Eavesdropping on a recent conversation about the best burger in the Twin Cities, we were horrified to note the following ground rule: "But not counting Vincent, of course, that thing is beyond a burger..." What! Is this what happened back in the evolutionary mists of time when the first fish grew legs? They just kicked him right out of the ocean and didn't let him party with the other fish anymore? What's fair about that? People, people. Just because this burger is stuffed with the tender meat that has fallen from the bone of braised short ribs, just because those intense short rib threads are combined with smoked Gouda, just because that whole little cheesy-beefy wonder nugget is wrapped in sirloin and grilled till it blisters with char, just because it is then tucked into an eggy bun and gilded with a mayonnaise popping with minced cornichons and sherry vinegar, just because it is finally adorned with wisps of onion and slices of restaurant-kitchen-quality slices of tomato and leaves of lettuce--just because of all that must we no longer call it a fish? Evolution, people. It is a friend, not a foe.

Last year, a bar in Pennsylvania announced that it sells a gut-busting six-pound burger--not including the three pounds of bun and toppings. After hearing this, what could be more appetizing, more rational, and less nauseating than a plate of Herkimer mini burgers? Before you go dismissing them with dogs birthed in their own Louis Vuitton handbags, consider this: A plate of five can fill you up just like one that's regular-sized. Plus, the wee ones are easier to maneuver, making burger time a less sloppy ordeal. The compact meals are neatly confined between buttery buns and come in several varieties including veggie, Cajun pork, and mini Big Macs. Or have them masquerade as a snack by ordering them on soft pretzel buns with a side of jalapeño honey mustard. In any case, you can pretend they're somehow healthier than their big, beefy brethren because they're, like, ohmigod, so cute, right?

The menu at jP insists on calling them pommes frites, but, whatever: When it comes to happy-hour grazing or late-night nibbling, the crispy, salty fries at Lyn-Lake's swankest destination are always the first bar treat to leap to mind. They are, of course, perfectly crispy and deeply salty, but they're also dusted with smoked paprika and, in a nod to the Belgian original, served up in a paper cone that turns a fetching shade of terra cotta as it blots the excess oil. The aioli served alongside is practically superfluous. At just $4.50, we say these fries are the perfect way to round out happy hour (5:30 to 6:30 nightly), when jP's thirst-slaking cocktails are half price. Careful, lest you find yourself contemplating a second order--and a third sidecar.

Every few months, inevitably when we've been mixing gin and Guinness, we feel compelled to make the case that Joey D's is the finest restaurant in the Twin Cities. We'll spare you the excruciating details of this harangue (and apologize if you've ever witnessed this sad spectacle), because the only truly important thing to know about this Ericsson neighborhood institution is quite simple: Order the Chicago dog. Don't bother with the pizza. Skip the fries. Don't even mess with the Polish sausage or the chili-cheese fries. Order the Chicago dog with all the fixings: mustard, relish, pickles, tomatoes, celery salt, onions, and sport peppers, all exquisitely crammed into a poppy-seed bun. (Okay, if you're a truly heroic creature: Order the Chicago dog and the Italian beef). There are only a few places in the Twin Cities that serve hot dogs worthy of mention in the same breath as Joey D's. The Wienery, that venerable West Bank hovel, continues to serve up multiple delicious dog variations, while Bullwinkle's Saloon dishes out a mean Coney Island dog. And relative newcomer the Bulldog produces a pretty decent Chicago Dog too. But Joey D's remains the top dog in town.

There are so, so many reasons to name this Lyndale neighborhood sweetheart Best Ice Cream Parlor. There's the ice cream, of course, and the sorbet, the sherbet, and the ice cream-based desserts, all blended on the premises in small batches from top-flight sustainable ingredients and in killer flavor combinations like Cabernet-chocolate, balsamic-Morello cherry, and Crema's signature espresso-kissed crema. There's the ever-seductive pastry case, the recently inaugurated brunch and lunch service, and your choice of seating on the tiny oasis-of-calm terrace (a slice of Rome spitting distance from Lyn-Lake!) or at tables along the front, facing the most prettily arranged, constantly abloom boulevard garden in the Twin Cities. Those are all swell reasons, but for our money the very best reason to write this item, right now, is that perhaps it will be read by the fine family behind the churn as a 160-word plea for a more frequent appearance of Crema's best-ever flavor invention, black pepper-cardamom, and we will receive deliverance.

