if they really wanted to—and they don’t.

Rural food is often seen as less than. Even in tourist towns. Especially by city people. And particularly by food writers (not just ours, most of them).

But anyone who eats in a lot of rural restaurants knows that they do what most restaurants dream of doing and never achieve: they make food by and of the place they are in.

My favorite restaurants are rural.

My favorite Indian restaurant in the country is in a truck stop in Nebraska.

My favorite bar is deep in the mountains in Colorado, with a door that never fully shuts.

My favorite barbecue joint is in rural Iowa, with a line of farmers every day at opening.

My favorite ice cream is in a similar Iowa town, further north, untouched since the 1950s.

My favorite donuts are on a farm in New York.

My favorite tacos are in a small town near the Texas border.

In the Upper Peninsula, there’s Neapolitan pizza that rivals the best in Minneapolis.

The best biscuits are in rural family run gas stations in the south.

Everyone knows small tourist town chocolate is where it’s at.

My favorite shake of all time is a strawberry shake at a rural drive-in.

And one of my favorite meals of all time was in a restaurant called Garden of Eating which was only open 1 Saturday a month, maybe, sometimes, if you were lucky, in Grove City, MN of all places (long closed).

So while stuffing my face with some extremely good onion rings, a server at Lakes Tavern in Pequot Lakes told me that their cheese curds were, “Better than the State Fair.'“

I did not doubt her. I believed her. Even though I was not very hungry (see all the onion rings I ate), I ordered them.

Lakes Tavern has all the things I love about a restaurant in the country: a good burger, good sides, and a server who cares enough about your N/A beer that she double checks to make sure she got you the right one before she drops it front of you (city folk, take note!). As snow was falling in Pequot Lakes, people piled in here to eat at the bar. They were received with hugs by staff or greeted by name with a wave. Some people had reserved tables. Some people went right up the bar and razzed other customers they knew well.

I was treated like a regular, too, even though I’m not, with attentive service, an occasional, “hon,” and a server who talked at length about the things she loved on the menu. They clear plates here about as fast as a Michelin starred restaurant without any of the pretension. You can feel that they care. About the food. About the locals. About you.

It’s the kind of place that you want go back to.

It’s the kind of restaurant I notice, too. Not every restaurant treats everyone who walks in the door like a regular (or a local). The ones that do? Those are special. They are intentionally built that way, with lots of effort and tons of grace. As soon as I realize a restaurant runs on exceptional hospitality, I’m all in.

When the curds arrived, they looked like Mouth Trap cheese curds except with something extra added into the batter (pepper).

In the light, these had the tell tale sign of Mouth Trap cheese curds: darker patches on the batter that give you a little bit of crunch in every bite. They were thinly battered, with obviously high quality curds inside.

So many cheese curds fail because they are breaded with strange things (panko??? why?), breaded too thickly, over or under fried, made with low quality curds, lack flavor in the batter, are strangely dry (biting into a dry, hot cheese curd is an experience that is hard to explain), or all the cheese falls out of the curds and gloops together at the bottom (truly a sad thing to witness).

These had no cheese that escaped the batter, even though it was paper thin. A feat, really, when you compare them to other curds, even ones at fine dining restaurants.

Biting into these made me feel like summer was so close and soon I’d be standing in line right when Mouth Trap opened to get curds (this is how you beat the line, my friends, you eat cheese curds in the morning).

They reminded me of the best things about Mouth Trap: thin batter, little crunchy edges, different sized curds for different textures, and cheese that tastes better than most.

Are these better than Mouth Trap? No. But they’re just behind it. Dare I say it, they’re the best you’ll find year round.

I keep thinking about them. They occupy a spot in my brain normally reserved for extremely creative caviar dishes or desserts with beets shaped into roses or gazpacho cubes that pop in your mouth like gushers. Those dishes stick in my head because they are unique. These curds? They are, too. Not like you might expect—not unique like caviar on top of celery ice cream but more like no one makes this simple thing like you do.