It's largely a myth that you can't get good barbecue in the Twin Cities--scores of places do up barbecue in some sort of "authentic" style. The trouble with that, of course, is that paying homage to some variation of barbecue feels anything but authentic. Great barbecue here is rare. Some exceptions to this faux home-cookin' aesthetic this year were the old standby Market Bar-B-Que on 14th and Nicollet and the upstart Big E's down the road on 18th and Nicollet. But Market suffers from being a little too familiar and Big E's was closed for a spell and is now under new ownership. That leaves St. Paul's Lee's and Dee's as tops for most authentic barbecue. Opened by Lee Smith and his wife Dee 12 years ago in St. Paul's Summit-University neighborhood, near Selby-Dale, this fewer-than-10-booth storefront feels more like something out of Smith's home state of Mississippi than Minnesota. Lee's and Dee's serves real soul food appropriate for what was once Rondo, St. Paul's long-gone African American neighborhood. Some say the crisp, grease-free catfish here is the best in town, and the place gets major points for its smoky, chewy rib tips. The true test of any real barbecue joint, though, is the pulled-pork sandwich, and the one here does not disappoint: Delicate shreds drowning in a sauce that leans more toward honey than vinegar, but not too much of either, on a simple white bun. (One quibble: The hot sauce isn't nearly hot enough. But then again, this is Minnesota.) Smith gets his meat from a company in South St. Paul, and his prices reflect the aesthetic of a local small-business man. (The catfish and pork sandwiches are both under $6 with fries; a rib dinner runs less than $10, and a full rack of ribs less than $20.) The only notable decorative touches are some personal photos of folks like Don King and Ice-T dining in with Lee and Dee, old-school style. And that, folks, is authentic.

Galactic Pizza's slogan is "Pizza with a conscience," and, boy, do they mean it. Tucked in a tiny storefront on Lyndale just north of Lake alongside flash-in-the-pan hipster shops and trendy dining establishments that will feel outdated by the year 2006, this pie shop has a checkerboard floor and the future in mind. When weather permits, drivers in kitschy, futuristic superhero uniforms deliver your vegan pizza (or any other pizza) in a tiny electric car; the store runs entirely on renewable wind energy; all of the pizza packaging is made from recycled materials or is 100 percent biodegradable; and the mozzarella cheese comes from cows that have never been injected with icky growth hormones. On top of that, pizza lovers don't have to settle for the traditional tomato-based sauces if they don't want to. These space cadets anoint their delicious pizzas with one of ten different condiments, including hemp pesto, Thai peanut, and creamy tomato-vodka sauces. But lest you think Galactic's vision is, umm, pie-in-the-sky, take a moment to digest their vision statement while devouring a slice of Paul Bunyan pizza loaded with wild rice and bison sausage: "Imagine what the world would be like if every store, corporation, etc. were run this way."

For the best authentic Neapolitan pizza this side of the Atlantic, one need look no further than Punch. A certified member of the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, Punch doesn't pack its delectable thin-crust pizzas with greasy fixin's like thick ham or half-cooked bacon. Instead, Punch fills its crispy handmade crusts with only the best and freshest ingredients available, like San Marzano tomatoes imported from Naples, virtually transparent prosciutto, and Mediterranean olives and mushrooms. Then, each perfect specimen is cooked to a crispy-gooey goodness inside a wood-fired brick oven, which makes the crust taste like it was magically created by the pizza gods using only the light of the moon and the earth's greatest hidden treasures. Yes, the crust is that good. Thankfully, the dough is made with only the finest all-natural ingredients. But even if it was made up of unknown herbs from the planet's lower mantle and shaped into a gigantic pie the size of Saturn, we'd still eat it in one sitting--and still have a hankering to order the tiramisu mousse for desert.

The burritos at Taqueria La Hacienda are meals within themselves, with a variety of fillings sure to appeal to anyone's taste. The chicken- and steak-stuffed versions taste like meat, sure, but also like cilantro and onion. In fact, they set a new standard for the egalitarian burrito, in which no ingredient overpowers another. The beef tongue burrito costs a little more, but fans of that particular hard-to-find cut won't mind. Still and all, we think the finest Taqueria La Hacienda has to offer is the al pastor. This barbecued pork is the best you'll find in the Cities, the rock star of all the choices. It's so good the taste--sweet, rich, spicy--will become your definition of al pastor for life. Before you eat, don't forget to order a Jarrito soda; the prices here allow for a beverage no matter what your budget. Taqueria La Hacienda is open until 3:00 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Imagine, even after the bars close, they are still making burritos.

Did you think hot-water cornbread was dead in Minnesota? Did you think you'd never see a credible hush puppy or drown your sorrows in a glowing mound of candied yams ever again? Yes, it was a dark 2004, with Lucille's Kitchen closing. But the whole point of soul food is that life is a glory and here to be led with passion and richness, and so all thanks for Abundant Bistro, which has come to give abundant soul to your life, and also to your dinner plates. At dinner they've got all the classics, like golden fried catfish, smothered chicken, and gooey rib tips, but don't miss the sides: Fresh yellow corn kernels are fried in a skillet with bell peppers till the whole mess is crackling with salt and country flavor; hush puppies are made perky with slivers of green onion in the batter; macaroni and cheese is as rich as Donald Trump, but far more down to earth; greens come in a bowl of liquor that's got more strength of character than a boatful of senators. And those yams. Those yams! Like the sun setting in a bright painted picture, as orange as imagination, veiled in a lace of cinnamon and butter. It isn't easy being soulful in a cruel world, but when you're soothed by food such as this, it gets a bit easier.

Pastry that looks too good to eat? Well, it probably is. But at Franklin Street Bakery, the trays of scones, tarts, and muffins are irresistible precisely because they are not egg-washed and jellied to perfection. Instead each is a crusty, browned, homey individual. And Franklin Street offers something that practically nobody else in town does: savory pastries. Chewy individual brioches topped with mushrooms and Gruyère. Hearty focaccia rounds with caramelized onions. Pint-sized croissants overstuffed with ham and Swiss. Not everyone wants a muffin for breakfast. Individual pastry prices are a little out of keeping with the neighborhood (keep in mind, you're paying for real butter here) but the bread is priced for the masses: baguettes, seedy whole grains, and simple white loaves are just two and three bucks. (Take that, Aldi.) The woman behind it all, bakery chef Michelle Gayer-Nichelson, was lured to the Twin Cities early last year, after tenures at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago and La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. In 2003 Bon Appetit named her Pastry Chef of the Year.

Turtle Bread knows crust: the splinteringly crisp but tender crust of a baguette, the soft shell of a potato loaf, crackling and toothsome ciabatta. Turtle also knows crumb: airy baguettes, soft and open hearth loaves, dense brioche. What's amazing is that, like a batter in a cage hitting ball after ball out of the park, Turtle Bread makes nearly three dozen unique breads, consistently producing excellent loaves. Most of them are set apart not by futzy seeds or olives, but by masterful manipulation of the same four basic ingredients: flour, yeast, water, and salt. But, while the ficelle, levain, campagne and other classics are remarkable, the chocolate bread alone, an Italian-inspired yeasty loaf with the emphasis on the cocoa, not the sugar, deserves its own special award.

Doughnuts are decidedly blue-collar food. No need for imported, artisan, or Dutch-processed anything. At the same time, you don't want your doughnuts to come from a gas station or the front rack at Target (we're looking at you, Krispy Kreme). The Bosela family has been hand-rolling and hand-cutting doughnuts in the little Mel-O-Glaze bakery just off Minnehaha Creek since 1961 (the bakery itself has been there even longer). They've survived bagels, croissants, biscotti, scones, and every other pastry craze to whiz through town by focusing on the classics: raised, chocolate-glazed, old-fashioned, longjohns, apple fritters, and Boston creme. A brief foray into the avant-garde (fresh-baked doggy treats) recently withered and the family is back to what it does best: fresh, hot, deep-fried goodness with just the right touch of chewiness and crispiness, never greasy and not overly sweet. Baked goods for the masses. In fact, you can get a morning doughnut and huge cup of brewed coffee (remember that stuff?) for less than two bucks. Try doing that with plastic-wrapped biscotti and a venti anything.

At best, the folks at Just Truffles are wonderfully humble people; at worst, they are liars. Walking into the house that serves as their aromatic headquarters, it's pretty obvious they've got a lot more going on than mere truffles. In fact, there's a whole display case stacked with trays of non-truffle entities including coconut clusters, vanilla caramels, and cherries floating in a rosy syrup within dark chocolate shells. But what about those truffles? First of all, if you glance past the counter, you can witness as they're hand-dipped and decorated. The final product is about the size of a golf ball and blessed with a buttery, fluffy filling so rich that sharing is required. They come in over two dozen unique flavors including peppermint crunch, plum wine, and Luciano Pavarotti's favorite, the Tenor's Temptation, a mixture of coconut cream and Malibu rum. We haven't discussed the matter with him, but it's a fair bet that the man knows his chocolate.

Gentlemen: Want to meet real single women now? Live and in person? Women with, shall we say, certain appetites? Start by forgetting about the Friday night parade of Midwestern nubility that staggers up and down Minneapolis's First Avenue in search of grain alcohol. You want to catch these women earlier in the fermentation process, when they can still stand up--that is to say, when they hunger for simple sugars. And, at lunch hour, the St. Paul Candyland is the place to find them. It helps if you're attracted to the kind of woman who wears a parking permit on a shoelace around her neck: say a compliance coordinator at Ecolab, or a junior controller at Lawson software. For it's these lovelies who line up for milk chocolate almond bark ($10.99 a pound) and sour cherry balls ($4.99/pound). They fill their purses with caramel corn popcorn balls (a buck a ball) and stuff their pockets with butter toffee bars (priceless). It's an innocent place, the candy store is, clean and unfussy. Yet there's little that's precious or kitschy--or shall we say saccharine--about this family-owned business and city mainstay, and on a Tuesday at 1:00 p.m., it's not a kiddie crowd ogling the goods. Best of all, if your romance begins over a mound of chocolate-covered Oreos, you can hope your sweetie won't be boring you with the details of her Atkins diet any time soon.

How many sorts of blue cheese should a cheese counter have to win your admiration? Ten? Oh no, Surdyk's Cheese Shop can do better than that. Twenty? Keep going. Twenty five? Pshaw. How about 30! That's right, a recent visit to Surdyk's revealed more than 30 varieties of blue cheese, and not just your Stiltons, your Gorgonzolas, your Maytag Blues. Oh no. There's a raw milk blue from Massachussets, a buttermilk blue from Wisconsin, the Roaring '40s Blue from Australia, Neal's Yard Cashel Blue from the vaunted British producer, and a million more. Like the Bingham Hill Blue from Fort Collins, Colorado, with its sharp and pointed age, its dry crumble and deep finish. There's Le Papillon Roquefort, all ivory, salt, elegant mineral, and rich luxury (and, in the words of cheese guru Steven Jenkins, the reason God created caves.) There's even resilient, hopeful Shepherd's Way Farm Big Woods Bleu, from right near here in Nerstrand, Minnesota, which, when tasted beside the French Roquefort, seems to tell you something about American energy versus European tradition. What, you ask, how can a cheese be resilient and hopeful? Well, maybe what we're referring to here is the way the clear bright sheep's milk focuses the tang of the blue mold, or maybe we've just been touched by the way Surdyk's cheese shop customers and Surdyk's owners joined forces to present Shepherd's Way with $2,800 to help the farm recover from a horrible fire. Because even though Surdyk's initially won our admiration with the depth of their cheese selection, they've cemented it by showing the depth of their commitment to our local cheese community, and the depth of their hearts.

Seventy years is a long time to be the pastrami king of Minneapolis, but if you've tucked into a pastrami sandwich at Brothers lately, all hot and steamy, piled high on good thick rye, ecstatic with the precisely correct ratio of soul, nostalgia, and salt, you'll know that even 70 years in, the reign of this emperor is still just and good. What, you say, smarty-pants? Nothing in Minneapolis is 70 years old? We immediately bulldoze anything that begins to amass that terrifying stink of history? Okay, yes, that is true. To trace the full 70 years of Brothers you have to remember Mike's Café, opened by the current Brothers grandfather in the space now occupied by that check-cashing joint near the 7th St. Entry, where Grandpa Mike used to cure his own corned beef and pastrami, and simmer down his own oxtails. Well, today the oxtails are out, and fresh salads with homemade dressings like blue cheese and mustard-maple are in, but otherwise the soul, the spirit, and, above all, the corned beef and pastrami (now flown in from the Bronx) are as strong as 70 years' experience should bring. So won't you join us in offering a bouquet of exclamation points as a toast to Brothers' first 70 years, and all our wishes for 70 years more!!!

Few things set a cook's heart afire as quickly as a really kick-ass display of finfish, crustaceans, and mollusks. The colors alone take one aback: deep ruby tuna steaks; pink, opalescent whole snapper; silvery-patterned striped bass; ivory diver scallops; blue-black mussels; finely ridged skate-wing. Lately, no local display gets our minds to conjuring just the right compound butter or warm vinaigrette as quickly as Whole Foods' inviting berg of crushed ice. It's fresh, it's varied, and, surprisingly, it's not as expensive as those other chain grocers. So, lemon-chive butter on wild-caught coho or garlic-habañero mojo on tiger prawns?

God bless the Twin Cities' excellent food co-ops: They've educated a generation of cooks to demand nothing less than fresh, locally grown, pesticide-free produce. And come summer, those cooks now flock in droves to the farm stands at Minneapolis's Midtown Public Market where they finger, squeeze, sniff, and taste the wares and otherwise generally get in the faces of the very folks who grew the lovelies spread out under this ever-blossoming sea of awnings. Several times last summer we snatched up electric tangerine squash blossoms; tiny, sweet, baby turnips and their greens; and corn so fresh from the field that the family matriarch declared herself transported back to her pre-hybrid-era youth in rural Indiana. We're never able to walk past the mother-daughter duo selling blackberries the size of a thumb, or the chap with the freezer case full of choice bison cuts. This year the market will offer expanded hours: It will open on Saturdays starting May 7; when regular hours begin July 10 it will be open Tuesday evenings like in years past and, drum roll please, Sundays.

Whether your diet is vegan, lactose-free, macrobiotic, or you just plain enjoy a meal without yellow number 5, you've probably spent some quality time in grocery stores scanning aisles and reading labels. That's why it's so great when you find a store where the staff has already read the labels and understands exactly what a gluten-free diet entails. Employees at Mississippi Market can tell you what local farm the tomatoes came from that week (Mississippi Market buys produce from local farmers, when possible), or what aisle you can find the yeast-free bread in, and they certainly won't give you the wonky eye when you ask if they carry soy pepperoni. But don't feel excluded if you eat red meat or are enviably devoid of food allergies. Mississippi Market offers a variety of unique food items that you would never find at your typical generic mega-grocer--like all-natural meats in the deli, green tea and ginger ice cream, and well over 100 varieties of cheese. Also, be sure to check out the bulk section, which offers a selection any co-op would be envious of. You can stock up on standard hoarding items (flour, rice, beans) or items you might never think of hoarding (sun-dried tomatoes, almond butter, shampoo) except that now that you can, you definitely will.

To the uninitiated, Kowalski's might look like a mere grocery giant, but if you're a Twin Cities cook you'll quickly see that Kowalski's is much more than that, it's a delight to both palate and soul. Why? Because Kowalski's has both a great, great number of great ingredients, and a great commitment to Minnesotan food-life. As far as the ingredients, many locations offer more than a hundred cheeses from both around the world and close to home, some of the best charcuterie selections in Minnesota for salamis, hams, and even lunch boxes (love that Boar's Head case!), a bounteous olive bar that makes preparing avant-garde sauces and relishes for a small family both affordable and fun (you don't have to buy a whole jar of caperberries when you only need two tablespoons), and a big and colorful produce section that always offers something to delight and surprise, like little pristine heads of lettuce, root ball intact, isolated in a plastic pod like a shiny new Walkman, each leaf as tender as plant-made silk. While it's Kowalski's great ingredients that make our palates sing, it's Kowalski's commitment to our little, budding gourmet community that makes us sing their praises: Talk to anyone at local food producers like Golden Fig, Bramblewood Cottage, Ames Honey, B.T. McElrath, Sausage Sisters, Pastureland Butter, or a dozen others and they'll often tell you in great detail how the Kowalski's crew has bent over backward to help their fledgling companies get on solid ground. Is it good business for a company to support local producers when food giants are offering such attractive shelf-space payola? It's good for us.

Strains of "It's a Small World" might as well have been wafting down from the heavens as we made our way slowly through this bright, sparkling, Nordeast market one day in search of provisions. There were the inevitable spices and sauce mixes and bulk bags of exotic rice and legumes, yes, but there was also the Pillsbury Doughboy. He offered his trademark parade wave from dozens of packages in the freezer case, right next to a tempting array of cocktail-nibble-sized samosas and pakoras. We couldn't resist picking out one of the Doughboy's "flavoured" parathas, made not at General Mills in Golden Valley, but in Mumbai, people. We put it into our cart, taking care not to crush the fresh fenugreek (fresh fenugreek--in the Midwest!) and some other unexpected prizes, and we made our way slowly home, wondering whether the kids would believe us if we said that once upon a time the Doughboy meant crescent rolls and his buddy the Green Giant the only produce available most of the year.

So far, 2005 is shaping up to be the year we conquer the chile: dark and musky guajillos, sweet and fruity anchos, startling cascabels, bold, almost tannic pasillas. It's pretty easy to turn the dried pods of your choice into a rich, thick sauce. Toast, soak, grind, and fry, and then simmer along with your choice of meat or fowl. Inspiration is no further away than the prodigious chile section at El Burrito. They sell so many chiles, they pack their own! There's also a full complement of dry goods, a small but spiffy selection of housewares, and well-stocked produce and dairy cases. (On our last trip we picked up some fresh, peeled nopales and some very pretty prickly pear fruit. The prospect sent the kids scurrying to the basement.) If all that isn't enough to prompt the purchase of an armload of dried peppers, take a trip through the line of El Burrito's cafeteria, take your sampler to the charming tile-and-adobe-graced dining room. Surely there you, too, will resolve to conquer the chile.

It always happens: We stop in to Shuang Hur for a jar of curry paste or a bottle of fish sauce, and we leave $30 lighter but toting the makings for any number of quasi-made-up meals. Because, you see, there is not one kind of curry paste, or even one discrete display, but an aisle of tins and tubs to be inspected. An aisle that dead-ends at a wall of fish tanks playing hospice to all manner of live seafood, adjoining an aisle crammed with sticky-rice steamers and green tea flavored with roasted rice, more or less near aisles of produce cases bearing Chinese chives, purple basil, long beans, greens, greens, and more greens, and big packets of minnow-shaped Thai bird chiles. If all that's too ambitious, there's a freezer aisle full of ready-to-heat dim sum items and a butcher counter boasting lacquered duck, red-roasted pork, and sundry other less labor-intensive meal building blocks.

We'll never forget the very moment we encountered the first shell peas of spring. There they were in a first-course salad at Osteria I Nonni: greener than Kermit the frog, springier than a spaniel off-leash, and as welcome, in the ice-capped late winter Minnesota landscape, as water is to a thirsty man. This spring mountain of peas was set on a dark bed of dressed arugula and further enhanced with thinly sliced red onions, chopped bundles of fried pancetta, and long, translucent papers of Parmesan. Every bite was charming: The sweet peas, the bitter arugula, the rich pancetta and cheese, and the point of raw onion allowed enough breadth that all the flavors could play off one another, like wildflowers in a spring field. This shell pea salad cost $9 and was worth every penny, because it was more than a salad, it was proof that spring would come--and what is the essence of a great salad, if not to pinpoint a fleeting moment in a season?

Grocery stores have made great strides lately in popularizing sushi basics. Consequently, sushi bars are more popular than ever. This has been great for the bottom line at all of the best local sushi joints, but it has led to a new sort of problem: All too often, sushi bars are greeting their staggering crowds with slapdash creations that are more about clearing the sushi chef's ticket window than creating any kind of art. Origami, however, remains utterly dedicated to creativity and artfulness, as expressed through fish. On a recent visit to the Ridgedale Origami we ordered omakase (chef's choice) and were recipients of a special plate with four pieces of sushi, each distributed like tiny sculptures on a large, white four-cornered bowl. In the hollow of the bowl were two salads. One, based on chopped shrimp, was pale, elegant, and minimal like a snowball from the sea; beside it sat another salad, this one cubes of ruby-red tuna cloaked in a dressing based on puréed avocado, the whole thing topped with angular strips of fresh-cut avocado so that it looked like a wee Calder mobile. Around the salads were scattered fuchsia orchid petals. Up on two corners of the plate were gorgeous, tiny bites: broiled eel topped with a little hat of custard-light tamago, a piece of mackerel draped with a pressed paper of translucent yellow seaweed, the whole thing topped with a pea-sized garnish of fresh-grated ginger. It was the most creative and ambitious thing we saw in a sushi bar all year. Until the sushi roll we had next: a mad bundle made with crunchy rice crackers, salty-sweet pistachios, minced fish, a rich and spicy wasabi mayonnaise, and a dark red chili sauce. It sounds ridiculous, we know, but it felt nice, happy, jazzy, and fun. Art can be fun, you know. And art can also be quiet, contemplative, and serious, like the aforementioned plate with the orchid petals. Art can be all kinds of things. If you want art to be sushi, you'd best go to Origami

Two words make this the best pound of coffee to take home: Nordeast mud. It's rich. It's oily (that's a good thing in Coffeeland). It's smoother than anything this complex should be and goes down like good chocolate. It has a taste so dense you could stand a spoon up in it. And the loyal regulars at this very regular-y neighborhood coffee shop love it. Not your neighborhood, you say? That's exactly why you need a pound to take home. Dark roast isn't your thing? Get the Fair Trade Bolivian instead: Light and mildly acidic, it hides its caffeine punch. In fact, Taraccino stocks 20 roasts toasted up to order just for them, many of them made with fair trade organic beans and priced at $10 to $11 per pound. This Nordeast coffee shop probably wasn't on your regular shopping rounds but, there you go, now it is.

There are two sorts of people shopping for wine: Those who need help, and those who don't. If you can't tell a Barolo from a Zinfandel even when one bites you on the pants, it doesn't matter if you're in the Fort Knox of wine: It all looks the same. Meanwhile, if you chuckle all week because your dad compared Paul Wolfowitz to a '62 Haut-Brion, when the '34 would have been a far funnier joke, you can probably pull a great wine out of the most under-stocked Pump 'N Run in South Dakota. Yet both of you shoppers, you neophytes and you pros, should be accommodated in the Best Wine Store in the Twin Cities. How could this be? Through that most underrated of all human abilities: organization. Taste, we maintain, presented through organization, is the very definition of a good wine shop. Great taste presented through great organization is a great wine shop. Solo Vino is such a shop. Walk in and the first thing you see are bins with plenty of clear walking room around them, holding "Things Under $14 For Your Dinner, Tonight." These Things Under $14 change often enough that a complete novice could drop in weekly and try something new each time. The staff at Solo Vino is small enough, with owners behind the counter and on the floor all day every day, that eventually a novice will grow comfortable enough to mention that he or she liked something particularly. Thus a relationship is founded, a door is opened, and one kind of shopper begins to turn into the other kind. Meanwhile, those shoppers of the second kind, the old hands, need no help to understand Solo Vino's clearly labeled, clearly organized store, and therein they will find all sorts of rather rare and even esoteric options with which to wash down the evening's meal. In conclusion: An endless selection without an organizing intelligence is a warehouse, a jumble, a forest. A good selection with an organizing intelligence is Solo Vino.

What makes a liquor store the best one? The liquor, mostly. Like how the last time we were in Liquor Depot we got the daft idea of counting the varieties of vodka. Right as we hit number 138, we completely lost track, so awestruck were we by the vodka in the bottle shaped like a 1920s Tommy gun, replete with circular bullet cartridge and ridged pistol grip, and everything. So wait. If you drank from the mouth of the bottle it would be like you were shooting yourself in the mouth with a crystal clear Tommy gun? Which is to say nothing of the bottle next to it, vodka in a bottle shaped like a hunting rifle. Or the Swedish one called Thor's Hammer. Or the tippity-top-shelf 1.75 liter of Level vodka with accompanying martini glasses priced at half what it cost last Christmas. Or the Russian vodka flavored with honey, or the Soy vodka or the...did we mention the Tommy gun? So shocked were we, in fact, that we fled the vodkas and sought solace in the rums: Haitian, Jamaican, Dominican, Anguillan, Barbadan, Guyanan, Nicaraguan, Brazilian, Bermudan, and over there some from St. Croix--yikes! Suddenly we wished we had memorized the names of all the tropical nations that produce sugar cane; was any of them missing? We backed away in wonderment, at which point we encountered five sorts of Amaretto (not counting the cream Amarettos). You want liquor? You don't even know what liquor is until you go to Liquor Depot. Liquor isn't one thing. It isn't even a thousand things. It's tens of thousands of things, like the 3,000 wine labels Liquor Depot stocks, the seemingly endless towers of beer, and the truly uncountable thousands of bottles of liquor. (The secret to Liquor Depot's success: 15,000 square feet of storage space. They can gobble up hundreds of cases of booze when the price is right; they're also various liquor distributors' first choice when that distributor needs to hide their own purchasing mistake, or come up with cash fast.) With all that liquor to befuddle the senses (even before you drink a single drop) it's nice that the Liquor Depot employees are sweet, pretense free, and helpful in a laid-back, supremely Minnesotan way. But if it's the most liquor that makes a most great liquor store, rest assured that Liquor Depot has the absolute most.